reflective portfolio assignment

How to Write 1st Class Reflective Portfolio

Increasingly, students in the UK are being encouraged to demonstrate reflective practice as part of continuing professional development. Reflective Portfolios are becoming a common part of assessments, especially in practical subjects like Education, Medicine, Business, and the Arts. Students are often confused about the requirements and expectations for Reflective Portfolios, but this summary will help you understand what’s involved.

What Is a Reflective Portfolio?

A Reflective Portfolio is a set of writings that summarise the insights and experiences a student has gained from practical assignments. It is used to assess the student’s engagement with their fieldwork, and their ability to use theoretical knowledge in an applied setting. The portfolio itself can take many forms, including an extended written piece, a notebook or binder of short writings and documentary evidence, or an online archive of such pieces.

How Is a Reflective Portfolio Different from Other Types of Academic Assignment?

The reflective portfolio is very different from traditional assignments because it allows students to explore their own learning process. Whereas traditional academic projects expect students to be objective and impersonal, a Reflective Portfolio asks students to highlight their own personal perspectives, opinions and feelings. It provides an honest summary of the work undertaken and the skill sets that were developed. The key to success is demonstrating genuine engagement with the course of study rather than a simple ability to score highly on an exam or essay.

What Does a Reflective Portfolio Normally Contain?

The contents of a Reflective Portfolio will vary according to the discipline, but in general it contains short written pieces that summarise and reflect on the experiences of practical work placements. It can include the following:

• Samples of your Work – This will vary according to your field of study. For example, Art students might be asked to provide photographs or scans of some of their work, while trainee Teachers might be required to include sample lesson plans. The important thing is to include samples that reflect your best practice, and that demonstrate depth and diversity as a practitioner.
• Journal Entries – Students are often asked to keep an informal journal during their practical work. This should contain a brief summary of the tasks you’ve completed, as well as critical reflection on the skills they helped you to develop. You should also make note of any situations that you found difficult or challenging, and any moments of professional insight.
• Critical Incidents Reports – These are typically short summaries of moments that significantly enhanced student learning. Critical Incidents can be either positive or negative experiences which provided strong opportunities for professional development. When writing about such incidents, students should reflect on the ways that they prompted new skill development, or provided an enhanced understanding of course material.
• Evidence of Achievement – This part of a Reflective Portfolio provides written evidence of student achievement. For example, students can show how they met course objectives through work placement time sheets, mentor/employer feedback, client ratings, and more. This section can also be referred to in your other portfolio writings to support your reflective statements.
• Personal Statement – The Personal Statement provides an opportunity for students to summarise their newly developed skills and professional philosophies. Based on the experiences you’ve gained, how would you describe yourself professionally? Has your practical learning led you to embrace a particular philosophy related to your profession, or subscribe to a certain body of methods? In other words, what kind of practitioner will you be, and how has this been shaped by your practical fieldwork?

What Use Are Reflective Portfolios to Students?

Many students feel that Reflective Portfolios are far more helpful to their academic development than traditional assignments. This is because it allows them to develop a critical awareness of their own skill development, which helps them identify their own strengths and weaknesses. The Reflective Portfolio also instils confidence in the student as they learn to apply their theoretical knowledge to practical situations. Through a Portfolio, students reflect back on the thoughts, feelings and insights that they developed over the course of their degree programme, and this creates a more holistic educational experience than many other types of assignment.

How to Write a Good Reflective Portfolio

Be critical . Although the content of a portfolio will be more personalised than other assignments, you should use the same level of critical analysis as you do for any essay or exam.

Be comprehensive . Make sure that you include a good range of experiences that exemplify your work throughout the duration of your practical assignment. You might choose to highlight one or two periods of your work, but these should be contextualised within your overall experience.

Don’t be afraid to reveal your weaknesses . Writing about your professional insecurities and weaknesses shows examiners how much you’ve developed throughout your course. It also enables you to reflect on theories and methods that might benefit you in future.

Devise a plan for development . Your Reflective Portfolio should testify to your development as a practitioner throughout the duration of your course. However, to write a really strong portfolio you should also demonstrate an action plan for future development. Think about what knowledge and skills might address the professional weaknesses that your reflections reveal, and indicate how you intend to develop these.

Mistakes to Avoid in Writing Reflective Portfolios

The most common mistake in Reflective Writing is to be either too objective and scholarly, or too emotional and non-critical. Either mistake is equally wrong. Students should aim for a middle ground in their writing, in which they highlight their own personal feelings and reflections but analyse these with reference to the theoretical course material.

Another common mistake is not providing enough relevant evidence to support your reflections. Be sure to include documents from your practical experience, including summaries of assignments, mentor/employer feedback, client ratings and so forth.

Finally, be sure to keep your portfolio well organised and professional-looking. It is true that Reflective Portfolios entail a less formal style of writing, but students sometimes believe that this allows for disorganised presentations with jumbled notes, illegible handwriting and poor grammar. Remember that this is still an academic assignment, and all the normal standards of achievement apply!

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DartWrite Digital Portfolio Project

Dartmouth's home for digital writing portfolios

Course Portfolio & Reflection (Assignment Example)

Nick Van Kley asks his writing 2/3 and 5 students to complete a holistic reflection on the term as their last meaningful engagement with the course. This reflections draw on and cite the material that students curate in their digital portfolio throughout the term. Here, the portfolio is an inward-looking space for reflection on learning.

Nick shares his portfolio assignment:

In this course, you will develop new strategies, explored new contexts, and created new knowledge. You will also re-used and adapt old knowledge and familiar strategies. All of this work will take place within multiple collaborative environments. You will work with your peers, with librarians, with RWIT tutors, and with me. And you will be encouraged to write about those experiences in informal reflective assignments throughout the term.

The end of the term affords you the chance to synthesize work and to gain a clearer perspective on your learning and your development as a writer. To this end, you'll assemble a course portfolio and reflect on that portfolio in writing.

You'll create a portfolio website early in the term, add to it it periodically during the term, and finalize it during finals period. 

