Learning Portfolios Head to Sunny California!

Last week, Jessica and I went to Palo Alto, California to take part in an Open Portfolio Project working group meeting hosted by the Maker Education Initiative and the Moore Foundation. The facilitators and attendees were a mix of researchers, program directors, technologists, graduate students, and folks who work in college admissions. We met over two days as a whole and in small groups to discuss digital and open portfolios. We made, documented, reflected, asked questions and created some new ones.

More about the take-aways after the break... 


Here are some things we learned:

• Maker portfolios are being accepted for incoming MIT undergrads. 
• This was really interesting to learn more about - including how young people approach telling their story as a "Maker" and who is submitting them. Without getting into details, learning about this new development opened up a lot of questions about what opening up admissions to portfolio means both for the young people and the institution: 

• What should be included in an admissions portfolio and what questions should be asked to get at the information college's want?
• Who evaluates the portfolio and how does it connect to the larger admissions process?
• Does allowing submissions of portfolios to the admissions process mean a more diverse group will apply?
• What concerns should we have around equity, access and support if more colleges start accepting portfolios for admissions?   

Showing off a student portfolio

• There are many different ideas about what a portfolio is. 
• Even in our small meeting there were several different ideas about portfolios. From documentation of one project to a whole life of sharing work. Some questions included: 

• Does a portfolio just show final products? 
• How much process should be shown? 
• What about meta-cognition and reflection? 
• Is it important to show failures that were overcome? Are some groups more able to share failures? 

 

• We have a lot to learn about how to support ALL types of young people in developing portfolios. 
• As we've seen before in all types of media, not everyone feels like their story should be told or that their work should be shared. This can be a personal choice, but also it can be influenced or reinforced by larger structural inequities that privilege some people's stories over others. If we want under-represented groups like young African Americans and Latino/as, young women, and young people who are differently-abled to make digital portfolios about what they are learning and creating we need to be aware of a range of barriers to participation. Just setting up an opportunity to develop  or submit a portfolio will not be enough. We need to actively work on creating support systems and opportunities for youth-voice in our portfolio development programs that are equitable and flexible enough to accommodate a range of interests and approaches. One question that emerged around this was: 

• Should we design portfolio development approaches and support systems first for groups of young people that are the least likely to create them?

After the two days of discussing the topics and questions above, I was still left with a couple more questions to explore and some work to do in our own Learning Portfolio Project:

Me trying to document my own process. Harder than it looks!

• Do we have a clear enough definition of what a portfolio is for our own Learning Portfolio  project? 

• Why does portfolio development matter for a young person going to a state or city university which may not consider it in the admissions process? (I've already thought about this one a bit and am hoping to clarify why portfolio development is important for learning and assessment in general, whether it is used in admissions or not.) 

• How do we support documentation of creating and learning in a way that doesn't feel imposing?  We all know that it can take away from the creative process to have to document it as well. Ideally young people would be intrinsically motivated to show their process, reflect and share their accomplishments and what they learned from mistakes. Are there particular supports we can put in place to make documenting, reflecting and sharing more integrated into learning process?