Week 4 - Assessment & E-Portfolios

In going through this week’s reading and activities, I thought about the different types of assessment that I have seen and/or been subjected to throughout my years in education, as both student and teacher. I find more and more that the assessments that I am accustomed to seem to be extremely artificial and shallow. Portfolios, on the other hand, can be so much more than simple assessment of learning. These great tools can be assessment of learning, assessment for learning, displays of abilities, discussions and demonstrations of interests, and a quick and relatively comprehensive way to get to know a person more thoroughly than anything that can be accomplished with traditional testing.

In the article Electronic Portfolios as Digital Stories of Deep Learning, I found the tenet of “AFL develops learners’ capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing” to be most thought-provoking and resonant with me. In modern education, we have to cover so much in-class that there is little or no time to get into the deeper aspects of most topics. With portfolios, we could develop that deeper learning and some higher-level thinking skills to the point which is what our students truly need in order to be best prepared for a world that we cannot yet imagine, but in which they will be required to live, work, and function on multiple levels. All this will require adaptability which is best developed through reflective thinking and self-awareness coupled with deeper understanding of their knowledge and how they learn. The developing of my own portfolio will help me to develop my own reflectivity and adaptability for the future, as well as provide me with skills that can be adapted for purposes far beyond this class.