Creating Your Portfolio

You will build your portfolio using WordPress, an open-source Content Management System (in other words, a system you can use to build your own website). In fact, you already have a site; Dartmouth's DartWrite project created one for you before you arrived on campus. To access it and explore, visit journeys.dartmouth.edu and login.

You can also find information about the DartWrite project, as well as guidance on using WordPress: https://writing-speech.dartmouth.edu/dartwrite.

Organizing Your Portfolio

Your portfolio will come pre-loaded with several sections; I'll ask you to interact with four of them. 

Homepage:  About Me.  Your homepage should be a short, informational page that explains who you are as a student/writer. It should also explain the purpose of your site. Include images or media if you choose, and ensure your homepage includes working menus that direct visitors to the rest of your site.

Pre-College: If you haven't already, please upload a piece of writing you created before you came to Dartmouth. I'd love to read it and have a brief conversation about it with you at the start of term. My colleagues and I believe that it's crucial you build on the skills and knowledge you developed before you arrived. And recording evidence of that is an important step in that process.

First Course . This section will include your Portfolio Reflection. Note: You should write this piece last. Find directions for writing it below. Under this menu item, you should also link to Projects 1, 2, and 3.

Second Course : You can leave this section alone this term. You'll have a chance to take it up in your First-Year Seminar.

Reflection:  You will use this page frequently this term during in-class reflection activities.

Drafting the Reflection - Writing Knowledge and Strategies

Review the feedback you received in this course; read what your peers said about your work and  the feedback you received from me on Projects 1 and 2 and on the early draft of Project 3. Take a moment to think about what they say about your learning this term.  Then, make a list of the writing knowledge and strategies your work in the term helped you create, revise, or formalize . This list might cover drafting processes that you plan to use in the future, definitions of written genres, theories of communication, or a host of other topics.

Then, choose a  piece of writing knowledge or a strategy from that list, and  examine the projects in your portfolio and the reflective posts you’ve completed during the term for evidence that you made use of it.

In a single area of the Portfolio website, record your list and, below that, write a ~900 word essay making the case that your chosen idea or strategy productively informed at least one piece of work in the course, citing evidence from the projects, feedback, or reflective posts. Think of these as your archive, the place you would find evidence to support claims about your learning process.

Sharing the Portfolio 

I'll ask you to upload your portfolio URL to this assignment page at any time before the end of the class. If you adopt password protection to make some parts of your site more private, please submit that password as a comment to this assignment once you've submitted your URL. [note that you have to be viewing your site rather than editing it to get a clean URL.]

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60 Reflective Essay and Final Portfolio Assignment Guidelines

Writing a Reflective Essay

Introduction:

Congratulations—you’ve nearly made it to the end of the semester! For the past several months, you’ve worked diligently on your topic for community change, all the way from identifying a community to which you belong to taking action on an issue you see in a community by writing a proposal and sending out a call-to-action letter. This last writing assignment and portfolio will give you an opportunity to reflect on all of these experiences.  

What is reflective writing?

The University of New South Wales ( https://student.unsw.edu.au/reflective-writing ) provides a valuable overview of what reflective writing is and is not:

Reflective writing is:

• documenting your response to experiences, opinions, events or new information
• communicating your response to thoughts and feelings
• a way of exploring your learning
• an opportunity to gain self-knowledge
• a way to achieve clarity and better understanding of what you are learning
• a chance to develop and reinforce writing skills
• a way of making meaning out of what you study

Reflective writing is not:

• just conveying information, instruction or argument
• pure description, though there may be descriptive elements
• straightforward decision or judgement, e.g. about whether something is right or wrong, good or bad
• simple problem-solving
• a summary of course notes
• a standard college essay

You may also want to visit the UNSW Reflective Writing webpage , as it provides helpful tips for writing reflectively as well as some examples of different types of reflective writing.

How should you organize your reflective essay?

Because reflective essays are entirely subjective, there is no single organizational method. However, The Norton Field Guide to Writing, 5th ed . offers two helpful suggestions for structuring your essay. Feel free to use either organizational plan:

Organizational Plan #1

Organizational Plan #2

Assignment :

Part 1: Reflective Essay

Write a 2 to 3-page (about 500 to 750 word) double-spaced reflective essay that tracks your journey with your topic for community change. In developing your reflection, you will want to review the various assignments you completed during the semester, specifically:

• Multimodal Personal Narrative
• Topic Proposal
• Image Analysis Essay
• Synthesis Essay
• Summaries of 8 Sources
• Proposal Argument
• Call-to-action letter

It may also be helpful for you to consider the following questions:

• How does your topic relate to your personal values or to what is right?
• How did you wrestle or grapple with this topic?
• What were some obstacles to overcome?
• What were high points?
• How have your thoughts about this topic deepened or progressed?
• How will you use the skills you acquired this semester in other classes or outside of class?

Additional Requirements :

• Your essay should be cohesive with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
• Use specific examples (from readings, assignments, discussions, etc.) to support your claims.
• Format your paper according to MLA conventions (Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced, etc.).
• Give your paper a title.

Part 2: Portfolio

As part of your final project, you will compile a portfolio of your major writing assignments in one Word doc, which means that you will need to cut/paste clean versions (without my grading/notes) of each of your final papers & rough drafts into one new document. The first page of this document will contain a Title Page; page 2 will comprise a Table of Contents (with page numbers). On page 3, you will include your Reflective Essay. After the Reflective Essay, you will include the final versions of your major writing assignments and the rough drafts. NOTE: You are required to revise at least one of these writing assignments and address this revision process in your Reflective Essay. You can choose which writing assignment you revise; in some cases, this may be a writing assignment you revised earlier in the semester for a higher grade.

