Portfolios Rock!

What is Portfolio Assessment?

A portfolio is a collection of student work over a period of time that reflects progress or achievement within a specific topic or subject.

Portfolio assessment is the evaluation of the portfolio of work over time using a specific criteria or rubric.

“Authentic assessment, to me, is not meant to be the charged phrase, or jargony phrase that it has come to be for a lot of people. When we first started using it fifteen years ago, we merely meant to signify authentic work that big people actually do as opposed to fill-in-the-blanks, paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice, short-answer quiz, school-based assessment. So it’s authentic in the sense [that] it’s real. It’s realistic. If you go into the work place, they don’t give you a multiple-choice test to see if you’re doing your job. They have some performance assessment, as they say in business.” (Wiggins, 2002)

Synonyms:  Portfolio, Performance-based, alternative, real-world, authentic, project-based

Three common types of Portfolios:

A portfolio in the context of the classroom is a collection of student work that evidences mastery of a set of skills, applied knowledge, and attitudes. The individual works in a portfolio are often referred to as “artifacts.”  Most effective portfolios also contain a reflective element, where the student has in some form contemplated her or his own strengths and weaknesses as a learner.

Andrew Epstein of Synapse Learning Design outlines three main types of portfolios commonly used in the classroom; Process, Product and Public Exhibition.  He sees the process portfolios as an effective formative assessment tool and product portfolios as a form of summative assessment.  He additionally sees the importance of encouraging students to showcase their work in public exhibition portfolios.

Process oriented portfolios (Developmental)

Process oriented portfolios tell a story about the growth of a learner. They document the processes of learning and creating, including earlier drafts, reflections on the process, and obstacles encountered along the way. They may be organized into skill areas or themes, yet each contains a student’s work from the beginning, middle, and end of a learning unit. For example, there may be three drafts of a short story: a preliminary draft, a reworked draft reflecting teacher and peer feedback, and a final draft. The student can comment on the ways one is better than the other. In this manner, the artifacts can be compared providing evidence about how the student’s skills have improved. In any number of ways, in writing or perhaps during a parent-teacher conference, the student would reflect on the learning process: identifying how skills have changed, celebrating accomplishments, and establishing present and future challenges.

Product oriented portfolios (Assessment/Standards based)

Product oriented portfolios are collections of work a student considers his or her best. The aim is to document and reflect on the quality and range of accomplishments rather than the process that produced them (as described above). It typically requires a student to collect all of her work until the end, at which time he or she must choose artifacts that represent work of the highest quality.

There are any number of ways to facilitate this process. Students can be left completely to their own devices to choose or teacher can also establish parameters of what a portfolio must contain and the quality an artifact must achieve to be included. For example, a math teacher may stipulate that a portfolio must contain evidence of the ability to successfully apply the concepts of mean, median, and mode. The teacher may also stipulate that these artifacts must have earned a certain score to be accepted into the portfolio. In this way, product oriented portfolios can be quite effective in holding students accountable for producing quality work. Finally, it is very common for each artifact in a product oriented portfolio to be accompanied by self-reflection, usually in writing, on why and in what ways the artifacts represent best work.

Both kinds of portfolios are used at all grade levels. It does turn out, however, that process-folios are more common at the elementary level. It may be that teachers at these levels tend to be more concerned about individual growth than about determining specific levels of performance. The process-folio may also match elementary teaching methods more readily.

Similarly, product oriented portfolios are more common at the secondary level. This is probably due to two factors. First, the higher stakes of grade point averages and test scores at these levels has created a more final result oriented learning environment. Second, older students generally have the higher thinking skills necessary to choose their best work wisely, as well as engage in self-reflection more deeply. Notwithstanding any of these points, neither type of portfolio is necessarily better suited for any grade level. It is usually a matter of preference, teaching style, or school culture.

Public exhibition (Showcase Portfolios)

One final element common to both kinds of portfolios is the public exhibition. Before a panel consisting of any combination of peers, teachers, parents, or community members, students are asked to formally present all or parts of their portfolio. Groups of students might exhibit their portfolios in a more celebratory manner, much like a museum exhibition. Still other cases have students develop a part of their portfolio more in depth, reflecting a student’s individual academic or career interests.

However a portfolio exhibition is structured, the importance of this element lies in forging a connection between student and community. When a student’s portfolio will be viewed by others critically, it lends the whole process more validity and higher stakes; students will pay closer attention to quality. Similarly, it also becomes a way to involve the community, particularly parents, more deeply in the learning process.

(Epstein )