The Flash or the Trash: Web Portfolios and Writing Assessment - Janice McIntire-Strasburg, Saint Louis University Writing process theories have undergone a sea-change in recent years from single-process models of writing to variable, situation-specific models. This change probably consists in equal parts of the natural evolutionary process of any systematic model and the rapidly changing nature of our own and our students' writing situations – especially the shifting emphasis toward Internet writing tasks. Instead of boiler-plating a process and shepherding our students through it, Thomas Kent and others suggest multiple processes more closely tied to the rhetorical situation. The flexibility of on-line or Webpage portfolios offers clear opportunities for students to customize and analyze cross-situational background terms webbing samples possibilities acknowledgements differences in process and use that information to improve their writing across the semester. As an added bonus, it also allows them to view their personal process(es) and fine tune them through varied projects, giving them information that they can apply to situations throughout their writing lives. These opportunities for self-exploration also suggest possibilities for assessing student writing in first year composition courses, and hold out at least the possibility of using Web portfolios for program assessment in the future.

This essay was originally presented as a paper at CW2001 as part of a panel dealing with assessment.  
 

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vol. 6 Iss. 2 Fall 2001