In art courses, students often develop a portfolio over the course of a semester. Students place all of their work in the portfolio, or maybe just the best of their work. The idea is to have a collection of art that, when considered together, is meant to represent a student's output for the semester.
I really like this idea as another means of evaluating a student. I like that the students choose what work goes into the portfolio and that they can make decisions such as layout and formatting and the like. I think it might encourage students to be proud of their accomplishments. Also, by it being a collection of work throughout a term, students get a chance to show off their development.
In my vision of the typical American high school math class, students don't get to choose what gets evaluated by their teacher, nor do they have the opportunity to design their own assessments. Rather, all students take the same assessments (tests and quizzes largely) that were created by their teacher (or by some publishing company) and a student is judged by their work on these. A student's semester grade is often determined based on how she or he does on these assessments.
I am establishing a new course this year at my school: Math 2 Standard. This is an integrated course that is much more similar to our honors math courses. I believe the integrated aspect alone is reason enough for the change as I believe (and I think research supports this notion) that an integrated math course produces better learning outcomes than the traditional American math progression of Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus.
But, by having a new course to design, I made the decisions to do some experimentation, so I dug up the Portfolio. I had attempted to have my math students create a portfolio in years past, most recently at my last school. But, that was just them collecting all of their work and storing it in a three-ring binder that was kept in my classroom. I never ended up assigning a grade to that portfolio, nor did I really have the students do anything with it.
In the fall semester of this year, however, I gave much more detailed directions. Students were to find a certain number of problems (not entire assignments) that they had already submitted for evaluation, and were to revise their solutions in an attempt to improve. I have long championed mistakes as being useful, that mistakes are necessary in the learning process. I suggested that by reflecting on mistakes, students can improve their understanding and thus establish true learning. So, the Portfolio was an attempt for me to put my money where my mouth had long been. I would evaluated a collection of work, work chosen by the students, that they offered to me as evidence of their improvement. As a part of the Portfolio, students were to write a page or so about their process: how did they improve on their work?
For the most part, I feel this project was very useful and productive. Looking over some Portfolios, it looked like some students truly improved a lot, that they took the project seriously. Some students, however, appeared to have just copied the work of others and taken the path of least effort. But, all in all, I was glad I did it and I do think it was a valuable learning experience. It was definitely better than a final exam.
Unfortunately, it produced an immense amount of work for me to grade. It was as if 58 students took 58 different final exams and wrote 58 reflection essays, all of which I evaluated during my holiday, ahem, break. By far, this assignment took me longer than any other to correct. So, I won't be doing it again in exactly the same format. Instead, I will evolve it to make it more practical for me.
This semester, there will again be a Portfolio. This time, I will limit it to 2 or 3 large-ish problems and students will write a reflection on each problem and how they went about revising it and how they improved their learning from it. I really like the idea of students choosing for themselves work that they want me to evaluate. I really like the idea of them going back and re-doing problems, trying to better understand the ideas and the processes and what it all means. So, if I can keep up with my blog, I will write again about the Portfolio in 5 months' time. I wonder if I will do it again next school year...