Your portfolio must contain the following (in this order):

• English 101-XX [Section number]
• Composition Portfolio
• Reflective Essay Final: “Your Title,” page XX
• Reflective Essay Rough Draft, “Your Title, page XX
• Multimodal Personal Narrative Final: “Your Title,” page XX
• Multimodal Personal Narrative Rough Draft: “Your Title,” page XX
• Image Analysis Essay Final, “Your Title,” page XX
• Image Analysis Essay Rough Draft, “Your Title,” page XX
• Synthesis Essay Final, “Your Title,” page XX
• Synthesis Essay Rough Draft, “Your Title,” page XX
• Summaries of 8 Sources, page XX
• Proposal Argument Final, “Your Title,” page XX
• Proposal Argument Rough Draft, “Your Title,” page XX
• Call-to-action Letter Final, page XX
• Call-to-action Letter Rough Draft, page XX
• Reflective Essay – Final Version
• Reflective Essay – Rough Draft
• Multimodal Essay Final Version
• Multimodal Essay Rough Draft
• Image Analysis Final Version
• Image Analysis Rough Draft  
• Synthesis Essay Final Version
• Synthesis Essay Rough Draft
• Proposal Argument Final Version
• Proposal Argument Rough Draft
• Call-to-action letter Final Version
• Call-to-action letter Rough Draft

Writing for Community Change: An Instructor Guide Copyright © 2024 by Lewis-Clark State College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Examples of Reflective portfolios This page is part of the collection 'Example pages - QMplus Hub'.

• Print Print
• Independent Study Project  Alina's portfolio displays her presentation slides, action plan, essay plan, reflections on her first draft and annotated refs. She is using the pdf, text and comments blocks.
• Sustainable Tourism  Here is an example of using a portfolio page to scaffold writing essays. The portfolio page can be used to help students display their evolving essay title, plan their essay in the form of an essay outline, add reading notes as they are conducting research and continue to add references to their growing list of bibliography. In this examples, the following artefacts are used: text, images, videos, downloadable files)
• Reflective essay - First semester of the Certificate in Clinical Foundation Studies . Rawan's portfolio displays her essay, timed writing, reflections from her first semester, references and powerpoint slides. She makes use of text, images and downloadable files on her page.
• Group reflections  This is an example of how multiple students reflections can be displayed on the same page which can be useful for team projects.
• Rewrite practice essay
• Placement evidence
• Evidence Portfolio - Placement Module
• Nan's Portfolio - Reflective tasks, first and final essay drafts with annotation
• Ezgi's Portfolio - CV, reflective tasks, annotated essay drafts

  PGCAP Student examples: Reflective Portfolio

• Elena Doldor  - Business & management
• Jessie Holman  - Law
• Claudia Leitner  - Medicine & Dentistry
• Previous portfolios - Group
• Gabor Durko 2015  (very good)

Student eportfolio training

• Finlay's Microteaching Journal - Use of journal entry but poor use of layout
• Sameerah's weekly reflective journals -  wk4 - good commitment but poor use of layout

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External feed (bbc) rss.

BBC News - Family & Education

'I lost two years of income when my son had to miss school'

School week change bid faces further questions, second-hand bedding a hit at st andrews university, external media.

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NMC Portfolio

• The NMC Portfolio
• What is a portfolio?
• Short Answer:
• Long Answer
• Why Keep a Portfolio?
• Long Answer:
• How is the Portfolio Organized?
• The Educated Citizen
• The Educated Citizen Core Curriculum
• Professional Objectives
• Personal Goals
• NMC Requirements
• Associate's Degree Students
• Bachelor's Degree Students
• Special Programs

Reflection: The step that makes a portfolio more than just a collection of work

How to write a reflection, the long answer:, questions asked in reflection, the short answer, step one: select the objective,  step two: select the degree to which you have met the objective,  step three: what did you learn, step four: consider the objective again, thoughts on reflection:.

• Examples of Reflection
• Change Agent Reflection (Level Two): WEAK EXAMPLE
• Change Agent Reflection (Level Two): STRONG EXAMPLE
•   1  
• |   2  
• |   3  
• |   4  
• |   5  

As you move through your education, experiences will begin to present themselves that cause you to reconsider your perspective, change your mind, or deepen your understanding.  As these experiences occur, you will want to record them in your portfolio for future reference.

This step is essential to the development of a learning portfolio. Your portfolio is not just a file drawer of papers and assignments; it is a place to record not just what you did, but also what you learned from it, how it fits in the context of your education, and how you think you'll use the experience in the future.

If you have a paper portfolio, the paper that your reflections are recorded on is called a "cover sheet"  If you are using an electronic portfolio, you will record your reflections in the "comments" area of each artifact you load to the ePortfolio.

To record an experience in your portfolio, follow the steps below:

Quite simply, reflection is the process of asking yourself, "What happened?" "Why did it happen?" and "What do I want to happen next time?"  It is a process you frequently use without thinking about it.  For example: You are stuck in traffic.  You realize that this road has been congested the last two times you drove on it  at this time.  You make a decision to try an alternate route next time you need to go this direction at this time of day.  Related to school it might look something like this: You take your first exam in a class and don't do as well as you had hoped.  You realize that you spent more time memorizing minor parts than understanding how the information fit together.  For the next test you prepare by focusing on the broader systems. 

While these examples are rather simple, one goal of the portfolio is to further develop and support the skills necessary to be a reflective practitioner.  We know that experts in a field know what questions to ask when faced with a new situation.  They know these questions because they have practiced asking questions related to their field and developed a depth of knowledge that the novice does not have.  They also begin to see patterns in the information and from those patterns can draw conclusions.  Though everyone must begin at the novice level in a new discipline, we can build the skills of awareness, inquisitiveness, and reflection that are universally useful to becoming an expert.

Whether you complete an electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) or paper portfolio, you will collect evidence (artifacts) of your progress toward meeting specific objectives.  One artifact may fit under more than one goal or objective (e.g. A paper may fit under the Effective Communicator for your writing skills and a Change Agent objective for how you accessed resources).  The goals are the Reflective Individual, the Effective Communicator and the Change Agent. The objectives are listed in the section "How is the Portfolio Organized?" Select one objective for each reflection.

