Educational Portfolios: an Overview

1. Educational Portfolios: an Overview

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Career Portfolio: Example Lisa Abate (Student of Indiana University's Instructional Systems Technology program, which requires a final professional portfolio)

7. 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

8. 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?

9. Assessment Portfolios: Example Mark Kenefick (Student of Indiana University's Instructional Systems Technology program, which requires a final professional portfolio)

10. 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

11. 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

12. Developmental Portfolios: Example Kate Jenks (Student of Kalamazoo College, which requires an ongoing developmental portfolio)

13. Portfolio “Types” • Misnomer – most portfolios serve more than one purpose • Need to address each purpose individually and consciously

14. 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

15. 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)

16. Schematic