Portfolio Assessment

1. Portfolio Assessment Portfolio

2. Portfolios are part . . .of the constructed response assessment family For those training to be teachers, a portfolio means a collection of work in your teaching area (TaskStream) and has the following characteristics: • Multiple entries, many of which are self -selected. • Assessments of your work conducted by others. • Self-reflection (self-assessment) on the entries. • On-going in nature with growth indicated. So would it make sense to have your students do portfolios? • Caution: What is the purpose for using the portfolio? Is it a working portfolio or a showcase portfolio? Who will see this work and why? Be sure students understand. Be sure you understand. • Caution: How will you evaluate the student’s portfolio? Overall, will you be using it for formative or summative assessment? • Caution: How much should go into a student’s portfolio? Key works only. Start slowly with key entries one at a time. Don’t have students working on different entries of the portfolio all at once.

3. Portfolio Evaluation Guidelines. . . when portfolios are used as summative assessment • Because the portfolio is a collection rather than a single response, conducting quality assessment in this area requires one to make three somewhat unique decisions: • From the assortment of materials in the portfolio, what will be the focus of the evaluation? Three choices: • Student’s best work, most typical work, or his progress • Who will select material for evaluation? • Teacher, Student • Who will evaluate? • Teacher, Student • From this point on, you can choose to evaluate using any scoring scheme discussed earlier with regard to essay and performance assessment (e.g., holistic or analytic).

4. Thoughts to consider when you . . .Create Your Scoring System Portfolio Scoring Systems – Some Basic Choices • Point method - Have a written outline for yourself which expresses your preconceived model of a high quality answer (i.e. key points to be included or skills to be demonstrated). Simply sum these points. • Analytic method – use a two-way scoring rubric (e.g., rate on subscales from 1 to 4); raters break the portfolio task into important predetermined sub-tasks associated with key points and skills. • Holistic method – use a one-way scoring rubric (e.g., rate on overall scale from 1 to 9); raters compare each portfolio taken as a whole to the model. There is a variation to this method in which the raters sort all the portfolios into three categories (for example: “below average”, “average”, “above average”) then fine sort within categories. Some teachers use this method for A, B, C, D, F. • Primary Trait method – Used most often when the portfolio is a practical one (for example, “Create a 10-page portfolio for a job interview.”) The score is determined on whether it was complete or not; sometimes we say “met, or unmet”. The students receive a predetermined score when the task is completed satisfactorily.