Constructivism & Assessment
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A portfolio is defined as a "representative and judicious collection of your work." Your portfolio for this course has two fundamental purposes:
An Electronic portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that tells the story of a student's personal self and a student's achievement or growth. This is characterized by:
 | vision of content, |
| skills and processes addressed, |
| built on a learner's selection of work going in |
| and referenced to criteria. |
Portfolios may demonstrate a wide range of an individual's work. Learners may control the selection of portfolio content and material. Unlike standardized assessments and evaluation instruments portfolios are direct indicators of an individual's learning and work experiences.
Portfolios allow employers, teachers and parents to share real display of a student's performance without interpretation of standardized assessments. Portfolios provide a natural medium for learner-mentor discussions and the customization of individual learning experiences and goals.
Comprehensive portfolios, maintained over a period of time, can exhibit comparisons of learner's/worker's abilities and illustrations of growth. Portfolios can grow and carry into the learners work life beyond the school environment. An increasingly self-reliant work force is evolving at an ever increasing pace. Today's technology allows electronic portfolios to be one career tool for life long learners in today's workplace.
The portfolio is at the heart of a learner's demonstration, documentation and defense of their learning and ability, however, the portfolio is/can be much more; the portfolio, for the life long learner can be used for personal visioning and philosophies, taking inventory of personal /career assets, personal/career goal-setting, tracking and demonstrating growth and learning, career planning, employment applications, employment performance conferences, employment tenure and advancement, job transfer or promotion, peer review or collaboration, self-assessments, defining roles and responsibilities, career initiatives...etc...
Various technologies today are capable of demonstration, documentation and defense of learning and growth and can include: static information and archives, speech, career development illustrations, quicktime Movies, essays, surveys, outlines, notes, recognitions, masks, collections, self-evaluations, certificates, debates, reports, research, maps, photos, letters, tests, books, paintings, drama, news, statistics, murals, pamphlets, mock activities, travel, interviews, short and long-term goals, novels, presentations, seminars, games, journal entries, scales, budgets, electronic media, experiments, profiles, improvement studies, internships, work experience, simulations, slide shows, personal and professional philosophies, psychological profiles, resumes, drawings, opinion, poetry, matrices, reflective summaries, songs, tools and techniques, self-assessment profiles, rubrics, formative and summative assessments,etc...
The Goal is in Developing portfolios that:
1) Are learner-centered; that is, a framework enabling each learner to create and continuously improve a personal portfolio (Rubric Example).
2) Accessible by all learner & stakeholders: teachers, parents, prospective evaluators, mentors, etc.
3) Easy to maintain; maintenance and additions and deletions to learner portfolio should require minimal mentor time.
4) Accommodate easy storage and retrieval.
5) Easily portable; via storage device or electronic transfer.
6) Use Internet protocols (HTML) for instant retrieval any where, at anytime
7) Accommodate automatic updating of records
8) Have an accessible user interface (are user friendly).
9) Have a capacity to accommodate multiple forms of electronic multimedia: static text and graphic displays, databases, audio bites, video clips, panoramic files, object oriented(three dimensional) files, virtual reality, etc...
10) Are able to accommodate the integration of existing software files representative of individual capacities and assets.
Portfolio
PowerPoint Presentation (contributed by: Theresa Jones, Marty McDougal, Coach Woodruff, Janet Shuttlesworth)
Mastering Lifelong Skills
In developing self-directed (lifelong) learners, educators need to take a constructivist approach in developing learner skills in:
• "information access" in a world where information is exponentially increasing,
• " research processes" in a world where everyone needs to be able to evaluate information intelligently,
• "technology access & process" in a world where technology is changing by the minute and provides unlimited opportunities of distance / virtual learning,
• "collaborative / groupwork / workforce methods and technologies" in light of a distributed knowledge economy and distributed social networks / organizations,
• "knowledge building" for creativity, entrepreneurial activity, mutual benefit and profit(information + intelligent assessment + creative / collaborative process(es) = knowledge + relationship building(stakeholding) = wisdom = personal, social or economic benefit),
• "character building" for self identity, for community health, democratic participation(electronic democracy) and global citizenship,
• "leadership" in a world where we are subject to ever-increasing pressures to deliver more for less.
• "learning self-assessment" where continuous process improvement can be applied to self assessment of learning
• "communication skills" where free thought and collaboration are enhanced by valuable listening skills and enriched by effective verbal, written, and multimedia communication techniques
• "systems building" where learning leaders need to collaborate with learners, and learners need to collaborate with other learners in processes designed to identify, analyze and remove barriers to learning. These processes to understanding systems and dynamics of systems should be supported with a comprehensive repertoire of tools and techniques.