Once you identify the artifact, your reflection may benefit from you rating the skill level that the learning experience demonstrates. In some ePortfolios, for example, there are even pre-stated categories of development to select: beginning, developing, competent, and advanced .

This is an opportunity for you to think about your progress toward proficiency in this objective.  Would you consider this artifact to be evidence of just beginning to understand the objective, or does this artifact demonstrate a more advanced proficiency?  This is a subjective rating scale and you may find yourself selecting numbers in non-sequential order as you progress through your education.  This may take just a few sentences or a paragraph.

The second part of your reflection is an opportunity to summarize what you learned from constructing this artifact.  This should not be a summary of the project/assignment/experience itself, but a reflection on what all you learned from the process.  For example, if you submit a paper that you wrote for class, you might begin by expressing how you approached writing the paper.  Did you review the paper requirements?  Conduct research? Ask for help?  What is the role of the writer?  Do you feel you met that goal?  How did you determine when the paper was "done"?  What practices did you employ that you want to retain for the next written assignment?  Are there any new skills you want to develop?  This portion of the reflection should be one or two paragraphs.

Once you have thought about how you approached the artifact and what you learned from it, put the artifact in a larger context.  How does this experience remind you of other experiences you have had?  How does this experience contribute to the development of the Educated Citizen Core Curriculum objectives?  What does it contribute to your education?  Do you have goals tied to this objective?  How might you accomplish those goals?  These are broad questions and may be difficult to answer.  In fact, you may list more questions than answers in this part!  This should be one or two paragraphs as well

John Dewey, the American philosopher and reformer of education, once stated,

Reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome because it involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance.  Reflective thinking, in short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry; and suspense is likely to be somewhat painful…To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry – these are the essentials of thinking. (Zubizarreta, 2004, p.8) 

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The Portfolio – Culminating Activity (Your Final)

Portfolio assignment.

EN 111 Final Portfolio

The portfolio is a selection of work that demonstrates your writing abilities and knowledge about writing and critical thinking at the close of EN 111. For the purposes of this class, this assignment will be considered the final.

What goes in the Portfolio?

• Title page (title + optional picture and/or quote)
• Reflective Essay (~2 pages)
• A final (2nd) draft copy of all essays completed during the semester (Experience, Compare/Contrast, Issues) and the prior drafts for all essays.
• Selected Artifacts (2-3)

You should title the portfolio in a way that captures your sense of yourself as a writer and critical thinker at this point in your educational journey. You can include a picture and/or quote on the title page as well. A quote can come from anywhere (any text, movie, lyrics, etc.) but should illustrate your perspective about writing and/or critical thinking. You will discuss the significance of your title (picture and quote too if you included them) in your Reflective Essay.

Reflective Essay for Portfolio

The Reflective Essay is a self-assessment that examines the entire body of your work (all of your writing up to this point) rather than a single subject and/or inquiry thread. Your task is to examine, or reflect on , your own writing and situate your observations and interpretations within the context of our discussions about writing and critical thinking skills. The portfolio, in essence, is a presentation—a somewhat persuasive demonstration illustrating how you approached writing and critical thinking before EN 111, and how you see yourself, as a writer and thinker, now, in relation to these same abilities/skills at the close of the course.

What goes in the Reflective Essay?

This essay should be a fairly polished and focused piece of writing that supports its claims and reflections with specific evidence (i.e. cite yourself). It will run ~2 pages in length. All reflective essays should take into account the following, but not necessarily in the order presented here:

• The significance of your title (and picture and quote, if included).
• What you now understand about effective writing and how it is achieved and what the portfolio reveals about your writing and your abilities to think on paper. (Refer to your included essays and selected artifacts).
• What you now understand about writing and critical inquiry that this portfolio might not reveal. (You may understand more than your portfolio reveals).
• What the portfolio reveals about you as a writer and critical thinker at this point in your educational journey (Refer to your included essays and selected artifacts).
• What challenges you continue to face as writer and critical thinker. (What is hard for you? In what areas have you gotten stronger and more confident? What immediate goals have you set for yourself as you continue to develop as a writer and critical thinker?)
• (Optional) Discuss, document, and evaluate the extent to which you were actively engaged in this class (i.e. determine how much time/effort you put into this course and whether your writing reflects that same time/effort).

You are to include final (2nd) draft copies (at minimum) of all the essays you have written in this course. In including your essays, you will be expected to discuss why you have included them in your Reflective Essay, and explain specifically what they illustrate about you as a writer and critical thinker. As such, I recommend that you discuss how the essays reveal your analytical skills at work—your abilities to develop, examine, and communicate an informed perspective.

Selected Artifacts

I am asking you to include 2-3 artifacts from the course (or outside of EN 111) that are significant to, and reflective of, you in terms of yourself as a writer and critical thinker. You may select anything from your Informal Writing Collection (freewrites, peer exchanges, etc.), your formal writing (part of your essay(s), or parts of them as a sequence from the first draft to the final draft stage) or other texts (a particular paper or assignment from another class you found pertinent to your overall growth).

How Do I Submit It?

You should submit the portfolio, in the dropbox on the preceding page,  as a Word document or a PDF so that I may open it in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Reader.

• Portfolio Assignment. Authored by : Jason Brown. Provided by : Herkimer College. Project : AtD OER Course. License : CC BY: Attribution

Reflective writing: Portfolios and learning journals, logs and diaries

• What is reflection? Why do it?
• What does reflection involve?
• Reflective questioning
• Reflective writing for academic assessment
• Types of reflective assignments
• Differences between discursive and reflective writing
• Sources of evidence for reflective writing assignments
• Linking theory to experience
• Reflective essays
• Portfolios and learning journals, logs and diaries
• Examples of reflective writing
• Video summary
• Bibliography

On this page:

“if we take the stance that neutrality is not possible, professional practitioners need to have a clear understanding of their own values and the impact these have on their work.” Bassot,  The reflective journal

Portfolios, learning journals, logs, and diaries

A learning journal, log or diary is often an important component of a portfolio. A portfolio is a collection of evidence or proof of the student’s learning and abilities.

