Portfolio assessment focuses on the process and experience of students’ learning which are the process of evaluation and reflection rather than merely recording what students have done during the learning process. Students can reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and thereby identify room for improvement by recording their learning experience and their contribution to the portfolio. Portfolio assessment provides a broader picture of what students have learnt in class and teachers may utilise this information for planning future assignments and curriculums.
Implementation
The steps for establishing a portfolio are outlined as follows.
Identify the purpose and focus of the portfolio: Define the purpose and educational goals of your portfolio and identify what kind of information may be included, such as the skills that students acquire, the learning strategies they adopt, the concepts they learn and how they apply their knowledge.
Select portfolio contents appropriately: Ensure the contents of the portfolio achieve their purpose and educational goals. Identify students’ strengths and weaknesses using both formal and informal techniques, such as formal testing and students’ self-ratings. Use this information as a reference for designing the portfolio contents.
Design the assessment criteria: Set clear standards and criteria for assessing the portfolio contents. The improvement between students’ present and previous performance and the mastery of acquired skills are the examples of assessment criteria. Integrate all information collected from the portfolio. Develop a coherent approach for analysis because the portfolio may contain diverse types of information, such as observations, teacher checklists. Make sure that both students and teachers receive timely and adequate feedback during the course of analysis.
Prepare information for instructional use: Familiarize students with the topics to which they will be exposed and ask them to search out relevant details before the trip. Distribute the assignment that students need to complete after the trip. Teachers may also invite past students who have experienced the field trip to talk about what they learnt.
Plan verification of procedures: Develop a system to check the reliability of portfolio judgments. Make careful decisions regarding information collected from the portfolio and even verify the judgment of students’ performance if necessary.
Extended reading
Elango, S., Jutti, R. C., & Lee, L. K. (2005) Portfolio as a learning tool: Student’s perspective. Annals Academy of Medicine, 34(8), 511–514. Singapore: Annals, Academy of Medicine. Teachers can click on the link below for more information: http://www.annals.edu.sg/pdf/34VolNo8200509/V34N8p511.pdf
Paulson, F. L., Paulson, P. R., & Meyer, C. A. (1991). What makes a portfolio. Education Leadership, 48(8), 60–63.
Ideas:
Portfolios for reflective learning. A physiotherapy programme at Hong Kong Polytechnic University required final year students to submit the portfolio assessment to evaluate their learning experience in group tasks. At the end of the process, both positive and negative feedback was sought so that improvements could be made to the assessment process in future. CUHK teachers can click on the link below for more information:http://www.informaworld.com/index/781814691.pdf
Portfolios recording individual clinical processes for assessment.
Portfolio assessment was used in a medical course at The Medical School of Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Students enrolled in this course were required to record and evaulate their clinical processes in the Patient Report. The portfolio, which consisted of at ten least reports, aimed to encourage students to reflect on their performance in the clincal process. Read the website here:
Portfolios recording progress in the learning of skills. Portfolio assessment was introduced to an introductory computer programming course and a language course at Manukau Institute of Technology. For the programming course, students were asked to submit a portfolio assessment three times during the semester. For the language course, students were encouraged to accomplish self-learning by completing exercises in the portfolio. Teachers found these two portfolio assessments very successful in letting students review and demonstrate what they had learnt in class. Read the details here:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.60.7597&rep=rep1&type=pdf
