How to Compile a portfolio

WHAT. In the final part ofour four-part series on key skills, Peter Burke and Bob Rainbow look at methods of tracking students' achievements using portfolios

WHY. Portfolios help students hone their self-assessment skills and offer evidence on which tutors can base judgements. They can be useful to potential employers

HOW. Any mention of the word "portfolio" in connection with the assessment of student progress and achievement will usually lead to vociferous criticism because it is thought to be impractical in higher education.

Yet if students are already building up portfolios of their attainment in schools and many workers are being encouraged to enhance their curriculum vitae with some lifelong learning, then higher education has to start taking the idea of tracking students' achievements seriously.

The problem is not so much in judging the quality of evidence and identifying the skills. Rather, it is keeping tabs on students' progress in each skill over time, and assimilating the separate assessments of different tutors and lecturers, often over a mix of modules.

Confirmation of this is shown in research by Peter de Vries and Nina Downie at the Oxford centre for staff and learning development on degree courses in hotel and restaurant management at Oxford Brookes University.

Although the courses contained a range of skills and all staff were involved in their delivery, some skills were not being assessed. This made it impossible to judge whether students had acquired them. The corollary of this was that students tend not to attach importance to things that are not formally assessed.

All this was in a university that has made progress towards a coherent portfolio system through the establishment of its course-based profiling scheme.

Oxford Brookes, in common with a number of United Kingdom universities, has drawn on the experience of United States Alverno College's pioneering ability-based learning programmes, in which students are required to apply key skills in different parts of their course to encourage their transferability.

Whose skill is it anyway?

There is a strong case to be made for putting "improving own learning and performance" at the top of the key skills hierarchy. For example, the Open University puts this at the heart of its key skill development in its open mathematics degree course.

The ability to review and reflect on progress and achievement and plan the next steps in learning lies at the heart of independent study. It is in that sense the overarching key skill and provides the framework within which to nurture other skills such as communication, application of number, information technology, problem solving and working with others.

Effective review and reflection can only occur, however, if the evidence is readily available to the student and is in a manageable form. This is where the portfolio offers a solution. The portfolio not only provides the focus for review, reflection, target setting and action planning by the student, it will also contain evidence of their progress and achievement. It is not just a key-skill portfolio. Properly managed, it can help to raise overall achievement.

But it must be the student's responsibility to compile the evidence and manage the portfolio. This is the first step in shifting the burden from the tutor.

Managing the portfolio The problem with much portfolio practice is that the emphasis has been on the quantity rather than the quality of the evidence. As students progress, the portfolio's content expands and it ceases to have any practical use either as an aid to assessment or for review purposes. It contains too much information for it to be assimilated effectively. There are a number of steps the student should follow for successful portfolio management.

Selecting Over a university year's study, a student will produce an enormous amount of work that will be assessed. Some will also contain evidence of key-skill competence. Trying to make valid judgements about progress and achievement by looking back over all the work is not possible. The student needs to select work that is significant in revealing evidence about learning and/or key skill competence. The student needs to agree the criteria on which selection is made with the tutor. Work might contain evidence of:

* progress over time

* understanding of a key principle or process

* lack of understanding and hence of future learning needs

* originality and creativity

* achievement in different contexts

* key skill development.

Selecting work against the criteria immediately slims the portfolio's content.

Annotating The selected evidence also needs to be annotated to show why and when it was selected. So a brief note should be attached to each piece to show for example :

* the date it was done

* the context in which it was done

* the reason for its selection.

Updating Portfolio management is as much about taking things out as putting things in. Portfolios need to be updated regularly and evidence replaced from time to time by more recent work that shows for example:

* a higher level of achievement

* improved understanding

* that a previous weakness has now been overcome.

The updating process is also crucial in keeping the portfolio to manageable proportions.

In compiling the portfolio, particularly with regard to key skill evidence, the range and nature of the evidence available to the student for selection may be very wide. Most of it will be in a retainable form, derived from different sorts of written and visual work (essays, minutes, diaries, reports, questionnaires, photographs, plans, models, film/video, graphs, maps and so on). Some may be ephemeral but an observation note from a tutor authenticating that the student did or said something significant can go into the portfolio.

Students should also be encouraged to include evidence from extra-curricular activities for example, from work experience. The greater the variety of evidence and the better its quality the more it will confirm that the student has demonstrated the key skills in a variety of contexts and on different occasions. This is a crucial aspect to the whole question of the assumed transferability of these skills.

Keeping Track A portfolio managed in this way provides an evolving picture and can be used:

* as the focus for regular review between tutor and student

* to enable the student to improve the skill of "improving own learning and performance".

The review process should be set against the previous action plan and focus on a number of questions. These would include:

* what skills, concepts and knowledge have been demonstrated?

* is there evidence of progress over time?

* is there any significance about the contexts from which the evidence was drawn?

* to what extent has the previous action plan been met?

* what should be the next targets for the student, either in terms of remedial work or progressing to new work?

Although the tutor will continue to play a central role in the review process, the main responsibility for managing the portfolio rests with the student. This raises the status of the portfolio from a mere repository to a powerful tool in developing the self-assessment skills, providing evidence on which valid judgements can be made about progress and achievement in all parts of the course, not just in key skills.

Students can use the portfolio for their curriculum vitae. Portfolios are being adopted in industry as the basis for the regular appraisal of senior managers. In this sense portfolios in higher education will provide a basis for "lifelong learning".

Peter Burke and Bob Rainbow are members of the key skills team in the school of education, University of Nottingham, http://www.keyskillsnet.org.uk