{"id":8424,"date":"2025-08-26T15:56:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T19:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/?page_id=8424"},"modified":"2025-09-03T15:38:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T19:38:40","slug":"revision-and-portfolios","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/teaching-writing-at-bu\/writing-in-the-disciplines\/teaching-writing-in-math-and-statistics\/math-resources\/reflection-feedback-and-revision-in-mathematical-writing\/revision-and-portfolios\/","title":{"rendered":"Revision and Portfolios"},"content":{"rendered":"

Objective: <\/b>Students will have an opportunity to revise, and possibly also showcase, their previous work, to arrive at pieces that they feel represent their best work. They will also have an opportunity to reflect on what has gone well in their work so far and what could be improved upon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Key Terms: <\/b>Revision, reflection, early\/final draft, portfolio.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Timing: <\/b>Revisions and portfolios could be utilized periodically throughout the semester, or less often, depending on instructor preferences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Conceptual Framework<\/h6>
In many mathematics courses, particularly lower division ones, students are not given any meaningful opportunity to revise their work. This is not reflective of how mathematics is typically done. Moreover, it provides no incentive for students to internalize feedback, or to reflect about what went well, and what could have been better, about any given piece of work they have completed. The purpose of revision assignments is to address this. Moreover, they can be used to provide students with an opportunity to focus on a fewer number of assignments than may have appeared in the overal course and to choose the ones that they feel reflect their best work. This helps to highlight for each student their personal strengths.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Portfolios are assignments that typically incorporate revision in some way. They can take many forms but generally involve students looking back at the work they have done so far in the course and synthesizing, revising, and\/or reflecting on that work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n

Lesson<\/b><\/h2>\n

Example I: This example is for a proof-based course where students periodically select some of their proofs from their homework problems, revise them, and submit them as “final drafts” that are meant to represent their best work. It assumes there are regular, eg weekly, homework assignments given during the course.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. At the beginning of the semester, discuss<\/strong> with your students the nature of the revision structure you will be using, and make sure this is reflected in your syllabus. See, for example, this <\/span>Analysis syllabus<\/span><\/a>, created by Margaret Beck.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. For each HW assignment, list<\/strong> a selection of problems that are available for revision and submission as final drafts. These could be, for example, problems that are proof-based, as opposed to problems that are more focused on examples or computations.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Provide<\/strong> the students with a framework through which the revised proofs will be assessed. For example, in the analysis course that corresponds to the above syllabus,\u00a0 <\/span>this rubric<\/span><\/a> was used for assessing the proofs as either “achieved” or “not yet achieved”.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. You may wish to also incorporate<\/strong> peer feedback<\/a> on early drafts of the proofs.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Example II: This example is for a course where each student creates a midterm portfolio and a final portfolio. A portfolio not only provides students with the opportunity to revise their work, but it also provides students with an opportunity to reflect on the overall work they have done so far in the course.<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. At the beginning of the semester, discuss<\/strong> with your students the nature of the portfolio structure you will be using, and make sure this is reflected in your syllabus. See, for example, this <\/span>Number Theory syllabus<\/span><\/a>, created by Li-Mei Lim.<\/span><\/li>\n
    2. Provide<\/strong> the students with a prompt for each portfolio submission you would like them to make. See, for example, these Number Theory <\/span>midterm portfolio prompts<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>final portfolio prompts<\/span><\/a>, created by Li-Mei Lim.<\/span><\/li>\n
    3. Provide<\/strong> them with information about how the portfolios will be assessed, and what the process for revision will be. See, for example, this Number Theory <\/span>rubric for HW rewrites and portfolio entries<\/span><\/a>, created by Li-Mei Lim.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Example III: This example is for a course where each student creates a portfolio of their work throughout the semester, and where students receive regular peer feedback on their portfolio.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. At the beginning of the semester, discuss<\/strong> with your students the nature of the portfolio structure you will be using, and make sure this is reflected in your syllabus. See, for example, this <\/span>Discrete Math syllabus<\/span><\/a>, created by Debbie Borkovitz.<\/span><\/li>\n
      2. Put the students into groups<\/strong> that they will work with throughout the entire semester.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
      3. Provide<\/strong> the students with a date by which they must have an early version of their portfolio ready to share with their group. For example, you could modify this <\/span>Portfolio Update 1<\/span><\/a>, created by Debbie Borkovitz, to suit your personal preferences and the context of your course. You can even provide them with a specific template, <\/span>such as this template<\/span><\/a>, created by Debbie Borkovitz.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
      4. Provide<\/strong> the students with a framework for giving each other feedback on their portfolio, <\/span>such as this framework<\/span><\/a>, created by Debbie Borkovitz.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
      5. Repeat<\/strong> the above several times throughout the semester so as to provide students with an overall path to preparing their final portfolio, which they will submit to you at the end of the semester.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Objective: Students will have an opportunity to revise, and possibly also showcase, their previous work, to arrive at pieces that they feel represent their best work. They will also have an opportunity to reflect on what has gone well in their work so far and what could be improved upon.\u00a0\u00a0 Key Terms: Revision, reflection, early\/final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15811,"featured_media":0,"parent":8464,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15811"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8424"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8706,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8424\/revisions\/8706"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/teaching-writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}