Evaluation: Jessica Guy
Jessica,
I'm delighted that you decided to take this course, not only because
I enjoy interacting with you and seeing your good work, but because you
and a few of your classmates have demonstrated the very best that students
can do when they apply their abilities. When teaching an online course
such as this one, I sometimes worry about how much students are learning.
You have reassured me that a lot of learning is taking place, at least
in your case.
Your portfolio is strong in many respects. In addition to being
clear and detailed, the writing is quite thoughtful. For example,
your introductory essay shows real reflection about what you have learned
in this course. Furthermore, you clearly have mastered the technical
component of this course. Your online portfolio is quite clean and
attractive, and the links work perfectly. You have done an outstanding
job writing and designing your Web page on John Steinbeck. With both
your essay and your extensive sidebar, you have provided a thorough overview
of his life and work, as well as some provocative study questions.
I love your links to other resources! Indeed, your page is one of
the best I have seen, and I am eager to add it to All American.
Finally, you performed extremely well in your midterm portfolio presentation.
I was particularly impressed by your memory of details.
Allow me to suggest a few revisions, which can make your portfolio even
stronger. For starters, try to add an example here and there to illustrate
your points. In your introductory essay, for instance, you might
include a sentence or two identifying an example of the provocative details
in Shakespeare's work--a symbol or an image that conveys meaning in Hamlet,
perhaps. Similarly, I would love to see an example of Steinbeck's
innovations in his fiction. You could add a few other details, as
well. For instance, I suggest fleshing out the second paragraph of
your essay on Hamlet and commenting in your annotation on parallels
you see between the sentiments behind the American Revolution and the sentiments
that Benjamin Franklin expresses in his autobiography. As I mentioned
to you before midterm, I think you could do a bit more interpretation in
your essay on the meaning of "genesis," perhaps analyzing not only examples
of beginnings in the Book of Genesis, but the reasons why this book focuses
so much on beginnings. In your Steinbeck page, you have effectively
incorporated source material into your own text. Don't forget to
identify authors through attributive phrases. Also, I would like
to see you do a bit more of your own interpretation of his themes and techniques.
Your writing is quite clear at the sentence level, but I think you could
improve the overall clarity by revising some of your paragraphs--particularly
in your Web page on Steinbeck--to make them more unified. Writing
an effective topic sentence for each paragraph will help. I noticed
one place where the graphic presentation is not as strong as it could be:
while I like the idea of using red and blue in your annotation of "American
Revolution," I found the text hard to read. You might try using red
and blue text on a white background. Finally, I'm sure that you will
want to proofread at least one more time. I noticed a few pesky misspellings
and other minor lapses.
In the box at the right, I have used boldface type to highlight areas
where you will want to focus your energies as you strive to improve your
reading, writing, and thinking skills.
Mark
Canada
mark.canada@uncp.edu |
November 14, 2000
Reading
Writing
Thinking
Grade: |