Portfolios across the first year
Your portfolio has three pages, under "Courses," for each term in your first year: Fall 2022, Winter 2023, and Spring 2023. You can of course redesign these in ways that best fit your ideas about curating and reflecting on your work in this first year, in courses and in other Dartmouth experiences. We do strongly encourage you to create content from your first writing course and your second writing course as a strong building block for the portfolio. Here, we offer suggestions about what you might build for each first-year writing experience.
Portfolios in the first writing course
Your first course in the writing sequence might be Writing 5 (Fall or Winter), Writing 2-3 (Fall and Winter), or Humanities 1 (Fall). We've loaded a Fall 2022, Winter 2023, and Spring 2023 page into your portfolio so you can add first-year writing content, because we think it's important to reflect on and remember what you learned in that course. If you take the time to reflect on that course, it can set you up for success in the rest of your Dartmouth career. You can use the appropriate term page to make a record of your transition to writing at Dartmouth.
Building your First Writing Course page (Fall or Winter)
You can use the term page to make a record of your experience in your first writing course. Some faculty might require you to do some work in the portfolio for the course. If that's the case for you, your faculty will give you guidelines for how to complete that work.
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 First Course page to:
- share your best work from this course and write a brief description that answers the question, "What makes this your best work?"
- share you most challenging project from this course and write a brief description that answers the question, "what was challenging about the project?"
Recording these projects and experiences should help you remember what you did in years to come and make you adept at consciously re-using and adapting the strategies you develop in your first writing course at Dartmouth. You'll need to re-use those strategies in other courses, but you'll also need to change your approach to fit your new academic context.
For guidance on how to upload documents, see directions on the Pre-College page of this site.
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 (Winter 23 or Spring 23) or Humanities 2 (Winter 23). We added a Winter 23 and a Spring 23 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 the appropriate term page to make a record of your experience in first-year writing.
Build your Second Writing Course page (Winter or Spring)
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:
- share your best work from this course and write a brief description that answers the question, "What makes this your best work?"
- share 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).