Emily Springfield 2004

Educational Portfolios: an

Overview

Emily Springfield 2004

Types of Portfolios

• Creators:– Students

• Details on subsequent slides

– Faculty• For tenure review• Benchmark course portfolios (current state of learning)• Inquiry course portfolios (track change across sections)

– Institutions• Accreditation• Recruiting

Emily Springfield 2004

Student Portfolios

• Functions:– Career portfolios demonstrate skills and

supplement resume and cover letter– Assessment portfolios help determine if

students have mastered information– Developmental portfolios help students make

connections and articulate the intangible• Forms:

– Paper, Web, CD-ROM, video, combination

Emily Springfield 2004

Career Portfolios

• Often viewed as “Electronic Resumes”• Demonstrates skills, samples of work,

pictures, etc.• Allows employers to view the level of

detail they want to see• Motivating power: High: similar to a

resume

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Career Portfolio: Dangers

• Resume and cover letter must stand on their own– Employers may not take time to look at them– Technology may be a barrier

• Too much “flash” and not enough “substance”

• Mid-level computer skills might not be good enough

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Career Portfolio: Example

Lisa Abate (Student of Indiana University's Instructional Systems Technologyprogram, which requires a final professional portfolio)

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Assessment Portfolios

• Determine if students have mastered information, skills, concepts

• Used to assess writing, studio or applied art, teaching materials, etc.

• Require collections of “artifacts”--papers, photos, drawings, lesson plans, etc.

• Mid-term and final assessment of learning• Motivating power: Mid: similar to an exam

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Assessment Portfolios: Dangers

• Poorly expressed or nonexistent goals for the Portfolio

• Collecting too much information• End of course may be too late• May be redundant or inefficient, esp. for

objectively-evaluated materials. – Do you really need a Portfolio to do the job?

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Assessment Portfolios: Example

Mark Kenefick(Student of Indiana University's Instructional Systems Technologyprogram, which requires a final professional portfolio)

Emily Springfield 2004

Developmental Portfolios

• Help students make connections and articulate the intangible

• Enhance experiential learning through reflection

• Help students make informed, intentional decisions

• MAKE STUDENTS THINK!• Motivating power: Low: similar to a journal

Emily Springfield 2004

Developmental Portfolios: Dangers

• Collection without reflections• Runs risk of becoming “just another

requirement”• Must be completed thoughtfully to be

beneficial • Web format does not guarantee

connections• Students and faculty both need to

understand why they are participating

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Developmental Portfolios: Example

Kate Jenks (Student of Kalamazoo College, which requires an ongoing developmental portfolio)

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Portfolio “Types”

• Misnomer – most portfolios serve more than one purpose

• Need to address each purpose individually and consciously

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Web vs. Paper Portfolios

• Web advantages– Easy accessibility and storage– Cross-linking capabilities– Improvement of computer skills

• Web disadvantages– Software learning curve– Too much focus on format instead of content– Software and training costs

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Common Conceptual Features

Comparing pfolios from several disciplines, most have the following features:

• Requirements (set by the college)• Benchmarks (set by state or a board)• Artifacts (collected student work)• Reflections or annotations (by student)• Comments (from professor or advisor)• “Resume” view (for employers)

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Schematic

Artifacts “bin” • A place to store all artifacts • You can link to artifacts within the bin from text

anywhere in the portfolio • Metadata allows items to be “called out” and dy-

namically placed into a number of different “views”

Reflections “bin” • A place to store all reflections • You can link to reflections within the bin from text

anywhere in the portfolio • Metadata allows items to be “called out” and dy-

namically placed into a number of different “views”

Requirements List • All of the requirements for the portfolio, e.g.:

• 10 artifacts • 25 reflections • Comments on each benchmark • Final reflective view • Final career view

• Customizable by School

Benchmarks/competencies List • Specific goals and objectives, usually as required by

state licensing boards, e.g.: • Demonstrate competence in computer technology • Demonstrate understanding of the profession’s code

of ethics • Customizable by School • There is some chance that the only requirements for the

portfolio are to achieve the benchmarks, but in most cases, there will be portfolio requirements in addition to the actual benchmarks.

Views • “Reports” or layouts that

arrange information for viewing by different audi-ences • “All” - shows all arti-

facts and reflections, sortable by subject, chronology, or alpha

• By requirement • By competency (may

be a clickable matrix) • Resume format • Other industry-

standard portfolio for-mat (customizable by school)

• New custom format (customizable by stu-dent)

• Data export—for im-port into HTML, etc.

Artifact • Data—text, video, image • Metadata

• Title • Date Created/modified • Abstract/description • Link to reflection(s) on this artifact • Categories (x3, customizable by

school and by individual) • Public/private

Artifact—created by student • Data—text, video, image • Metadata

• Title • Date Created/modified • Abstract/description • Link to reflection(s) on this artifact • Categories (x3, customizable by

school and by individual) • Public/private

Reflection • Data—text • Metadata

• Title • Date Created/modified • Abstract/description • What artifact it’s a reflection on

(including link/location) • Categories (x3, customizable by

school and by individual) • Public/private

Reflection—created by student • Data—text • Metadata

• Title • Date Created/modified • Abstract/description • What artifact it’s a reflection on

(including link/location) • Categories (x3, customizable by

school and by individual) • Public/private

Requirements—created by School or department

• Will meet student learning needs • Will meet departmental assessment

needs

Benchmarks—created by certifi-cation agency, or by School

• Often will be agency-mandated for certification

• If no agency certification exists, a school may choose to create their own benchmarks