Saturday, 18 May 2019

PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT



[Portfolio Assessment]
[Types of Portfolio Assessment and Guidance For  Assessment]

A portfolio is a purposeful collection of a student’s work that tells a story of effort, progress, or achievement.

[2019]
[Tasneem Ahmed]
[SunShine ]         


Contents

Portfolio

 Definition:

·         A the portfolio is a purposeful collection of a student’s work that tells a story of effort, progress, or achievement
Or
·         A collection of student work that demonstrates achievement or improvement” (Stiggins 1994)
·         Portfolios are a great classroom assessment for students. Portfolios measure student growth over longer periods of time than normal assessments. 
·         Student The portfolio is the cumulative assessment or collection of students work, samples, progress and achievement in one or more area.

Guidelines for Using Portfolios

·         Identify purpose
·         Select objectives
·         Think about the kinds of entries that will best match instructional outcomes
·         Decide how much to include, how to organize the portfolio, where to keep it and when to access it
·         Decide who selects the entries (the student, the teacher, both)
·         Set the criteria for judging the work (rating scales, rubrics, checklists) and make sure students understand the criteria.
·         Review the student’s progress
·         Hold portfolio conferences with students to discuss their progress.

Guidelines for Developing Portfolios

                                                              According to De Fina (1997) when decided the contents of a portfolio, two compelling factors should be kept in mind:
 1. The students’ desires and the purpose of collecting each item. Ideally, the portfolio should be as a student- centred as possible and the teachers facilitate, guide, and offer choices rather than inform, direct, and predetermine priorities.
2. It should be remembered in the process of preparing a portfolio that each student has different cognitive, effective, psychomotor skills, different experiences, social environments and socio-economic levels.

Determining the Purpose of the Portfolio

                                                                     The aim of teacher using a portfolio is to assess the progress of the student over a period of time, to determine the efficiency of the teaching, to have a connection with the parents of the students, to evaluate the education program, to enable schools to have contact with the service, to help students for self- assessment and to determine the students’ weak points in the learning process (Mumme, 1991; De Fina, 1992). During determining the purpose of the portfolio, it is very important for teachers to consult his colleagues, students, parents and school administrations.

 Innovative Portfolio Ideas trying a variety of strategies

                                                                                               Depending on the portfolio, a variety of documentation strategies can be used. Students can organize paper documents including papers, artwork, written assessments, teacher-written feedback, peer reviews, and other learning evidence in a notebook or scrapbook. These paper documents can be scanned; students can record interviews and create videos for digital portfolios. Finding resources: Teachers can assist students in discovering resources to use in developing the portfolio. Examples of resources include digital cameras, video equipment, technology resources, and workers to assist individual students.

Guidelines for Portfolio Assessment

                                                              Portfolio assessment should be multidimensional and in order to make a reliable assessment, data should be collected from different sources such as student himself, teachers, student’s friends and parents. The portfolio which was used for mathematics course in 1990 in Vermont State, in the USA, consisted of only problem-solving activities. In this portfolio application students have been asked to present the solutions of open-ended problems in detail.

Determining Assessment Criteria

                                                          First, the purpose of a portfolio is mentioned explicitly and then, assessment criteria of each item in a portfolio need to be explained. Assessment criterion allows students to recognize, and select work that is considered high quality. Assessment criteria should be clear and easy to understand. This is quite important in terms of a student to assess his own works and to be able to fulfil his weaknesses. Rubrics should be used in order to determine the quality of the evidence in a portfolio and to make a reliable and valid assessment.

Purpose of portfolio

                                  Evaluating coursework quality, learning progress, and academic achievement.Determining whether students have met learning standards or other academic requirements for courses Tests and quizzes give teachers information about what students know at a particular point in time, but portfolios can document how students have grown, matured, and improved as learners over the course of a project, school year, or multiple year.

 Purpose of Portfolio Assessment

  1. ·         Portfolio the assessment gives a profile of learners’ abilities in terms of depth, breadth, and growth
  2. ·         Portfolio assessment is a tool for assessing a variety of skills
  3. ·         Develops independent and active learners
  4. ·         Develops social skills
  5. ·         Portfolio assessment can improve motivation for learning and this achievement
  6. ·         Portfolio the assessment provides an opportunity for student-teacher dialogue.

·         Portfolio provides multiple ways of assessing students’ learning over time. It provides a more realistic evaluation of academic content than a pencil- and paper tests. It allows students, parent, teacher and staff to evaluate the students’ strength and weakness. It provides multiple opportunities for observation and assessment. It provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate his/her strengths as well as weakness. It encourages students to develop some abilities needed to become an independent, self-directed learner. It encourages students to think of creative ways to share what they are learning. It increases support to students from their parents and enhances communication among teachers, students and parents. It encourages teachers to change their instructional practice and it is a powerful way to link curriculum and instruction with the assessment.
·         It can provide opportunities for learners to demonstrate his/her weakness and strengths and for teachers to direct their teaching. It also can encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning, and enhance student-teacher communication. Portfolio gives detailed information about students’ development in the learning process to teacher, parents and student’s themselves. Portfolio assessment is a tool for assessing a variety of skills. Develops social skills. Portfolio assessment develops independent and active learners.

