TO PORTFOLIO

OR NOT TO PORTFOLIO
HELPFUL OR HYPED?
Judy Lombardi

Abstract. Portfolios have received mixed but primarily positive reviews in colleges and universities.
The portfolio offers a tool of authentic assessment
as well as an opportunity for students to be reflective
practitioners. Portfolio implementation and evaluation has become a feature of many university departments. The author describes different approaches
to portfolios, as well as the origins of and research
related to portfolio use.
Keywords: assessment, education, portfolio, writing
The portfolio is probably the single most
important reason I am resigning my position at this university. The portfolio seems
like overkill, big time. I will say that once
completed, the ones done well are treasured by the student teachers. However,
I think their feelings are based mainly
on the extraordinary amount of work that
went into the preparation. I doubt if anyone has ever used a portfolio to get a job.
And preparing twenty-six entries for one
portfolio? Bah humbug.

his quote from an individual at

my university, who supervised student teachers in the field for years
Judy Lombardi is an associate professor of
secondary education at California State University
Northridge and coordinator of the secondary
accelerated collaborative teaching program.
Copyright 2008 Heldref Publications

Vol. 56/No. 1

and helped score stacks of portfolios,

reflects some of the current antipathy toward portfolio development
and scoring in college and university
departments.
Not all commentary on portfolios
is negative, however, as evidenced by
the upbeat tone of Kalamazoo College
(Michigan) in providing information to
students on portfolios:
The Kalamazoo Portfolio is a tool designed
to help you make informed decisions about
your educational path. Its part journal, part
goal sheet, and part educational map. Its a
series of Web pages which youll save in
your e-mail account (dont worry about privacy; its easy to lock your Portfolio). Its
also a graduation requirement and part of
the academic advising process. And though
it may seem like extra work at first, it is a

very useful tool to help you get the most

out of your Kalamazoo College education.
(Biziorek 2003)

Portfolios have become a fixture in

higher education institutions across wide
variety of academic fields. They have
evolved in form, type, and purpose and
have a rich history in many disciplines.
Where Did Portfolios and
Portflios Come From, Anyway?
For decades, portfolios have served as
evaluative tools of fine arts and creative
writing departments, as students looked
for ways to showcase their best work.
The early roots of todays portfolios can
be traced to the mid-1980s, with the
work of Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff
(1986), who served as administrators for
a writing program with a written exit
exam. Elbow and Belanoff, dissatisfied
with the holistic scoring method used on
the exam, experimented with portfolios.
Their students submitted folders with
writing across several genres, rather than
only one. A new emphasis on process
over product occurred as well.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
portfolio-based programs emerged at
Purdue University, Miami University of
Ohio, and the University of Michigan;
the junior portfolio program at Washington State University also appeared
(Beagle 2004). Portfolios were generally divided into two categories: the process portfolio or the product portfolio.
Process-oriented work demonstrates the
7

growth of the learner over time, such as

the rough to final draft of a particular
piece of work. Product-oriented portfolios
focus on the best work of the student, the
items that represent the highest quality
created (Epstein 2005). From demonstrating progress through selection of best
works, the portfolio system provides new
ways for students to exhibit what they
have learned over time.
Since the advent of the World Wide
Web in 1992, the term ePortfolio has been
used to describe electronic portfolios,
typically collections of student work captured on a Web site, CD-ROM, or DVD.
Webfolios became the term of choice for
composition studies, and the term digital
portfolios gained widespread acceptance
after 2000, as technology changes and
improvements accelerated.
Helen C. Barrett (2003), the reigning
guru of ePortfolios, notes that many teacher education programs are adopting electronic portfolios to meet National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE) 2000 Standard #2. Assessment
Systems, which mandates a comprehensive system that is aligned with program,
institutional, state, and national standards,
is based on performance and is developed
in conjunction with the professional community. Barrett was on the faculty of the
School of Education at the University of
Alaska and the assessment coordinator for
the International Society for Technology in
Educations National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers.
Barrett warns against confusing electronic portfolioswhich have multiple
purposes, such as learning, assessment,
and employmentwith assessment
management systems, which are primarily used for formative and summative assessment. The true ePortfolio is
student-centered, with works selected by
the student, whereas the assessment management system is institution centered,
with works prescribed by the institution
(Barrett 2003).
Commercial companies such as
Taskstream (http://www.taskstream.com),
Livetext (http://college.livetext.com), and
Folio Live (http://www.foliolive.com)
allow creation and long-term storage of
electronic portfolios, projects, and documents; provide faculty access to student
work, to give online feedback; and give
8

