Portfolio Instructions
What is the Portfolio and how will it be used?
A portfolio is a collection of work that gives information about the person doing the work. Artists and architects, for example, have portfolios that show the range and scope of what they do, and by looking through their portfolios, you get a sense of who this person is, how they have grown as a professional, what they have produced, and what they are capable of producing.
That’s the spirit intended for the STAT 331 Portfolio. In your portfolio, you will give a curated collection of your best work along with reflections that tell the story of your growth from the first day of classes all the way to the end. Your goal is to argue, convincingly and with concrete evidence, that you have met the criteria for both content proficiency, evidence of continued learning, and growth as a team member that goes with a particular grade. I will read your portfolio carefully, and if you make a convincing case for a grade, that’s the grade you’ll receive.
Key information
Format: You’ll put all of your work — both the artifacts of past work and the responses to the writing prompts — into one GitHub repository. If you choose for this repository to be public, you only need to provide me with the link to the repo. If you choose for this repository to be private, you will need to add me as a collaborator to your repo.
Template: Here is a template repository you can use to guide how you should organize your portfolio: https://github.com/atheobold/STAT331_portfolio_template
Due date: The portfolio is due the Saturday before finals week. No deadline extensions are available for the Final Portfolio.
What to include: Your portfolio needs to contain all of the following:
Final grade reflection: this is a document housing examples of code you’ve written which demonstrate your achievement of the course’s learning objectives, reflections about how you revised your thinking throughout the course, examples of how you extended your thinking, and reflections and examples of how you grew as a collaborator.
Supporting artifacts – These are all of the assignments you reference in your final grade reflection. You are able to use any Lab or Challenge assignment submitted, but please keep these focused, and be selective.
Essay responses. Write brief responses to each of the essay prompts listed below under Essays. Put each essay response on its own page. (All of the “Lightning Round” responses should go on the same page, however.)
Final grade reflection
This component is a self-evaluation of your performance in the class. Your goal is to state clearly what grade you think you have earned in the course, and convincingly argue that you have met the criteria for that grade. Please be thoughtful, honest, and reflective, but also brief and focused.
This reflection will be done in the reflection_template.qmd file provided in the repository. The structure of the document is as follows:
What grade did you earn? State it clearly in one sentence. You can include plus/minus modifiers; see below about those.
For each of the learning targets, carefully select examples of your code that demonstrate concretely and directly your proficiency with the given target.
Some learning targets ask for one example, some ask for two examples, and some ask for specific examples relative to particular data types.
Your Lab assignments and Challenge problems should be a primary source of these examples, but you can also include other items. Anything that supports your argument for a grade can be submitted.
You must indicate where the code you provided came from, including the title of the assignment and problem number either next to the code title (e.g., xlsx
Lab 2 Question 1) or as a code comment at the top of the code chunk.
Note, your code is not expected to run! The execute options at the top of the Quarto file are set to
eval: false. Thus, you do not need to load in any packages or datasets in your reflection.
How did you meet that grade’s requirements? The requirements for grades are found in the course syllabus section of the syllabus. Review the criteria carefully. Then, explain how you have satisfied the criteria for the grade you are saying you’ve earned. Be specific and thorough. List each criterion you have met and how you know you’ve met it. Refer to specific artifacts or examples in the Portfolio that support your case. Again, keep it brief and focused on concrete evidence that the criteria have been met.
What else? There may be some other criteria that figures into your grade request that isn’t explicitly listed in the syllabus. If so, state the criteria you’re thinking of, explain why they are useful criteria for your grade determination, and then explain how well you met those criteria (and provide evidence in the artifacts, if applicable). As with the syllabus criteria, be focused, specific, and thorough — and refer to specific artifacts that provide evidence.
Plus/minus grades: You may argue to add a “+” or “-” modifier to your grade. Generally speaking a “+” added to a letter grade means you’ve met all the criteria for the letter grade along with a significant amount, but not all, of the criteria for the next letter grade up. And a “-” means that you have met the requirements for a letter grade but only in a way that you believe is a bare minimum, or you’ve met almost all the requirements for the letter grade except for a small number of minor criteria.
Revisions
You can revise any Lab Assignment or Challenge one additional time before including it in the portfolio. If you do so, please note:
Do not submit the revised Lab Assignment or Challenge to Canvas. Just put the revision in the Portfolio.
If you chose to complete an additional revision for the Portfolio, please indicate this to me. For example in the reference to the code location, indicate a revision has been made (e.g., right_join() - Challenge 4 (Revised))
You won’t get any additional feedback for revisions done for the Portfolio. If you want feedback on a solution, submit it as an ordinary homework revision.
Essays
In your Portfolio repository, there is a folder labeled essays which includes three separate .qmd files. You are expected to address the essay prompt(s) in each file.
Growth as a data scientist: Describe how you have improved as a practitioner and student of data science this quarter through your work in the course. Focus specifically on data science concepts and the skills we employed in learning them. Don’t just give a laundry list of topics that you learned (those are in the syllabus, so we know them already). Focus instead on a small number of specific areas of growth for you that happened in STAT 331. Identify at least one artifact in your portfolio that illustrates each area of growth. Explain in this essay how this artifact shows growth in the way you are describing.
