Portfolios: Tools for Assessment and Learning
What is a portfolio
Types of portfolios
-Purposeful collection of student work that tells the story of student achievement or growth over time
-Diverse in content
-Often collaborative: encourages dialogue between students and between student and instructor
-Encourages students to experiment, take risks
-Focus is on learning process more than the final product
-Can be used in a variety of disciplines and media: written work, visual work, 2- or 3-dimensional, electronic, etc.
Working portfolio: an archive that includes almost all of the student’s work
-Possible arrangements: by type of writing, chronology, writer’s satisfaction with work, etc.
-One goal may be to help students become more organized
-May be collected regularly and include self-assessment: a glow (achievement) anda grow (goal)
Final or presentational portfolio (culled from working portfolio)
-More formal, defined, focused than working portfolio
-In addition to selected work, includes entries about the work; some possibilities are:
-Table of Contents: explains the pieces and their arrangement
-Letter of Acknowledgement: discusses what kinds of assistance were beneficial to writer
-Grade Justification entry: argues for a particular grade
-Writer’s Reflections: metacognitive ? created throughout the project
-Writer’s Profile: describes and summarizes writer’s composing process, strengths and weaknesses
-Presentational portfolios may be used by students for broader purposes (application to a school or program, presentation to potential employers). Exs.: Digital Media, College of Education
Reflection is integral to portfolios
Portfolios contribute to students’ intellectual and personal development in several areas
-Should be threaded through course or project, not just grafted on at end
-Includes projection, retrospection (review), and revision
-Should be social, not just individual: sharing sessions or portfolio partners
-Some uses for reflection:
-On individual assignments
-Across assignments
-Across classes or disciplines
-On processes
-Beyond school
-At specific times: daily, weekly, midsemester
-Students use reflection to “articulate their own learning within a teacher’s curriculum” (Sunstein 1996)
-self-reflection
-critical thinking
-students help to set assessment criteria
-select work to include
-write reflections
-creativity
-take responsibility for learning
-content area skills and knowledge
Assessment options
-Global, impressionistic: grade based on portfolio as a whole
-Analytical: assess each piece and average the scores to decide grade
-Group scoring by instructors: holistic scoring, two ratings per portfolio
Advantages of portfolios
-Students’ work is compared with other work by same student, rather than with other, possibly stronger students; focus is on individual progress and growth
-“Institutional response” of grading can be deferred as long as possible (some instructors choose not to assign grades to pieces until conclusion of project)
-“Framing” created by seeing student work in its own context may enable instructor to see students’ work and assignments in new ways (e.g., observe which assignments are most successful) (Yancey)
Some important points in designing and implementing portfolios
-Content and arrangement of portfolios are key elements
-Student involvement is essential
-Portfolio selections should balance student choice and curricular requirements
-Clear criteria provide students with goals and vocabulary for discussing portfolio work
-Instructor who chooses to use portfolios should design assignments that fit the objectives of his or her class (there’s no one “right way” to do it)
-Can be labor-intensive for students and instructor, so start small: try a project portfolio for one unit, rather than making the entire course portfolio-based
~Beth Kupper-Herr, October 2001
Arter, Judith A. & Others. Portfolios for Assessment and Instruction. ERIC Digest,1995.
Sunstein, Bonnie S.“Assessing Portfolio Assessment: Three Encounters of a Close Kind.”Voices from the Middle.Volume 3, Number 4.November 1996.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake.“Portfolios in the writing classroom: a final reflection.” Portfolios in the Writing Classroom: An Introduction.Ed. Kathleen BlakeYancey. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1992.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake and Joy Seybold.Portfolios: Real Challenges, Real Solutions.NCTE Teleconference, 1996.