Student Self-Assessment Form BLANK

Performance Category	Student Self-Assessment Form   Complete this self-assessment template with brief comments and specific   examples. Submit the completed form as the last item in the Portfolio.    Along this margin, left-align your typed comments in each row.
Information Literacy
Written and Oral Communication
Technical
Interpersonal
Critical Thinking
Technology and Information Systems
Ethics
Aesthetics
Lifelong learning
Lessons Learned -- Portfolio Summary

HOW DO I do the Self-Assessment FORM in COMM150?

Form for Self-Assessment in COMM150

The Process Essay with the remainder of the Portfolio is due in hardcopy during the Lab on the following dates:

Monday July 26

The College asks students to evaluate their performance in a succinct manner. Remember: You are assessing your own performance and learning in the Student Self Assessment form.

1.        Summarize your learning in doing the research about specializations in your degree area, and in your writing for the Portfolio.

2.        Provide examples of new things you learned.

Your self-assessment and reflection are High level, when your comments are “concise” and “meaningful.” Your reflection is Low level, if it is “incomplete” and/or not provided with the portfolio. Thoughtfulness and honesty are HIGHLY evaluated. (The rubric for English & Presentation contains the criteria with which the self-assessment is evaluated.) .

How to Evaluate your Performance

With the Categories Recommended by the College

o    Look at the Student Self-Assessment form on the last page of the current handout. Start your reflection on the research and portfolio experience by recording your observations in the blank form on the next page. Look at the instructor’s  tips below for  how you might respond to each Performance Category.

Evaluate yourself with the Performance Categories in the Left column. The questions in the Right column of the following table will guide you in commenting about your work. Provide your comments in the blank, Right column of the form on page three.

Performance categories:	Questions which will help you comment in each self-assessment category:
Information Literacy	How did you perform in the information literacy process? Consider the following procedures in preparing a research topic and research strategy -- Focusing on two career specializations in the Narrative Essay and on one specialization in the Descriptive Essay; searching with appropriate keywords, strings, and Boolean operators; finding relevant articles in the databases, and finding relevant Web sites; evaluating your sources; and using and crediting the sources in the essays.
Written and  Oral Communication	What did you learn about composing an essay, and documenting your findings according to the APA standard? Did you learn about some grammatical errors, which you fall into? Are you ready to summarize your experience with the Portfolio for your classmates and instructor in the Oral Presentation in the last class?
Technical	Were you able to use efficiently your computer station, Microsoft Office Word, the campus network drives, the course Web page, and a storage device on which you may have transported your files?
Interpersonal	Did you help someone, or welcome any help, in regard to your research and writing activities? Did you seek advice from the staff of Pathways, from the service of SmarThinking, or from the instructor?
Critical Thinking	How did you go about selecting articles with the greatest relevance and quality in the EBSCO databases for your Narrative Essay? Which criteria for evaluating information sources (Accuracy, Authoritativeness, Objectivity, Currency, & Coverage) did you use in evaluating Web sites?
Technology and Information Systems	How easily did you navigate through the resources in the Virtual Library, such as the collections of databases? How easily could you use search technologies (Boolean operators, search strings, special searching procedures) for resources in the databases and on the Internet? Did your search skills improve? Did you make good use of a portable storage device for your files?
Ethics	Did you develop an ability to credit (cite) the sources from which you obtained information? Is it easy or hard for you to paraphrase? Was it difficult to be cautious about plagiarism?
Aesthetics	Did you find it easy to organize the pages of your essays with double-spacing, headers, consistent margins, section headings, and other features of an APA formatted page? How did the process go in assembling the materials for a neat-looking portfolio?
Lifelong learning	What new understanding of possible career specializations, sources for research, and search techniques did you acquire? Could you use any writing and research procedures in COMM150 for  research or presentations in subsequent classes, in the workplace, and for personal interests?
Lessons Learned: Portfolio Summary	How would you summarize in 1 - 2 sentences your overall experience and learning through the phases of the Portfolio project?

