The Stages of Electronic Portfolio Development

Stage 1: Defining the Portfolio Context

Multimedia Development: Decide/Assess

Portfolio Development: Purpose & Audience

· Identify the assessment context, including the purpose of the portfolio.

· Identify the learner outcome goals (which should follow from national, state, or local standards and their associated evaluation rubrics or observable behaviors). This is a very important step, setting the assessment context, which should help frame the rest of the portfolio development process.

· Identify the resources available for electronic portfolio development.

· Identify the hardware and software you have and how often students have access.

· Assess the technology skills of the students and teachers

· Identify the audience for the portfolio--student, parent, college, employer (often based on the age of the student). The primary audience for the portfolio will contribute to the decisions made about the format and storage of the formal or presentation portfolio. Choose a format that the audience will most likely have access to; i.e., parents may not have a home computer, but may have a VCR.

A portfolio without standards or goals:

is just a multimedia presentation

or a fancy electronic resume

or a digital scrapbook

Appropriate Technology Tools at this Stage:

Use whatever software tools are currently being used to collect artifacts, storing them on a hard drive, a server, or videotape.

Set up electronic folders for each standard to organize the artifacts (any type of electronic document). [Level 1]

AND

Use a word processor, database, hypermedia software or slide show to articulate the standards to be demonstrated in the portfolio and to organize the artifacts. [Level 2]

OR

Use an HTML editor to articulate the standards to be demonstrated in the portfolio and to organize the artifacts. [Level 4]

OR

Use a multimedia authoring program to organize by the standards to be demonstrated in the portfolio.[Level 5]

You will know you are ready for the next stage when:

You have identified the purpose and primary audience for your portfolio.

You have identified the standards or goals that you will be using to organize your portfolio.

You have selected the development software you will be using and have completed the first stage using that tool.

Stage 2: The Working Portfolio

Multimedia Development: Design/Plan

Portfolio Development: Collect

· Identify the content of portfolio items (determined by the assessment context) and the type of evidence to be collected. This is where the standards become a very important part of the planning process. Knowing which standards you are trying to demonstrate should help determine the types of portfolio artifacts are to be collected and then selected.

· Select the software development tools most appropriate for the portfolio context and the resources available. Just as McLuhan said, "The medium is the message", the software used to create the electronic portfolio will control, restrict, or enhance the portfolio development process. Form should follow function as well, and the electronic portfolio software should match the vision and style of the portfolio developer.

· Identify the storage and presentation medium most appropriate for the situation (i.e., computer hard disk, videotape, local-area network, a WWW server, CD-ROM, etc.). The audience for the portfolio will have a major impact on this component. There are also multiple options, depending on the software chosen.

· Gather the multimedia materials that represent a learner's achievement. Once you have answered the questions on portfolio context and content, as well as the limitations on the type of equipment available and the skills of the users (teachers and students), you will be able to determine the type of materials you will digitize, such as: student written work, images of student projects, sounds of students speaking or reading, and video clips of student performances. Of course, you will want to collect artifacts from different points of time to demonstrate growth and learning that has taken place.

· Interject personality into the portfolio design. Use some of the graphics capabilities of current computer systems to add style and flair to the portfolio.

You will know you are ready for the next stage when:

· You have a collection of digital portfolio artifacts that represent your efforts and achievement throughout the course of your learning experiences.

· You have used the graphics and layout capability of the chosen software to interject your personality into the portfolio artifacts.

· It is time to turn this collection into a portfolio.