Assessment of Student Learning 2 Finals 1st Sem.

AY 2013-14 Portfolio

On Portfolio Assessment A. What is portfolio assessment? What are the key elements of 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 of the curriculum. The collection must include the following:

Student participation in selecting contents. Criteria for selection. Criteria for judging merits. Evidence of a student's self-reflection.

It should represent a collection of students' best work or best efforts, student-selected samples of work experiences related to outcomes being assessed, and documents according growth and development toward mastering identified outcomes. Portfolio assessment is one of the several authentic and non-traditional assessment techniques in education. It is gaining popularity since early 1980s in response to the growing clamor for more reasonable and authentic means of assessing studentsgrowth and development in school. One area of application of portfolio assessment is in the accreditation of experiences towards a degree (CHEDs ETEEAP Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program). In this modality, experiences of managers or workers are accredited towards a Bachelors degree (or higher) depending on the portfolio presented by the students to a panel of expert evaluators.

Essential Elements of the Portfolio 1. Cover Letter about the author what my portfolio shows about my progress 2. Table of Contents with numbered pages 3. Entries both core (required) and optional (uniqueness of student) 4. Dates of all entries to facilitate proof of growth over time 5. Drafts of aural/oral and written products and revised versions 6. Reflections at different stages in the learning process a. What did I learn from it? b. What did I do well? c. Why did I choose this item? d. What do I want to improve in the item? e. How do I feel about my performance? f. What were the problems areas?

B.

What are the purposes of portfolio assessment? Discuss the merits of portfolio assessment over traditional testing. Purposes of Portfolio Assessment 1. Portfolio assessment matches assessment to teaching. The final outputs to be assessed are products of classroom discussions and classroom work and are not simple diversions from the tedium of classroom activities. Unlike test items which mainly measure cognitive skills, portfolio assessments can asses other components of the students formed abilities based on classroom discussions. 2. Portfolio assessment has clear goals. In fact, they are decided on at the beginning of instruction and are clear to teacher and students alike. In cognitive testing, the objectives are set at the beginning but the actual items may or may not reflect achievement of such objectives. In portfolio assessment, however, the students control the items to be included and therefore are assured that the goals are achieved. 3. Portfolio assessment gives a profile of learner abilities in terms of depth, breadth, and growth. In terms of depth, portfolio assessment enables the students to demonstrate quality work done without pressure and constraints of time present in traditional testing through the help of resources such as reference materials and the help of other students. In terms of breadth, portfolio assessment can show a wide range of skills to be demonstrated in the final output. Finally, in terms of growth, portfolio assessment shows efforts to improve and develop and clearly demonstrates students progress overtime. 4. Portfolio assessment is a tool for assessing a variety of skills not normally test able in a single setting for traditional testing. The portfolio can show written, oral and graphic outputs of students in a variety of ways which demonstrate skills developed by the students. 5. Portfolio assessment develops awareness of own learning by the students. Students have to reflect on their own progress and the quality of their work in relation to known goals. This is achieved at each stage of the process since the students continually refer to the set of goals and objectives set at the beginning. 6. Portfolio assessment caters to individuals in a heterogeneous class. Such flexibility is attributed to the fact that portfolio assessment is open-ended so that students can demonstrate their abilities on their own level and caters to differential learning styles and expression of varying strengths. 7. Portfolio assessment develops social skills. Students interact with other students in the development of their own portfolios. Sometimes, they are assessed on work done in groups or in pairs sot hat they necessarily have to interact and collaborate to complete the tasks.

8. Portfolio assessment develops independent and active learners. Students must select and justify portfolio choices; monitor progress and set learning goals. Traditional testing cannot achieve this educational objective no matter how skillfully the tests are constructed. 9. Portfolio assessment can improve motivation for learning and thus achievement. When students are empowered to prove their own achievement and worth they become highly motivated to pursue the learning tasks. It is when they lose this feeling of empowerment that they feel inadequate and become less motivated as in traditional classroom testing. 10. Portfolio assessment provides opportunity for student-teacher dialogue. It enables the teacher to get to know every student. Moreover, portfolio assessment promotes joint goal-setting and negotiation of grades which can never happen in traditional testing.

C.

For each of the following main elements of a portfolio, construct a rating scale or rubrics for evaluating students' portfolio on the topic: "The EDSA Revolution I": 1. Cover letter 2. Table of Contents and Introduction 3. Entries 4. Reflections 5. Summative Statements 6. Appendices and Dates of Drafts

D. Enumerate and discuss the various types of portfolios. Types of Portfolios

1. Documentation Portfolio a. Involves collection of work over time showing growth and improvement reflecting students lear ning of identified outcomes b. Also called growth portfolio in the literature c. Include everything from brainstorming activities to drafts to finished products d. Include the best and weakest students work 2. Process Portfolio a. Demonstrates all facets or phases of the learning process b. Contain an extensive number of reflective journals. Think logs and other related forms of metacognitive processing c. Useful in documenting students over-all learning process d. Show how students integrate knowledge or skills and progress towards both basic and advanced mastery 3. Showcase Portfolio a. Shows the best of the students output and products b. Best used for summative evaluation of students mastery of key curriculum outcomes. c. Include students very best work, determined through a combination of student and teacher selection.

d. Only completed work should be included. e. Include photographs, videotaped and electronic records of students completed work f. Include written analysis and reflections by the students upon the decision-making process used to determine which works are included.

E. What is the importance of student-teacher conferences? Discuss its importance in light of portfolio assessment.
The main philosophy embedded in portfolio assessment is shared and active assessment. To this end, the teacher should have short individual meetings with each pupil, in which progress is discussed and goals are set for a future meeting. Through the process, the student and the teacher keep careful documentation of the meetings noting the significant agreements and findings in each individual session. Through meetings of this kind, the formative evaluation process for portfolio assessment is facilitated. Finally, student-teacher conferences can also be used for summative evaluation purposes when the student presents his final portfolio product and where final grades are determined together with the teacher. With 20 or 30 or more students in a classroom, one-on-one conversations between the teacher and student are difficult to regularly arrange. That is unfortunate because the give and take of face-to-face interaction can provide the teacher with valuable information about the student's thinking and progress and provide the student with meaningful feedback. Such feedback is also more likely to be processed by the student than comments written on paper.

F. What is the main philosophy behind portfolio assessment? Discuss this basic philosophy.
1. A portfolio is a form of assessment that students do together with their teachers. Teachers guide the students in the planning, execution and evaluation of the contents of the portfolio. Teachers and students interact in every step of the process in developing a portfolio 2. A portfolio represents a selection of what the students believe are best included from among the possible collection of things related to the concepts being studies. It is the teachers responsibility to assist the students in actually choosing from among a possible set of choices to be included in the portfolio. However, the final selection should be done by the students themselves since the portfolio represents what h\the students believe are important considerations. 3. A portfolio provides samples of the students work which show growth overtime. By reflecting on their own learning (self assessment), students begin to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their work. These weaknesses then become improvement goals. 4. The criteria for selecting and assessing the portfolio contents must be clear to the teacher and the students at the outset of the process. If the criteria are not clear at the beginning, then there is a tendency to include among unessential components in the portfolio and to include those which happen to be available at the time the portfolio is prepared.

G. How does portfolio assessment differ from traditional testing and from other authentic assessment methods?
On traditional assessments, students are typically given several choices (e.g., a,b,c or d; true or false; which of these match with those) and asked to select the right answer. In contrast, authentic assessments ask students to demonstrate understanding by performing a more complex task usually representative of more meaningful application