‘A common ingredient – sometimes a compulsory one – of a portfolio is a learning journal. If you are going to use this, remember to start it soon enough – as soon as you know that a portfolio will be demanded of you…If you keep a “Learning Log”, “Learning Journal” or “Learning Diary”, you will in fact be reflecting on or thinking about what you are learning. You will be learning by internalising your experiences – by making them more fully your own…The portfolio at its best can help to bring together your whole learning process. It adds to – even while it helps you to reflect on – your personal growth, learning and development.’

Wilson (2007) in Study Guide: Portfolios, pages 1-2

Your learning journal should not be just a description of the topics and activities covered during a class session or placement; you should include some brief background but it should be predominantly about your thoughts, feelings and experiences. This should form the core of your journal. Try to get into the habit of reflecting on your learning in all modules of your course, as well as on the learning that takes place in your life in general. You can write anything that helps you to reflect on your learning. Here are some examples of the sorts of things you may wish to write about:

• your feelings about the course and your progress
• your feelings about the lecturers and the other students
• changes in your motivation or attitude toward your learning
• your ideas about how you learn most effectively - focus on your learning preferences
• the things that challenge you; that you find difficult (and why)
• the things you find easy (and why)
• your ideas (or strategies) for tackling tasks such as essay writing and exams. You may like to set yourself some targets for these tasks
• how different areas of your study are connected
• how your study and your developing skills relate to other aspects of your life.

If you keep a journal, diary or log, make sure it is reflective. Keeping descriptive notes will not allow you to maximise learning from any experiences you have had.

If you are already engaging with a learning journal, why not take part in The Hull Employability Awards.

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What is a Portfolio?

A “portfolio” is a selection of student work that they have chosen and evaluated as their best work, or as representative of their development over time. By making students responsible for collecting, organizing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and/or reflecting on their work, portfolio assignments engage them in the learning process and afford them an opportunity to share with the instructor their own reasons for investing in the project of the course.

Portfolios are especially common in the arts and for courses in which students conduct a range of writing assignments. (“ Exam wrappers ,” increasingly common in STEM fields, might also be considered a form of portfolio.) Portfolios can be assigned for semester-long courses, or for longer term capstones like certificate programs, across a range of fields.

Why use Portfolios?

Portfolios can be assigned as an alternative to a traditional final exam or paper, and can be especially effective at meeting some or all of the following goals:

• encouraging student agency;
• generating insights into each student’s engagement in their own learning;
• prompting students to reflect on and understand understand their own development over the course;
• inspiring students to identify future goals for continued learning beyond the course;
• providing students the opportunity to select and develop work that they can use beyond the classroom, such as samples for graduate school applications or future employers.

“Portfolio culture” honors both processes and products, and encourages students to prepare materials for the job market / interviews, by encouraging a mindset of professionalism, rather than an “assignment mindset.” Portfolios encourage students to reflect on the amount of work they’ve accomplished over the course of a semester, and ideally, to learn about themselves and their own learning strategies as much as they’re learning new content/skills.

What does a Portfolio contain?

A portfolio typically includes three key components:

• Samples of student work distributed across the term
• Reflections on the work samples
• A professional re-presentation of the work samples
• Samples of Work
• Reflections
• Re-presentation

Work samples can be chosen to:

• represent the students’ best work (potentially incorporating revisions of previous work)
• display an array and/or mastery of skills, such as drawing, digital media, music, language fluency, coding, etc.
• Demonstrate growth over the course of the semester

Depending on the needs of the course, the selection might include essays, interviews, charts, inventories, diaries, tests, or artwork. These samples can vary based on content, format, length, or style of writing or research. The instructor may give specific requirements for the type of work, or it may be selected entirely by the student. For instance, for a writing class, the instructor might stipulate that the portfolio ought to include at least one persuasive piece (in which the main purpose is to agree or disagree with a public concern), and one source-based piece (in which the main purpose is to respond to a primary source).

Some portfolio assignments incorporate the requirement or opportunity to revise prior work. In some circumstances, the opportunity to incorporate instructor feedback can help reinforce learning goals and allow students to take their own work to the next level. In other circumstances, including rough drafts or early-semester work can provide the student with the opportunity to reflect on their early work from the position of greater mastery, and allow them to see their own growth over the semester.

The key self-reflexive element of a portfolio is that it contains a reflection on the work by the student: without the reflection it is just a collection of assignments. The reflection is an opportunity to convey a philosophy, methods, and goals, and identify strengths as a writer or learner.

Each piece might be accompanied by a reflection, or they can be summarized in a “Dear Reader”-style cover letter, with the artifacts as more of an appendix. This letter might contain:

• What readers can expect to encounter in the portfolio
• A rationale for the documents included
• A description of the variety of strategies / methods / theories / skills utilized in the works included
• Connections drawn between the assignments
• Connections drawn between the assignments and the content/skills of the class
• A reflection on what the student is most proud of, and why: did they experiment with new theories? Did they push themselves to try new styles or methods?
• What the student was thinking when they created the artifact, and what impact did it have on their learning? (Questions here might include: What would you do the same or differently next time? How did specific moments in the assignment help you recognize that you were making improvement or on the right track?) This kind of reflective action involves an examination of their past work and the impact that it had in order to synthesize how it might be refined for a better outcome in the future
• Evidence for how it aligns with assignment objectives or class goals
• Moments of surprise or moments corroborating earlier intuitions

Finally, portfolios usually incorporate some sort of professional presentation—what would in another context be a physical portfolio. In other words, it is not merely the resubmission of the components in their original form, but rather an intentional re-presentation of them so as to make an argument about their relationship to each other. Tangible portfolios might take the form of a binder or book; digital portfolios might be collated into a website or slideshow. There could be a visual/graphic design component that could “package,” or “brand” the material to tie it all together, and/or a table of contents, to show how the components fit together. Giving students the opportunity to create a professional package with visual / non-textual material can encourage them to connect with it on a more personal level, and which might allow them to understand their own work in new ways. The act of “publishing” their work can also give it value.

