Erin Workman

 

Borton and Huot describe the use of progress journals as a way of scaffolding the work that students do while composing sustained research projects. While the exact assignment and assessment process they outline is not feasible for ENC 1102 at FSU (for instance, we can't cancel more than two weeks of class for conferences, and Borton and Huot call for canceled class and frequent conferences over the course of the research project), the progress journals can be adapted to my course. Borton and Huot write,

As faculty engage in these frequent informal assessments of the multimodal essays, they may want to keep a progress-assessment journal in which they jot down notes about the progress individual students are making as well as information from conferences and project observations.  A systematic record with dated entries of encounters and thoughts on individual students’ projects can help teachers make more succinct and helpful comments based on past encounters. (6)

Though this type of record-keeping on students' work makes sense, I had never thought to do this before. This record of "informal assessments" seems particularly useful as a way of tracing the progress of students' research projects and reminding myself of that work as I read their "final" theories of writing and ePortfolios. Similarly, I'll ask students to keep their own progress journals to keep track for themselves of what they do at each stage of the research and writing process and the kinds of feedback they got and chose to take or not take (and why). Just as my journal will serve as a reminder for me, the students' journals will help them to remember and reflect on the processes and strategies they developed over the course of the research project.

Borton and Huot provide templates for these progress journals, and though I will likely adapt these to the local context of my particular classroom, I'll still include the following sections for the teacher-kept journal: project description, purpose, and audience, and date of these observations and student conference. As this journal focuses on describing the work, it will also double as a form of descriptive response for the student. Student-kept progress will contain the same sections, with additional space for "progress notes," which include rhetorical rationale for changes, date, and hours logged on project.