How important is it to prescribe the contents of the portfolio?

This is tricky. If you are too prescriptive, it can stifle inventiveness and originality in your students work and reduce their sense of ownership of the product, but a degree of direction is needed to keep the process both manageable and transparent.

Manageability

A portfolio can be a substantial piece of work. It should reflect both the expected level of effort put into the relevant classroom preparation and related activities, as well as the appropriate proportion of the assessment effort. On the other hand, there is the risk that committed students will put in an excessive amount of hours relative to more conventional assessments carrying the same credit weighting. Manageability is thus important for tutors and students. There are two key steps to keeping portfolios manageable:

1. Specify your basic task requirements, for example:

• minimum number of tasks/activities/events to be recorded in the portfolio
• maximum number of pages or words permitted
• whether there are any specific kinds of evidence which must be incorporated
• whether there is any material you want expressly to exclude (for example the students lecture notes)

2. Set minimum expectations for structure and organisation:

• consider whether there is a specific way of organising the portfolio that will facilitate your evaluation

Example

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When I set up Legal Skills and Process 2 I made it clear that students would be expected to submit a log sheet and evidence for each workshop. I did not think to specify that the evidence for each workshop should be paired-up with its log sheet, so some students organised their logs as one section of the portfolio and their evidence as another. These portfolios were definitely harder to evaluate than those whose evidence followed the log entry to which it related.

• require students to label everything clearly. Every task/piece of evidence should have as a minimum:
• a title/description of what it is
• a date of completion
• a document number or other identifier to facilitate cross-referencing

Transparency

If any assessment is to be truly valid, students should have sufficient information to make informed judgments about what will be required of them. Students should be clear on:

• the learning outcomes on which they will be assessed
• the specific assessment criteria which will be applied, and marking scheme (if appropriate)
• your minimum expectations as to the form and contents of the portfolio
• any maximum page/word length, and penalties for breach thereof
• what constitutes plagiarism and whether collaboration is allowed for the purposes of this assessment.

Given that most students will be unfamiliar with portfolios, it is also a good idea to:

• introduce them to the basic (experiential) learning model and its implications for how they learn. (see Maughan and Webb (1996) for more detailed discussion.)
• allow them an opportunity to see real samples of such work
• provide opportunities for formative evaluation of their work ‘in progress’

Last Modified: 4 June 2010