 Types of Portfolio 1

                                   The types of portfolios are varied according to their purpose and collected items in it. Therefore, many researchers define different types of portfolio. According to Haladyn (1997), there are five types of portfolios that 1. Ideal, 2 Showcases, 3 Documentation, 4 Evaluations, 5 Class portfolio.
1. The ideal portfolio contains students’ all works. It is not given to students a grade.
2. The showcase portfolio is included only of the students’ best works. It is important for students to select own works and to reflect their works.
3. The documentation portfolio involves a collection of work over time showing growth and improvement reflecting students' learning of identified outcomes. This portfolio contains quality and quantity data.
4. The evaluation portfolio includes a standardized collection of students’ work and could be determined by the teacher or, in some cases, by the student. This portfolio is suitable for grading students.
5. The class portfolio contains student’s grade, teacher’s view and knowledge about students in the classroom. This portfolio can be defined as a classroom portfolio.

Types of Portfolio 2

·         Slater (1996) describes there types of a portfolio as 1. Showcase, 2. Open-format and 3. Checklist portfolio a showcase portfolio is a limited portfolio where a student is only allowed to present a few pieces of evidence to demonstrate mastery of learning objectives.
·         In an open-format portfolio, students are allowed to submit anything they wish to be considered as evidence for mastery of a given list of learning objectives.
·         A checklist portfolio is composed of a predetermined number of items. Often, a a course syllabus will have a predetermined number of assignments for students to complete.

Types of Portfolio 3

                                 Mlograno (2000, p.101), who made more detailed descriptions, defines nine types of portfolios.

  1. ·         Personal portfolio: The portfolio could contain pictures, awards, videos, or other memorabilia.
  2. ·         Working portfolio: The ongoing, systematic collection of student work samples and exhibits can be maintained in a working portfolio. This collection of daily, weekly, monthly, or unit work products forms.
  3.  Record-keeping portfolio: This type of portfolio is usually kept by teachers. It contains necessary assessment samples and records that may be required (e.g., written exams, proficiency tests). It could also include observational information (e.g., subjective notes, frequency index scales, narrative descriptors, behaviour checklists) and progress reports cards.
  4. ·         Group portfolio: Each member of a cooperative learning group contributes individual items along with group items (e.g., samples, pictures, community project) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the entire group.
  5. ·         Thematic portfolio: This portfolio would relate to a unit of study with a particular focus, normally lasting from 2 to 6 weeks. For example, if a portfolio is constructed related to "Rational Numbers", “Force” unit, this portfolio could reflect cognitive and affective skills and their views about these units.
  6. ·         Integrated portfolio: To view, the whole student works from all disciplines showing connections between or among subjects would be included. Selected items, either required or optional, could be drawn from several or all subjects. For example, this portfolio can be prepared in math and science courses.
  7. ·         Showcase portfolio: A limited number of items are selected to exhibit growth over time and to serve a particular purpose. Usually, only the student's best works are included.
  8. ·         Electronic portfolio: In an electronic portfolio, data is arranged and stored online with the help of online webs and blog. Electronic portfolios offer many advantages such as to collect, and store, and manage the information electronically according to traditional portfolios. In recent years, because of the educational opportunities supported by technological development, electronic portfolios are used much more.
  9. ·         Multiyear portfolio: Students would collect items from a cluster of grade levels over 2-, 3-, or 4-year intervals. The multiyear portfolio would be stored at the school. For example, this portfolio can be used to follow students’ progress periodically during primary and secondary school and university education.

Important Points in Portfolio Developing Process
·         Asturias (1994, p.87) and De Fina (1992, p.14) made some suggestions to solve this problem and enable portfolio as an important learning and assessment tool. Some of them are as follows;

·         It should be consulted to teachers, students, parents and school administrations in deciding which items would be placed in it
·         It should be created a shared, clear purpose for using portfolios.
·         Students should clearly understand what purpose of and for whom a portfolio is consisted.
·         It should reflect the actual day-to-day learning activities of students.
·         It should be ongoing so that they show students’ efforts, progress, and achievements over a period of time.
·         Items in a portfolio should be collected as a systematic, purposeful, and meaningful.
·         It should give opportunities for students in selecting pieces they consider most reprehensive of themselves as learners to be placed into their portfolios, and to establish criteria for their selections.
·         It should be viewed as a part of the learning process rather than merely as recordkeeping tools, as a way to enhance students’ learning
·         Share the criteria that will be used to assess the work in the portfolio as well as in which the result is to be used
·         Teachers should give feedback to students, parents about the use of the portfolio.

Supply Content

                      Making a portfolio requires students to use the higher-order cognitive skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).portfolios are particularly useful for teaching students how to evaluate their own work. Portfolios may work for formative assessment but are very difficult to use for summative assessment because scoring is unreliable. Standardizing a portfolio makes it easier to score with some confidence that the score is reliable. Standardizing a portfolio means that it is no longer only the individual story of a student’s efforts, progress, and achievement. The individual nature of a portfolio has always been considered one of its virtues. We saw these portfolios as learners’ working documents that allowed us to see evidence of thinking, ideas, action, and reflection in real time skills, contents that can be found in the portfolios some of the contents include essays, art, graphs, journaling, standardized test scores, and other classroom assessments material.

Examples of portfolios for Science subjects

  • ·         Charts, graphs created
  • ·         Projects, examples, posters
  • ·         Lab reports
  • ·         Research reports
  • ·         Tests 
  • ·         Student reflections (weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly)

Conclusion

                   In sum, portfolio assessment provides a more authentic and valid assessment of students’ achievement and comprehensive views of students’ performances in contexts, and encourages students to develop independent and self-directed learners, and enhances communication among teacher, student and parents.


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