Assessment of Student Portfolios - Assignment Example

They are similar and at the same time different aspects of assessing performance. Venn (2000) defines an assessment portfolio as a systematic collection of artifacts that uses a selection of work, measured against pre-determined scoring criteria, to evaluate a person’s skills, achievements, and growth over a specified period. Student portfolios are designed with the main objective of efforts, achievements, and progress of the students.

Portfolios are used for various purposes. They provide a collection of student work that aids in assessing the quality of the past or ongoing performance of the student. Moreover, they help in the demonstration of achievements that is essential to students as it helps them demonstrate the capability to master chief topics in a program.

Portfolios come in different formats and designs. The format to use is determined by the type of material included, the intended use of the portfolio, and the target audience. Regardless of the format, all portfolios must contain the name of the student, a brief introduction about the student, several pieces of work selected using criteria specified carefully, and fields where progress in the selected work is recorded over some time. Students may also choose to give an explanation of the reasons behind the selection of the subjects as well as specify criteria for evaluating the quality of the work.

As discussed earlier, portfolios come in a variety of types depending on the kind of material included, the intended use of the portfolio, and the target audience. Danielson and Abrutyn (1997) suggest that there are three main types of portfolios; working, display, and assessment portfolios.

As the name suggests, it contains work in progress as well as finished work samples. It acts as a store for this work in progress that may be selected later on for a more permanent assessment. It is an intentional collection of work that is guided by learning objectives and differs from a work folder. Its main audience is the student, guided by the teacher.

This is among the most rewarding use of student portfolios and is used to display the best works of the students. The students and their teachers become committed to the process most when they exhibit their best work and infer the meaning.

The core objective of this type of portfolio is to demonstrate the highest achievement level attained by the student. It may be maintained yearly with new work samples being added yearly to document growth.

They are designed primarily to document what a student has learned and may be used to demonstrate the student’s mastery in a certain curricular area, the quality of the student’s work as well as the level of growth and effort, attitude, and progress. The work selected for the portfolio is determined by the content in the student’s curriculum.

An assessment portfolio can have a lot of benefits to users when designed and implemented properly. The following are some of these benefits:
- Promotes reflection, self-evaluation, and critical thinking among the students.
- Provides flexibility when measuring how students achieve the set learning goals.
- Facilitates sharing of responsibility (among students and teachers) for setting goals and evaluating progress to meet the set goals.
- Provides a process for structuring the learning process in stages.
- According to Venn (2000), assessment portfolios enable multiple dimensions of the student’s progress to be measured by including several types of data and materials.