Final Portfolio Essay

Brian Huitt
UWRT 1104-029
December 4, 2016

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

Organization
My e-Portfolio is the culmination of 15 weeks of continuous work its
safe to say that there is a lot to manage in it! For this reason, the
organization, placement, and layout of my portfolio were strategically
calculated to connect with its audience in the most efficient manner possible.
Upon entering my portfolios website, the user is immediately directed to this
Final Portfolio Essay, or FPE. I originally did not know how I wanted to
incorporate my FPE into my website, but after utilizing the Class Resource list
provided by Ms. Ingram, I observed previous students e-Portfolios. I was
most attracted to the ones that were blunt with placing their FPEs on their
home page, having their FPEs as the first thing their reader saw. The FPE is a
written demonstration of the work you have put in throughout the semester,
and by organizing it as the first item of your e-Portfolio, you allow the reader
to understand the journey you have taken. It is practically mandatory to
categorize it first; as I write in Module 7 If people could see how hard you
had prepared for something rather than just only seeing the result of the
performance, wouldnt you want them to acknowledge and appreciate the
process? The emphasis put on having the reader observe the FPE first is a
demonstration of the gestural mode of communication, as I am making a
specific gesture to the reader.
After reading the FPE, the reader is provided with three other
navigation tabs at the header of the website. From left to right, they are:

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

Major Assignments, Artifacts, and Blog. The Major Assignments tab is a dropdown menu of the three major assignments we worked on this semester and
are in chronological order of how they were assigned. Despite my portfolio
not having a collective theme, I did not want to just throw things on the
portfolio, in any order, and call it done. Having them drop down in
chronological order is a structured, safe style. The Artifacts are placed in
order of how I read them from the FPE rubric, sticking with the ideology of
having a rationale behind their placement. The Blogs were constructed
throughout the semester and are chronologically sorted from newest to
oldest.
On the individual webpages, there are mostly embedded documents of
my work, including scanned pages of feedback-filled rough drafts and other
scanned artifacts. I was presented the option to either take photos or scan
the artifacts, but felt that scanning the documents encompassed all of the
linguistic data that a photo might not be able to collect.
Design
The entire portfolio is encapsulated by an omnipresent design of a pier
submerged in a light-orange canvas. When I first created the website and
assigned said photo to the background, I did not know it would become the
pillar of the design of my portfolio. However, I noticed that once the header
and navigation tabs were aligned with this fuzzy orange color, there was a
great visual mode of communication present. The website was not flashy,

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

but rather the background provided a passive, complementing visual appeal

to the website. It does not distract the reader or take away from the content
of the page, something I noticed on a few of the sample e-Portfolios. This is a
demonstration of learning in UWRT that we can benefit from others work,
exemplified by our peer workshops and group feedback. Throughout the
portfolio and display of my work, there is a linguistic mode of communication
at play. My syntax and diction are purposeful, and epitomize the kind of
writer I am. As the portfolio is supposed to be a collection of our work
throughout UWRT, it only seems logical to have my work conveyed through
my style of writing.
Exploratory Essay
The Exploratory Essay was easily one of the most frustrating essays I
have ever been assigned. It took me a few days to figure out what I wanted
to write about, and after stumbling upon wanting to write about music, I
created my first draft. It was awful. Ok, it wasnt awful, but it was super nonpersonal. My group members were too nice of people to really pick up on
that, but at my next peer review, Natalie and Ms. Ingram agreed with my
qualms I had mentioned in my Dear Reader excerpt that the essay was not
personal enough. Ms. Ingram especially left very good feedback, saying I
still find myself wondering how music impacts your daily life. How does Brian
experience music daily, from waking up to bedtime? Upon looking over my
essay again with a new depreciation for it, I realized I needed to write the

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

essay over from scratch. Lines like, After creating the majority of the song,
you can send it through the final stage of mixing and mastering, which
clarifies the frequencies found in the music and creates a more stable, solid
sound made me cringe. This was difficult for me; I knew I needed to stretch
my comfort zone, but committing myself to changing the essay to being
more personal was more difficult than I envisioned. After finalizing an
exploratory essay that was more personal, I felt a nice sense of
accomplishment having successfully stretched my comfort zone. To weave
together a coherent theme of music on the Exploratory Essay portfolio page,
I incorporated a Spotify playlist of my current favorite music. Doing so had
the added benefit of demonstrating both spatial and aural modes of
communication. Most of the page is dedicated to the Exploratory Essay itself,
but saving room for the embedded Spotify playlist is where both the spatial
and aural modes come into play.
I mentioned that I stumbled upon wanting to write about music, but
how I reached that conclusion is very important because of its piece in the
grand scheme of things. Very early into the semester, right before the
Exploratory Essay was officially assigned, Ms. Ingram gave us the task of
brainstorming what we were interested in. I had brought my laptop to class
that day, so when she started the timer to brainstorm, I wrote the few things
I could think of in a Notepad file. This process of brainstorming became a key
part of my semester in UWRT, as it emerged to be my primary composing
process. I had never been one to make an outline or properly gather my