Ready? 

Type Your Self-Assessment on a Blank Digital-Copy of the Student Self-Assessment Form

Fill-out the self-assessment form with typed responses so that your assessment looks more professional than a handwritten copy.

Copy the empty table on the next page into a new file, which you create. You can follow these steps to do so:

o    Start an empty document in MS Word at your station, and save it with a filename like “assessment”; then minimize the blank document to the tray at the bottom of the screen;             

o    Find the electronic version of the current handout, _self_assessment_form BLANK,” on the data-file drive In the campus network, or on the course Web page;

o    Pass your cursor over the upper Left corner of the table until you see a handle for the table appear;

o    Right-click on top of the handle in order to bring-up a context menu in which you select “Copy”;

o    After selecting “Copy,” you can minimize the current handout to your system tray;

o    Maximize your empty MS Word document from your system tray;

o    Paste the table with the blank self-assessment form into your new empty document.

o    Save again the document on which you just pasted the assessment form.

o    Begin typing your responses on the Left margin of the row for each Performance Category.

o    OR, just fill it in and print it.

               

Type your responses neatly (left-aligned) in the rows of the following table. The instructor will recommend an automatic way to left-align  sentences that you type into the rows.

Performance Category	Student Self-Assessment Form   Complete this self-assessment template with brief comments and specific   examples. Submit the completed form as the last item in the Portfolio.     Along this margin, left-align your typed comments in each row.
Information Literacy
Written and Oral Communication
Technical
Interpersonal
Critical Thinking
Technology and Information Systems
Ethics
Aesthetics
Lifelong learning
Lessons Learned -- Portfolio Summary

Checklist for the Process Essay and for the Portfolio in COMM150

Checklist for the Process Essay and for the Portfolio in COMM150

Description of Exercise:	A checklist with which students can determine that they are submitting proper content for the Process Essay, and meeting the presentation and assessment requirements for the Portfolio
Objective:	To check-off each item that is a characteristic (component) of your Process Essay and the Portfolio
Content in the Tracking Calendar & Outcome	Week 11: Process Essay in the Portfolio Outcomes 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, & 10
Reading:	See the pages identified in the handout, “wks11-13_process_essay_format.” Bring textbooks to class as aide for a possible quiz question.
Assignment name:	wks11-13_checklist

Background

The Process Essay with the remainder of the Portfolio is due in hardcopy during the Lab on the following dates:

Monday section on  July 26

Do the following TODAY :

·         Complete a rough draft of the Process Essay;

·         Put together your binder, sheet protectors, dividers, and labels for the Portfolio;

·         Insert the earlier copies of essays with the instructor’s marks about writing/grammar corrections, and the re-typed versions with the corrections inside the portfolio; and

·         Complete the Self-assessment form, and insert it into the Portfolio.

REMEMBER! If you need in-depth help, arrange an early appointment with the staff of the Pathways Center. Ask the instructor during the Lab to scan your work in order to catch some of the more notable errors or missing items

A late portfolio must go to the receptionist of the College during the late period identified on your handout. During the brief late period you assume responsibility for the failure of the third party in forwarding your portfolio to the instructor.  All Portfolios must be in hardcopy. NO emailing this time.

Do not opt for the large deduction and risks associated with late work.

During the Lab today and TO BE READY FOR NEXT WEEK-you should complete these steps with the aide of the checklist on the next page:

o    Work on the Process Essay;

o    Place the Process Essay into the binder along with the revisions(THAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE DONE) of prior essays and their original marked copies;

o    Place SmarThinking with each of your essays., and the revised Process Essay in response to the recommendations.

o    Add any final remarks on the Student Self-assessment form; and

o    Ask the instructor to check your Portfolio for completeness.