What is an Exam Wrapper?

An exam wrapper (or paper wrapper) is an activity or document that “wraps around” an exam. Similar to portfolios, they are used to enhance student metacognition and self-awareness of their own strategies for study and performance. Common questions that might be asked in an exam wrapper include:

• How did you study for this exam? What strategies did you use to prepare, and which seemed most effective?
• Did these study strategies differ from your preparation for the last exam? Did these changes effect your performance?
• On which aspects of this exam did you perform well?
• Are there patterns to your errors that you can address in future preparation?
• Name at least three things you plan to do differently in your preparation for the next exam. (For example, will you spend more time, change a study habit, or add a new skill?)

How are Portfolios Assessed?

Because of the open-ended nature of work that could be produced across portfolios, it is important to provide clarity about what is expected. Explicit instructions are necessary to avoid student uncertainty about what to include in their own portfolios. Periodic check-ins between student and instructor could alleviate student uncertainty. Students could be organized into pairs or groups, and could thought partners for students working on assembling and explaining their work.

Because of the potential variability between portfolios, a clear grading rubric is key to students understanding how their own work will be assessed. While the precise assessment scheme will depend on the course learning objectives, a rubric might include:

Selection of work

• Shows a variety of work (for example, in different genres or at different stages of drafting)
• Shows development / growth / moving up Bloom’s taxonomy
• Shows clarity / concision of writing

Reflection: demonstrates understanding of course skills

• Shows awareness of and ability to communicate development / growth

Professionalization: has an organizational structure, which is carried out consistently over the project

• Shows engagement with presentation style: includes visual or graphic components that convey a polished professional finish, an overall “brand”
• Is adapted to audience

Portfolios by definition contain individual parts that are organized into a whole, and these parts are themselves coming together at different stages of the assignment. As a result, assessment itself might take place at different stages—including lower-stakes formative feedback—with rubrics that are tailored to the individual parts and/or the final submission.

For more information...

University of Hawai’i at Mānoa: Using Portfolios in Program Assessment

The University of Arizona, Tucson: The Use of Portfolio Assessment in Evaluation

Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center, Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation: Exam Wrappers

Indiana University Bloomington, Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning: Help Students Learn to Take Exams with Exam Wrappers

J.E. Sharp, “ Using Portfolios in the Classroom .” Proceedings Frontiers in Education 27th Annual Conference. 1997.

Crystal Kwan and Camilla Kin Ming Lo, “ Evaluating the Portfolio as a Social Work Capstone Project A Case Study in Hong Kong .” Social Work Education 42, no. 1. April 2023: 145-160.

Betty McDonald, “ Portfolio Assessment: Direct from the Classroom .” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 37, no 3, May 2012, 335-347.

J. L. Ray, “ Industry-Academic Partnerships for Successful Capstone Projects .” 33rd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2003.

David R. Schachter and Deena Schwartz. “ The Value of Capstone Projects to Participating Client Agencies .” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 15:4 (2009), 445-462.

John Zubizarreta, The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning . Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Elana Michelson, Alan Mandell, eds., Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning: Perspectives, Models, and Practices . Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2004.

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Graduate program in critical and creative thinking, university of massachusetts boston, reflective practice portfolio.

A portfolio often means a showcase or a display for others of achievements, but the “Reflective Practice (and Metacognitive) Portfolio” (RPP) is designed to be a revelation of the journey that one has taken through the (MA) program. The outcome serves as a self-customized tool box and set of reminders that students intend to use in their ongoing learning and practice (including their work beyond/after CCT), embedded in a narrative. The portfolio should be created along the way of the CCT study in order to best capture your reflection close in time to the points that represent the milestones of your journey (that is, it is not recommended to wait until the end of the degree program to put together the parts all at once).  Asking students to build this kind of portfolio during their studies matches the goals of personal and professional development captured by the Program overview, excerpted below.

Requirements

The portfolio is a compilation of a set of exhibits (assignments from the courses), and an additional narrative writing that goes along with each of them. Toward this end, students should choose one specific assignment from every course taken as part of the MA (including electives taken from other graduate programs during your time of study, but excluding any courses taken prior to CCT matriculation at other institutions that were brought in as transfer credits). The section at the bottom of this page gives examples of a possible choice of assignment from many of the courses. Each course’s instructor may also recommend a specific assignment as a good option for your selected assignment. Ultimately, though, it is up to the student to choose the most appropriate assignment. This assignment is one that best illustrates a key shift or change in thinking that you experienced through that course or conveys an important insight about yourself that you want to continue to move into your own practice.

Once you select the representative assignment from a course, develop a narrative that explains why this assignment was meaningful to your development. The narrative should be 2-4 paragraphs of writing (about one double-spaced page per assignment) that shows your reflection on why that is the case, and how the writing demonstrates your thinking or assumptions. The narrative uses a metacognitive approach — is a type of “guided tour” of your thinking as you notice what you wrote previously and the significance that you find now in what you were writing about.

Note: If your selected assignment is a final paper or other lengthy work, do not submit the entire paper as the assignment. In this case, submit an excerpt of a single relevant section (or at least indicate in your narrative which section is relevant) so that the reader knows where to focus. The narrative should help to point to a moment of transition or insight that happened during the course. Even if your selected assignment is the course’s final paper, you should still try to illustrate such moments by pointing to specific points in the paper rather than refer to it as a generic whole.

Note that the above description implies that the narrative should not :

• be general commentary on the course as a whole or a broad appreciation for the course or key takeaways; that is, keep the narrative focused on the one specific selected assignment and its particular importance
• explain instructions for the assignment in detail (you can mention its purpose or goal but keep that to a sentence or two)
• merely give a summary/abstract of the content of the assignment; your narrative must go beyond what is included there. Address deeper reflection on how the assignment represents important shifts in your thinking during that period, or as part of your overall development as a reflective practitioner through the CCT program. Assume that the reader can refer to the assignment itself if they want to get into the full content.

