II. Literature Review

Rubrics are used in the portfolios because a student should have a reason for putting something into a portfolio.

Because the course I have built is an online course, it has an electronic portfolio for the entire course in the form of an online literary journal as well as individual portfolios for the students. It is important to first discuss portfolios in general as an assessment tool and then to discuss the special advantages and problems that e-portfolios present.

The use of portfolios is not new; they have been a part of learning since before the digital age (Gibson 2002, Danielson 1997). Many schools and school districts that utilize portfolios as a part of learning, but the purpose of these portfolios is where the difference comes in. Many teachers and schools use the portfolios to demonstrate the student mastery of a subject, but may not use them as the as the primary means of assessment. My review of the literature shows that although portfolios are common, there is by no means a consensus as to what should go into a portfolio, how it should be created, by what criteria should materials in a portfolio be judged (Kozloff, 2003).

What is a portfolio?
According to my research, a common definition of a portfolio would be "a collection of a student's work which can be used to demonstrate his or her skills and accomplishments" (Lankes, 1995). More specifically:

A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student's efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas. The collection must include student participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection, the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of student self-reflection." (Paulson, 1991)

This definition is hardly disputed and seems to be an ideal for portfolios that is sought after but difficult to achieve. After this definition, the agreement ends. How educators decide to what degree the students should participate in the materials selection process, the criteria for selection and judging of merit, and what constitutes evidence of student self-reflection may vary widely.

What is the portfolio’s purpose?
The very purpose of the portfolio is also a point of contention. According to Martha Dudley (2001), portfolios are only for students to save their writing, revisit their work, share it with others, and for reflection but not for assessment. According to my research, this is the most common use of portfolios: as a folder to store student work. The materials collected in portfolios are referred to in the literature as “artifacts.”
The alternative view of portfolios is that the process and act of creating one is an end in itself. The skills needed to create the portfolio (besides computer literacy skills) include the metacognitive skills (self-reflective, higher-order thinking) needed to succeed in school and the workplace, such as problem solving, self-reflection, and critical thinking skills. Assignments are created that gradually introduce the students to the technology and methods of the e-portfolio.

What are some of the advantages of portfolios?
It is important that some attention is paid in any research into portfolios to the technical skills that are required to create and maintain portfolios. There are many advantages of electronic portfolios. The materials in the portfolio can be made available in many formats (Barnett 2000). The artifacts may be viewed from anywhere; parents, and possible employees, will be able to access documents that traditionally would only exist in the instructor’s files, or in a single location. Also, “One advantage of using an electronic format is to facilitate collaborative discussion of work in progress and over time between dispersed groups of learners online” (Phillips, 2001).

What are some of the problems with portfolios?
Portfolios are perceived by some as being difficult to implement in the classroom because of time issues (Simon, 2000), and to lack a conceptual framework for content selection (Popham, 1997). Other perceptions include that portfolio assessment is expensive, unwieldy, insufficiently valid, invasive of individual privacy, and to be “disempowering,” (Kozloff, 2003). Many feel that portfolios are also time-consuming (Burns, 2000 and Stecher, 1998). Martha Dudley (2001) expresses a common concern; the perception that creating and implementing the rubrics necessary to support portfolios as an assessment tool would be a “daunting task.”

How should they be created?
How a portfolio will be used can greatly influence how it should be created. The process of building or creating an e-portfolio is not without controversy. The question for some researchers include is whether one should use “generic tools” (Microsoft Word, Dreamweaver, PhotoShop, etc.) or a “customized system” from a commercial online database (Gibson, 2000). At the heart of this question is how the portfolio will be utilized, and what role the student is intended to play in the assessment of the work. A customized system has the advantage of ease of use while generic tools allow the student to work with the portfolio creation process in a more significant way. They are not just uploading a picture to a database; for instance, they will have to decide how the photograph should be cropped and where it should be placed in the portfolio for maximum effectiveness. A customized system may not offer that kind of flexibility.

How are portfolios used as an assessment tool?
Herman (1999) points out that, typically, "objective-based test assessment only focuses on the product and limits the learner’s ability to demonstrate the learning process." Traditional assessments are only able to tell you what the student knows at a particular time. Portfolios have the potential to show not only what the student knows but how the student attained that knowledge, how the students utilizes the knowledge, and how the student has developed over time.

One of the advantages of having portfolio assignments built into a course is that it removes any question of security in online quizzes. Courses that are dependent on single means of assessment (if the major percentage of the grade is in a final exam, for instance) run the risk as being perceived as insecure from an administrative point of view. Colin McCormack (1998) saw the main issues of online assessment as being impersonation and security.

What is the relationship between rubrics and portfolios?
The question remains: how do portfolios support authentic assessment? I believe that the answer to this is rubrics. I agree that rubrics, initially, are a “daunting task” (Dudley, 2001), but there are two approaches that I think might be helpful. One is to focus on standardization and the creation of generic rubrics. Teacher-created rubrics are important for individual projects, but standards-based rubrics should be created by teachers, administrators, and the state together. This is one of the important lessons of David Niguidula’s study (1997) that said that digital portfolio assessment is something that the whole school must be involved in to be successful.

The second approach is to allow the students to be responsible for their work and play a role in its assessment. A study by Renee Forgette-Giroux (2000) said that some teachers “tended to underestimate their students’ ability to set up, maintain, and reflect on their portfolios.” Creating assignments that utilize multimedia allow for a broader assessment of the student than assessments that rely solely on one modality of learning.

Rubrics are used in the portfolios because a student should have a reason for putting something into a portfolio. There should be nothing arbitrary about what is assessed and what is in the portfolio. Clear guidelines for the assignments will ensure that the student knows exactly what is going into the portfolio and why it is there.