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Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology

Student Portfolios

Print-Based Electronic Across the Curriculum

Student portfolios have become increasingly popular because they allow students to think of their work as evolving, rather than one-shot wonders (or blunders), and they provide teachers with a more accurate reflection of the student's abilities across a wide range of activities. To that end, portfolios may include any number of different artifacts: writings, pictures/artwork, letters from supervisors, problem sets, curriculum designs, math problems, video, etc., depending on the discipline/audience for which the portfolio was created. Although print-based portfolios have proven themselves as excellent assessment instruments for classrooms, newer eportfolios and webfolios allow students to keep archives of their work throughout a variety of courses - and even after college as they join the workforce - and to maintain ownership of their work. As Trent Bateson notes, portfolios have also become more than merely a means of assessing student work: they are now used equally for "accreditation, reflection, student resumes, and career tracking."

Print-Based

Portfolio Standards (Writing Program, ISU)
In this convenient table, the Writing Program at ISU outlines its key criteria for evaluating portfolios in the First-Year Composition course. Student writing is evaluated based on rhetorical situation, quality of thought, presentation of ideas, etc.
Portfolios Across the Curriculum (Lizabeth Moore and David R. Russell, Iowa State)
Moore and Russell remind us that writing instruction (and assessment) are the responsibilities of all teachers in this brief overview of what portfolio assessment can do for students and teachers at the various grade levels.
Program Portfolios (San Diego State U)
In the Liberal Studies program at SDSU, student must complete a portfolio of their work throughout their undergraduate education. This site provides information on what programmatic portfolios might look like and what sort of questions faculty and students frequently ask.
Student Portfolios: Classroom Uses
A convenient question-and-answer page that highlights the primary reasons to use portfolios to increase active student learning, as well as what problems portfolios create for teachers and students.

Electronic

ProfPort @ ISU (Doug Love and Gerald McKean, Accounting)
Love and McKean define the webfolio as a "myriad of multimedia artifacts" that students have put together in such way as to "demonstrate mastery of standards"; the webfolio also offers a "foundation for lifelong learning." This site contains sample student portfolios, rationales for using portfolios in classes and whole programs, as well as information on assessment practices.
The Electronic Portfolio Boom: What's It All About? (Trent Bateman, Campus Technology Online)
Bateman distinguishes between E-Portfolios and webfolios, and makes suggestions for how this distinction affects planning and assessment for teachers. He writes, "Webfolios are static Web sites where functionality derives from HTML links. 'E-portfolio' therefore now refers to database-driven, dynamic Web sites, not static, HTML-driven sites."
Theatre Arts Student Portfolios (Virginia Tech)
Another presentation portfolio, this site represents the "best work" of these Fine Arts students. Increasingly, web portfolios are being used to help students professionalize themselves in order to prepare them for the job market.
Webfolio Project (Tidewater CC)
Donna Reiss provides a clear example of how to incorporate low-tech product webfolios into courses: 1) she has clear directions to students, along with "help" links and 2) she has student samples to be used as models. As a product portfolio, however, this system doesn't showcase the processes the students went through to develop the final drafts.

Student Portfolios Across the Curriculum

Creating Online Portfolios (Cathleen J. Chamberlain)
Electronic/Digital Portfolios (Clemson)
Learning Record Online (M. A. Syverson, UT Austin)
Selected Electronic Portfolio Resources (Donna Reiss, Tidewater CC)
Student Portfolios (Mary Yearns, Dept. of Human Development and Family Services)
Student Portfolios: Architectural Technology (Brian Kelley, Morrisville)