Portfolios

What is a Portfolio?

A “portfolio” is a selection of student work that they have chosen and evaluated as their best work, or as representative of their development over time. By making students responsible for collecting, organizing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and/or reflecting on their work, portfolio assignments engage them in the learning process and afford them an opportunity to share with the instructor their own reasons for investing in the project of the course.

Portfolios are especially common in the arts and for courses in which students conduct a range of writing assignments. (“Exam wrappers,” increasingly common in STEM fields, might also be considered a form of portfolio.) Portfolios can be assigned for semester-long courses, or for longer term capstones like certificate programs, across a range of fields.

Why use Portfolios?

Portfolios can be assigned as an alternative to a traditional final exam or paper, and can be especially effective at meeting some or all of the following goals:

  • encouraging student agency;
  • generating insights into each student’s engagement in their own learning;
  • prompting students to reflect on and understand understand their own development over the course;
  • inspiring students to identify future goals for continued learning beyond the course;
  • providing students the opportunity to select and develop work that they can use beyond the classroom, such as samples for graduate school applications or future employers.

“Portfolio culture” honors both processes and products, and encourages students to prepare materials for the job market / interviews, by encouraging a mindset of professionalism, rather than an “assignment mindset.” Portfolios encourage students to reflect on the amount of work they’ve accomplished over the course of a semester, and ideally, to learn about themselves and their own learning strategies as much as they’re learning new content/skills.

What does a Portfolio contain?

A portfolio typically includes three key components:

  1. Samples of student work distributed across the term
  2. Reflections on the work samples
  3. A professional re-presentation of the work samples

Samples of Work

Work samples can be chosen to:

  • represent the students’ best work (potentially incorporating revisions of previous work)
  • display an array and/or mastery of skills, such as drawing, digital media, music, language fluency, coding, etc.
  • Demonstrate growth over the course of the semester

Depending on the needs of the course, the selection might include essays, interviews, charts, inventories, diaries, tests, or artwork. These samples can vary based on content, format, length, or style of writing or research. The instructor may give specific requirements for the type of work, or it may be selected entirely by the student. For instance, for a writing class, the instructor might stipulate that the portfolio ought to include at least one persuasive piece (in which the main purpose is to agree or disagree with a public concern), and one source-based piece (in which the main purpose is to respond to a primary source).

Some portfolio assignments incorporate the requirement or opportunity to revise prior work. In some circumstances, the opportunity to incorporate instructor feedback can help reinforce learning goals and allow students to take their own work to the next level. In other circumstances, including rough drafts or early-semester work can provide the student with the opportunity to reflect on their early work from the position of greater mastery, and allow them to see their own growth over the semester.

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Reflections

The key self-reflexive element of a portfolio is that it contains a reflection on the work by the student: without the reflection it is just a collection of assignments. The reflection is an opportunity to convey a philosophy, methods, and goals, and identify strengths as a writer or learner.

Each piece might be accompanied by a reflection, or they can be summarized in a “Dear Reader”-style cover letter, with the artifacts as more of an appendix. This letter might contain:

  • What readers can expect to encounter in the portfolio
  • A rationale for the documents included
  • A description of the variety of strategies / methods / theories / skills utilized in the works included
  • Connections drawn between the assignments
  • Connections drawn between the assignments and the content/skills of the class
  • A reflection on what the student is most proud of, and why: did they experiment with new theories? Did they push themselves to try new styles or methods?
  • What the student was thinking when they created the artifact, and what impact did it have on their learning? (Questions here might include: What would you do the same or differently next time? How did specific moments in the assignment help you recognize that you were making improvement or on the right track?) This kind of reflective action involves an examination of their past work and the impact that it had in order to synthesize how it might be refined for a better outcome in the future
  • Evidence for how it aligns with assignment objectives or class goals
  • Moments of surprise or moments corroborating earlier intuitions

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Re-presentation

Finally, portfolios usually incorporate some sort of professional presentation—what would in another context be a physical portfolio. In other words, it is not merely the resubmission of the components in their original form, but rather an intentional re-presentation of them so as to make an argument about their relationship to each other. Tangible portfolios might take the form of a binder or book; digital portfolios might be collated into a website or slideshow. There could be a visual/graphic design component that could “package,” or “brand” the material to tie it all together, and/or a table of contents, to show how the components fit together. Giving students the opportunity to create a professional package with visual / non-textual material can encourage them to connect with it on a more personal level, and which might allow them to understand their own work in new ways. The act of “publishing” their work can also give it value.

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What is an Exam Wrapper?

An exam wrapper (or paper wrapper) is an activity or document that “wraps around” an exam. Similar to portfolios, they are used to enhance student metacognition and self-awareness of their own strategies for study and performance. Common questions that might be asked in an exam wrapper include:

  • How did you study for this exam? What strategies did you use to prepare, and which seemed most effective?
  • Did these study strategies differ from your preparation for the last exam? Did these changes effect your performance?
  • On which aspects of this exam did you perform well?
  • Are there patterns to your errors that you can address in future preparation?
  • Name at least three things you plan to do differently in your preparation for the next exam. (For example, will you spend more time, change a study habit, or add a new skill?)

How are Portfolios Assessed?

Because of the open-ended nature of work that could be produced across portfolios, it is important to provide clarity about what is expected. Explicit instructions are necessary to avoid student uncertainty about what to include in their own portfolios. Periodic check-ins between student and instructor could alleviate student uncertainty. Students could be organized into pairs or groups, and could thought partners for students working on assembling and explaining their work.

Because of the potential variability between portfolios, a clear grading rubric is key to students understanding how their own work will be assessed. While the precise assessment scheme will depend on the course learning objectives, a rubric might include:

Selection of work

  • Shows a variety of work (for example, in different genres or at different stages of drafting)
  • Shows development / growth / moving up Bloom’s taxonomy
  • Shows clarity / concision of writing

Reflection: demonstrates understanding of course skills

  • Shows awareness of and ability to communicate development / growth

Professionalization: has an organizational structure, which is carried out consistently over the project

  • Shows engagement with presentation style: includes visual or graphic components that convey a polished professional finish, an overall “brand”
  • Is adapted to audience

Portfolios by definition contain individual parts that are organized into a whole, and these parts are themselves coming together at different stages of the assignment. As a result, assessment itself might take place at different stages—including lower-stakes formative feedback—with rubrics that are tailored to the individual parts and/or the final submission.