The Course Portfolio
Overview
Many courses like ours have traditionally required a research paper or “term paper,” typically focused on a single author, theme, feature, or context related to the period under study. Indeed, I have required papers of that sort in many different courses over the years. But because our course covers a long historical period that includes a great many important figures and events (some of them literary and cultural, some of them not), I prefer to assign a project that involves practical, ongoing, day-to-day interaction with the materials we study and the contexts in which we study them. Therefore, instead of the standard “term paper,” I’d like you to prepare a course portfolio consisting of two major components: (1) a set of reading notes, and (2) a supplementary research and study portfolio. These are described in what follows.
The Reading Notes
I ask that during the semester you maintain a written record of your responses to our course materials and concerns in the form of an ongoing collection of reading notes. I will collect these from you at several points during the semester, about every three or four weeks, and I will return them at the next class meeting with my own brief responses to your notes, including any suggestions I may have about ways to improve or otherwise modify them. At semester’s end these notes will become part of your course portfolio and will constitute approximately 20% of your overall course grade.
Because we cover a considerable amount of literary, historical, and cultural material during the semester, it is important that you keep up-to-date notes on the reading and thinking you are doing with the assigned materials, both on their own and in relation to our work together as a class. The reading notes I am requiring will help you to think creatively and systematically about these matters, and they will help you develop a coherent view of the literary and cultural history of Great Britain during the nineteenth century.
These notes will also provide a good source of preliminary material for the course research portfolio you will assemble as the semester proceeds. Indeed, you will probably find that the two parts of the portfolio actually form a sort of “dialogue” with one another and with the required reading for our course. You should plan to work on both parts of this project on a regular basis; this is not a project that can simply be pulled together at the last moment, when the crush of the semester is already creating considerable stress.
Format for the Reading Notes
I ask that you maintain (and submit) your reading notes in some sort of notebook form. Either a standard spiral notebook or a loose-leaf binder will do; if you work with a computer and print out your notes, the latter is the obvious choice. I suggest that you set your notes up in a double-page format, as follows.
On the left side of the double page, makes notes on the daily reading assignments. These notes should include your responses to any or all of the assigned readings for the day. You may wish to record your initial reactions to and interpretations of the readings themselves, as well as any thoughts about them that may have occurred to you on subsequent re-readings. You may wish to speculate in your notes about how any or all of these readings relate to subjects, themes, and other considerations we have been exploring in the course. Or you may wish to write some about how they relate to your own personal and professional interests and skills. In any case, I expect that your notes will be primarily critical and interpretive, and not just a collection of superficial and impressionistic comments about whether or not you “like” particular works.
On the right side of your double-page, make notes about how any or all of the assigned readings relate to (1) any outside reading you may be doing for this course (including your plans and research for the portfolio) and/or (2) to any other framework that is relevant to your personal and professional work (connections to things you are reading for other majors, for instance, or for your individual personal development). The emphasis in these right-hand-page notes should be on the “big picture” you are developing about nineteenth-century British literature in relation to other historical, cultural, critical, and theoretical contexts: how it all begins to “fit together” for you, in other words. Here you should be writing about how your other reading or interests or activities help you make greater sense of the materials you are reading for this course.
There is no set format for these notes, nor is there any particular “right” way to do them. I do not expect that you will write about every assigned reading every day. Nor do I require that your reading notes be “long”: certainly you don’t need to feel you have to go beyond one single left-hand-and-right-hand pair of pages per entry. Nevertheless, I do expect your notes to demonstrate a serious and systematic investment of time and intellectual energy appropriate to a course at this level.
Feel free to ask questions at any time, whether about what to put into your notes or how to format the notes; let me help in any way I can.
The Research Portfolio
The “research portfolio” part of your Course Portfolio represents an expanded set of study notes that you develop by consulting various sorts of research sources. You may go on-line, of course (remembering that many on-line sites are only as reliable as the persons who set them up, and that many contain vast numbers of errors of fact and inference). Ideally, your portfolio should include at least 50% of its materials from traditional print or other “hard” media sources (photographic reproductions, etc.), although I will accept up to 75% on-line materials, if you demonstrate that you have engaged them and done more than merely print off a bunch of pages. Think of the Course Portfolio – which contains both your daily reading notes and your more elaborate and focused collection of study materials – as a personal study guide that matches this course to your own particular personal and career interests and expertise. Like the Reading Notes, the Research Portfolio will constitute approximately 20% of your final grade.
Please talk to me about this project at any time, and as often as you’d like me to comment, advise, suggest or do whatever may help you. This is an unconventional project assignment, and I don’t want it to cause anxiety for you when the real objective is a satisfying project that fits in with your own interests, plans and goals.
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Format for the Research Portfolio
You may want to begin thinking about your Research Portfolio by considering some suggestions about what the finished Portfolio should contain:
1. a cover letter or introductory statement that explains the form, format, and substance of the Portfolio as a whole. It should say why you have chosen to follow the direction you have followed, what principles guided your research and your selection of materials to include, and what you see as the relationship among all these materials (including your reading notes) and the course as a whole. In practical terms, this statement should tell me what to expect in the Portfolio, including why the materials you have chosen are important, both for you personally and for the “picture” they help to draw of the course, its authors, its themes, and its contexts as you see them.
2. a table of contents that identifies each component in the Portfolio in the order in which they appear.
3. a set of research and study materials that reflect your individual efforts better and more fully to understand some particular aspect of the materials and the cultural history covered by this course. These materials may take many forms: essays and articles, visual materials, downloaded materials, original work, etc. For each item, you should provide the following information:
a. the exact source of the materials (give complete bibliographical citations for print and visual materials, complete URLs for Internet downloads);
b. a brief statement explaining why you consider the selected item important enough – or interesting enough – to include; and
c. another brief comment on the item’s relation to the “angle” on the course you are developing in your own work and approach.
4. a summary statement that explains what the value of this entire Course Portfolio project has been to you. What have you learned? What did you discover that you might not have expected (including about your own interests and abilities)? What (if any) additional questions or areas of inquiry have emerged that you have not had time to pursue? You may wish to discuss the sort of “paper”(s) that might be developed out of the materials you have assembled, as one way of getting into this summary statement.
Submitting the Course Portfolio
I will ask to see your reading notes several times during the semester; we will negotiate the due-dates that work best for you, and we can “customize” dates individually to accommodate your personal schedule if that helps you. In addition, I will be very happy to have a look at your Research Portfolio at any time in the semester, if you wish, to give you feedback on what you have collected and prepared to that point. The complete Course Portfolio will be due in class on Thursday, 5 December, so that I can evaluate it and return it to you by our last meeting so that you will have it available as you study for the Final Examination.
I hope that this project does not sound intimidating or overwhelming to you; I have found that people actually prefer this alternative to the usual “paper,” in part because it allows everyone to tailor her or his project to individual interests while also providing what turns out to be an effective study guide that reduces “exam anxiety,” especially at the end of the semester when everyone has begun to go totally crazy-bonkers – or as the British sometimes say, “barking mad.”
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