Going Beyond: Portfolio assessment for student learning, faculty development, and curricular explora

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Going Beyond Portfolio assessment for student
learning, faculty development, and curricular
exploration

• Jacqulyn Lauer-Glebov, Carleton College
• March 2006
• AACU General Education and Outcomes That Matter
  in a Changing World

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Portfolios for Student Learning
Sophomore Writing Portfolio

• 3 5 essays from 2 of the 4 academic divisions,
  max 30 pages
• At least one paper addressing observation,
  analysis, interpretation, use of sources,
  thesis-driven argument
• Portfolio introduced by a reflective essay

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Portfolios for Student Learning
Portfolio Findings - Scores

• 79 of students receive a score of Pass
• 14 of students receive a score of Exemplary
• 7 of students receive a score of Needs Work

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Portfolios for Student Learning
Portfolio Findings Courses/Faculty

• Work comes from an average of 314 courses out of
  700 offered annually
• Assignments come from an average of 185 faculty
  members of 290 regular, non-regular, visiting,
  and fellowship faculty
• Both courses and faculty are
• distributed over all four academic
• divisions

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Portfolios for Faculty Development
What qualifies as faculty development?

• Curricular grants
• Portfolio scoring sessions
• Workshops
• Writing Placement readers
• Brown bag discussions
• Learning and Teaching Center events

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Portfolios for Faculty Development
The impact of faculty development
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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
What I know

• Writing happens within a context and utilizes
  content from one or more areas/disciplines
• Writing is both a skill in itself and a means of
  articulating other skills (e.g. critical
  thinking)
• Writing in portfolios comes from 45 of the
  courses in our curriculum

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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
Accessing the Portal

• As a table, decide on a working definition of
  your skill (learning outcomes)
• Using the matrix, read through the portfolio at
  your table. Is the skill present in the writing?
  What is a good example? A poor example? Are there
  places where the skill couldve been used but
  wasnt?
• How does reading student work change either your
  learning outcomes or your idea of mastery?

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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
What you found in your exploration
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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
What Carleton found Quantitative reasoning

• States questions and issues in numerical terms
• Identifies appropriate quantitative or numerical
  evidence
• Generates, collects, or accesses appropriate data
• Uses quantitative methods correctly
• Selects appropriate quantitative or numerical
  methods
• Interprets results
• Assesses limitations of methods used
• Presents/reports data appropriately
• Focuses analysis on relevant data

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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
What Carleton found Interdisciplinary Science

• Willingness to explore
• Asking what other areas/disciplines are or can be
  involved
• Searching for relevant disciplinary approaches
• Recognizing tensions among different perspectives
• Integrating perspectives to produce a new
  understanding
• Use or develop language that travels across
  disciplines
• Building complex explanations for complex
  phenomena

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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
What Carleton found Critical Thinking

• Identifies and summarizes the problem
• Identifies and presents the students perspective
  and position important to the analysis
• Identifies and considers the influence of the
  context on the issue
• Identifies and assesses the quality of supporting
  data/evidence
• Identifies key assumptions in the authors
  position
• Identifies and assesses conclusions,
  implications, and supporting logic

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Portfolios for Curricular Exploration
Portfolio limitations for exploration

• Work in portfolios is student selected and
  identified
• Portfolio doesnt explicitly ask for work using
  other skills (e.g quantitative reasoning)

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Special Thanks to

• Archibald Bush Foundation for support of writing
• FIPSE for support of quantitative reasoning
• HHMI for support of interdisciplinary science