Class Portfolio

Introduction

Throughout this semester I’ve learned how to be more creative, express myself more, and be open with my beliefs through the work I create. I most enjoyed getting to know the other people in my cohort and to work as a group. I’m happy to be able to build a support system which helps me focus on my assignments and think from different perspectives. I’m most proud of myself for trying to let go of the academic conditioning I’ve experienced and to be more creative. I believe this learned skill will help me a lot throughout college and the rest of my life.

Goal 1 (20%)

Based on 8.A: I will remain organized through my processes to ensure I can present my content coherently.

This artifact is a slide from our photo essays. Although you can’t distinctly see my processes through the photo, being able to go and engage with my community with the photos we took allowed me to be more confident in the presentation. I am used to there always being structure with my presentations, such as putting the whole script of what I say on the slides. Since I was able to actually go out in the community, speak to people, and gather my photos myself I felt like I didn’t need to do all of that. The simple caption and memory helped me organize what I needed to say in my head without needing the structure in front of me. I feel like this is a big step for me on my creative and academic journey because I am getting out of my comfort zone, but I am also adapting to forms that are better academically. If I could change anything next time I would make my slides more appeasing and add more information to my slides. Although this helped me learn the importance of context, I feel I could reach a bigger audience if I at least summarized my talking points within the slide instead of just speaking everything from experience.

This artifact is an excerpt from my Digital Project #1. Although this project does not directly represent oral communication, I believe it is a great example of how I present content. My goal within the project was to show my age progression through my experiences with trauma and to correlate that to what I wrote. These photos are from the beginning of the project when I was younger. I think the way that I chose to organize the photos helped me get my point across better since the photos were also placed within the essay as I progressed. This made my story stronger and easier to understand. This project indirectly affected my oral communication skills and how I present myself. This was a hard subject for me to talk about and being able to create this made me realize to stop being afraid of people knowing my past. I believe that now I was able to express my feelings, I can speak about it easier. One thing I would change next time is to consider an audience with how I organize content because that can change the way it is viewed. But, I do think that since I did not consider an audience this time and spoke from the heart that I got more out of the project.

Goal 2 (20%)

Based on 13.A: I will exhibit my comprehension of reason and context while practicing awareness of the audience I address.

This artifact is my introduction from my reflection #4. This is the perfect example for practicing awareness of audience since this is an audience analysis for our Digital Project #2. I believe this whole reflection shows how I learned to practice this. Within choosing this audience I had to consider the content of the article I choose to rhetorically analyze and think about what audience this could appeal to. I think my choice of the audience fit well for the content I was trying to share and showed my understanding of these issues while also adding my own intention for this audience. This assignment helped me think about how changing the specificity of my audience can change the way my pieces appeal. Most of the time, I wrote not considering audience, so I believe I will do so now. Even though considering audience makes it harder to write, it is more accurate.

Goal 3 (25%)

Based on 9.B & 9.C: I will comprehend the context behind the difficult issues we address and provide insight on possible solutions.

This artifact is my conclusion from my reflection #3. I believe I showed well how I understand the context of the problems we speak about. To understand rhetoric shows that you understand what’s going on throughout the text, especially since the uses of rhetoric I chose had the most to do with the context of the issue and how they expressed that. This helped me learn because I did not particularly do the greatest on this reflection, but I learned how to create more holistic pieces of work from feedback. What I would do to do better next time would be to get rid of the ‘5 paragraph’ essay idea that I have in my head and to be more creative with my writing.

I have expressed well through class discussions on what I would do to solve certain issues, especially with my peers. But, I don’t think I have any artifacts to back this up. This is an aspect of this goal that I would like to work on more during the last half of the semester since I believe it’s important to understand the context behind problems, but it is equally important to try to provide solutions.

Goal 4 (25%)

Based on 3.B: I will comprehend the complexity of multiple ethical issues and how they relate to one another.

This artifact is two excerpts from my reflection #2. I believe that this shows my understanding of how ethical issues can overlap. The article this was on showed how these multiple ethical issues(being a woman and queer in a country where it’s illegal) can overlap but they defied these standards. That’s what I felt made this story more beautiful and really defined how these issues regularly affect people. My reflection on this shows my understanding of these affects and how they are connected. I learned how to read multimodal works and how this can change your view of a situation. I thought this was applicable, especially in the sense of understanding multifaceted problems, because there are many examples of the issues. Something I would do to do better next time would to take the feedback I was given to make my perspective easier to understand.

I will also add my Digital Project #2 on here because the article I chose helps to align with this goal well.

Goal 5 (10%)

Based on 6.A & 6.C: I will cease judgement upon others based on identity and reflect on how figures of my race have impacted these biases.

My Digital Project #2 seems like the best example of how I can show this because the article I am rhetorically analyzing is about how the officials of New York City have been ignoring bilingual street signs disappearing from Chinatown and replacing them with English signs. When I finish my digital project I will upload the artifact from a specific part in it. But, I do believe this can show this skill because the main people who govern are white, which has allowed them to be ignorant to Chinese Americans problems as simple as having access in understanding street signs. Just by choosing this article and creating a project which clearly shows my feelings on this issue makes it easy to understand my open mindedness. If I would do anything differently, I would choose more projects where I can clearly show the importance of this goal to me.