Portfolios

WHY USE PORTFOLIOS?

Portfolio assessment strategies provide a structure for long-duration, in depth assignments. The use of portfolios transfers much of the responsibility of demonstrating mastery of concepts from the professor to the student.

WHAT ARE PORTFOLIOS?

Student portfolios are a collection of evidence, prepared by the student and evaluated by the faculty member, to demonstrate mastery, comprehension, application, and synthesis of a given set of concepts. To create a high quality portfolio, students must organize, synthesize, and clearly describe their achievements and effectively communicate what they have learned.

WHAT IS INVOLVED?

Instructor Preparation Time: Minimal, after the course learning objectives have been clearly identified.

Preparing Your Students: Clear expectations must be provided to students at the beginning of the course.

Class Time: None.

Disciplines: Appropriate for all.

Special Classroom/Technical Requirements: None.

Individual or Group Involvement: Individual.

Analyzing Results: Intense and requires a scoring rubric.

Other Things to Consider: Materials are presented in the natural language of the student and will vary widely within one class.

Description

Student portfolios are a collection of evidence, prepared by the student and evaluated by the teacher, to demonstrate mastery, comprehension, application, and synthesis of a given set of concepts. Students must organize, synthesize, and clearly describe their achievements and effectively communicate what they have learned. The evidence can be presented in a three-ring binder, as a multimedia tour, or as a series of short papers.

A unique aspect of a successful portfolio is that it also contains explicit statements of self-reflection. Statements accompanying each item describe how the student went about mastering the material, why the presented piece of evidence demonstrates mastery, and why mastery of such material is relevant to contexts outside the classroom. Self-reflections make it clear to the reader the processes of integration that have occurred during the learning process. Often, this is achieved with an introductory letter to the reader or as a summary at the end of each section. Such reflections insure that the student has personally recognized the relevance and level of achievement acquired during creation and presentation of the portfolio. It is this self-reflection that makes a portfolio much more valuable than a folder of student-selected work.

Assessment Purposes

The overall goal of the preparation of a portfolio is for the learner to demonstrate and provide evidence that he or she has mastered a given set of learning objectives. More than just thick folders containing student work, portfolios are typically personalized, long-term representations of a student’s own efforts and achievements. Whereas multiple-choice tests are designed to determine what the student doesn’t know, portfolio assessments emphasize what the student does know.

Limitations

Portfolio assessments provide students and teacher with a direct view of how students organize knowledge into overarching concepts. As such, portfolios are inappropriate for measuring students’ levels of factual knowledge (i.e., recall knowledge) or for drill-and-skill activities and accordingly should be used in concert with more conventional forms of assessment. Similarly, student work completed beyond the context of the classroom is occasionally subject to issues of academic dishonesty.

Teaching Goals

• Develop ability to communicate scientific conceptions accurately
• Develop ability to write effectively using graphics as support
• Develop ability to relate principle concepts to real-world applications
• Develop ability to cite sources and references appropriately
• Develop ability to synthesize and integrate information and ideas
• Develop ability to be reflective and effectively conduct self-assessment
• Develop ability to think creatively and critically

Variations

Showcase Portfolios
A showcase portfolio is a limited portfolio where a student is only allowed to present a few pieces of evidence to demonstrate mastery of learning objectives. Especially useful in a laboratory course, a showcase portfolio might ask a student to include items that represent: (i) their best work; (ii) their most interesting work; (iii) their most improved work; (iv) their most disappointing work; (v) and their favorite work. Items could be homework assignments, examinations, laboratory reports, news clippings, or other creative works. An introductory letter that describes why each particular item was included and what it demonstrates makes this type of portfolio especially insightful to the instructor.

Checklist Portfolios
A checklist portfolio is composed of a predetermined number of items. Often, a course syllabus will have a predetermined number of assignments for students to complete. A checklist portfolio takes advantage of such a format and gives the students the choice of a number of different assignment selections to complete in the course of learning science. For example, instead of assigning exactly 12 sets of problems from the end of each text chapter, students could have the option of replacing several assignments with relevant magazine article reviews or laboratory reports that clearly demonstrate mastery of a given learning objective. Additionally, class quizzes and tests can become part of the portfolio if that is what is on the checklist of items to be included. A sample checklist might require a portfolio to have 10 correctly worked problem sets, two magazine article summaries, two laboratory reports, and two examinations in addition to self-reflection paragraphs where the student decides which objectives most closely fit which assignments.

Open-Format Portfolios
An open-format for a portfolio generally provides the most insightful view of a student’s level of achievement. In an open-format portfolio, students are allowed to submit anything they wish to be considered as evidence for mastery of a given list of learning objectives. In addition to the traditional items like exams and assignments, students can include reports on museum visits, analysis of amusement park rides, imaginative homework problems, and other sources from the “real world”. Although these portfolios are more difficult for the student to create and for the instructor to score, many students report that they are very proud of the time spent on such a portfolio.

Analysis

Because each portfolio is individualized, student assessment must be compiled by looking at the portfolio’s contents relative to the course learning objectives. Each piece of evidence should be graded according to a predetermined scheme. The items can be scored discretely as a 0, 1, 2, or 3 based on the grader’s judgment about the student’s presentation as related to the stated learning goals. (A larger scale can be used, but the reliability of different faculty giving the student the same score decreases.)

Grading Criteria

Each individual piece of evidence will be graded according to the following scale:

Score 0: No evidence - the evidence is not present, it is not clearly labeled, or there is no rationale or self-reflection.

Score 1: Weak evidence - the evidence is presented is inaccurate, implies misunderstandings, has insufficient rationale or insufficient self-reflection.

Score 2: Adequate evidence - the evidence is presented accurately with no errors nor misunderstandings implied, but the information is dealt with at the literal definition level with no integration across concepts. Opinions presented are not sufficiently supported by referenced facts or facts are presented without clear relevance to opinions or positions.

Score 3: Strong Evidence - the evidence is presented accurately and clearly indicates understanding by integration across concepts. Opinions and positions are clearly supported by referenced facts.

Evidence scored as a 0 or a 1 is rather straightforward. The most difficult judgment usually lies between awarding a score of 2 and a score of 3. In particular, a score of 2 is awarded if the student has addressed the learning objective correctly and clearly, but only at the literal-descriptive level; there is little explicit integration across concepts or indication of relevance to the student. A common characteristic of such evidence is that facts are not used to support an opinion or position. Furthermore, evidence that does not clearly identify relevance to the student’s life or career path is also given a score of 2. To be awarded a score of 3, the evidence must clearly indicate that the student understands the objective in an integrated fashion. Such evidence provides the reader deep insight into the complexity of the student’s comprehension.

Viewing student portfolios from this perspective drastically changes the emphasis from collections of facts to encompassing concepts. Such a grading procedure also shifts responsibility for demonstrating competence from the instructor to the student. Effectively shifting this responsibility affects comments placed in the portfolio by the grader; comments are directed toward improving the next submission as well as indicating the inadequacies of the current evidence.

Pros and Cons

• Portfolios put the responsibility of demonstrating knowledge and integration across concepts on the students
• Portfolios provide a structure for long-duration assignments
• Portfolios encourage student creativity and allow for students to emphasize the aspects of a concept most relevant to them in meaningful ways
• Portfolios engender self-reflection and self-assessment

However:

• Portfolios take longer to score than machine graded multiple-choice exams
• Portfolios involve student work outside of class
• Portfolios do not easily demonstrate students’ knowledge-recall abilities
• Students who have been successful at memorizing their way to an “A” initially find portfolios intimidating

The original text was written by:
Timothy F. Slater, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of New Mexico