Geology 113
Portfolio Project
Guideline 2

2. What is the difference between the portfolio, the report, and the presentation?

All semester long, each member of your team will develop a portfolio. Think of the portfolio as a folder of work - some (not all) of your laboratory exercises and your research (library resources and pages of text, diagrams, and maps that you download from the World Wide Web). Maintain and organize the portfolio in a 3-ring binder or a folder. You will not turn it in for a grade, but each team member should maintain a separate portfolio to keep and use as a resource for the future teaching.

At the end of the semester, your team will submit one written report. To write the report, team members should discuss their portfolios and select work from them that best supports your scientific arguments about the likelihood of natural disasters affecting Delaware. This process is consistent with science. Rather than submit an entire "portfolio" of research to the agency which requests their consultation, scientists discuss, select, and put forward the data (evidence) that supports their ideas and arguments (do not take the word "support" to imply that negative evidence is ignored or hidden - both positive and negative evidence is used to support a scientific argument). Writing your report forces your group to get a sense of what scientists do - to work as a team, review all your research, and decide what best supports your scientific arguments.

Each team will give a presentation - a 12-minute oral summary of decisions and arguments. Base your presentation upon your report (i.e., write the report first, then develop the presentation). You will make overhead transparencies of key material in your report to guide the audience through the presentation. There will be a brief discussion period after each presentation where your classmates, the instructor, or visitors can ask questions of anyone on your team.

	Guideline Index		Guideline 3: What should our report look like?
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