Portfolios

  1. What Is a Portfolio?
  2. Why Are Portfolios Important?
  3. How Do I Make a Portfolio?

What Is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is a collection of writing and assignments that promotes reflection on your learning and writing experiences. Portfolios give you and your writing more agency, encouraging you to revise your writing and ideas and to reflect on the relationship between your process and a product. Portfolios give you a tool to examine and analyze your writing processes and thinking from a broader purview, and they are built on the following core principles:

  • Collecting: Students collect drafts, notes, final papers and projects, reading responses and other written materials from the course that demonstrate steps and writing activity during your writing process.
  • Selecting: Students select assignments and examples of writing that demonstrate their learning and growth as a writer and how ideas and thinking develop from and with writing over the quarter.
  • Reflecting: Students reflect on their writing materials and processes and consider how writing works and functions and what their processes for writing tell them about themselves as a writer.
  • Revising: Students revise products in light of reflecting and extend their learning and thinking through revision.
  • Evaluating: Students evaluate their writing and thinking from a broader perspective and consider their growth as a writer and their learning in the course.

Why Are Portfolios Important?

Numerous educators, writing instructors, and students have expressed a deep affinity for portfolios and portfolio pedagogy. In “The Use of ePortfolios in Evaluating the Curriculum and Student Learning,” Dale Fitch et al. explain that portfolios prompt students to reflect on their learning experiences and writing, allowing students to clarify their goals (p. 39). Portfolios give students the chance to reflect on their writing projects and processes and improve their metacognitive abilities. Brian Huot argues that compiling a portfolio allows students to practice assessing their own writing (p. 72). In “Portfolios in Progress: Reevaluating Assessment,” Sarah D. Spence and Billie Theriot assert that portfolios enable students “to begin the process of self-determination, independence, and responsibility” for their learning and articulating that learning to their instructors (p. 34). In “Revising Our Practices: How Portfolios Help Teachers Learn,” Irwin Weiser describes how portfolios let students make more of their own decisions during the collection, reflection, selection, and revision processes for the portfolio (p. 296). Furthermore, because portfolios are evaluated as a complete collection, they can help students see “each piece as part of an ongoing process...contributing to the student’s development, not as a discrete marker of it” (Wesier, p. 296). Christy Desmet et al. state that portfolios do four specific things:

  1. They "increase the writer’s agency in assessment,” since the writer persuades their audience through a reflective introduction (p. 19).
  2. Second, portfolios encourage students to reflect on their writing process and thinking and revise papers that may otherwise remain untouched (p. 19).
  3. Third, portfolios establish “an explicit relationship between process and product” (p. 19).
  4. Finally, portfolios help students learn about audience (p. 19).

Take a few minutes to think about these characteristics of a portfolio and discuss them with your instructor and classmates to learn more about the value of portfolios and how they are used in this course as a learning tool.

Resources for Making Portfolios

By Rebekah Pusateri, MA CWU

This section provides several tools and resources for making portfolios

Panopto

  • All professors and students have access to Panopto through canvas
  • It can capture PowerPoints and multiple screens
  • Change the resolution and FPS (frames per second) depending on the size of the screen
  • Videos are saved through the cloud; there is nothing to download
  • The video can be directly embedded into canvas or other platforms
  • People can watch the video via the embedding or link even if they don’t have canvas
  • The video can be made public or privately viewed by specific people
  • The person using Panopto can cut out sections of the video
  • The video can be uploaded on YouTube
  • Videos are assessable for computers, tablets, and phones

How to Make an ePortfolio Using Google

Google sites makes it really easy to add videos and various texts from other platforms. Students can add collaborative works using google slides or docs (this makes it social). It’s very accessible; all you need is a google account Students can have multiple pages for videos, essays, and reflections. If a student picks a picture as a heading, Google will automatically make a color scheme to fit the rest of the portfolio. Everyone can access each other’s eportfolios as you create personalized web addresses for people to search, or you can specifically invite someone to view your portfolio (similar process to viewing a google doc). Students can unpublish your eportfolio at any time. Students can select a preview option for a computer, tablet, or phone to see what their portfolio would look each device and medium.

How to Make an ePortfolio Using Wix

Wix is a free website creator? Students specify the template based on what they want it for: a school assignment or a job or college application. Students can view the template before making a decision. There is a bigger outlet for creativity as Wix lets people choose colors, designs, music, art, and motion throughout the website. Students can add images, links, videos, songs, and social media buttons that link to other pages, blogs, online stores. The website will be made public.

How to Make an ePortfolio Using Twine

Students who are familiar with computer science, gaming, and programming may find this tool more interesting This platform will help you see nonlinear connections to various componenets of your portfolio. You do not need to know how to code to use Twine. Using the off-line version is best because when you use Twine online it is linked to your browser history, which means if you clear your browser history, the project will disappear. Twine is compatible with several different computers, phones, and tablets because of its universal CSS coding system. To share, a student needs to download the most recent version of their Twine project. The project downloads to an html file on their device. When clicked, the project opens up into its own web browser. Choosing a “story format” will determine what coding and changes a student will need to make to the project. To change the font, color, or any other stylistic element, a student has to use CSS. The possibilities are endless for customization. Students can add images and music that they created themselves or that they find on the internet. Depending on your level of programming and markup knowledge, Twine can require quite a bit of work to design a project.

How to Make an ePortfolio Using Canvas By Dan Martin

Works Cited on This Page

  • Beaufort, Anne. (2007). College writing and beyond: A new framework for university writing instruction. Logan, UT: Utah State UP. Print.
  • Fitch, D., Peet, M., Reed, B. G., & Tolman, R. (2008). THE USE OF ePORTFOLIOS IN EVALUATING THE CURRICULUM AND STUDENT LEARNING. Journal of Social Work Education, 44(3), 37–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23044338
  • Huot, Brian (2002). (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning All USU Press Publications. 137. Link
  • Spence, S. D., Theriot, B., & Spence, S. L. (1999). Portfolios in Progress: Reevaluating Assessment. Research and Teaching in Developmental Education, 15(2), 27–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42802511 Copy
  • Weiser, Irwin. (1997). Revising Our Practices: How Portfolios Help Teachers Learn in Yancey, Kathleen Blake, & Irwin, Weiser (Eds.) Situating Portfolios: Four Perspectives. Utah State University Press. Link