Description: A submission portfolio is a portfolio in which students submit work along with annotations of that work. This can be a productive way to ensure that students end a course with a collection of work that they can use in the future. Further, by asking students to annotate their own work in various ways, an educator can extend the learning experience and/or focus students' attention on specific aspects of the learning experience. For example, by asking students to write a design rationale to accompany a design assignment, an instructor can help students learn to talk about their work as well as do it. By having students write reflections about what they learned through an experience, an educator can help students by getting them to make their learning more visible.
Underlying pedagogical goals: Synthesis
Examples: These examples represent submission portfolios from two different sections of my course, the Computer in Technical Communication. In this course, students complete eight assignments in eight weeks using eight different software tools. One key difference between the two submission portfolios is the number of annotations I requested that students make. In the autumn 2003 term, I had students annotate their work in three ways - with a design rationale, a professional activities statement, and a learning reflection. In the spring 2004, I decided that less is more and had students write only the design rationale, but also requested that the design rationale be more extensive. This illustrates that a key decision in a submission portfolio is deciding how you will ask students to annotate their work given a large number of possible ways.
