Portfolios

What can portfolios assess?

Whilst many of the individual items that are included in a portfolio will be short-term, in that they are produced at a particular stage of the course and capture evidence of achievement at that stage, the portfolio itself will be a long-term, sustained piece of work. Additional values of portfolios are:

1) that the learner can return to elements of evidence and (based on formative feedback) update and enhance them; and,

2) that the learner can review their own learning over a period of time and reflect on their achievement and, ideally, move into double-loop learning (Argyris & Schön, 1974 and Anderson 1997) and think about how they learn as well as what they have learned.

This means that portfolios can be used to assess a wide-range of achievements and abilities but would only be recommended as a mean of assessment if the learning outcomes of the module/programme include the meta-learning/reflective aspects.

As will be noted in the design section, a portfolio may include aspects that are not submitted for the final assessment, but may be useful for evidence of learning beyond the outcomes of the module and learners could rewrite sections to re-present the evidence to gain future study / employment opportunities or professional recognition.

What alternative assessment methods can I choose?

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Design

Whilst here we are particularly concerned with the idea of a portfolio for assessment purposes it is worth thinking, even briefly, of the different types of portfolio and their uses as this background may be a useful means to ‘sell’ the idea to students; portfolios are a lot of work for both assessed and assessors and we need to be able to convince our learners of their value.

The video below outlines the different types of portfolio which could be incorporated as an assessment method.

Download video transcriptLink opens in a new window

Many professions now require a (e)portfolio for continuing professional development (CPD) purposes. These long-term records can be started during a first degree and then taken forward as needed; this is certainly a value of an e-portfolio which is transferable and mobile.

Six crucial steps for designing portfolio assessments:

Determine the curricular outcomes to be addressed through the portfolio; the intended learning outcomes must be clear and broad-reaching including reflective / meta learning aspects to make portfolio assessment valid.
Determine the decisions that will be made based on the portfolio assessments; will individual elements carry marks/grades or just the complete portfolio or a mixture of both? In the latter case, what are the relative weightings and why?
Design assessment tasks for the curricular outcomes; constructive alignment must rule here and the tasks must measure the knowledge, skills and approaches / attitudes (at the appropriate level of difficulty / sophistication) that students are expected to attain. This will will ensure the validity of the assessment.
Define/agree the criteria for each assessment task and the overall portfolio, as appropriate, and establish standards for each criterion.
Decide formative assessment points and what feedback (judgement) and feed-forward (development) pointers will be given.
Determine who will assess what: self, peers and staff can all contribute here.

Finally, returning to the requirement that students reflect on their learning through the portfolio:

at the most basic level, it could be a requirement for students to map the contents of their portfolio to the learning outcomes (using a grid for example)
at the next level, students can be asked to write claims outlining explicitly how their work provides evidence that they have met the criteria and to what level
if students have been given choice of elements from their (working) portfolio to include, they can be instructed to explain why they have selected certain tasks over others, aligned to the intended learning outcomes for this assessment.

These exercises force the student to focus on the content of the portfolio. The next stage is to concentrate on the process of developing the portfolio and require students to analyse their learning - how and what - as a result of undertaking the building of the portfolio, and still further, to reflect on what else they need to do to master the content/skills addressed.

Diversity & Inclusion Academic Integrity

As portfolios are developed over time, we are able to track the development of the work making it very difficult to include work that has been plagiarised. The requirement of critical reflection further ensures that it is difficult to copy /plagiarise. (See guidance on academic integrity.)

By giving students agency and ownership of their learning they become more invested in the output, which can promote academic integrity.

The cumulative nature of portfolio building removes the big bang assessment, one high-stakes task at the end, which often creates stress and assessment bottlenecks which can motivate students to seek other solutions, such as contract cheating, collusion, or other shortcuts which compromise academic integrity.

All text-based assessment can be compromised by the use of AI if the intended learning outcomes address elements that generative AI can produce. Portfolio assessment provide opportunities for more creative, individuated, and ongoing assessment that would be harder to achieve with a one-off use of AI.

Student and staff experience

Benefits

Portfolios include work that is produced over an extended period and should require a wider range of skills in its production. As a result students may view it as a fairer form of assessment. Given the opportunity to be involved in

designing of the individual tasks
deciding the criteria to be used
selection of content to present
peer assessment

and the longer-term opportunities afforded by portfolio assessment all add to the attractiveness of the method.

Deciding on an e-portfolio rather than a paper-based version has further benefits (Madden, 2007) including:

cost-efficient means to store a large amount of material, allowing a range of media types to be included
easy sharing of the portfolio and, by selecting permissions, selective sharing of content
easy to adapt and so use for more than one purpose
ease to update, add to and delete from the content
developing additional IT skills
opportunities to display in a number of ways and so suit different purposes; showcase and assessment roles.

Challenges

For students

Developing a portfolio is time consuming and if the range of tasks does not go beyond the ‘usual’ (essays, short answers , mcqs etc.) then there will be little motivation to engage and to invest the time. Counter to this, requiring production in a range of formats (audio, video, blogs, etc.) and as an e-portfolio may add time demands as students have to learn how to produce new formats, master editing techniques and gain competence in the use of additional technologies.

All of these concerns can be mitigated by providing advice and guidance on the techniques and underlining the added values of the method.

For staff

Assessing portfolios can be time-consuming, especially as they can provide evidence of more than the usual disciplinary knowledge and understanding. The Strivens (2006) report lists twelve strategies, identified by surveying users of portfolios, to mitigate workload; well worth considering.

Building in student choice, whilst a positive in terms of developing autonomous learners, can be challenging when trying to ensure that the assessment of the portfolio is consistent and reliable

Portfolio assessments can lead to over-assessing if we are not careful about weighting elements and making this clear to learners.

Workload

For students

Time consuming but has the potential to generate great benefits. The time investment vs the value of the assessment should be clearly communicated to students. Students should be encouraged to divide the portfolio into manageable chunks to mitigate cognitive overload.

For staff

Time consuming - but arguably all good assessment is. Strivens (2006) identified twelve strategies to mitigate workload. In particular, it is worth considering spreading the assessment over time to reduce the psychological burden at the final submission point, and encouraging self-assessment and peer-assessment to enable students to receive more timely, frequent and detailed feedback. Clear identification and parameters surrounding what should/should not be included within the assessed portfolios, will also help to reduce the marking burden.

References

Argyris, M. and Schön, D. (1974). Theory in Practice. Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Anderson, L. (1997). Argyris and Schön’s theory on congruence and learning. Accessed: 14/03/25. Available from: http://www.aral.com.au/resources/argyris.html

Strivens, J. (2006). Efficient assessment of portfolios. The Centre for Recording Achievement. Accessed: 14/03/2025. Available from: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/efficient-assessment-portfolios

Useful resources

Clarke, J. L., & Boud, D. (2018). Refocusing portfolio assessment: Curating for feedback and portrayal. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 55(4), 479–486Link opens in a new window.