Student Portfolios
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)
- Student
Teacher Portfolios (College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, CSU-Fresno)