Checklist for the Process Essay and for the Portfolio

My check		To do for the Process Essay and for Submission of the Portfolio:
	Process     Essay	The pages conform to the APA standard for page formatting, such as -- Margins are consistently one-inch; all lines and spaces between sections are double-spaced; the font is size 12 in Times New Roman; a running head appears in the upper Left corner of each page with page numbers in the Right corner of each page; bold-faced, primary section headings organize my discussion in three main sections of the Process Essay; and an Introduction & a Conclusion are added to the body of the essay.
		The overall size of the Process essay is 5 pages for adequate detail (includes the title page and a page for References). The essay is saved with a file-name like “process essay” in my COMM150 folder on the S-drive. It is saved on a portable storage device, if I work on the essay off-campus.
		The first section of the Process Essay has a primary section heading, such as: Avoiding Plagiarism. I do the following -- ·     Explain the ways in which I would be careful to avoid plagiarism. ·     Describe some of the general APA rules, for providing in-text citations and References. Identify some essential elements inside an in-text citation and inside a Reference. ·     Explain the need for crediting a source, whether I quote or paraphrase content from the source.
		The second section of the Process Essay has a primary section heading, such as: U.S. Copyright Law & the Rights Given to Authors/Artists. I do the following – ·         Paraphrase the purpose of U.S. Copyright Law and identify the five rights given to authors/artists. ·         I avoid copy-and-paste from other handouts about copyright.
		The third section of the Process Essay has a primary section heading, such as:  Following the Fair Use Guidelines. I do these things -- ·     Identify each of the four Fair Use Criteria to be followed, when I do not have an author’s permission to use her/his material. ·     Explain in my words what a fair use and an illegal use is for each of the Fair Use criteria:  My Purpose; the Amount I take from an author; the Nature of the material I take from someone; & the Effect on the marketplace, when I take without permission someone else’s material. ·     Provide an example of how I would follow each of the four Fair Use Guidelines in my work at the College, or in the type of workplace for which I am training.
		I find on my own a source about plagiarism, copyright, or fair use. I use the source in my essay. The web site, which I choose to use in the essay, is different from one already included in a class handout, or to which a link was provided. I cite the source in-text and in a Reference in compliance with the models in my textbook and previous handouts for citing Web sites.
		I do not copy from the handouts. If I take content literally from a source of my own, I restrict the copied content to a maximum of one quoted sentence or three items from a list in the original source. I paraphrase the remaining ideas or facts of relevance in the original source.
		Acquiring extra credit for the Process Essay – 1.     For three extra points -- I included a graphic related to my career area at the bottom of my title page. The image has a Creative Commons license with permission to use the image. (See the instructions on using Flickr on p. 5 of “wk10_plagiarism, copyright”., the hand out from last week.) o    I cite the image in-text. See the illustrated title pages in your handouts for the format and content in the Process Essay. . o    I provide a Reference for the image in my list of References. See the illustrated page of References in the handout, “wks11-13_process_essay_content,” or on p. 16 of APA Style Guide. IF I DON’T DO BOTH, I DON’T GET THE POINTS AT ALL.
	Portfolio	The earlier Narrative and Descriptive essays have been revised in regard to grammatical errors in the text and in the annotations for the References of the Descriptive Essay. o    The instructor noted some of the more important spots in the essays that need improvement. I made additional corrections, especially in the Process Essay, in order to show that I learned from prior incorrect writing errors. o    If I omitted quotes for phrases and sentences taken from a source for an essay, I revised the essay so that I am quoting or paraphrasing properly. o    If I quote more than one sentence per source, I paraphrase the extra sentences from the source.
		I include the original Narrative and Descriptive essays with the instructor’s comments inside the portfolio.
		The Portfolio has four dividers with properly typed labels to separate the essays and the self-assessment inside an appropriately sized 3-ring notebook or other neat and secure binder.
		The Portfolio includes a completed form for Student Self-assessment at the end of the essays.