Winter 2008

the school, college, or department of education a way to collect and aggregate data
for program evaluation and improvement.
Eager to assess the effectiveness of ePortfolios through both qualitative and quantitative research, the REFLECT Initiative
[was] a two-year study, directed by Dr.
Helen Barrett and underwritten by TaskStream, assessing the impact of electronic
portfolios on student learning motivation
and engagement in secondary schools
(TaskStream 2005).
Showcase ePortfolios, which enable the
author to control who sees the collection
of selected work through passwords at
a particular site, can be seen at the Web
sites of Pennsylvania State University
(http://portfolio.psu.edu), Elon University
(http://www.elon.edu/students/portfolio),
and the Knowledge Media Laboratory at
the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/KML). The Minnesota
State College and University system has
embraced portfolios, and MITs Open
Knowledge Initiative (OKI) has championed the ePortfolio as a major learning
and assessment tool within the campuss
virtual community (Batson 2002). The
Maryland State Department of Education (2006) has established a statewide
resource on electronic portfolio production in teacher preparation programs.
Florida State University assists students
in creating career ePortfolios (http://www
.career.fsu.edu/portfolio), and The Center for Technology in Education (CTE)
at Johns Hopkins University (http://cte
.jhu.edu/epweb/) has developed a standards-based ePortfolio for teacher education as a replacement for the paper
portfolios used in the Master of Arts in
Teaching program to respond to formal standards and teacher certification
requirements (Greenberg 2004, 28). The
Electronic Portfolio Action Committee
(EPAC) was created within the National
Learning Infrastructure to engage in the
creation, use, publication, and evaluation
of electronic portfolio projects and tools
in higher education and beyond for teaching, learning, and assessment (Treuer
and Jenson 2003).
Gary Greenberg, executive director
for information and research initiatives
at Northwestern University, champions
dynamic multimedia portfolio presentations

such as those created at Carnegie: Showcase ePortfolios can also be highly professional, provocative, and intended to advance
knowledge and experience in a field while
bringing people together around common
interests and concerns (Greenberg 2004,
28). Greenberg goes on to describe the Folio
Thinking Project at Stanford:
The Folio Thinking Project (http://scil
.stanford.edu/research/projects/folio.html),
a collaboration among the Royal Institute
of Technology (KTH), Uppsala University,
and Stanford University, is using personal
learning ePortfolios to capture the artifacts
and evidence of student learning and to
help students use reflection to document
their changing understanding. At Stanford,
electronic learning portfolios (or e-folios)
were used to capture formal and informal
learning as students in the Class of 2002
made career decisions during their evolving four-year course of study. A new project is exploring how folio thinking can
build engineering students confidence in
their ability to become an engineer and
can thus increase the number of prospective majors who stay in engineering.
(Greenberg 2004, 28)

Essentially, digital portfolios and ePortfolios have evolved from the traditional,
paper variety and serve as a source for
study regarding their effects on student
motivation, achievement, and institutional outcomes. Several well-established
resources exist on ePortfolio purposes,
compilation, types, assessment, and examples, such as the American Association
for Higher Educations Electronic Portfolios, Resources for Higher Education
(http://http://ctl.du.edu/portfolioclearing
house/); the Electronic Portfolio Consortium (http://www.eportconsortium.org);
and Educauses National Learning Infrastructure Initiative for Electronic Portfolios (http://www.educause.edu/content
.asp?page_id=5524&bhcp=1).
Portfolios: The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly
Attitudes toward portfolios depend on
stance, history, and perceived value. With
the current buzz around ePortfolios versus
paper portfolios and electronic portfolios
versus assessment management systems,
it seems an opportune time to revisit the
dangers and benefits of portfolios. Stanford Universitys Lee Shulman, a leader
in the portfolio movement, describes five
dangers of portfolios:
COLLEGE TEACHING

