As we plan for portfolios in our communication across the curriculum initiative here at Presbyterian College, Situating Portfolios: Four Perspectives (1997), edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey and Irwin Weiser, can show us how portfolios have worked at other institutions and the resulting promises and problems they bring. The chapters on technology preview possiblities for electronic portfolios.

Evaluating Writing: The Role of Teachers' Knowedge about Text, Learning, and Culture (1999), edited by Charles R. Cooper and Lee Odell, has chapters of interest to faculty in many disciplines. Cooper's "What We Know about Genres, and How It Can Help Us Assign and Evaluate Writing" presents several genres faculty assign students, such as "Taking a Position on a Controversial Issue," and gives some ideas for the writer at work, for peer critique, and for student self-evaluation. For example, Cooper says a successful "Taking a Position on an Issue" paper does the following:

• asserts a clear position on the issue;
• gives specific reasons for holding the position;
• supports each reason with personal
  experience, examples, statistics, or by quoting
  authorities;
• provides readers with new, surprising ways to
  think about the issue;
• shows an understanding of opposing views;
  anticipates readers' objections and questions:
• sequences the argument in a logical step-by-
  step way. (31)

Such guidelines help students know the criteria for success in writing a particular kind of paper. Cooper further discusses classifying and sequencing genres to build on the students' knowledge throughout a course. Chapters of interest to science, mathematics, or history teachers include "How to Read a Science Portfolio," "Using Writing to Assess Mathematics Pedagogy and Students' Understanding," and "Evaluating Student Writing in History."