Across and Beyond the
Curriculum:
Encouraging Choice,
Variety and Reflection in
Student Portfolio Keeping
Appalachian State University
August 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
Portfolio methods are flexible!
O Portfolios bring process and product together
O Portfolios require students to take
responsibility for their own learning
O Portfolio assessment puts students in a
situation where they must attend to audience
and purpose
O
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 Solve
O
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 PK
O
O
O
O
O
Brief, supplemental text
De-mystifies assessment
Provides guidance for coursebased portfolios
Choice, Variety, Reflection
If EVERYTHING is
included, it’s not a portfolio.
Companion volume: PT
O
Emphasizes teachergraded classroom
portfolios, including:
Planning a portfolio
course
O Selecting artifacts for a
teaching portfolio
O Assessing the portfolio
O
Choice
O
Choices must be genuine/authentic
O
2-3 artifacts of *anything* you have written
The higher the course level, the more choices
students should be given.
O Giving choices also means assigning plenty of
writing tasks
O
Importance of storage
O
What’s in storage that will provide content or
context?
O
Have students analyze their collections/reorganize the contents to find patterns.
Variety
O
not just by genre, but also by
O
O
O
O
O
length
when composed
number of readers or reviewers
degree of completeness
variations of document design
Across and Beyond:
making a case with support from
Andrea Lunsford
O
[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_SemiLiterate_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 Turn
O
Choice & Variety Across the Curriculum
O
Choice & Variety Beyond the Curriculum
Facebook status updates
O Twitter posts, texting
O
Sharing / Reporting Out
O
O
What did you come up with for choice and
variety across and beyond the curriculum?
Choice and variety need reflection to matter.
Reflection
Without reflection, a collection of work is not a
portfolio!
O Reflection makes learning “stick”
O Reflection allows teachers to get unstuck
O
Defining reflection
O
O
O
O
O
O
The ability to think about one’s thinking
Meta-cognition
Self-awareness / self-consciousness
Thoughtfulness
Introspection
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.
Introduction
A cover letter to the evaluator
2.
3.
4.
5.
Introduction & Conclusion
Brief introduction to each entry
Process essays
A reflective essay anywhere in the package
Assigning the Reflective Element
“the most significant piece of writing you will
produce this semester”
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.
O
The students’ job in reflecting
O
What does this package of stuff mean?
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?
O
When stuck, back to basics
O
O
What do we know, with some confidence,
about how writers work?
about a typical writing process?
Portfolio keepers need what all
writers need
TIME
O OWNERSHIP
O RESPONSE
O
O Nanci Atwell, In the Middle
Your Turn Again
O
O
What do you do to provide time, ownership,
and response?
What could you do differently or do more of?
Focusing on Response
O
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
O
O
O
O
O
O
Subtlety
Consistency
Clear navigation
Straightforward page layout
Legibility and ease of reading
Thoughtful use of emphasis
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
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.
O
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!