Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants

Title

What Fifteen Years has Taught Us: Sustaining a Portfolio Assessment Program for the Long Term

Department

Writing

College

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Date Range

2010-2011

Abstract

Portfolio-based writing assessment began in the mid-1980s at the State University of New York-Stony Brook when Belanoff and Elbow (1986) successfully demonstrated how using portfolios across a writing program was not only pragmatic, but valuable to students, teachers, writing program administrators and the curriculum. Now, 24 years later, portfolios have becomea well-established grading mechanism in writing curriculums across the nation. Research supports the idea that portfolio assessment groups (PAGs) enrich the process of assessing writing, the teaching of writing, and curriculum and faculty development in a writing program (Elbow & Belanoff, 1997; Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 2000; Broad 2003). The three presenters, Rick Iadonisi, Craig Hulst, and Dauvan Mulally, have 33 years of combined experience with GVSU's FYC PAG program, and will discuss the history of the program, the potential problems with PAGs, the solutions to these issues as we have discovered them, and the overall benefits to students, faculty, departments, and universities. We expect that the discussion raised by our presentation will be led by questions regarding the efficacy of introducing or re-introducing PAGs into an FYC program, how to deal with logistic and sustainment issues, and how to sell the idea to departments, faculty, universities, and students.

Conference Name

Writing Program Administrators

Conference Location

Philadelphia, PA

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