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

thoughts before writing, but now this composing process has shifted my
writing lifestyle. Its for its importance in beginning the cycle of how I
compose my writing that the Exploratory Essay Brainstorm is one of my
Process Work Artifacts. In fact, my Exploratory Essay, Exploratory Essay
Brainstorm, and outline of this very essay are my three Process Work
Artifacts!
Process Work Artifacts
Picking up where I left off discussing the composing process of my
Exploratory Essay, we have my three process work artifacts. My Exploratory
Essay Brainstorm was easy to choose, as I have mentioned its crucial
influence on how I composed my work for the rest of the course. My second
artifact, the Exploratory Essay itself, which is being double labeled, was
chosen because of its significance in opening me up to appealing to the
audience. I originally had written a very non-personal, formal essay, when
really I needed to dive deeper and become more expressive. The comments I
received from peer editing, such as Natalies Dear Reader response, I do
agree with you, that it needs to be more personal; more personal explanation
than anything pushed me in the right direction of showing the audience how
music is incorporated into my life, rather than writing a dissertation about
music. My favorite artifact out of this entire portfolio, though, is the outline I
used to construct this essay. Just like the Exploratory Essay Brainstorm, I
used a Notepad file to organize my thoughts. I took it a step further from

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

when I first used this composing process and went in more depth with my
brainstorm. I organized, laid out sections, and made comments for myself
about the process to write this FPE. I personally think its really cool to use
that as one of my Process Work Artifacts! Not only this, but to see how my
composing process has matured from the time I wrote on Blog #1, I have
struggled in the past with doing before thinking in various aspects of my life.
Whether it is making plans with friends, outlining an essay, or simply not
taking the most efficient solution for a problem, I have lacked in the ability to
properly composing processes. is sort of fulfilling .
Annotated Bibliography and Multi-Genre Project
In my opinion, the multi-genre project was the most extensive
assignment assigned to us in UWRT. We began the project shortly after
working on our Exploratory Essays, and it seemed a lot of people were
basing their inquiry questions around the topic of their Exploratory Essay. I
tried to do this, but ultimately came up short. The first draft of my Annotated
Bibliography had me focusing on a music-related inquiry question that I
truthfully wasnt that interested in. Not only this, but there was not a lot of
varying answers/information around the question in all of the sources I
researched. This is why Blog #4 details a roundtable audience of people who,
in the end, have nothing to do with my current inquiry question. Not only
this, but there is a clear transition between Draft 1 of my Annotated

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

Bibliography and Draft 2, which focused on a new inquiry question: Do the

pros of GMOs outweigh the cons?
To gather research for the aforementioned inquiry question I had to
practice critical reading. There is a lot of information regarding GMOs and
the stigma around them which is what emphasized the importance of critical
reading. With many sources available, and in turn, a lot of information, the
ability to efficiently sift through articles and pull out key/relevant research
becomes a necessity. We practiced critical reading several times throughout
the semester which became a valued resource in the Annotated Bibliography
assignment. However, critical reading is certainly not limited to UWRT-1104.
In future courses, I will have to gather research and/or observe highly
linguistic works. Having the skill of critical reading will allow me to read the
selection, analyze what is important, and apply it to my personal benefit.
From the English class I will be taking next semester that is sure to involve a
lot of reading, to optimization problems in Calculus 1 that demand an
understanding of the word problem, critical reading will transcend its
application from UWRT.
The Annotated Bibliography provided me with a lot of information
regarding GMOs and their respective pros and cons, but without the MultiGenre Project, my research would have no medium. As discussed earlier in
my reflection of composing processes, following my Exploratory Essay I had a
newfound importance of writing for and appealing to the correct audience.

