MATC Non-Thesis Option Portfolio Requirements

In your final semester of the MATC, you will develop and present to the TCR faculty a portfolio demonstrating what you have learned in the program.

The purposes of the portfolio are to present evidence of the best academic and practical work you completed in the program and to reflect upon your professional growth. Your goals in creating the portfolio should be to show that you have developed the sophisticated knowledge and abilities that the MATC degree represents, as well as to reflect on how your knowledge and abilities will enable you to contribute to the field of technical communication.

Specifically, the MATC portfolio should demonstrate that you have gained the skills and perspective to reflect the following core values of the MATC program:

The rhetorical situation of the MATC portfolio is different from that of a job search portfolio, so you should not consider them the same thing. However, the MATC portfolio might contribute to or lead in to your development of a job search portfolio (see “Bridging to the Professional Portfolio,” below).

Although the MATC portfolio is not due until your final semester, begin your portfolio as early as possible—ideally, in your first semester. To encourage this early portfolio development, the portfolio will be a regular component of ENGL 5371, Foundations of Technical Communication, a course all MATC students are required to take early in their coursework. The portfolio should grow along with you in the program, not only as a repository of your work, but as an expression of what you have learned and who you have become professionally.

Medium, format, & design

The MATC portfolio and all documents or artifacts within it must be electronic and web-enabled, although they will be submitted on CD-ROM. Typical portfolios will take the form of web sites. Regardless of the specific technologies used,  however, the portfolio must present learning artifacts and reflective statements in a clearly organized, effectively designed, usable, and hyperlinked structure.

To create your portfolio, you may use any electronic technology the committee can reasonably access, including HTML, DHTML, or Flash. Save any paper-based documents you wish to include in an appropriate digital file type such as PDF. (If you have any questions about whether a technology is appropriate, please contact the TCR Graduate Director, who will forward your query to the portfolio assessment committee.)

The design of the portfolio itself should demonstrate your skills and sensibilities as an expert technical communicator. That is, it should be usable, logically structured, rhetorically effective, and visually compelling—a direct reflection of what you have learned in the MATC and of who you are as a technical communication professional.

Portfolio contents

The portfolio should include three kinds of objects: a reflective analysis, learning artifacts, and contextual reflections.

Reflective analysis

The centerpiece of the portfolio will be a 3000- to 4000-word reflective analysis of your growth and development in the MATC program, demonstrating to the TCR faculty how the artifacts you are presenting in the portfolio relate to the values of the program and to your future role in the field. In a sense, the reflective analysis is a counterpart at the end of your MATC experience to the intentions statement you wrote when applying to the program, but backed up with an analysis of the work you completed.

The reflective analysis is an important part of your portfolio; the assessment committee will give as much attention to it as to the artifacts you choose to include. It gives you the opportunity to examine yourself and to address your development as a professional.

Your primary goal in writing the reflective analysis should be to show how your work in the MATC program fulfills the standards expressed above. But in addition, you should explore how your experience in the MATC leads to your future as a scholar or practitioner. In this regard, the essay should reflect on the ways your work enacts, complicates, or contributes to current research and theory in the field, and thus it should be grounded in and refer to your readings of research and theory.

Learning artifacts

The portfolio must include three to six learning artifacts as evidence of the skills and knowledge you have gained in the MATC. These learning artifacts should be projects or papers you completed in MATC coursework. At least one of these artifacts must be an academic essay or research paper; at least one must be a practical technical communication project.

Choose the artifacts carefully; your choice is a reflection on what you have learned in the program, and it’s a way to show the assessment committee who you are and what you can do as a technical communication professional. Use your best judgment to decide how many artifacts to include. If you include large artifacts, you can include fewer of them (i.e., 3 or 4); if you include small artifacts, you should include more (i.e., 5 or 6).

Although the artifacts must be work you completed in MATC courses, you should revise the artifacts for presentation in the portfolio. The evaluators will be looking at the body of your work from the culmination of your academic career; don’t assume that an artifact that received a good grade in a course will be assessed as highly in the portfolio.

You may include collaborative projects, but choose projects to which you made a substantial contribution and revise them individually. At least one learning artifact must represent your own independent work from start to finish.

Contextual reflections

Introduce each learning artifact with a contextual reflection—a 400- to 500-word discussion of the artifact’s rhetorical and practical context that reflects on the process of its creation and on the theoretical justifications behind your strategies and decisions in creating it. For example, if the learning artifact is a web site you designed for a class, you might explain the rhetorical and practical situation surrounding the site, what theories or research in usability or design informed your design approach, design challenges you encountered, and solutions you discovered.

If you revised the project since its initial submission for a course, describe your strategies for revision and the changes you made.

If the artifact was collaborative, explain and reflect on the contributions you made to the project.

Submission guidelines

The portfolio will be due at the end of March for May graduates and at the end of October for December graduates. The TCR Graduate Director will publicize the specific due date early each semester. Submit to the TCR Graduate Director a manila envelope containing the following:

• 4 CD-ROMs, each holding one copy of the portfolio. Label the CD-ROMs with your name and, if need be, any instructions the committee will need to open and view the portfolio.
• A copy of the checklist at the end of this document.

Mail all of this to the Director of Graduate Studies (MATC), PO Box 43091, Lubbock, TX  79409-3091

Originality & independent work

The portfolio must be your own work and include your own work. For collaborative projects, specify exactly what your initial contribution was and revise them individually for portfolio submission.

