Portfolio Analysis

From: Michelle Chiodi
To: UN 2001 Program Assessment Group
Date: December 12, 2010
Re: Portfolio Analysis

Composition is a course designed to help students with the writing done in their respective majors. This course taught many different techniques from MLA and APA citation styles, to the main components of rhetoric. Different aspects of developing an argument were discussed along with the basics of creating a visual argument. Throughout this course we completed several different projects, which were an annotated bibliography, a rhetorical analysis, a presentation on rhetoric, a research paper, a visual argument, and finally this portfolio analysis.

The first project was an annotated bibliography, which served as a practice and discovery of the citation style in our major. For this project we had to interview a professor in our major about the citation style used in our major. After the interview, we wrote an annotated bibliography using the citation style described by the professor. Overall, this project was very interesting. I had never interviewed a professor before and I thought that it was a fun and interesting experience. In the end, I learned a lot about the writings done within Chemical Engineering and how the style of the citation is dictated by the journal it will be published in. Because there was no set style for citation it was difficult for me to write the annotated bibliography that went along with the interview. Luckily I got some pieces of writing that a professor wrote and the citations were shown. I used those citations as an example to base my citation on.

The next project was a change in pace from the first that was more technical. Our second project was a rhetorical analysis in which we had to choose an article and analyze the effectiveness of the author’s argument. For this project, I found an article from the New York Times about alternative medicine. After reading through this article I began to analyze the rhetorical techniques used by the author in creating her argument. After creating an initial draft it was peer reviewed and I found the feedback to be very helpful. One thing the reviewer said was that I needed to define my audience better. I worked on this and for the second draft I had defined my audience to be middle-aged readers 35-55 of the New York Times who are interested in medical topics. This allowed me to focus my analysis more toward my audience. If I had more time to work on it, I would have talked about the converse to the argument more. Alternative medicine is a controversial subject and the article I read only discussed its pros. I would have discussed how the author of the New York Times article should have incorporated more about the cons into her article.

Along with the idea of rhetoric we had a group project where we had to analyze the ethos, pathos, and logos of an argument. My group chose to analyze a Doritos commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. Because of this airtime it was easy to identify the audience as predominantly male football lovers ages 16-35 as the target audience for this commercial. In the end, we found that the argument was made using mostly pathos and ethos as the rhetorical appeals. We put together a presentation using Prezi to present our ideas to the class. Because our audience for this presentation was our class we decided to present it in a more interesting way than Power Point so we decided to use Prezi. This was effective as it seemed to keep the attention of the audience.

Our third project was a research paper that had to be on a topic within the theme of new digital media and student life. This was a very broad theme, and at the beginning I was unsure of what to use for my topic. Initially I thought I wanted to write about the detriments the new digital media has on interpersonal communication. However after beginning research on that topic, I began to lose interest on that and was not finding any excellent sources. Eventually I decided that I wanted to look into the topic of cyber bullying. I was interested in this topic because it had been in the news quite a bit lately so I wanted to learn more about it. I decided to make my argument that cyber bullying is creating a new breed of bully that is more severe than traditional bullies. With this I also looked into what is being done to prevent cyber bullying and what still needs to be done. After searching the online database resources provided by the library, I found many useful sources that provided great substance for my argument. After crafting a first draft we had a peer review in class. The feedback that I got was useful and let me know that I needed to work on the organization and clear up a couple section. For my final paper I worked on the organization so that my argument flowed better and was more logical. Additionally, I made sure that everything was clear and nothing was overly word or ambiguous.

The last project for this class was a visual argument. For this project we had the option to use our project three topic for our visual argument. This is what I decided to do so I created a visual argument about cyber bullying. From the beginning I was not sure what media I wanted to use to create my visual, I began by trying to create a computer drawing then turned to creating a Windows Movie Make video. I quickly realized that I was not familiar enough with the software to do either of those. After running into this problem I decided to revert back to what I know how to do: drawing. At the beginning I knew that my I wanted my audience to be teens, specifically younger teens ages 13-16 because they are often targets for cyber bullying. Because my audience was teenagers I decided to make something that looked slightly funny so it would draw their attention. I think this effective because their attention will be grabbed by the drawing and at the same time they will be able to understand the argument. Then when they read the text will be able to fully understand the main argument of the drawing.

Overall I think I performed well in this class. I tried to participate in class discussions when I had a good idea to add and I think I gave good feedback when I was peer reviewing. One thing I think could enhance this class would be a more formal verbal project. Something like a debate could be used to give students practice incorporating ethos, pathos, and logos into a verbal argument. I think something verbal is needed in this class because it is something all students are going to need to use in the future when trying to present their ideas in industry and even when interviewing for jobs in the future.