M.A.S. 070610

Grammar, Presentation, & Self-Assessment in the Portfolio

Grammar, Presentation, & Self-Assessment in the Portfolio

The Process Essay with the remainder of the Portfolio is due in hardcopy during the Lab on the following dates:

Monday section on  July 26

1.        What are some ways in which I can improve the English composition?

2.        How can I add to the Presentation quality of the Portfolio?; and

3.        What should I say in evaluating the research and writing on the self-assessment form?

The College evaluates your use of standard English composition in all of the essays in the Portfolio, when you submit the final Process Essay. Your writing of the annotations for the Descriptive Essay is included in the evaluation. The following quote provides the reason for the College emphasis on writing --

"...the number one skill employers say they want to see in job candidates is good communication skills: the ability to write and speak clearly. Unfortunately—in spite of requesting this skill year after year, many employers also report that college graduates lack good grammar and writing skills."

(Source:  National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2006). Job outlook 2006: Student version. In NACE Research. Retrieved from             http://www.jobweb.com/joboutlook/2006/JO6Student.pdf)

Provide the original, instructor-marked copies of your Narrative and Descriptive essays in the portfolio. You can attach them directly behind each revised essay, or insert them in a pocket in the portfolio. You and the instructor should be able to see where you have revised the earlier writing.                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                      

Here are recommendations for improving the grammar --:

·    Use shorter sentences and paragraphs.

·    Begin each sentence with a subject.

·    Match a plural/singular form of the verb with the subject.

·    Match the singular/plural form of a pronoun with its noun referent (that to which the pronoun refers).

·    Check to see that each of your pronouns has a clear referent in the same sentence or the prior sentence. If the pronoun may be ambiguous to a reader, substitute a descriptive noun for the pronoun.

·    Use commas before subordinate clauses, such as those clauses beginning with “because ... .“

·    Place a colon before a list of examples, such as: Auditor, accountant, tax consultant, bank clerk, and bill collector

·    Avoid connecting long complete sentences with the conjunction, “and.” The result is a run-on sentence in which your main idea becomes obscured. 

·    Use a spell and grammar checker.

·    Indent first lines of each paragraph.

Here are some recommendations for improving your writing generally, including its academic (intellectual) honesty –

·    Read your essay OUT LOUD to yourself, and then someone else.

·    HAVE A FRIEND IN CLASS READ IT OVER- PEER EDITING HELPS!

·    Ask someone to proof-read a page in your essay, such as the staff of the Pathways Center in the Library. Ask the proof-reader to explain what s/he thinks is the most common type of grammatical error in your paper.

·    Plagiarism and Fair Use –

o    If you copied over the maximum of one sentence per source, paraphrase the excess.

o    If you forgot to add quotes around a copied phrase or sentence, add the quotes.

                                                                                           

THINK YOU ARE DONE? YOU KNOW YOU AREN’T. GO BACK AND PROOF READ IT AGAIN!

                                                                                                Make some Grammatical

Improvements in the Earlier Essays of the Portfolio

Take these steps in revising your original Narrative and Descriptive essays –

ü  Fix-up the marked grammatical errors;

ü  Find other non-marked errors in light of the recommendations from the instructor’s and from SmarThinking;

ü  Revise also the grammar inside the annotations of your Descriptive Essay;

Instructions for Activity  --

Identify a place in your essays in which the grammar can be improved. You may ask the instructor or someone near you to check a page in your essays. Make the sample correction.

Sample errors in grammar & writing:	Corrections in grammar & writing:
A sample spelling mistake: medical assitance                                       Sample poor grammar: J. Neil he believes (2005) registered nurses finds fewer job opening than medical assistants. Their higher salaries are difficult for some medical facility to afford.	A sample spelling correction (boldfaced for emphasis): medical assistance Sample corrections (boldfaced for emphasis): J. Neil (2005) believes registered nurses find fewer job openings than medical assistants. The higher salaries of RN’s are difficult for some medical facilities to afford.

