Where the Wild Papers Are: Producing a Student Portfolio in the Undergraduate Seminar

WHEN OUR DEPARTMENT decided to use student portfolios for assessing our major program and teaching performance we were in the process of revamping the sophomore level seminar in research methods required of our majors. In this article we will explain how our course and its portfolio development has come to represent a substantial portion of the data sought in the overall departmental assessment of the history program. We decided to restructure the course around the preparation of a research portfolio as a strategy to overcome students' tendency to evade the thoughtful analysis and reflection which are central to historical scholarship. Pressured by the demands of their jobs and social lives, they all too often regard an assignment not as a opportunity for intellectual growth but as a hurdle to overcome in a race for a satisfactory grade, so they throw an assignment together the night before it is due. Taking these realities of student culture into account, it was essential that we mold the course around a structure which basically forces such analytical and reflective modes of thought. The step-by-step, skill building approach provided by the cumulative process of preparing a portfolio met this challenge. By completing assignments which employ self-evaluation and peer evaluation, our students have no choice but to revise their work,