Project Guidelines

(J. Miller - 10/3/97)

Student Portfolio Project
Guidelines For Portfolio Students

[ Intro | Description | Writing Format | Outcomes | Schedule ]

Welcome to the student portfolios project! You are an important part of an exciting educational experiment.

Portfolios have long been used by artists and designers, and more recently by teachers and students, to demonstrate and document the nature and the quality of their work. Portfolios are useful for job searches, for applying for awards, and in general for demonstrating to anyone in a professional capacity the dimensions and quality of one's work. Portfolios are living documents, constantly being added to and changed as one's professional accomplishments and interests change. The most important benefit of a portfolio is the self-reflection that is required in its preparation.

In higher education nationwide, there are increasing demands for colleges to demonstrate the value of the education they offer, i.e. what their students have actually learned. Passing tests and courses and accumulating sufficient credits for graduation, while important, is not completely convincing in terms of having demonstrated success in skills needed to succeed in professional careers. Accreditation boards, such as ABET (which accredits WPI's engineering programs), NEASC (which also accredits WPI), and others, are increasingly expecting colleges to find other ways of demonstrating what their graduates have learned. A very few colleges have begun to use student portfolios as a way of measuring student learning. This experiment has as its goal the pilot testing of the use of student portfolios at WPI. We want to find out if student portfolios can tell us anything more about what students learn than tests and grades do; we want to find out what elements of portfolios are useful and which ones are not; and we want to find out how much time and effort it takes for students to create useful portfolios, and for faculty to evaluate them. Along the way, we will also be developing ways of evaluating student portfolios, and we will experiment with maintaining them electronically and with posting some of them (on a voluntary basis only) on the World Wide Web.

Although the ultimate goal of the use of these portfolios is the evaluation of the value of a WPI education, the portfolio that you construct will not have any effect on your academic record. We hope that the process of constructing a portfolio will be a valuable exercise for you, and that you will find the completed portfolio useful. Although we will ask you to share (with course staff and, if you so choose, publicly on the Web) a large portion of what you write, you are not obligated to share with anyone (including us) anything which you consider to be private.

We are counting on your feedback and suggestions for the improvement of the portfolios themselves or this experiment.

1. Keep everything. All in one box or notebook(s), and on easily identifiable diskettes (with backups), keep all of your written material and other physical objects from everything you do this year, either academic or extracurricular. ESPECIALLY keep graded assignments, with the original assignment sheets, and graded tests, with the original test questions. But video or audio tapes, works of art, projects, posters, etc. are all useful. You will not use all of this stuff in your portfolio, but as you tackle each writing assignment, it will be helpful to have a complete collection of materials from which to select.
2. Write a brief reflective piece every other week. This piece should be about a page long (longer is fine, but we are very mindful of not wanting you to exceed your expectation of an hour of work every other week unless you want to!). The content of the first piece has been described in the email message you received a couple of weeks ago. The content of subsequent pieces is described below. Email each written entry to the portfolio PLA, Kevin Pease (kestrel@wpi).
3. Keep your biweekly portfolio entries (hard copy of your written piece, plus selected supporting documentation drawn from the collection in item (1) organized, labeled and in order, in a separate notebook and/or box. This collection of portfolio entries is DIFFERENT from the box in which you are collecting raw materials, as described in item 1. From time to time we will ask to see your portfolio, so please keep it ready for viewing on short notice. Also keep a separate diskette containing the electronic form of each reflective piece.

For the rest of the academic year, we would like you to write about the 11 areas which ABET (see Introduction) has identified as important outcomes of an undergraduate education. These outcomes are listed in the next section. Each writing assignment will address a different one of the eleven outcomes listed below. The outcomes are to be addressed in the order in which they appear, i.e. Outcome 1 for the first assignment, Outcome 2 for the second, etc. In addition, at the end of the year there will be one or two culminating assignments. Your writing will be easiest and most productive if you think about the outcome you will write about for about a week in advance of actually doing the writing. If you are planning to write about communication skills, for example, keep track of how many times you volunteered answers in class, or talked with classmates about course-related material. For each writing assignment you should document your points with actual materials from your course work or other experiences if at all possible.

No matter which outcome you will be writing about, answer the following questions:

1. Outcome X: (description of outcome)
   1. Identify and describe a recent occasion on which you encountered the outcome, either in academic (course or project) work, or in your extracurricular activities. What was the point of the assignment or activity? What happened? When? Where? What was the nature of your involvement in the activity?
   2. Pick a piece of physical evidence (e.g. a graded assignment, or some writing you did for a project) which relates to this week's outcome and the occasion you described in (a). Describe, in writing, what it is and in what context it was produced (for example, "I am including in my portfolio a graded lab report from my EEXXXX course. The lab concerned XXXX and was done in conjunction with three other group members.") Insert the physical evidence in the physical version of your portfolio.
   3. How do you see this piece of physical evidence: as an indication of real accomplishment, as less than your best work, as evidence of learning, as part of a worthwhile experience, as something else? Please explain.
   4. Describe explicitly how the content of the physical evidence relates to your current level of overall achievement with respect to this outcome.
2. Discuss how this outcome relates to your educational or life goals.
3. Is there anything else you'd like to say about this outcome or about the physical evidence you wrote about?

If these questions or outcomes seem vague or you don't know what to write, consult the portfolio PLA, Kevin Pease (kestrel@wpi) for help. He will be contacting you regularly as well.

1. Outcome 1: Ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering.
2. Outcome 2: Ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data.
3. Outcome 3: Ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs.
4. Outcome 4: Ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams.
5. Outcome 5: Ability to identify, formulate, and solve problems (engineering, scientific, or other).
6. Outcome 6: Understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.
7. Outcome 7: Ability to communicate effectively.
8. Outcome 8: Broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering and science on society.
9. Outcome 9: Recognition of the need for and an ability to engage in life-long learning.
10. Outcome 10: Knowledge of contemporary issues.
11. Outcome 11: Ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering and scientific tools necessary for professional practice.

• Introductory assignment Sept. 29
• First outcome Oct. 13
• Second outcome Nov. 3
• Third outcome Nov. 17
• Fourth outcome Dec. 1
• Fifth outcome Dec. 15
• Pay day I ($75 for those who have completed all the assignments so far)*
• Sixth outcome Jan. 12
• Seventh outcome Jan. 26
• Eighth outcome Feb. 9
• Ninth outcome Feb. 23
• Tenth outcome March 16
• Eleventh outcome March 30
• Summary assignment I (TBA) April 13
• Summary assignment II (TBA) April 27
• Pay day II ($75 for those who have completed all the assignments so far)*

This site created by Kevin Pease (Portfolio Project Peer Learning Assistant) Last Modified: 12/12/97