Teaching Portfolios: comments archive

The following comments are placed in chronological order, with the most recent at the top of the list.

Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997
From: g.p.gibbs@open.ac.uk (Graham Gibbs)
Subject: Assessing Portfolios

Assessing portfolios is very time consuming because portfolios tend to be large, idiosyncratic and difficult to interpret. If accreditation becomes compulsory in the UK there will be thousands a year to be assesed, and to a common standard. What ideas do people have for making assessment economical while retaining rigour and validity?

Date: Tue, 6 May 1997
From: Bland.Tomkinson@umist.ac.uk (Bland Tomkinson)
Subject: Using Portfolios

The question about bad bits relates to some extent to the purpose of the portfolio. If it is for purely developmental purposes then it is deluding oneself if the bad bits are not put in. If it is for evaluative purposes then the temptation will be to omit them. However, the influence of the Funding Council teaching assessment exercises has made it much more accepatble to expose ones weaknesses provided that this is accompanied by actions to remedy them. One way out of the dilemma is the concept of a meta-portfolio that has the data and analysis to embrace both development and evaluation and from which subsidiary portfolios can be drawn for particular purposes. Perhaps more telling is the use of the phrase bad. In other quarters I have heard suggested (and used) the term development needs rather than weaknesses; perhaps we ought to think in terms of not yet perfect rather than bad?

Date: 18 April 1997
From: Marva A. Barnett
Subject: Who should judge portfolios?

The question of judging portfolios does indeed seems to be at the center of the hesitation at many universities to use portfolios for review or promotion. The peer review program as described makes sense, but I wonder how it can be implemented, when given a lack of cultural support and the massive amount of time required to do the reviewing.