Across and Beyond the Curriculum: 

Encouraging Choice, Variety and Reflection in

Student Portfolio Keeping

Appalachian State UniversityAugust 22, 2011

Goals for Today’s Workshop

O refreshing/reminding

O going back to basics

O leaving here with a list of best practices

Why Use Portfolios?O To collect, chart, showcase,

evaluate

O To promote reflective learning

O To involve students in making choices

O To emphasize both process and product

What counts as a portfolio?

• A purposeful collection of students’ work that illustrates efforts, progress, achievement – Helen Barrett

• Any collection of artifacts (documents, photos, videos, etc.) that represents learning, growth, patterns, choices.

Types of Portfolios• Learning portfolios• Showcase portfolios• “Open” or “Closed”

• Program-graded• Teacher-graded• “Mastery” portfolios for

certification• Teaching portfolios for

professional development

Why portfolios have many fans

O Portfolio methods are flexible!O Portfolios bring process and product

togetherO Portfolios require students to take

responsibility for their own learningO Portfolio assessment puts students

in a situation where they must attend to audience and purpose

Change is good!

From . . . O 3 out of 5 projects (revised, edited,

polished) To . . . O 10 pages of evidence that you have

met the learning outcomes of this course

Your Turn: Assessing Where You Are

O As a program, what is working well and what is not in using portfolios?

O As a teacher, what is working well and what is not in using portfolios?

Problems to SolveO Students don’t know where they

stand with grades

O Students feel rushed and pressured at the end of the course

O How can encouraging choice, variety, and reflection help?

Features of PKO Brief, supplemental

textO De-mystifies

assessmentO Provides guidance for

course-based portfoliosO Choice, Variety,

ReflectionO If EVERYTHING is

included, it’s not a portfolio.

Companion volume: PTO Emphasizes

teacher-graded classroom portfolios, including:O Planning a

portfolio courseO Selecting artifacts

for a teaching portfolio

O Assessing the portfolio

ChoiceO Choices must be genuine/authentic

O 2-3 artifacts of *anything* you have written

O The higher the course level, the more choices students should be given.

O Giving choices also means assigning plenty of writing tasks

Importance of storage

O What’s in storage that will provide content or context?

O Have students analyze their collections/re-organize the contents to find patterns.

VarietyO not just by genre, but also by

O lengthO when composed O number of readers or reviewersO degree of completenessO variations of document design

Across and Beyond: making a case with support from

Andrea LunsfordO [Today’s students] are inseparable from

their phones, which [Jeff] Grabill called “the new pencil.”  With these phones, they are keeping in touch with friends and family, taking notes, writing texts of all kinds . . . . So YES, texting is writing, and we need to be paying very close attention to it and learning from our students how they are using this new “pencil.” 

More from Andrea Lunsford

O "rather than leading to a new illiteracy, these [nonacademic, social networking] activities seemed to help [students] develop a range or repertoire of writing styles, tones, and formats along with a range of abilities"

(www.stanford.edu/group/.../OPED_Our_Semi-Literate_Youth.pdf ).

Over the years, we collected nearly 15,000 pieces of student writing: lab reports, research essays, PowerPoint presentations, problem sets, honors theses, email and textings (in 11 languages), blogs and journals, poems, documentaries, fan fiction, even a full-length play entitled “Hip-Hopera.” While we are still coding these pieces of writing, several results emerged right away. First, these students were writing A LOT, both in class and out, though they were most interested in and committed to writing out of class, what we came to call “life writing,” than they were in their school assignments. Second, they were increasingly aware of those to whom they were writing and adjusted their writing styles to suit the occasion and the audience. Third, they wanted their writing to count for something; as they said to us over and over, good writing to them was performative, the kind of writing that “made something happen in the world.” Finally, they increasingly saw writing as collaborative, social, and participatory rather than solitary.

-- “Our Semi-literate Youth? Not So Fast”

In short, O the rhetorical awareness that social

media require is almost unprecedented in young people's experiences writing outside of school

O so portfolio teachers need to tap into this rhetorical awareness and these experiences

Your TurnO Choice & Variety Across the

Curriculum

O Choice & Variety Beyond the CurriculumO Facebook status updatesO Twitter posts, texting

Sharing / Reporting Out

O What did you come up with for

choice and variety across and beyond the curriculum?

O Choice and variety need reflection to matter.

Reflection

O Without reflection, a collection of work is not a portfolio!

O Reflection makes learning “stick”O Reflection allows teachers to get

unstuck

Defining reflection

O The ability to think about one’s thinking

O Meta-cognitionO Self-awareness / self-

consciousnessO ThoughtfulnessO IntrospectionO Insight

Practicing reflective writing

O Taking Stock or other prompts

O Post-writes or writers’ memos

O Companion pieces

O Journals or blogs with reflective prompts

Options for a reflective element

1. IntroductionA cover letter to the evaluator

2. Introduction & Conclusion3. Brief introduction to each entry4. Process essays5. A reflective essay anywhere in the

package

Assigning the Reflective Element

“the most significant piece of writing you will produce this semester”

O Remind students of the practice

they have had with reflection.O Emphasize the need for support or

evidence.O Encourage them to use materials

they have put in storage.

The students’ job in reflecting

O What does this package of stuff mean? O The learner has to put the meaning

into words.O Metacognition

O How and why were choices made?O What do these choices represent

about the learner?O What changes were made in response

to instructor or peer commentary?

When stuck, back to basics

O What do we know, with some confidence, about how writers work?

O about a typical writing process?

Portfolio keepers need what all writers need

O TIMEO OWNERSHIPO RESPONSE

O Nanci Atwell, In the Middle

Your Turn Again

O What do you do to provide time, ownership, and response?

O What could you do differently or do more of?

Focusing on ResponseO Who is doing the responding?

O At what point in the process?

O With what aim or intended outcome?

O From what training or practice?

Provide questions/criteria

O In The Web Portfolio Guide, Miles Kimball identifies 7 criterion for effective electronic portfolios: O SubtletyO ConsistencyO Clear navigationO Straightforward page layoutO Legibility and ease of readingO Thoughtful use of emphasisO Careful use of color

Sample peer review prompt

O “Choose three of these criteria and comment on the extent to which your partners (or group members) have succeeded in implementing them. Make three concrete suggestions for improvement.”

Encouraging Reflection through Peer Review

O With opportunities to practice and clear expectations /criteria, students can provide excellent help to each other.

O They are “real readers.”O They can teach each other about

technologies and share ideas.

Best Practices for Appalachian State

A new instructor in the program asks you about portfolio teaching. You and your colleagues want to respond with a “Best Practices” list. Let’s start it!