Research and
Information Skills
Portfolio creation
2006
What is a portfolio?
A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that
exhibits the student’s efforts, progress, and achievements
in one or more areas. The collection must include student
participation in selecting contents, the criteria for
selection, the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of
student self-reflection. A portfolio provides a complex and
comprehensive view of student performance in context. It
is a portfolio when the student is a participant in, rather
than the object of assessment it provides a forum that
encourages students to develop the abilities needed to
become independent, self-directed learners (Paulson,
Paulson and Meyer, in BEDEE1-V tutorial letter
104/0/2006:5)
Why Portfolio
Assessment?
Portfolio assessment supports authentic
assessment models.
• Main objectives are to keep track of
personal progress in the module
• Determine the extent of achievement
• Provides an opportunity to value and assess
personal accomplishments
• Provides the opportunity to show lecturers
what and how students have learnt
Putting the portfolio
together
Requires involvement in following
activities:
• Deciding on tasks or goals
• Planning the stages of various tasks
• Carrying out plans and adjusting them
as necessary
• Assessing the success of tasks
Selecting a framework
• Chronological – organise portfolio by date
• Thematic – organise portfolio around
themes and functions
• Problem-oriented – organise porfolio
around problems or issues
• Own organising principle – a combination of
any or all of the above ways
Keeping track of the
portfolio
• Decide on a collection device for portfolio
materials (files, folders, spiral binding,
etc)
• Keep practical element of presenting
portfolio to university for assessment
purposes in mind
• Chosen framework could serve as guideline
for organising portfolio.
What items to include
• Indicate personal goals and objectives for
portfolio development
• Indicate personal goals and objectives for
Research and Information Skills
• Indicate proposed plan of action for
achieving these objectives
• Include your reactions to our feedback
• Include elements of self-reflection.
Reflection
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What you believe is important and why
What is characteristic about your learning
What has changed with time
What still remains to be done
How different kinds of experiences have
contributed to your growth and learning
• What personal insights you have gained from the
experience
• How your opinions and ideas have changed, refined
or not changed
Feedback
Purpose of feedback is to support you. We
will try to be:
• Specific so that you will know what we
mean
• Sensitive to your goals and will give our
views accordingly
• Timely in our feedback
• Accurate in our interpretation of your
inputs.
Portfolio activities
Assignment 01
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Activity 1: Introduce yourself
Activity 2: Decision requiring information
Activity 3: Selecting a research topic
Activity 4: Quantitative and qualitative
research
• Activity 5: Reasons for literature search
Portfolio activities
Assignment 01 (continued)
• Activity 6: Types of information sources
• Activity 7: Evaluation of information
sources
• Activity 8: Practical computer skills
• Activity 9: Selection of search terms – one
sentence summaries
• Activity 10: Identification of types of
records and database structures
• Activity 11: Search strategies
Portfolio activities
Assignment 03
Activity 12: Internet activities. These
include:
• Setting up an e-mail address
• Finding e-mail addresses for lecturers
• Finding specific information on the
Internet
• Finding information relevant to research
topic
Portfolio activities
Assignment 03 (continued)
Activity 13: using online information resources
• Finding specific information using an online library
catalogue
• Finding information relevant to research topic
• Finding specific information in online databases
• Finding research related information in online
databases
Portfolio activities
Assignment 03 (continued)
Find relevant information related to your research
topic:
• Explain what you searched for and how you
adapted your search
• Indicate how you adapted your searches
• Include a variety of sources from the library
catalogue, internet and full-text databases
• Provide examples of search strategies
• Evaluate your search results according to the
criteria in study unit 2
Portfolio activities
Assignment 03 (Continued)
Compile a bibliography / list of reference
sources by:
• By information sources retrieved from the
internet, library catalogue and online
databases
• Including keywords for each reference
Portfolio activities
In-Text activities
• In-text activities are compulsory.
• In-text activities appear in Tutorial letter
BEDEE1-V 103/0/2006.
• There are 11 activities.
• Each activity is marked with an A
• Each activity counts 2 marks.
• See marksheets in Tutorial Letter 104/0/2006
(p.36) for a list of the activities.
Exam Portfolio
Submit exam portfolio to
Mrs M du Preez
Dept of Information Science
Box 392
Unisa
0003
Any Questions?