1. laminationA portfolio becomes a

mere exhibition, an opportunity for selfaggrandizement, a chance to show off.
2. heavy liftingIs all the hard work
a portfolio demands really worth the
effort?
3. trivializationPeople document
material that does not merit reflection.
4. perversionPortfolio scoring systems might objectify portfolios to the
point that the portfolios lose their ability to evaluate individual outcomes.
5. misrepresentationDoes the emphasis on best work misrepresent the candidates work, so as not to be a true picture
of competency? (Shulman 1998 qtd. in
Barrett 2003, 34)
Shulman also discusses five benefits in
the use of portfolios:
1. Portfolios permit the tracking of longer
episodes of teaching more effectively
than single observations do.
2. Portfolios encourage important connections between process and product,
through bridging what goes on in teaching with how it is manifested in portfolio products.
3. Portfolios institutionalize norms of collaboration, reflection, and discussion.
4. A portfolio introduces structure to the
field experience and can be seen as a
portable residency.
5. Portfolios shift the responsibility for
demonstrating learning back to the student teacher, as a participant rather than
an observer. (Shulman 1998 qtd. in Barrett 2003, 4)
Myriad challenges exist in portfolio
management at any institution, such as
storage for traditional binder-style portfolios; the choice of which rubric or assessment instrument to use; security for both
paper and digital products; the evaluation
process; student resistance to the bulk
of work required; repetition, redundancy,
or overlap of certain items and requirements; and student understanding of and
compliance with portfolio procedures and
deadlines.
Says the university supervisor who
finally retired over portfolio problems:
I used to ask the student teaching seminar
what themes they were interested in, and I
would put together a packet for them, including short stories, articles, whatever I could
find. Those days are pretty much over. A good
Vol. 56/No. 1

share of time now is devoted to explaining

the nit-picking requirements for the portfolio.
Bottom line: it breaks my heart to see so much
time taken from worn-out, overworked student teachers to prepare something that very
few benefited from. If they were all polled,
I doubt that one in a hundred, if even that,
would advise continuing this process.

A Walk on the Wild Side: The

Professional Teaching Portfolio
In response, California State University
Northridge, a campus of 33,000 students
just north of Los Angeles, opted for Professional Teaching Portfolios (PTPs) in
2003. With 1,700 students annually earning teaching credentials in elementary,
secondary, and special education through
CSUNorthridges College of Education,
the Department of Secondary Education
laid a firm foundation in procedures for
and assessment of the PTP, with an emphasis on teachers as reflective practitioners.
At CSUNorthridge, the portfolio is
defined for students as a collection of artifacts that you thoughtfully select to show
evidence of critical teaching knowledge,
teaching abilities, and professional development (Ericson 2004). Procedurally, traditional, binder-style PTPs at CSUNorthridge are collected at the end of the students
final student teaching experience, when all
coursework for the teacher credential has
been successfully completed. Two pieces,
called artifacts, per Teacher Performance
Expectations (TPE) are required in the
PTP, including examples of student work,
lesson plans, extended unit or semester
plans, the midterm or final student teaching
evaluation, or an individual induction or
flight plan for the road ahead in the first
year of teaching. A one-page reflection,
required with each artifact, asks students to
address these questions:
1. What insights about your teaching or
student learning have you gained?
2. How does the lesson, activity, or assignment allow you to make decisions about
your teaching in the future, with increased
understanding or pedagogical skill?
3. How does the artifact reflect what you
value in your teaching practice?
In California, thirteen TPEs were
created by the California Commission
on Teacher credentialing. The thirteen
TPEs reflec: six domains: making subject matter comprehensible to students;

assessing student learning; engaging and

supporting students in learning; planning instruction and designing learning
experiences for students; creating and
maintaining effective environments for
student learning; and developing as a
professional educator.
Students begin building their portfolios
in their first foundations of education class,
then add artifacts from various methods,
instructional technology, literacy, and student teaching seminar courses. Artifacts
are reviewed, evaluated, and graded by
various instructors who are trained in the
portfolio procedures.
Once the PTP is submitted for its final
evaluation, two trained readers who are
subject-area specialists use a prescribed
rubric to assess the portfolio. Readers
are composed of faculty from across the
many disciplines in which the students
teach, as well as those who have supervised students and conducted seminars
during the student-teaching experience.
Reader training consists of a one-hour
session on the TPEs, PTP procedures
and requirements, rubric, criteria, and
reading process review; benchmarking
of student samples with scoring practice; and discussion. A benchmarking
session before each portfolio-scoring
meeting helps to calibrate and recalibrate readers according to established
standards and evaluation criteria. The
CSUNorthridge rubric, developed over
time with the input of faculty and supervisors, scores the portfolio across a continuum of 5 to 1, from outstanding to
unsatisfactory; the readers grade it on a
pass-fail basis:
A Web site also assists students with
the portfolio process (http://www.csun
.edu/~sch_educ/sed/ptp/index.htm), providing directions on how to prepare the
portfolio, listing information on the TPEs,
and posting a sample evaluation form
used to score a PTP.
As CSUNorthridge and others look
at using ePortfolios to replace the current paper format, the ePortfolio Clearinghouse recommends some forty-five
universities as resources, as they are
advancing in digital portfolio collection,
storage, and sharing (http://ctl.du.edu/port
folioclearinghouse/search_portfolios
.cfm). For example, the eDoc project
at Iowa State University is a multi9

