The Living Schoolbook

Anyone involved in a survey of portfolio packages will quickly learn that the term “portfolio” is a loaded term. Part of the problem for the OSP software development team is that the designers of OSP 2.0 decided to try to accommodate several portfolio development and assessment strategies. While they were very broad with their definition of portfolios and developed their own stack of software tools to try to meet those needs, they disregarded the tasks involved in moving student created content from the traditional courseware tools in their classes to their portfolios.

The opportunity to use tools that teachers and students are already extremely familiar with as an entry point for building their portfolios would build on their mental model about what “courseware” is (a set of tools that support existing pedagogical practice such as giving assignments and discussing topics). Working from and expanding this understanding will help faculty that have been reluctant to experiment with portfolios to understand and use the toolset. This is an important difference from the shift in thinking that faculty and students have been asked to make when exchanging their traditional teaching techniques in favor of using portfolio systems that have not been well integrated into existing systems.

We also want to add a sense of student ownership to learning management systems that will make these systems more valuable to students. When seen simply as “courseware” that supports classes that start and end each semester, it makes sense to remove access to student-authored content after each academic period. While the evaluation hasn’t been performed, we believe that students would find more value in a system in which they could build off of the coursework they have done, retain their own personal copies of relevant coursework materials and continue to draw connections and new meaning out of that content. Sharing this new knowledge with fellow learners and educators and getting their feedback is key to providing a student-centered learning experience.

Our use of portfolios in the School of Education is similar to many other groups around the world. We want students to engage in a process that allows them to:

1. Collect content that they have authored in their class assignments and discussions;
2. Select evidence of their learning and classify their own ideas as they relate to institutional and personal learning outcome themes;
3. Reflect on the evidence and experiences;
4. Share (publish) their work with others;
5. Receive feedback and assessment of their progress.