In this course you will create a final  portfolio of course work you created, accompanied by reflection, analysis, and self-evaluation. The purpose of the portfolio is for you to integrate, review, and comment on what you’ve learned, and, in turn, to demonstrate your learning to your evaluator (your seminar professor). Because New Century College values active learning and competency-based education, you may be asked to create portfolios at the end of the first year, at the end of some learning communities, and as a requirement for graduation. NCC faculty hope that creating these portfolios will provide you with meaningful learning opportunities and also with material that may be useful to you in job searches and graduate school preparation. 

Throughout your NCC years, you should save course materials for possible use in portfolios. (It is an especially good idea to save a copy of your work on a flash drive or other storage medium.)

The central questions around which you should construct your NCLC 110 portfolio are:  "What have you learned and how have you learned?" One of the major ways you are asked to address this question is to consider how you have progressed in the nine New Century competency areas: communication, critical thinking, strategic problem solving, valuing, group interaction, global understanding, effective citizenship, aesthetic awareness and information technology. 

Both in the introductory letter/essay (described below) and throughout the portfolio (i.e., in the commentary and self-evaluation preceding each component), you are asked to reflect on your growth in competency areas. You should also include more than one draft of at least some work from the unit, and you may revise additional work as you choose. 

Because portfolios are evaluated holistically (that is, individual parts will not receive separate grades), you should consider how the parts can make a comprehensive and detailed picture of your learning. While most of the products in the portfolio will be written, you need to think carefully and creatively about the visual aspects of your work and about how to create a professional appearance for the portfolio as a whole.

As you can see from the above description, a portfolio not an academic scrapbook. Constructing a successful portfolio is a time-consuming and challenging process, and you’ll need to allot plenty of time for preparation, just as you would spend a significant period of time studying for exams. Creating a portfolio is an exercise in problem-solving: the problem in this case is how best to demonstrate your learning. 

Before constructing your portfolio and the introductory material, reflections and other components, be sure to review your syllabus, the course goals and objectives, readings and day-by-day schedule.

• Annotated table of contents—This component should make it clear that you have organized your materials so as to facilitate your readers (NCC faculty interested in your learning). It is important that your evaluator be able to understand readily how you have organized your work and where specific items can be found. In other words, the table of contents should be very user-friendly.

• Introductory letter/essay (six to eight typed pages)—This essay is the most crucial single component of your portfolio, and it should make a well-developed statement about what you have learned in this course and how. Like the integrative essays you have written (for daily writing assignments), this letter should analyze ideas and make connections between and among readings, theories, discussion, and course experiences. Please refer to specific readings, etc., (with page numbers where applicable), and include your thoughtful reflection on them. This introductory letter/essay should explain how the portfolio represents you as a learner. You are also encouraged to pose questions in your essay—for example, questions you found interesting in the course and questions about ideas, texts, theories, etc. The letter should convey your ability to reflect thoughtfully and to engage in candid self-evaluation, and it should provide the reader with a context for understanding and appreciating your portfolio. At the end of your essay/letter, please be sure to include a bibliography of sources to which you have referred. You may choose either APA or MLA format, please consult Hacker to make sure you are citing correctly. As you plan/write/revise your introduction, consider the following prompts and choose several to address.

Essay prompts to consider:
 
• Which of the nine NCC competencies have been most significant for you and why?

• What connections do you find among and between readings, films, etc., and why: how do you integrate these ideas?

• In addition to three course themes (Sense of Self, Ways of Learning/Ways of Knowing, and Higher Education), what other themes and categories do you see in what we have been doing for the past weeks?

• What ideas, theories, and experiences have been most compelling during this course and why? Which do you find problematic or insufficient and why? How do your own ways of knowing shape your response?

• What has been hard intellectually about your first six weeks in college and why?

• What are your next goals as a learner? What skills, habits of mind, etc., do you plan to work on next?

• What insights have you had about multiple perspectives (for example, those arising from differences in culture, academic disciplines, gender, etc.)?

• What does it mean to be an active and self-aware learner?

• If you had to select a symbol or construct a metaphor to represent yourself as a learner so far in New Century College, what would it be and why?

• Have your goals as a learner changed? Have you re-thought your purpose in being in college during this course?

• What has surprised you about yourself, about learning, about college?

Components numbered 3 – 6 below should be introduced by commentary/self-evaluation addressing the following questions: what have I chosen to include in this section and specifically how does this represent me as a learner? What’s strong about this work and/or how might it be improved? What competency or competencies are most involved and why? Please begin each component with at least one page of introduction/explanation.

1. From one to three pieces of work from each of the three major themes of the course, Sense of Self, Ways of Learning/Ways of Knowing, and Higher Education—accompanied by explanation of why you have chosen each piece, its significance in terms of the theme, and an evaluation of how it represents your learning. Please be sure to point out how you might improve these examples of your work.

2. At least one piece of revised work with an earlier draft accompanied by an explanation explaining specifically what changes you have made and what you are attempting to accomplish in the revision.

3. Work reflecting your learning in the afternoon phases of the course. The introduction to this component should analyze what you learned in phases, most of which are dedicated to hands-on learning. What kinds of connections do you see between work in individual phases and course themes, readings, assignments, etc.? 

4. An evaluation of your information technology skills in which you describe specific skills you have learned or polished. What skills do you need/want to work on next and why?

5. A summary of information about your learning style—Please refer to your results on the Kolb test, the Multiple Intelligences instrument and whatever else you’ve learned about how you learn best. What is useful, valid, and/or problematic about your results on the Kolb and MI instruments?

6. Study Group assessment/evaluation (minimum length: two pages)—how did your group function? Why did your group function as it did? What were the dynamics, roles, behaviors, (including your own) that you observed in your group? Please create this evaluation and analysis using terms and concepts from your communication textbook and from the phase workshops focusing on groups (for example, group collaboration, group problem solving, group conflict analysis and resolution, intercultural communication). In order to complete this evaluation, you will need to refer to the materials on group collaboration in your course packets. Please review the evaluation of how your group functioned during the group problem solving exercise. 


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