Students are strongly encouraged to submit a sample of your ongoing portfolio no later than the mid-semester point of your final term to confirm that your work meets the requirements here.

The format for creating the portfolio is flexible. At a minimum, develop the portfolio in a way that allows you to eventually capture the entire contents as a single, standalone PDF file . You may develop the portfolio as a running document where you update the narratives after each term, and then add the selected assignments as attachments. You may also develop the portfolio as a personal web site or blog, where you set up one page on the site for each course term, and then add the narratives and attached selected assignments on that page (or similar variations).

Submit the final Reflective Practice Portfolio to [email protected] (any documents or links to your site, plus a Microsoft Word or PDF compilation of the entire contents of the portfolio)  no later than one week after the final Synthesis project has been submitted (typically during the CrCrTh 694 course). If you have remaining course requirements to fulfill after finishing CrCrTh 694, wait to submit the portfolio until all courses are finalized.

Portfolios are publicly viewable for at least one year after your graduation (and then possibly longer unless you ask for it to be removed). If your portfolio takes the form of a personal blog or web site and you prefer that this be used to view your work, it is requested that you keep this site live for (at least) one year after graduation (although the full single-file compilation is still needed). The portfolios serve as examples for future students  to help them reflect and be inspired, and so these should generally be regarded as accessible to public. It is therefore ok to be selective about what/how much you share; you may hide or redact some sections or private information within the original assignments that you don’t want to be seen by others. Portfolios are also potentially shared with UMass Boston administration in demonstrating program outcomes.

Occasional CCT orientations may use past examples of portfolios to demonstrate to incoming students how these have been constructed.

Selected Examples of Portfolios

Note: Some examples below were produced before the RPP became a formal program requirement or still in piloting stage, so content may or may not fully cover the current guidelines as students used their own distinctive approaches. Refer to the sections above for current guidelines.

Andrew Castagna Billie Charles Emily Flaherty Hans Helgeson Matthew Jose Ivy Madden Bradford O’Brien Randy Valdez April Baptiste Robertson Yin Chan Geoff Keston Annie McCluskey Erin McCoy Timothy Brian Nuryadi Cynthia Romer Evan Schapiro Russell Suereth Michael Teachey Kyle Lemstrom Cara Tuttle Nadjia Edwards Timizay Ruiz Pineda Caitlin Quarrington Casey Andrews Erik Anker ( overview | documents ) Meghan Callaghan Russell DeLuca-Kavanagh David Kooharian Rhoda Maurer Lauren Taub

Suggested Selected Assignments for Courses

(others may be substituted as appropriate)

• CrCrTh 601: Critical Thinking Manifesto, or individual Reflection Paper
• CrCrTh 602: Second Reflective Review of Diary
• CrCrTh 603: Weekly Paper or Final Paper
• CrCrTh 611: Process Review, or Final Written Plan
• CrCrTh 612: Self-Reflective Assessment, or Reflection Assignment
• CrCrTh 615: Manifesto, or Final Project
• CrCrTh 616: Final Paper or individual discussion posts
• CrCrTh 618: Plan for Practice; Critical Reflection Paper
• CrCrTh 619: Short Paper
• CrCrTh 627: Current Issues Analysis Paper
• CrCrTh 630: selection from Creative Products
• CrCrTh 640: Research Plan
• CrCrTh 645: Final Paper
• CrCrTh 649: Education Unit/Curriculum
• CrCrTh 650: selection from Creative Products
• CrCrTh 651: General Principles Journal/Summary
• CrCrTh 652: General Principles Journal/Summary
• CrCrTh 655: Plan for Classroom Implementation
• CrCrTh 670: Expert Teaching and Learning Portfolio
• CrCrTh 688: Progress Report or Plan for Practice
• CrCrTh 692: Self-assessment
• CrCrTh 693: Process Review
• CrCrTh 694: (brief) excerpts from Synthesis paper; ongoing writing exercises, or selection from the Exit Self-assessment

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What Is Reflective Portfolio? How does It Differ from Other Academic Assignments?

What are parts of the reflective portfolio, how to write a great reflective portfolio.

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Most of the students have never received a task to write a reflective portfolio. So for some of you, this assignment is weird and hard to complete. However, the tasks are not as difficult as it may seem.

The reflective portfolio is a portfolio where students need to explore and comprehend their own learning methods, personal opinions, and points of view. In this kind of writing assignments, students describe their objective view on the work they have completed and skills they have developed. To write reflective portfolio successfully, the one needs to show true engagement with the subject. Visiting classes and passing exams are not enough.

Please keep in mind that content of your portfolio may vary according to instructions and discipline. However, there are some basic elements such as:

• Examples of your work: photos (if you are studying photography); artworks (for artists); lesson plans (teachers); etc. The main thing here is to add materials that will show your practical experience.
• Journals: usually, students are required to write an informal journal during their practical work. The content of journal should be the following: summary of completed tasks, results, and list of skills a student has developed during practical work. It is a good idea to add a few examples of challenging situations you have solved.
• Reports: write a short summary of the situation that improved the learning process. It can be both positive and negative experience with a strong possibility to enhance your professional skills.
• Achievements: describe everything you achieve during practical work and add some valid evidence.
• Personal Statement: in this part of the reflective portfolio, a student can summarize all conclusions and achievements, describe how this experience changes his/her professional skills.
• This portfolio is reflective, but you should not forget about the critical analysis of everything you describe.
• Add enough good examples of work you have completed during your practical experience. You may even outline one or two moments but they have to be connected to your overall experience.
• Don’t be afraid to describe problematic moments. Everyone makes mistakes, so show what lessons you have learned.
• Create a plan for the future development where you’ll describe your action plan.
• Make sure your portfolio looks professionally and well-organized. Also, keep in mind that reflective portfolio can be written in semi-formal writing style. However, this does not mean it can be poorly organized.

Remember, that writing a reflective portfolio is still academic assignment, so all normal rules and tips can be applied when writing portfolio.

