Due: Thursday 12/16/21 [this is the date in the syllabus. We can discuss in class any changes to the due date that make sense]

We have arrived at the end of the semester and are nearly done! Now it is time for you to pull all your work together, look at it as a whole, and reflect on what you have done over the course of the semester. You will write a final reflection (approximately 600-900 words) that takes into consideration and refers to or quotes from the work you have done throughout the semester:

  • Project #1: Education Narrative
  • Project #2: Reflective Annotated Bibliography
  • Project #3: Writing in a New Genre
  • Glossary Project posts
  • Weekly OpenLab Discussion comments
  • Weekly in-class participation (feel free to refer to your content from our Google Doc for class notes or your recollections of your experiences)

In writing your final reflection, you will make it your final portfolio, a collection of your work from throughout the semester, by including links to final versions of all three projects plus any additional work you want to highlight in your final reflection as you write about those materials. You may revise any or all of the three projects. If you do revise, be sure to reflect on those revisions specifically by including for each revision a paragraph in the final reflection explaining the changes you’ve made and why so I know to regrade your work and what changes to look for.

Questions for your reflection:

To write your reflection, you will refer specifically to your projects and other work from throughout the semester to address these three major questions:

  1. What have you learned about yourself as a reader and writer this semester?
  2. How have you changed or developed as a reader and writer this semester?
  3. Discuss what you learned in this class and how you might transfer this knowledge to other writing tasks, assignments, or situations either in college, professionally, or in your community.

Review your work, and brainstorm:

To help generate material for your reflection, look back through all your work (writing, reading, talking, thinking) from the semester. Use any of the following more detailed questions to help you brainstorm ideas for answering those main questions for your reflection:

  • What did you expect to learn in this class? What did you actually learn?
  • What are some notable lessons that have stuck with you after completing certain assignments?
  • How does your work from early in the semester compare to your work now?
  • What changed in your writing (and reading and thinking) as the genres changed or as you became more experienced?
  • What were your assumptions/beliefs about yourself and writing at the beginning of the semester? How have they since changed?
  • What techniques or ways of thinking about writing helped you this semester?
  • What was your experience when revising assignments? If you revised any of your assignments, be sure to identify what you changed and reflect on the changes.
  • How did feedback on your writing or other input (eg from me, classmates, tutors, librarians, your personal support team) factor into your work? What additional feedback would have been helpful?
  • What was particularly challenging for you in our course this semester and how did you overcome it (or attempt to)?
  • How did working in a First Year Learning Community with HMGT 1101 and HMGT 1102 influence the experience you had in this course?
  • What advice do you wish someone had given you to help you with this course? What difference would it have made for your learning and your writing?

Grading criteria:

Your successful Final Portfolio and Reflection will be a well-organized, easy-to-understand narrative that addresses those three main questions by referring to the work you have done throughout the semester. Use the following grading criteria as a checklist to help you develop your narrative:

  • Content: your reflection has all the components listed above, is thoughtfully written, and includes details and examples that illustrate your experiences in the course by including quotations from, references to, and links to your written work from the projects, posts, and discussions this semester. And does all of this in approximately 600-900 words
  • Organization:  Your reflection is a narrative that has a central focus, but it does not have to have a traditional organization. Be sure to write in paragraphs (not just one long paragraph) and order them logically–not simply a list answering the questions above but instead a narrative about your experience in this course this semester.
  • Presentation: Your project is written in a way that your audience can understand what you want them to take away from reading your reflection. You use formatting and sentence structure to help your readers make sense of your writing.