Portfolios at the end of your writing requirement
Depending on your pathway through first-year writing, your last course in the sequence might be a First-Year Seminar or Humanities 2. We added a Second Course page to your portfolio because we know how important it is to end your first-year writing sequence with an eye toward your future career as a writer. You can use your Second Course page to make a record of your experience in first-year writing.
Build your Second Course page
Your faculty members may incorporate the portfolio project into their courses by asking you to complete some work in the portfolio. If that's the case, they'll have instructions for you.
If that's not the case, it's up to you to determine how to make a record of your experiences. Based on scholarship about student learning and writing at the college level, we recommend that you use your Second Course page to:
- showcase your best work from this course and write a brief description that answers the question, "What makes this your best work?"
- showcase your most challenging project from this course and write a brief description that answers the question, "what was challenging about the project?"
Recording your projects and experiences should help you prepare to tackle the more complex writing projects that you'll encounter as you find a disciplinary home on campus. You will find lots of similarities between writing projects across departments and disciplines, but you'll find lots of differences too. Taking the time to archive and reflect on your experience as a writer in the first year should set you up to succeed with unforeseen challenges down the road.
For guidance on how to upload documents, see the directions on the Pre-College page of this site.
What comes next?
Each Dartmouth student has a unique path through their career as a student. You'll explore lots of new ground in the coming terms and years. Your DartWrite portfolio can become a place where you curate and reflect on all of those experiences, what they say to each other, and what they say about the scholar and person you become. You know that path better than we do, so it's up to you to decide how your portfolio will grow. Keep us updated if you want some help designing (dartwrite@dartmouth.edu).
Want some inspiration? Check out these examples of what Dartmouth seniors have done with their portfolios:
Lloyd May's senior portfolio has grown since graduation; it showcases his research, engineering, and music projects.
