This document discusses digital portfolios and their value and use in education. It defines portfolios as collections of student work that document growth, achievement, and learning over time. Digital portfolios allow for archiving, linking, storytelling, collaborating, and sharing artifacts. They provide tools for capturing evidence, reflecting, giving feedback, and presenting. The document shares examples of student digital portfolios and discusses key questions around implementing digital portfolios, including how they demonstrate learning and how to encourage student ownership of them.

1. Digital Portfolios Guide the
Global Learning Journey
Honor Moorman
Partnership for Global Learning Annual Conference
June 29, 2012

2. How would you describe your
school’s current work with
student portfolios?

3. Session Overview
✦ Portfolio: definition, purpose, metaphors
✦ Digital portfolios: affordances, value-added
✦ Examples of ISSN Students’ Digital Portfolios
✦ Key Questions about Portfolio Implementation

4. What is a portfolio?

5. A special case

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7. An artist’s portfolio

8. A collection of artifacts

9. What is the purpose of a portfolio?

10. Portfolio as a Portfolio as a
Process/Workspace Product/Showcase
✦ Main activity: learning & collaboration ✦ Main activity: showcasing achievement
✦ Organization: chronological ✦ Organization: thematic
✦ Documenting growth over time ✦ Documenting achievement of
for both internal and external standards, goals, learning outcomes for
audiences primarily external audiences
✦ Primary purpose: learning or ✦ Primary purpose: accountability or
reflection employment
✦ Reflection: immediate ✦ Reflection: retrospective

11. Portfolio as a Portfolio as a
Process/Workspace Product/Showcase
✦ Focus on artifact or learning ✦ Focus on standards, goals or
experience learning outcomes
✦ Assessment FOR Learning ✦ Assessment OF Learning
✦ Formative Assessment ✦ Summative Assessment
(feedback) (evaluation)
✦ Portfolio as journey ✦ Portfolio as destination
✦ Reflection leads to interactivity, ✦ Reflection leads to presentation and
and feedback evaluation

12. A portfolio is both
a process and a product.

13. Process
The portfolio “is the central and
common point for the student
experience . . . It is a reflection of the
student as a person undergoing
continuous personal development, not
just a store of evidence.”
Geoff Rebbeck

14. Product
“A portfolio is a purposeful collection
of student work that exhibits the
student’s efforts, progress, and
achievements in one or more areas
over time.”
Northwest Evaluation Association

15. Workspace
“The portfolio is a laboratory where
students construct meaning from their
accumulated experience.”
Paulson & Paulson

16. Showcase
“A portfolio tells a story. It is the story
of knowing. Knowing about things . . .
Knowing oneself . . . Portfolios are
students’ own stories of what they
know, why they believe they know it,
and why others should be of the same
opinion.”
Paulson & Paulson

17. Metaphors for Portfolio

18. What are the affordances
of digital portfolios?

21. Portfolio processes and
value-added benefit of technology
Traditional portfolio Adding technology allows
processes include enhancement through
Collecting Archiving
Selecting Linking
Reflecting Storytelling
Presenting Collaborating
Sharing Connecting
Celebrating Publishing
Adapted from Helen Barrett, “Researching electronic portfolios and learner engagement,”
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, March 2007

23. Technology provides
multiple tools to support
✦ Capturing and storing evidence
✦ Reflecting
✦ Giving and receiving feedback
✦ Planning and setting goals
✦ Collaborating
✦ Presenting to an audience

25. We do not
learn from
experience.
We learn from
reflecting on
experience.
~John Dewey

30. Digital Portfolio Examples
from the International
Studies Schools Network
bit.ly/KIgm6b

33. Key Questions about
Digital Portfolio Implementation

34. Key Questions about
Digital Portfolio Implementation
✦ How can digital portfolios be successfully
used to demonstrate assessment for learning
and assessment of learning?
✦ What are the benefits of developing digital
portfolios as perceived by students, teachers,
administrators, or parents?
✦ What are the perceived obstacles to
implementing digital portfolios, and how can
they be overcome?

35. Key Questions about
Digital Portfolio Implementation
✦ How do digital portfolios provide evidence of
deep learning?
✦ What knowledge, skills, and dispositions/
habits of mind will students need to develop
in creating their digital portfolios?
✦ How can we integrate digital portfolios with
what we know about social learning and
interactivity?

36. Key Questions about
Digital Portfolio Implementation
✦ Under what conditions do students take
ownership of their digital portfolios?
✦ How can we use digital portfolios to help
students become more engaged, motivated,
and self-directed?
✦ How can we make digital portfolio
development a natural process integrated into
everyday life?

37. All Images CC via Flickr
✦ RFF Pass the Camera Project by Gene Wilburn
✦ One Done by Daniel 1977
✦ Portfolio Case by Streetfly JZ
✦ Investment Portfolio by Iscan
✦ Abstract Photo collection by catchesthelight
✦ Puertas de Cartagena by Luz Adriana Villa
✦ pottery in the making by dave~
✦ 3 pots by cobalt 123
✦ guiding touch by pangalactic
✦ Pottery Factory by user.c

38. All Images CC via Flickr
✦ Digital Portfolio Reflection Points langwitches
✦ Soph Board Intro Ken Robinson by Talia Howard
✦ OZ 318 by torres21
✦ Lockers by darrendraper
✦ Roof Reflection CC sharkbait
✦ When we make our learning transparent, we
become teachers by langwitches
✦ Thinking by klmontgomery
✦ Student Collaboration by wlibrary
✦ Digital Collection by kyteacher

39. References
✦ Helen Barrett, “Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios,”
electronicportfolios.org/balance
✦ Helen Barrett, “Metaphors for Portfolios,” electronicportfolios.org/
metaphors.html
✦ Helen Barrett, “Researching electronic portfolios and learner
engagement: The REFLECT Initiative,” Journal of Adolescent &
Adult Literacy, March 2007
✦ Philippa Butler, “Review of the Literature on Portfolios and
Eportfolios,” 2006
✦ Northwest Evaluation Association, quoted in Paulson, Paulson,
and Meyer, “What Makes a Portfolio a Portfolio?” Educational
Leadership, February 1991
✦ F. Leon Paulson and Pearl R. Paulson, “What Makes a Portfolio a
Portfolio?” Educational Leadership, February 1991
✦ Geoff Rebbeck, quoted in Effective Practice with e-Portfolios:
Supporting 21st Century Learning, JISC, September 2008