Getting Rid of the Yawn Factor: Using a Portfolio Assignment to Motivate Students in a Professional Writing Class

Abstract

MOTIVATING BUSINESS or management students in a writing class is often difficult. In my experience, language is usually low on any list of favorite subjects for these students, if in fact it is on the list at all, and so the students are not very excised about taking a course that puts a lot of emphasis on it. Many students do not even think writing is that important-at least not in the way &dquo;real&dquo; or &dquo;content&dquo; courses such as economics and accounting are-or do not see clearly how it relates to their degree or future carecr. But even if some students do recognize the importance of writing and genuinely want to improve their skills, they often come to a writing class with an expectation that it will be boring. In general, thcrcfore, it is not uncommon to find a class of business or management students who show little enthusiasm about writing.Mention the word and thcir eyes start to glaze over! Articles in The Journal of Business Communication and Business Communication Quarterly provide evidence that my students are not uniquc in lacking motivation to improve their professional writing. Skarzenski and Stinc (1979), for example, state, &dquo;The business communication instructor faces some serious motivational problems early each term. Students often are a little fearful of English or writing courses in general, but, worse, sometimes feel any such course is generally abstract, 'artsy,' and worthless&dquo; (p. 27). Campbell (1981), who is &dquo;continually faced with the task of motivating students to want to learn about business communi

Unpacking Writing Needs of Nepalese University Students

“…The significance of writing, especially genres such as e-mail, advertisements, letters, meetings, and reports which require proficiency in written communication cannot be overestimated (Bacha, 2003;Campbell, 2002;Nickerson, 2005, as cited in Bacha & Bahous, 2008). Writing skills are considered to be important in the in university context as students' success is measured by their success in writing.…”

Using Professional Online Portfolios to Enhance Student Transition Into the Poststudent World

“…They sketch out how the use of portfolios could be a way for business communication educators to more reliably achieve what they saw as our goal: to transition students from the classroom into the professional world. Subsequent commenters (Brammer, 2007, 2011; Campbell, 2002; Dubinsky, 2003; Graves & Epstein, 2011; Okoro, Washington, & Cardon, 2011; Powell & Jankovich, 1998) have helpfully expanded on this topic. In this article, I describe a particular kind of eportfolio—what I call the professional online portfolio (POP)—and pitch it as a means of enhancing both the relevance of student work in the business and professional communication classroom and the stakes that work has for students’ futures.…”

Creating Professional ePortfolios in Technical Writing

“…Print and electronic portfolios (eportfolios) have long been used in assessment (Cargile Cook & Zachry, 2010;Graves & Epstein, 2011;Johnson, 2006), and a growing number of disciplines have begun to employ them for professional development. Moores and Parks (2010), for example, believed in the capacity of eportfolios to support undergraduates when they enter the health care profession and offered important tips for students to consider; Campbell (2002) asked professional and technical communication students to produce a specific portfolio with a set of related documents for a single organization; Williams (2002) endorsed the adoption of portfolios for engineering students and articulated necessary steps for development and maintenance; and Okoro, Washington, and Cardon (2011) promoted the eportfolio assignment in business communication courses as tools for employment. In their article on programmatic self-assessment, Cargile Cook and Zachry (2010) differentiated two types of portfolios, the students' ''professional'' portfolio created primarily for job-search purposes and the students' ''academic'' portfolio for assessment (p. 69).…”