This is the first article in a four-part series on the e-portfolio.
I, too, dislike it: there are things important beyond all this fiddle.
— Marianne Moore, a modern American poet, “Poetry”
To complete the general education requirement at SLCC, students must submit a reflection essay on the e-portfolio platform for each general education class.
The requirement has generated controversy, with many students being reluctant in their dislike. Some, however, are outspoken.
Many student complaints about e-portfolio center on the platform, with one student describing it as “janky.” The requirement itself has fostered some resentment: Why are we doing this?
Underneath it all is what e-portfolio is about: writing. Some students wonder why they are asked to write so much, while others feel it is not their strong point.
Why write?
I could tell you that institutions of higher education must document that students are learning and written records from students are more impressive than scores on standardized tests. That is true.
And when SLCC representatives go to the legislature to justify allocating tax dollars for our school, your general education essays are so much more influential, more moving than a computer printout showing how many students got a true/false question about Socrates correct. That is also true.
But the deeper truth is that writing – no matter how difficult – is the best way we learn. Beyond earning degrees, documenting progress, and justifying funding, that is why we are here – to learn.
And I feel your pain – not just as a phrase. The only thing I have wanted in my life is to be a writer, yet I have been putting off writing this article for weeks. There it is.
I understand more deeply than you can know how writing can hang over you – even when you love it, even when you are not half bad at it.
I understand how you can look at that blank page and worry that all the voices in your head will suddenly go silent, that all the exciting ideas floating through your brain will evaporate like fluffy clouds on a sunny day, leaving you wondering why you ever presumed to have something to say.
And for those for whom writing is a struggle? Is it not the great love of their life? I can’t even imagine.
But there is a mountain of educational research that says what so many of us just intuitively know – that we learn more from writing than we do from cramming for tests. What we do manage to get on the page stays with us.
And knowledge becomes ours as we tie information to our experience, as we find the words – our words. We stake our claim – “I own this fact because I can write about it and make sense; this theory has become mine” – if only because I can disagree coherently with it.
As Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh:
You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
Education is about realizing that – and writing is what gets us there.
