TaskStream Solves Our ePortfolio Problems
Issues
Concerns about the meaningfulness of the portfolio
The current portfolio is not meaningful to students. Students do not
understand the rationale and underlying structure of the portfolio. This
leads to poor quality reflections, poor artifact choices, and frustration with
artifact assessments.
Student autonomy for selecting artifacts needs to be preserved.
Concerns about technical aspects of the portfolio
Submission issues: A variety of issues related to student difficulties in
submitting artifacts and checkpoint portfolios.
Instructor assessment issues: Instructors feel that assessment is
cumbersome and still has some technical glitches that do not work
properly.
TaskStream
- Ability to develop rubrics specific to assessment, but reported
by outcome. This would allow course instructors to use one
rubric to grade an assignment and complete the portfolio
assessment simultaneously. It could potentially eliminate the
issue of having students earn an “A” on an assignment but still
be rated as emerging.
- Ability to tailor portfolio to program needs
- Ability to create/publish portfolio with own design
-DRF template can include space for optional artifacts
- Students can see who they submitted artifacts to and they can
even cancel the submission before it is graded
- Students upload and submit on the same screen
- Students can submit more than one file for a requirement
(useful for multi-part artifacts like the Teacher Work Sample)
- Students would not need to submit portfolios for checkpoint
since the assessment manager can have access to view the entire
portfolio
- Ability to assess “no-submission” assignments, like
disposition or student teaching evaluations
- Instructor can get an email when items are submitted to them
or not
- Log in screen provides a link to all assessments that need to
be completed.
- Help is available via telephone and email through
TaskStream.
Accessibility of information: Advisors, assessors, and remediation board
would like easy access to see more (previous assessments, other
assessments, artifact grading).
Usefulness: Students cannot create more than one portfolio at CSU. This
causes difficulties for students who did an undergraduate and a graduate
degree here
Need to highlight the “employment” portfolio more
Concerns about timing and sequence
Instructors not evaluating on time or not evaluating at all, leaving students
with locked artifacts that no one can access except the instructor.
Timing of when artifacts are due/assessed (artifacts due near the end of the
semester cannot be assessed in time to include in a checkpoint portfolio.
Students who receive an incomplete for a class due to not submitting
portfolio artifacts have no way of submitting these artifacts after the class
is over to satisfy the incomplete.
Concerns about training and instruction
Technical training (students and instructors). Submitting artifacts and
checkpoint portfolios, assessing artifacts and checkpoints,
- You can view all of the items that have been submitted or
graded in the student’s portfolio (they just have to save the
items) and you can view all assessments.
- Evaluation managers have access to view status of all student
codes
- Permission can be given to edit or override evaluations
- Students can create as many portfolios as they want to create
no matter their past, present or future degrees
- TaskStream allows students to create their own employment
portfolios, design them however they want, and publish them to
the web. This might be more engaging for the students and
allows for greater personalization.
- Possible to link portfolio assessment with course grading,
making it more likely that instructors will grade artifacts.
- Evaluation manager can evaluate student work or edit
previous evaluations.
- This is a College issue, but the system allows students to
submit to anybody they want
- Submit to anybody at any time can be set up to allow students
to submit to any faculty at any time.
Customer Service is available via email as well as phone and
our experience has been that they have gotten back to us
quickly (within 24 hours – sometimes within 2 hours).
Content training (students and instructors). Outcomes, rubrics, assessing
artifacts with rubrics, matching artifacts to outcomes, selection of
appropriate artifacts, reflection sheets.
- Pilot users have indicated that the interface is fairly intuitive.
- There will be a need for additional training
- Websites and Videos can be created and added to TaskStream
Training materials are not prominent and communicated uniformly to
faculty and students.
Instructors not adhering to established required artifacts for their course.
- Portfolio website has been updated to provide assistance
Concerns about benchmark checkpoints
Expectations for checkpoint assessors unclear
Checkpoint 3 & 4 assessors have too much responsibility (making up for
instructors who do not assess)
Checkpoint 2 not useful/robust/underutilized
Some assessors override previous artifact and checkpoint assessments.
This is extremely confusing for students.
- DRF template can be set up to make each checkpoint
developmental
- Evaluation managers can be established to allow faculty to
complete checkpoint assessments
- DRF can be set-up to identify specific required artifacts at
different checkpoints
- This could still occur. If requirements are carefully
established it should be clearer to students when they satisfy
requirements.
Once student receives proficient they think they are done with the outcome
Concerns about measurement and grading
Rubrics are not specific or applicable to artifacts
Rubrics require that you assess things that may not be related to the artifact
Reliance on narrative, qualitative rubrics makes quantification and utility
of data difficult
- Instructors or programs can make their own artifacts (course
or program specific), which will be helpful for SPA Reporting
especially since rubrics can be linked to CEHS outcomes or
SPA standards. Note: Any common course artifacts must use
the same rubric.
- By creating artifact-specific rubrics, we can select the specific
domains that are utilized for each outcome or artifact
- Assignment specific rubrics will need to be created
Portfolio data is not useful for SPA reports (most SPAs are not using
portfolio data, or SPAs are critical of the portfolio data)
Grading is inconsistent across assessors
Holistic rubrics are too wordy/difficult to use
Other general portfolio concerns
Transfer students do not have assessed required artifacts from prior courses
- Rubrics can be written for the specific programs with the
college criteria interlinked
-Rubrics can be associated with SPA standards, and reported by
standard
- Rubrics will be more specific to the artifacts
- Transfer students could see exactly what needs to be uploaded
to the template