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

This is why when Ms. Ingram stressed the importance of considering who the
audience of your inquiry question would be and tailoring your genre project
towards them I had some predisposed clarity. More simply put, I knew how I
was going to approach the Multi-Genre Project. My inquiry question was
centered on GMOs, and as quoted from my Reflection on Genre Pieces,
Personally, I feel that people would be more inclined to read a quick graphic
or image that could easily be shared through social media, text message,
email, blogs, etc. than take time to observe a genre that was heavily
linguistic. My audience is quite large, which is why I believed the efficiency of
something that is visual was my best bet to work with. I decided to rely on
the visual mode of communication for both of my genre pieces, an
infographic and comic strip. The referenced audience was anyone against
GMOs, or pro-organic people. I used the MLA Formatting and Style for the
parenthetical citations and Works Cited page because of my familiarity with
the citation type.
Fortunately, there was not a lot of editing to do from the original draft
to the final draft, but there was a small, visual change I had to make to the
Multi-Genre Project.
Feedback Artifacts
The minor editing I had to do to my Multi-Genre Project came in the
face of changing a graphic of the infographic. At our Multi-Genre Project
conference, both Jay and Ms. Ingram revealed that the graphic I had used to

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

illustrate a disease looked more like a piece of meat. Pretty funny, huh?
Shortly after, I changed the graphic to look more like a disease than a piece
of meat. I feel this is a significant artifact to use for my Feedback Artifact
because of how important the visual mode of communication was for my
Multi-Genre Project. Since the infographic is highly visual, its crucial that the
illustrations displayed are conveying the right idea. Otherwise, the intended
purpose of the infographic visual efficiency is lost in the translation.
My second Feedback Artifact is a familiar face and is being triple
labeled as a Major Assignment, Process Work Artifact and Feedback Artifact.
The Exploratory Essay is my second Feedback Artifact due to its critical
feedback from Ms. Ingram and Natalie. As previously mentioned, I ended up
entirely re-writing my Exploratory Essay due to its lack of personal
expression. Feedback from Ms. Ingram such as, I still want to know more
about you, how music fuels your day and impacts you motivated my
suspicions that I needed to be more personal. The reassuring push in the
right direction from our peer review ended up revolutionizing my final essay,
effectively demonstrating the importance of peer review and feedback in the
classroom.
In Blog #2, I wrote about peer review and my opinion on it, saying I
feel fairly indifferent about it. I would rather not peer review a classmates
writing for the sake of the situation possibly becoming uncomfortable,
awkward, or confrontational. A few short months later, and I would strongly

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

advocate for peer review. I can understand my previous self possibly feeling
uncomfortable or awkward entering a peer review session, especially with
strangers, but knowing the added benefit of having a different perspective
read and comment on your work would persuade me into a peer workshop.
Blogs
The ongoing blog assignment was where we posted most of our class
modules and served as a base for our e-Portfolio. A specific blog stuck out as
an important learning stone. Blog #5, my Midterm, had us reviewing the 10
Key Concepts that we discussed at the beginning of the semester. In this
post, I had to discuss a key concept I was successfully engaging with at the
time. I chose critical reflection, and supported the claim by lines like
Reflecting on this topic and how we perceived what Lammot wrote made the
lesson at hand a lot more memorable. Per the UWP, after completing Blog
#2.5, I was able to articulate how I perceived Lammots aproach to writing
drafts. In doing so, I was successfully critical reflecting. I didnt expect most
authors to follow such an orthodox style of drafting, and reflecting on how
they indeed do solidifies the lesson. Critical reflection allows us to create a
memorable experience between what weve learned and how we interpret it,
therefore defining it at the personal level.
Early in to the semester, a lot of students e-Portfolios were pretty
sparse, including mine. Our collection of blogs, however, presented us with
the opportunity to begin understanding our websites interface in preparation

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

for the finalization of the e-Portfolio. Id like to focus more on the concept of
the blogs rather than the wide array content that composed them. By
assigning tasks such as creating a Sandbox page that says Hi, Ms. Ingram!,
leaving a comment on another students blog, embedding a document, and
adding a shape, banner, or icon to the Sandbox page, Ms. Ingram was
subliminally getting us accustomed to our website builder. I believe that the
significance of using blog posts as a medium for our modules was to practice
acquiring webpage and multi-media skills. After all, we could have just
printed the modules out and handed them in, but like the rest of this portfolio
it was done digitally. Ms. Ingram has said that she had to re-think how to
approach to this course because UWRT-1104 incorporates an online aspect of
the traditional course. Throughout the course, up until the very end, we
sharpened our website skills and included the modes of communication in
the process. The spatial, visual, linguistic, and gestural modes of
communication are all guaranteed to be used in the expansion of our
websites e-Portfolio.
By using the blog posts, and in the larger picture the e-Portfolio, as our
record of work throughout UWRT, many students, including me, are leaving
the class more confident and competent using website and multi-media
platforms. In such a technology-dominant society, this is a comforting skill.
Module Artifact

