Assessing e-portfolios presents a practical and theoretical challenge for the teachers in our target audience. Among the more significant issues are the following:
- E-portfolios, unless they are exclusively product-based, imply that assessment will parallel creation and revision. The when of assessment may be as challenging to determine as the how.
- Growth can be difficult to quantify. Self-assessment techniques to assess metacognition may be difficult to justify.
- Standards of individual achievement may not scale to the work of an entire class (or vice versa.)
- Authentic tasks require authentic assessment: prescribed course or program learning outcomes may not parallel interest-based projects.
- The relative weighting of process-based, reflective, curatorial, and technical merit can be difficult to determine.
- E-portfolios may utilize a wide variety of materials, including hypermedia, text, and multimedia content. Common standards may be elusive.
- Teachers may have limited familiarity with the emerging practice of e-portfolios.
The E-portfolio Learning Commons focusses on addressing the last issue, and provides the teacher with a variety of resources and perspectives on assessment. The issue of assessment is too multifaceted to be resolved satisfactorily with a simple rubric. The intention, instead, is to make our target teachers aware of the breadth of issues involved and to make available a toolkit of resources to resolve those issues in a manner appropriate to their classes.
Many of the solutions used to assess regular portfolios, however, are applicable to e-portfolios as well. In particular, see The Authentic Assessment Toolbox, by Jon Mueller of North Central College, Naperville, Illinois.
Follow