THOUGHTS ON STUDENT PORTFOLIOS

Are online student portfolios the ideal solution for communicating progress to parents? As a parent and an educator who has used both FreshGrade and Seesaw, I am on the fence about the value added.
​
As a parent, it’s always nice to see photos and videos of your child at school, but progress is difficult to measure when parents are being presented with snapshots of different activities and assignments in all subject areas mixed together. And though it’s true that more often than not comments written by the teacher or student accompany the uploaded photos/videos, the randomness in the order of everything is posted makes it hard to visualize your child’s journey from beginning to end in each subject area. Additionally, because a student can excel in one area of a subject, for example, multiplication in math and then struggle in another, let’s say division, it’s hard for parents to get a clear picture of where their child is at overall, which can be frustrating, especially if the school doesn’t have a formal report card to accompany the student portfolios.

On the flipside, as an educator, having to post photos/videos yourself or ask the students to do so is a time-consuming process mired by setbacks ranging from slow internet at the school, lack of computers for each student, students forgetting their logins, students taking blurry photos, videos being too lengthy to upload, etc. And in a school day that is already pressed for time, the process of creating student portfolios can eat up valuable teaching minutes. That’s not to say that there is no value in learners reflecting on their work, but perhaps the process of having to upload and then type in comments isn’t the most effective means. To top it off, if the school doesn’t have formal report cards to fill out and grades are posted as part of the online portfolios, more often than not the software designed to create student portfolios doesn’t come equipped with a comment or learning outcomes bank to select from to make the job of reporting easier – everything must be typed in.
​
With that said, it’s possible I am a little old school, but I prefer the days of a simple parent-teacher conference where samples of student work were shared to highlight their achievements and we were given a handheld report card that outlined exactly how our child did in each subject area, but perhaps that’s just me. What are your thoughts on student portfolios? We’d love to hear them!

Further Reading

​Assessing Students on IEPs
​Are Dual-Tracking Report Cards the Answer?
The Flaw in "Gradeless" Systems
Are Schools Failing Students on the Move?
​Is Your School Putting Student Needs First?