ABSTRACT
In search of a more authentic method of final assessment, the University of Georgia First-Year Composition (FYC) Program replaced its traditional 3-hour, high-stakes final examination with an electronic portfolio of selected writings completed during and developed from the course. In the field of rhetoric and composition, process pedagogy has long emphasized the importance of writing as revision. Furthermore, those students whose scores decreased generally did so only by 1 point, whereas a much larger percentage of students made modest gains of 1-3 points out of 12. The students whose ratings decreased also defied expectations established by composition research and lore. From the researcher's perspective, perhaps the greatest benefit of EMMA eportfolios is the size and accessibility of the database of electronic documents upon which the eportfolios are built. A future plan is to ask students to link their revised essays to their original graded essays.
