Student-Growth Portfolios

Portfolios can be an effective tool that enables students to collect their work and assess their own work according to a set of criteria (Saeed et al., 2018). This self-assessment can improve their performance and products to help them meet the established criteria. Throughout the portfolio creation and collection process, students are taking ownership of their learning which can create learner autonomy (Lam, 2018). This can help build students’ confidence, motivation, and agency in their learning development. It also encourages students to clarify objectives and set new learning objectives (Shatri & Zabeli, 2018). Recording achievements can support the self-assessment process through a practical approach.

Portfolios can contain reflective activities, writing prompts, journals, and so much more (Shatri & Zabeli, 2018). Students should understand the objective for the portfolio, should have the opportunity to create a definition of quality work, receive feedback, and have the opportunity to correct or self-adjust. Feedback in the portfolio process can play a crucial role in closing the learning gaps between the students’ existing and desired levels of performance and mastery (Lam, 2018).

Portfolios have some shortcomings as well. Without clear expectations through the distribution of rubrics or the like, their use can be highly subjective. If the portfolio does not have certain artifacts or only highlights the students’ strongest work, learning gaps may not become apparent. Portfolios are best used to highlight process and improvement over time. Subject areas such as writing are most beneficial with this type of assessment process as the stakeholders can view the distinct change of students’ writing in samples over time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Effort & Participation Grades

Effort grades are given for various aspects of the learning process and are used differently almost from teacher to teacher. Effort grades may be due to perceived participation, certain behaviors, homework completion, and so on. Typically, these behaviors do not factor into academic content mastery. There is a time and place for effort grades, however. Many school subjects, such as drama, physical education, band, or public speaking, require student participation for full learning (Wormeli, 2018). When this is the case, if we believe that a particular subject participation is gradable, then the standard of excellence for participation must be agreed upon. This might include willingness to participate, attentiveness, relevance and accuracy of comments, and use of proper resources. Teachers should create rubrics, checklists, or scales to help make expectations clear for reporting purposes. Academic success and effort, behavior, and attendance are very highly correlated (Wormeli, 2018)....
Read more

References

Barnes, N. & Gillis, A. (2015). Assessment360: A promising assessment technique for preservice teacher education. The Teacher Educator, 50 , p. 288-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2015.1071904 Chowdhury, F. (2018). Application of rubrics in the classroom: A vital tool for improvement in assessment, feedback, and learning. International Education Studies, 12 (1), 61-68. https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v12n1p61 Fives, H., Barnes, N., Dacey, C., & Gillis, A. (2016). Assessment assessment texts: Where is planning? The Teacher Educator, 51 , p. 70-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2015.1107442 Gillis, A. (2019). Reconceptualizing participation grading as skill building. Teaching Sociology, 47 (1), 10-21. https://www.doi.org/10.1177/0092055X18798006   Guskey, T. (2009). Practical solutions for serious problems in standards-based grading . Corwin Press.   Kamariah, A., Husain, D., Atmowardoyo, H., & Salija, K. (2018). Developing authentic-based instruct...
Read more

Rubrics

Rubrics are a useful grading tool that can add reliability, validity, and transparency to the assessment process (Chowdhury, 2019). They also help to decrease subjectivity and convey expectations. Students can benefit from rubrics by understanding what level of what is considered good, very good, excellent, or bad. It can help give clear understanding of what is expected of them and improve their work to enhance their learning. Teachers can use the rubrics to provide informative and timely feedback. Rubrics help maintain grading consistency and fair assessment across graders and across students. Most importantly, rubrics can help foster student learning and self-assessment. Studies have shown that students who use rubrics have greater satisfaction in their learning and deeper understanding of content (Chowdhury, 2019). Rubric from (Chowdhury, 2019) Students are required to write an essay on the topic “Today the education quality is not as good as it was 5 years back”. The ...
Read more