Digital Portfolios
Digital Portfolios
Kathleen Yancey and Donna Winchell-Clemson University
Process of digital portfolios-
Self-selected student writing with reflection. Without reflection a portfolio becomes a folder of work.
At Clemson, all students have a laptop which makes the process of creating a digital portfolio easier.
Reflection drives the portfolio. The reflection is typically about the growth of the student as a writer and their strengths and weaknesses as a writer. In a digital format, students can link from their initial reflection to the writing which actually demonstrates what their talking about.
At Clemson, students use Word and Netscape Composer to create documents that are easily uploadable. (Click here for a tutorial on using Netscape Composer to create webpages)
At this point, Clemson has resisted the use of templates to guide students in the creation of their digital portfolio because they believe that part of the learning occurs in deciding how to present their learning…what type of format will best allow those viewing the portfolio to understand the learning that has happened? It also helps students see the bigger picture and brings the focus back to meta-cognition, which is the right aim of portfolios. It prevents the students and instructors from viewing portfolios as a quick-fix for assessment.
The process of getting a faculty together in agreement on implementing a digital portfolio as a general education requirement at Clemson:
- First step is getting the faculty together to talk about portfolios, how they envision them
- Talking with other institutions that have implemented portfolios. See the St. Olaf website for examples.
- Four traits for the portfolio:
- Integrated thinking
- Self-reflection
- Thinking in community
- Thinking in Context
- The goal is to develop habits of mind and these four traits help students do that.
- There needs to be a gradual shift to the portfolio and an understanding that the reflection is intended to make learning visible.
Helen Barrett—outlines a difference between portfolios and online assessment tools. There is a clear distinction.
Students and instructions need to be clear on what they envision the collection, selection, and reflection process.
- Showcase development?
- Communication?
- Feature of Evaluation?
- Showing of diversity?
How does making this a digital process change the learning? It can be done in print, but it places the process in a different intellectual frame. (?)
- Revision: color coding to a reason for the change. Can be done in frame situations. The reason for the change is really the important piece. When students know that they will be articulating why they’re making a change, their review of their work takes on a different jargon.
- Suggests creating a writing map. We ask students to map thinks a lot, but we rarely ask students to map their own thoughts/processes. Ask students to map discourse communities.
- An example presented where the student was asked to map her writing at the beginning of the semester and then at the end. At the beginning of the semester, the student only had four nodes on the map. At the end, there were ten.
- Take a look at Flowers and Hayes for their writing research. Donald Scheon for his research on reflection.
*As an aside, asking students to map their reading process is much harder than asking them to map their writing process but can be just as valuable.
Mapping in a digital format allows for the linking of ideas to explicit examples.
Digital portfolios create work in a public forum, writing for an authentic audience.
In examining a few digital portfolios, we begin to notice a “Dear Reader” component to the portfolio because it is a new genre and readers need to know how to work with it. There are multiple ways of navigating the portfolio and of knowing what the ultimate learning is. (presenters used a Victorian Novel metaphor here)
Interface-how does the student decide to set up the portfolio? This makes the writer a composer and introduces an element of intellectual play to the work of creating a digital portfolio—it sparks creativity and is perfect for differentiated learning. Presented an example of a student from Boston who decided to use a map of the Boston subway system as the interface for his portfolio. Each stop on the subway was a piece of work in his portfolio. He saw his learning as a journey.
A discussion of links-internal links are to own work. (one way to do this is from the reflection to specific pieces that highlight their examples) External links are to outside sites. Sometimes links are not self-evident and it might be a good idea to have students explains why they are creating the links.
Ultimately an exploration of the relationship between the learner and his or her learning.
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Last Updated April 11, 2011
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