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

The majority of our blog posts were consumed by our Module

assignments, with one in particular resonating me as the most important.
Module 5, titled Audience Awareness & Audience Profile, was my sixth blog
post, and was the workspace of specifying my Multi-Genre Projects
audience. The audience is such an important part of the Multi-Genre Project
because of how it determines the appropriate genre(s) to funnel your
research into. Without determining the proper audience, the bridge between
the Annotated Bibliography and Multi-Genre Project would not be filled.
Determining the audience, however, is not specific to just UWRT. By knowing
who your audience should be, you can tailor your diction, policies, and
overall presentation towards suiting them. Youre not going to try to explain
quantum physics to elementary students because theyre not your
appropriate audience, physicists are.
I chose my audience to be anyone against GMOs, or pro-organic
people, as they would be the individuals I am trying to persuade towards
believing my claim that the pros of GMOs outweigh the cons. Anyone who
already believes this claim does not need to be part of the audience, since
Im not trying to convince them of my argument.
Due to my audience potentially being a very large group, and my topic
being fairly scientific, I decided that the best way to get through to people
was to create genre projects that relied on the technological visual mode of
communication. In doing so, the mediums are not heavily linguistic which

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

could discourage potential readers, but rather eye-appealing and easily

shareable through the internet.
Writers Notebook Artifacts
There was an important activity along the way that helped me, and the
class, practice genre analysis in preparation for picking our Multi-Genre
Project audiences. Its for this reason that the Genre Analysis Questions
sheet is one of my Writers Notebook Artifacts. Jay and I chose a comedic todo list that we analyzed through different parameters: audience, purpose,
modes of communication, type of appeal, etc. I had a fun time rhetorically
analyzing the to-do list, and presenting in front of the class was even more
entertaining. I think that having practice with the to-do list made
determining the audience for our Multi-Genre Project easier since we had
prior experience.
My second Writers Notebook Artifact is my Chapter 22 RRL. An RRL, or
Reader Response Letter, is a reflective letter addressed to the class in which
you discuss how you reacted to the assigned reading. Chapter 22 was
notably my favorite reading from the textbook this semester which is why its
RRL made its way into my portfolio. This RRL was the first of the semester,
and the chapters content set the tone for the rest of the course. In the
Reader Response Letter, I write, McAndrews revised and contemporary
teaching style reminded me a lot of Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, in
which a high school English teacher veered from the norm in how he taught

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

and garnered the support of his students because of it. Essentially,

McAndrew spent the chapter describing how he instructed his freshman year
writing class differently than a high school English class. Coming into college,
a freshman like McAndrews students, I did not know what to expect from a
first year writing class. However, two days into the semester after reading
and having read Chapter 22, I was able to extrapolate that the rest of the
semester would not follow the traditional English class setup. And it didnt.
And Im glad it didnt. Chapter 22 and its RRL provided a comforting
expectation of what the semester would be like, and not to sound too sappy,
but that is what I took away from the assignment.
Wild Card Artifact
Ive been an avid runner since I joined the cross country team my
freshman year of high school. Its four years later, a lot of things have
changed, but my commitment and love of the sport has not. At the beginning
of the school year, I created a running blog to document my runs. I made a
Weebly website and registered it under www.brianhuittrunning.weebly.com.
The webpage was composed of embedded documents, uploaded files, text
boxes, linguistic effects, and comment boxes. I created the website for my
personal benefit, but unknowingly was heightening my familiarity with
website building. Weebly is the same domain host I use for my UWRT ePortfolio. In the process of updating my running blog every day, I became
better at Weebly and more confident with my webpage skills. I wouldnt say

Key: Quotes from myself, Modes of communication, Artifacts, Quotes from peers,
Key Concepts

Im a master, but the added practice from working on the running blog gave
me a comfortable sense of proficiency while building the online format of my
e-Portfolio.
Grade I Deserve
The grade I deserve is an A. This FPE meets all the criteria listed under
the A category of the grading scale; specifically, quoting myself 6-8 times to
illustrate my composing processes, describing 3 Key Concepts that I engaged
with, quoting peers work 4-5 times to illustrate my engagement with them,
and having a very extensive FPE that leaves no questions unanswered.
Respectively, I quoted myself seven times, described my engagement with 3
Key Concepts, and quoted peers work 4 times.
Also, Ms. Ingram sent me a starfish notification at the time of the
midterm that said if grades were due at that time I would have an A. I believe
I continued to make progress throughout the class and demonstrate my
proficiency of the course material.