year, multi-unit collaboration among

different colleges at ISU [that] involves
developing a campus-wide electronic
portfolio system [that] uses open source
electronic portfolio software (http://
www.kzoo.edu/pfolio/archive/). The
nonproprietary, open-source software
allows colleges flexibility to move in
and out of the project as needed. Both
undergraduate and graduate students
demonstrate their academic and professional competencies to faculty and
potential employers through portfolios,

subsequent impact on quality; (3) quality control over time, as students add
to the portfolio throughout their coursework, which can span two years; and (4)
the digitalization of the portfolio, raising
questions about appropriate procedures
and models that should be used.
As a result of discussions on portfolio
collection and storage, the Department of
Secondary Education at CSUNorthridge
recognizes that challenges accompany the
process of digitizing portfolios, as outlined
in the Electronic Portfolio White Paper,

ISSUES SUCH AS COST AND PRIVACY NEED TO BE EXAMINED IN THE

EPORTFOLIO EXPANSION, AS MORE VENDORS OFFER THE TECHNOLOGICAL
PRODUCTS TO SUPPORT DIGITAL PORTFOLIO PRODUCTION. IN SELECTING
SOFTWARE, QUALITY, USER-FRIENDLY FEATURES, EASE OF SECURITY, AND
APPLICABILITY OVER TIME MUST BE CONSIDERED.
as well as collaborate with peers in
their scholarship.
What the PTP Results Revealed
about Portfolios
Three types of credential candidates
accelerated, traditional, and intern (onthe-job candidates working on credentials
while teaching)submitted portfolios for
scoring, with the highest numbers in English, mathematics, science, and social science. Thirty-eight percent received a score
of 4 out of 5, and 11 percent were required
to rewrite sections of their portfolios.
Sixty percent of the rewrites came from
the interns, and the subject with the most
rewrites was math. Over the academic year
of 200304, with 245 portfolios scored by
evaluators, the most common score on a 5point scale was a 4, the average percentage
of rewrites was 12 percent, and 87 percent
of students passed the portfolio on their first
attempt. About 82 percent of the PTPs were
scored by one reader (Ericson 2004).
The principal portfolio issues faced at
CSUNorthridge have been (1) secure
storage of cumbersome, binder-style portfolios full of materials; (2) the twentysix artifacts required, with questions
about decreasing their number and the
10

Winter 2008

presented by the ePortConsortium in 2003.

Issues such as cost and privacy need to be
examined in the ePortfolio expansion, as
more vendors offer the technological products to support digital portfolio production.
In selecting software, quality, user-friendly
features, ease of security, and applicability
over time must be considered.
Summary
From early paper formats in fine arts
and creative writing departments to todays
sophisticated electronic versions, portfolios
are now widespread in a variety of fields.
Databases and Web sites are now devoted
to collecting, categorizing, sharing, and
discussing the electronic portfolio. Students
can now use digital cameras, camcorders,
Web cams, scanners, and file transfers to
demonstrate skills that cannot be conveyed
via traditional paper portfolios. A range of
resources, Web sites, books, and materials
on portfolio development and management
continues to expand rapidly.
The portfolio not only offers a tool for
authentic assessment but also a means
for students to be reflective practitioners,
emphasizing the how and why as much as
the what. Time spent in portfolio assessment is not time taken away from teach-

ing or academics, but time refocused and

redefined, with the portfolio viewed as a
natural complement to learning (North
Central Regional Educational Laboratory
2005). Although students and portfolio
scores may be resistant to them because
of the workload they represent, portfolios are now widely accepted and used in
hundreds of colleges and universities to
evaluate student work. Despite the price
of progress, portfolios are here to stay.
REFERENCES
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portfolios.com/systems/concerns.html
(accessed March 1, 2006).
Batson, T. 2002. The electronic portfolio boom:
Whats it all about? http://www.campus
technology.com/article.asp?id=6984
(accessed March 3, 2006).
Beagle, E. 2004. Bravely go where few have
gone before with digital portfolios. http://
www.techlearning.com/shared/printable
Article.jhtml?articleID=45400092
(accessed March 4, 2006).
Biziorek, R. 2003. Kalamazoo College portfolios. http://www.kzoo.edu/pfolio/archive/
(accessed March 5, 2006).
Elbow, P., and P. Belanoff. 1986. Portfolios as
a substitute for proficiency examinations.
College Composition and Communication
37: 33639.
Eport Consortium. 2003. Electronic portfolio
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Review 39 (4): 28.
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COLLEGE TEACHING

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