Abstract
My project focuses on student agency in first-year composition (FYC). Following recent research on ePortfolio assessment, student agency, and assignment prompts, I argue that student agency and the ability to make choices coincide. For this qualitative study, I surveyed 14 FYC instructors to see how they perceive the value of student agency, and I collected their ePortfolio assignments to see how they capitalize on ePortfolios as an “environment of opportunities” and frame the agentive opportunities provided by ePortfolios for students. I found that although participants claim to value student agency in ePortfolio assignments highly, participants used instructional language in their assignment prompts that potentially opened up students’ agentive opportunities most in regard to visual elements of the ePortfolio (e.g. images and design). In contrast, the frequent use of instructional language requiring and prescribing how students include written work (e.g. explanations and artifacts) in the ePortfolio has the potential to limit students’ agentive opportunities with regard to their writing. This suggests the need to draw more attention to choice and the use of instructional language that helps facilitate student agency, so that instructors can be sure to use instructional language in a way that reflects their larger concern with promoting student agency in ePortfolio assignments.