In revising your work, you should take advantage of any feedback you received from instructors when the work was initially submitted in a class. You can also ask for additional feedback from your faculty mentors on individual artifacts. But because the TCR faculty wish to assess your ability to work independently as a technical communicator, they will decline to offer feedback on drafts of the whole portfolio, on the reflective analysis, or on the contextual reflections.

Any references to or quotations from material by other authors should be documented appropriately using an appropriate style, such as MLA or APA. Any copyrighted material included must be appropriately acknowledged; if necessary, the portfolio should include permissions for using such material.

Assessment procedures

The portfolio is designed to satisfy the university’s requirement for a comprehensive assessment of your work in the MATC. Accordingly, it will be evaluated by a committee of TCR faculty members who will be appointed as representatives of the entire TCR faculty.

The portfolio assessment committee will evaluate your portfolio in terms of the core values and standards expressed above. The committee will submit to the TCR Graduate Director one of the following scores for each portfolio:

• High Pass: exceeds expectations
• Pass: meets expectations
• Fail: falls below expectations

The TCR Graduate Director will send out scores and evaluative comments shortly after the assessment committee completes the evaluation. If a candidate receives a passing score, his or her results will also be conveyed to the graduate school to acknowledge degree completion. If a candidate receives a failing score, he or she will have one opportunity to revise and resubmit the portfolio in the term following the initial submission. Upon a second failing score, the candidate will be assessed as having failed to complete the requirements for the MATC degree.

The TCR Graduate Director will retain a copy of your portfolio on file, but after its initial evaluation it will be used solely for MATC program assessment. If any researcher wishes to use your portfolio as part of any research project, he or she will request your permission first. If the program wishes to use your portfolio as an example for other students, we will request your permission first.

Transition to portfolio assessment

Formal assessments of MATC portfolios will begin in spring, 2005. Students who matriculated into the MATC in or after fall, 2003 must complete the MATC portfolio. Students who matriculated into the program before fall, 2003 may take the superseded MATC examination rather than submit a portfolio. However, the faculty encourage those students to consider completing the portfolio, which we think will provide a better learning experience.

Beginning in fall, 2004, ENGL 5371 (Foundations of Technical Communication) will include an in-depth discussion and analysis of portfolio learning. Students who have already taken ENGL 5371 but who wish to complete the portfolio may attend a fall 2004 workshop on portfolio learning parallel to the discussion conducted in 5371. The program will also offer an online version of the workshop in the EnglishMOO.

Bridging to the professional portfolio

A professional portfolio can be a very useful marketing tool as you move from the MATC to employment as a technical communicator. Unlike a resume—which in the end, is just a basic list of your qualifications—a professional portfolio can show potential employers what you can do. Typically, you can load a professional portfolio to a web space and direct potential employers to it by giving them the URL (usually on your resume and job letter)

The MATC portfolio differs from a professional portfolio you might use on the job market, but it can provide the foundation of a portfolio you might show to potential employers. Because both kinds of portfolios are collections of digital files that can be assembled in different ways for different purposes, you can likely re-use many of the files from your MATC portfolio, simply building a different front-end for your professional portfolio.

In building your professional portfolio, however, consider three important areas of difference between professional portfolios and the MATC portfolio:

• Rhetorical situations
• Reflection
• Delivery & Privacy

Rhetorical situations: MATC – versus – professional portfolio

In building a professional portfolio from your MATC portfolio, recognize how the rhetorical situations of the two portfolios differ. You created the MATC portfolio for a faculty committee assessing your work in relation to stated standards, but you will create the professional portfolio to show how your skills fit the employer’s both stated and implied needs. Accordingly, you will need to research and to consider carefully what the employer might be looking for, using stated information like the job advertisement and information you find out about the company’s goals, products, or services, as well as unstated assumptions and values such as professionalism.

Reflection in the professional portfolio

The most significant factor arising from this difference in rhetorical situation is the role of reflection. In the MATC portfolio, the assessment committee will look at much at your reflections as at the artifacts you include. The assessment committee will want to hear what you learned from your experiences—even from negative experiences, which can sometimes be great learning opportunities.

A potential employer looking at your professional portfolio, however, will likely be more interested in seeing the products of your work than your reflections on them. Certainly, they would find it odd if you dwelled on negative experiences; the professional portfolio is an employment marketing tool, and most readers would expect it to focus on the positive.

Despite this reduced interest in reflection, however, potential employers will still need contextual information to understand the background and significance of the artifacts you include. So if you choose to minimize the Reflective Analysis, consider keeping (although redirecting) the Contextual Reflections. That way, employers will not only see what you’ve done, but understand how your artifacts fit into the communication situations you designed them for. Employers can then take the small leap between that understanding and imagining what you can do for their situation.

Delivery & privacy

You delivered your MATC portfolio privately to a small group of faculty who will not distribute your portfolio further without your permission. But readers of your professional portfolio will likely have lesser motivations for safeguarding your privacy.

If you are comfortable with showcasing your professional portfolio online to any viewers who might come across it, you can easily upload your site to a web server and leave it there, just like any other web site. This might have a positive effect in building consulting or employment opportunities. But if you are uncomfortable about allowing that level of access to your work or if you include proprietary artifacts, you should consider password-protecting the site and limiting the time the password is valid.

Portfolio Checklist

To help you create an MATC portfolio that fulfills program requirements, use the following checklist: