Folio Thinking in W131/140 Reading, Writing, and Inquiry

at IUPUI

 

Folio Thinking is thinking strategically about the materials you are documenting/sharing in your ePortfolio. For W131/W140, you're building a course-based ePortfolio that showcases some of your best work this semester AS WELL AS reflections on your growth as a thinker and a writer.

 

You may have a professional ePortfolio that you curate to showcase work relevant to your career choices and professional ambitions. The materials you showcase/include in your ePortfolio create a story for your readers.

 

In W131, your portfolio tells the story of what you've learned and how you've demonstrated mastery of course goals.

 

How is your class ePortfolio similar to other portfolios you might have?

Your photography ePortfolio might contain images and commentary about the photos you share on the website as well as what these say about the style and subjects you photograph. Much like these comments--similar to the comments you might see in a gallery beside a work of art--your comments in your ePortfolio help the reader better understand what they're reading, how these materials related to the course, and how you transfer what you're learning into other environments.

 

FOLIO THINKING in COLLEGE CLASSES

Folio thinking includes the ability to see across the Canvas Activities, research, and written projects to carefully select, design, and hyperlink your materials to materials on the internet. This complete, well-developed ePortfolio create a cohesive view of your accomplishments in W131/W140.

 

Folio Thinking builds on our early activities which included watching Dweck's Growth Mindset Ted Talk video and reading about metacognition on the Vanderbilt website. As you look back, you can make connections between cultivating a growth mindset and being open to the exploration of new and familiar contact zones as you worked on W131 writing projects.

 

The ePortfolio gives you practical tools to document and illustrate what you've learned. Writing Project 3 and the end of semester reflection are additional opportunities to make connections between W131 course readings, your personal research, your experiential learning [immersion experience], and writing strategies like ICE/ICE that help you shape and report on your accomplishments as a writer and emerging scholar.

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As you reflect on your use of folio thinking, you're using metacognative strategies to examine what you've written and learned in W130/W140. Folio Thinking is at the heart of the strategic choices you make about how you will arrange artifacts (like your writing projects and/or photos you took of your immersion experience) to document and share what you've learned and demonstrated in W131/W140.

 

In addition to seeing your ePortfolio as documentation of writing strategies and skills you've practiced in W131/W140, Folio Thinking challenges you to take the next step and connect your work to W131 course goals:

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How does your work in the ePortfolio demonstrate that you've achieved specific course goals?

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Naming a course goal, then citing/quoting from your own writing project to illustrate ONE PLACE you demonstrated mastery of this goal helps connect the goal to your work. But don't stop there. Add a sentence that EXPLAINS WHY the quote from your work demonstrates that you've met a course goal. This connects the goal and your work and explains WHY this is evidence of your mastery of course goals. [Course goals are listed on your W131W140 Syllabus.]

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FOLIO THINKING + COMMENTING ON FOLIO THINKING

The idea of using Folio Thinking to help students like you make connections between what you've learned and how this demonstrates your growth (both personally and academically) is not unique to IUPUI. Universities around the world are using ePortfolios as one tool to help students reflect on and document learning.

 

Folio Thinking informs ePortfolio components and design decisions.

 

The image below is a screenshot from Stanford University's page on Folio Thinking and illustrates their university goals for "learning" ePortfolios.

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After reading the excerpt about Stanford's emphasis on Folio Thinking, you might be considering of some of the ways you've taken similar paths in W131/W140:

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• experiential learning [immersion experience + building the website]

• metacognition [like connecting your writing strategy for an in medias res introduction to the opening of Unbranded or the use of setting + character to introduce a piece like Berehulak's "They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals"]

• reflection [your Agenda for each writing project included reflection on your strongest moments and specific writing strategies, like using set pieces]

• critical thinking [making connections between your research, your topic, and the way this enriched your writing about the immersion experience in the feature style narrative]

• mastery orientation [your ability to meet and show mastery of course goals through your accomplishments in W131]

 

It is Folio Thinking, as a metacognative tool, that helps you to make connections between your film review, feature style narrative, and multi-modal project. Folio Thinking is part of what happens as you connect your immersion experience to class readings and notice that the assignment evolved from our reading of Mary Louise Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone" which challenged us to explore new and familiar contact zones with fresh perspectives.

 

Folio thinking for W131/W140 challenges you to move beyond the paper-focused view of your documentary film review as a static project. Instead, you're encouraged to see the film review as part of your research and to also see the review in conversation with your immersion experience.

 

Folio Thinking also sparks ideas that encourage you to think beyond traditional "school" research in books and articles to consider alternative means of documenting and researching/experiences. You can use a variety of genres in your research like documentaries, podcasts, video, and radio. Then, you can take screenshot and/or hyperlink to images in your ePortfolio. You can embed videos or audio messages. Folio Thinking means your considering the world of options you have at your fingertips while you're making an argument and/or building your ePortfolio.

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Beyond Folio Thinking:

Seeing Yourself As an Emerging Scholar

An added benefit of Folio Thinking is the opportunity to see yourself, and your work in the W131/W140 ePortfolio, as adding to the body of research on your topic. You have joined other voices--through hyperlinks and your written commentary--to expand the world of ideas related to your immersion experience.

 

You are an emerging scholar with a voice and a public platform: your ePortfolio.

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