The power of efficiency: As we’ve said in the class efficiency is a pivotal component of statistical computing (and data science). In this essay, give an explanation of what that term “efficiency” means in relation to statistical computing and describe some places where you encountered efficiency and understood its importance. Include: What is the definition of “efficiency”? What does efficiency look like in statistical computing / data science? What does efficiency allow you to do? Why is efficiency important? Where did you encounter efficiency, and what were some “a-ha” moments you had about efficiency? (For the latter, tie each a-ha moment to an artifact in the portfolio.)
Lightning round: Answer each of the following questions with one sentence including a brief explanation.
Finish the sentence with another student’s name: “If [Student] doesn’t earn an A, then nobody should, because…” Explain your choice and your reasoning.
What was the most difficult part of the class for you? List a general topic, a specific problem, a kind of work we did, etc. and explain why.
What was the easiest part of the class for you? Explain why.
What part of the class surprised or interested you the most? Explain why.
Give one piece of advice to a student just beginning a quarter of STAT 331 that will help them be successful in learning.
About time and effort
As your instructor, I understand and respect that you have spent a great deal of time and effort on this course and will probably continue to do so until the end of the quarter. It’s possible that STAT 331 has been the most challenging course on your schedule this quarter, perhaps in your entire college career so far. I want you to know that I see you, I respect your efforts, and it’s extremely fulfilling to see you respond to the challenges and grow.
I also want to be clear that while the time and effort spent on the class are vitally important, they are not explicitly part of the grade criteria you find in the syllabus. So, when you make the case for your grade in the portfolio, I respectfully ask that you keep your argument focused on concrete evidence of understanding of the learning targets and engagement with the class.
You are free to discuss your investment in time and effort in the essay questions if you like, or apart from the portfolio if that makes more sense. But when making the case for your grade, the focus needs to be on the results of your investment of time and effort. Did your efforts result in several exemplary solutions through the quarter? If so, put a subset of them in the Portfolio. Did the time you spend on coursework result in being an engaged collaborator during Practice Activities? If so, document how your efforts made you a valuable group member.
Questions you might have
Q: What if you disagree with our final grade reflection?
A: There are two ways this might happen.
You ask for a grade that is higher than the evidence supports. That is, you grade yourself too highly, for example you believe you earned an A in the course, but I do not feel the evidence you’ve provided supports this grade. If this occurs in your Midterm Portfolio, I will discuss this with you in your 5-minute Midterm Portfolio meeting.I’ll tell you what grade I would have given you based on the evidence you provided in the portfolio. You can then use this feedback when constructing your final portfolio. If I believe the grade you’ve proposed in your Final Portfolio does not reflect the evidence you’ve provided, I will discuss this with you in your 5-minute Final Portfolio meeting. I’ll tell you what grade I would have given you based on the evidence you provided in the portfolio, and then give you the chance to provide additional evidence and explanations for your grade request. In our meeting, if you still think your grade request is correct, you’ll have the chance to walk me through your materials and reasoning. Afterwards, I might agree with you. But if we still disagree, we will try to come to an agreement on the highest grade that the evidence supports. I have faith that we’ll be able to come to a mutually-agreeable result. But, if we can’t, I will assign the grade that in my estimation is the highest grade supported by the evidence, and my determination will be final. However, again, I will exhaust all other options before simply overriding your grade determination.
You ask for a grade that was lower than your actual performance indicates. That is, you “lowball” yourself, for example you say you earned a B when in fact I think you earned an A-. In this case, I will award you the grade I think you earned, and then just inform you that I’ve done so (and why).
In my experience, the second situation happens significantly more frequently than the first.
Q: Is there a limit on the number of artifacts I can include to support my grade?
A: There is no strict limit, but please be selective.
Quality, not quantity is what we are after. We do not want every assignment in our portfolio! Typically you should be able to give a complete portfolio in fewer than 8 assignments with judicious selection of homework solutions and other work. A handful of homework solutions that clearly indicate your attainment of the grade criteria is just as good as, if not better than, a massive binder of mediocre examples.
Q: How specific or detailed do I need to be on some of the criteria? For example, do I need to list all the dates when I answered someone’s question on Discord?
A: This isn’t filing your taxes, so a precise down-to-the-minute accounting of your work isn’t necessary.
Details and your reasoning are more important than precision and completeness here. For example if you made a handful of supportive comments in Discord, pick a few and tell me about them. What was the question about? What did you say? Why was that comment an example of “helpful feedback”? (Do you know that it was helpful?) Remember the purpose is to make a convincing case that you’ve earned a particular grade.
Q: Would someone actually make a case that they earned a “D” in the class?
A: Yes, if the person is honest and there’s not enough evidence to make the case for a “C”.
If you’re in that situation, be honest and don’t overreach just because the consequences are significant.
Q: How long should the essays be?
A: You should put serious effort into each of the essays and give thorough, detailed, and thoughtful responses — without going overboard and writing more than you need.
There is no hard word or character count here, but if you are writing less than half a page using ordinary font and line spacing, then you probably need to spend more time carefully reflecting on the question; if you are writing more than two pages for a single essay, you might consider editing it down for clarity. As always, put yourself in the shoes of your readers and then use your judgment as a writer.
Q: What if you do not submit a final portfolio?
A: If you do not complete a Final Portfolio submission, your grade will be at my discretion.
I will use your Midterm Portfolio as well as completion of assignments from Week 7 - 10 to guide my decision.
I’ll add more questions and answers in this space as they come up.