Seeking ePortfolio examples for AAC&U Gallery of Writing

2009.12.21

In partnership with the National Council of Teachers of English, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has created a Gallery of Writing within the much larger National Gallery of Writing project.

The AAC&U Gallery is looking for submissions of work that characterizes liberal education in the 21st century. The AAC&U page on the Gallery: http://www.aacu.org/gallery/index.cfm

The AAC&U Gallery itself: http://www.galleryofwriting.org/galleries/association_of_american_colleges_and_universities_gallery

We would be interested in e-portfolio examples or other innovative practices, reflections, examples. Address questions, please, to Susan Albertine: Albertine AT aacu.org

Thanks!

--Susan Albertine

Co-curator, AAC&U Gallery
Senior Director, LEAP States Initiative
AAC&U

Article: The $5,000 Approach to Teaching Writing

An interesting take on motivating students, external validity and relevance of classroom work with implications for how we might scaffold and support reflection.

The $5,000 Approach to Teaching Writing
By Bob Kunzinger
The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 29, 2009
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i40/40kunzinger.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Article: Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers (6/15/09)

Emerging findings from the "Stanford Study of Writing," a five-year study of the writing lives of Stanford students, have important implications for how and where written reflection occurs in students' lives and the role of ePortfolios in supporting these activities.

STUDY EXPLORES WHETHER INTERNET MAKES STUDENTS BETTER WRITERS
The Chronicle for Higher Education
June 15, 2009
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=Mr9MvgS2wzmnzwTKdqfgDgdfh9nQMpVp

As a student at Stanford University, Mark Otuteye wrote in any medium he could find. He wrote blog posts, slam poetry, to-do lists, teaching guides, e-mail and Facebook messages, diary entries, short stories. He wrote a poem in computer code, and he wrote a computer program that helped him catalog all the things he had written. But Mr. Otuteye hated writing academic papers. Although he had vague dreams of becoming an English professor, he saw academic writing as a "soulless exercise" that felt like "jumping through hoops." When given a writing assignment in class, he says, he would usually adopt a personal tone and more or less ignore the prompt. "I got away with it," says Mr. Otuteye, who graduated from Stanford in 2006. "Most of the time." The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students' writing and for the college curriculum.

From The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching