Every student knows the importance of building a portfolio. It can be used to showcase current and future skills, as well as progress and achievements. But what types of portfolio exist for educational purposes?
This article will explore the four distinct types of portfolio used in education, and explain how they can benefit students throughout their academic years.
1. Showcase Portfolios
A showcase portfolio is created primarily to document and display demonstrated skills, abilities, and learning progresses to potential employers. Usually filled with examples of work, such as essays, projects, and presentations, this type of portfolio is designed to both validate current knowledge base and show what can be offered in the future.
Showcase portfolios are a great tool for those looking to enter the workforce, as they provide tangible evidence of certain capabilities. Where other types of portfolios focus more on the things recorded, this type of portfolio is really centered around showcasing the student’s best work. Smaller in size and more succinct than other types of portfolio, showcase portfolios contain a more refined selection of work.
Therefore, students should focus on including only the most impressive and reflective pieces of work, as well as selecting a few relevant and meaningful samples of his or her work.
2. Growth Portfolios
Growth portfolios are used to regularly record development over a set period of time. They are dynamic, and typically include reflections of achievement, skills, and successes as they are being developed.
This type of portfolio offers a valuable insight into the student’s learning process, allowing teachers, parents, and employers to assess and review the student’s growth over a designated timeframe. Growth portfolios are designed both to recognize and celebrate the successes made, as well as identify areas for improvement. Different monitoring techniques are used to collect and store data.
Although some growth portfolios are paper-based or printed, digital or online showcases are becoming increasingly popular. This method allows users to store a higher volume of data, access it more easily and quickly, and update it more frequently.
3. Working Portfolios
As the name suggests, working portfolios are in a state of constant evolution and are used to reflect the progress of a particular project, research, or task. Specific to the subject or project, these portfolios contain plans, drafts, and evidence of experimentation, as well as reflections and notes of progress.
Students can use working portfolios to document progress and growth of the particular task at hand, as well as to satisfy any requirements of a given assignment or project. Working portfolios are mostly compiled and created digitally, in a cloud-based platform or program. By using this approach, students are able to access all the recorded elements of the project or assignment from anywhere, and maintain multiple versions of their work.
This makes working portfolios a popular and convenient tool for those looking to work in collaborative environments, such as IT, programming, and product design.
4. Assessment Portfolios
Assessment portfolios are used to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of a student’s knowledge and understanding of a particular subject area. Usually required by educational systems, these portfolios are designed to assess specific standards and criteria, in order to accurately assess and audit the student’s grasp and understanding of the applied material.
This type of portfolio contains evidence of the student’s progress and involvement throughout the learning period. Assessment portfolios should retain evidence of student involvement throughout the learning process and typically include reflection notes, exemplars, and other unique pieces of evidence. They are best used in combination with other types of portfolios, such as growth and working portfolios, in order to ensure that the student is accurately assessed according to all the criteria.
Conclusion
Overall, different types of portfolios are used for different purposes in the education system. Showcase portfolios are designed to highlight achievements and capabilities to potential employers, while growth portfolios enable teachers, parents, and employers to review a student’s development over a given period of time.
Working portfolios are specific to a certain project or task, while assessment portfolios are used to assess and audit a student’s performance in a particular subject. All of these portfolios together provide a comprehensive insight into a student’s academic standing, enabling them to have the best representation of themselves available.