Portfolio Assessment - Mastery Portfolio (2024)

FAQs

What are the disadvantages of portfolio assessment? ›

Disadvantages of a portfolio

Faculty time required to prepare the portfolio assignment and assist students as they prepare them. Logistics are challenging. Students must retain and compile their own work, usually outside of class. Motivating students to take the portfolio seriously may be difficult.

Portfolios allow students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. There are two types of portfolios - process portfolios for formative assessment and product portfolios for summative evaluation. Rubrics are scoring guides that define performance criteria and provide descriptors for rating student work.

It can be difficult to grade reliably, as students' portfolios are an individual expression of their own work and achievements. Interpreting them involves a high degree of subjective judgement. You must manage the risk of students including items that are not their own work in their portfolios.

Portfolio assessments can build students' self-confidence and “self-appraisal” skills through the opportunity they provide for students to reflect on and celebrate their accomplishments.

There are three key principles that portfolios should reflect: content, learning, and equity. Portfolios allow students to demonstrate their learning in different styles. When using portfolio assessment, the criteria must be clear to students and teachers.

In assessment by portfolio both educators and learners are treading unfamiliar territory. They encounter problems such as resistance, non-completion and difficulties with evaluating the portfolio and assessing the evidence.

Portfolio assessment involves students collecting samples of their work over time that demonstrate progress and skill development. Key elements of a portfolio include a cover letter, table of contents, entries of core and optional student work, dates, drafts, and reflections.

Three main factors guide the design and development of a portfolio: 1) purpose, 2) assessment criteria, and 3) evidence (Barton & Collins, 1997). The primary concern in getting started is knowing the purpose that the portfolio will serve. This decision defines the operational guidelines for collecting materials.

We propose as a first step, a classification of projects based on the three most important criteria namely the value maximization, risk minimization and strategic alignment.

Is a portfolio an authentic assessment? ›

It is clear that portfolio assessment, as a form of authentic assessment, holds many more benefits for both learners and teachers than the traditional testing of learners' learning.

The rubric evaluates portfolios on a scale of 1 to 4 in the following areas: organization, content relevance, depth of understanding, skills and competencies, growth and development, and communication of impact.

Within education, a portfolio means a collection of materials, documents and/or files with which the student can show their (development in) competence. With a portfolio assessment, the appraisal of a student's competence is done by means of that portfolio.

Limitations. Simplification of reality: Portfolio analysis models are often simplified representations of reality, which can make it challenging to incorporate all relevant aspects and factors into the analysis.

Some organizations just don't have a proper tool to manage their project portfolios and are doing their best to connect the dots manually. To do so, they may be using makeshift systems or collections of spreadsheets. Others face a software proliferation problem, causing data silos and asymmetries of information.

The disadvantage of assessing learning is that it can sometimes overlook the uniqueness and individual progress of each learner. It may not fully capture the depth of understanding, personal growth, and creativity that individuals bring to their learning journey.