If You Quoted MORE THAN ONE LINE: (and you know you did!)
Make sure you fix it by a Paraphrase (Your Own Words)

Look for a long quote. You were asked to quote only a sentence from a particular source in your essays, You might find several sentences or an entire list, which you copied literally from a source. Substitute your own words for the extra sentences and phrases. When you use your own words in a paraphrase, remember that the source must still be cited in-text.

Have you copied more than one sentence from a source? If so, practice a paraphrase (with an in-text citation) on the following line:

 ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………  .

Making it Look Good: Presentation of the Portfolio

The College scores a student highly in the Presentation of his/her portfolio insofar as the following conditions are met:

·  The essays have an “aesthetic” appearance:

The essays look professional when combined in a portfolio.

The essays are presented behind tabbed or labeled (typed) dividers inside a clean binder, such as a properly sized, three-ring notebook.

·  The essays have an APA page format:

Each page has the proper short title (running head) and page number.

All spaces and lines are double-spaced.

Margins are consistent (1 or 1.5 inches), and font is consistent (Times New Roman, size 12).

·  The essays were submitted in a timely way.

The Essays were provided during the lab time on the scheduled due date.

·  The self-assessment is complete:

The Self Assessment form is complete.

Each category of evaluation has an honest, relevant, and succinct response about my experience with the research and writing.

Acquire a binder before your next class:

 The best binder is a thin three-ring notebook. Alternatively you can use a heavy-duty folder, which has fold-over aluminum prongs to hold each essay. A hole-puncher will be available for preparing pages to fit securely in a three-ring notebook or in a heavy-duty folder. Alternatively you can use pre-punched, clear sheet protectors. Do not use the large accordion file (“container”), which is distributed in the Portfolio Development Day workshops as a depository of samples of your work in different courses.   

Acquire four dividers, and type the labels for them:

Set up the Portfolio before the class meeting with typed labels on the tabs for a “Narrative Essay,” a “Descriptive Essay,” and a “Process Essay.” Add another label for a section, which has your self-assessment.

You can acquire easily dividers with tabs. Some tabs are plastic sleeves into which you can slip a label. Labels can be typed neatly in small font in Office Word for slipping into the sleeved-tabs. Choose the Insert tab, and then select the ribbon for a simple textbox. Size the text-box with a height so that you can fold the label to fit securely into your tabs. Duplicate the text-box four times. Then type the name of each essay and the self-assessment into the text-boxes, as in this example:

                       FF                                   Fold here

                                                                                                                                      

An acceptable alternative to tabbed dividers for each essay is an extra-heavy sheet on which you type in large font the name of the essay following the heavy sheet. Clear sheet protectors are an alternative. Many page covers contain already holes for a three-ring notebook. To save the expense and bulk of a plastic cover per page, slip two back-to-back pages inside each cover. Another option is to slip each stapled, revised essay inside a plastic cover, which has holes for a three-ring notebook.  

Before the lab make a final check of grammar and presentation in the essays, including the following --

o    Revise grammatical errors In the bodies of the three essays and in annotations in the Descriptive Essay. You do not need to do the research again. You do not need to fix-up errors in the citations and References. 

o    Place quotes around any sentences, which you forgot to quote in the earlier Narrative and Descriptive essays.

o    Paraphrase any sentences, which are over the maximum limit of one quoted sentence per source.

o    Include the original copies of the Narrative and Descriptive essays with the instructor’s comments inside your portfolio. Keep the old, attached rubrics with the original essays.

Insert the revised narrative and descriptive essays inside the binder. Place the old, marked copies of the two original essays behind the revised narrative and descriptive essays, or in a pocket in the binder. Withhold your Process Essay so that you can insert it after revising the rough draft of the Process Essay during the Lab in next week’s class. The Process Essay is the only one in the Portfolio for which you do not have an earlier scored copy. You are expected to perform better on the writing and grammar in the Process Essay, since you learned about your more frequent errors from the marked spots and corrections on the original copies of the Narrative and Descriptive essays.