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Structure of academic reflections

Guidance on the structure of academic reflections.

Academic reflections or reflective writing completed for assessment often require a clear structure. Contrary to some people’s belief, reflection is not just a personal diary talking about your day and your feelings.

Both the language and the structure are important for academic reflective writing. For the structure you want to mirror an academic essay closely. You want an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion.

Academic reflection will require you to both describe the context, analyse it, and make conclusions. However, there is not one set of rules for the proportion of your reflection that should be spent describing the context, and what proportion should be spent on analysing and concluding. That being said, as learning tends to happen when analysing and synthesising rather than describing, a good rule of thumb is to describe just enough such that the reader understands your context.

Example structure for academic reflections

Below is an example of how you might structure an academic reflection if you were given no other guidance and what each section might contain.  Remember this is only a suggestion and you must consider what is appropriate for the task at hand and for you yourself.

Introduction

Identifies and introduces your experience or learning

• This can be a critical incident
• This can be the reflective prompt you were given
• A particular learning you have gained

When structuring your academic reflections it might make sense to start with what you have learned and then use the main body to evidence that learning, using specific experiences and events. Alternatively, start with the event and build up your argument. This is a question of personal preference – if you aren’t given explicit guidance you can ask the assessor if they have a preference, however both can work.

Highlights why it was important

• This can be suggesting why this event was important for the learning you gained
• This can be why the learning you gained will benefit you or why you appreciate it in your context

You might find that it is not natural to highlight the importance of an event before you have developed your argument for what you gained from it. It can be okay not to explicitly state the importance in the introduction, but leave it to develop throughout your reflection.

Outline key themes that will appear in the reflection (optional – but particularly relevant when answering a reflective prompt or essay)

• This can be an introduction to your argument, introducing the elements that you will explore, or that builds to the learning you have already gained.

This might not make sense if you are reflecting on a particular experience, but is extremely valuable if you are answering a reflective prompt or writing an essay that includes multiple learning points. A type of prompt or question that could particularly benefit from this would be ‘Reflect on how the skills and theory within this course have helped you meet the benchmark statements of your degree’

It can be helpful to explore one theme/learning per paragraph.

Explore experiences

• You should highlight and explore the experience you introduced in the introduction
• If you are building toward answering a reflective prompt, explore each relevant experience.

As reflection is centred around an individual’s personal experience, it is very important to make experiences a main component of reflection. This does not mean that the majority of the reflective piece should be on describing an event – in fact you should only describe enough such that the reader can follow your analysis.

Analyse and synthesise

• You should analyse each of your experiences and from them synthesise new learning

Depending on the requirements of the assessment, you may need to use theoretical literature in your analysis. Theoretical literature is a part of perspective taking which is relevant for reflection, and will happen as a part of your analysis.  

Restate or state your learning

• Make a conclusion based on your analysis and synthesis.
• If you have many themes in your reflection, it can be helpful to restate them here.

Plan for the future

• Highlight and discuss how your new-found learnings will influence your future practice

Answer the question or prompt (if applicable)

• If you are answering an essay question or reflective prompt, make sure that your conclusion provides a succinct response using your main body as evidence.  

Using a reflective model to structure academic reflections

You might recognise that most reflective models mirror this structure; that is why a lot of the reflective models can be really useful to structure reflective assignments. Models are naturally structured to focus on a single experience – if the assignment requires you to focus on multiple experiences, it can be helpful to simply repeat each step of a model for each experience.

One difference between the structure of reflective writing and the structure of models is that sometimes you may choose to present your learning in the introduction of a piece of writing, whereas models (given that they support working through the reflective process) will have learning appearing at later stages.

However, generally structuring a piece of academic writing around a reflective model will ensure that it involves the correct components, reads coherently and logically, as well as having an appropriate structure.

Reflective journals/diaries/blogs and other pieces of assessed reflection

The example structure above works particularly well for formal assignments such as reflective essays and reports.  Reflective journal/blogs and other pieces of assessed reflections tend to be less formal both in language and structure, however you can easily adapt the structure for journals and other reflective assignments if you find that helpful.

That is, if you are asked to produce a reflective journal with multiple entries it will most often (always check with the person who issued the assignment) be a successful journal if each entry mirrors the structure above and the language highlighted in the section on academic language. However, often you can be less concerned with form when producing reflective journals/diaries.

When producing reflective journals, it is often okay to include your original reflection as long as you are comfortable with sharing the content with others, and that the information included is not too personal for an assessor to read.

Developed from:

Ryan, M., 2011. Improving reflective writing in higher education: a social semiotic perspective. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(1), 99-111.

University of Portsmouth, Department for Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (date unavailable). Reflective Writing: a basic introduction [online].  Portsmouth: University of Portsmouth.

Queen Margaret University, Effective Learning Service (date unavailable).  Reflection. [online].  Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University.

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• > Building Your Portfolio
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Book contents

• Frontmatter
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction and getting started
• 2 Assessment criteria
• 3 Working with a mentor
• 4 Reflective writing
• 5 The curriculum vitae
• 6 The Professional Knowledge and Skills Base
• 7 Evaluative statements
• 8 Supporting evidence
• 9 The final steps
• Bibliography and references

4 - Reflective writing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

What is reflective writing?

Reflective writing is the formal or informal recording of your thoughts. Reflective practice requires that you learn from your practical professional experience (Booth and Brice, 2004). So first we have to learn to reflect on our learning and professional practice, and then we have to become accustomed to recording that reflection in writing. By recording the reflection we formalize the process and have a record of our development.

If you Google ‘reflective writing’ you will find many useful and interesting ideas to help you get started. Remember that your thoughts and therefore the recording of those thoughts are personal to you and different from the more academic writing that you may be more used to.

Many of us find it difficult to write reflectively; like most skills, though, the more practice you have, the easier it becomes.

Reflective practice

Those of you who are fans of Harry Potter will remember a wonderful magical object that Albus Dumbledore owned called the pensieve. Professor Dumbledore could place memories into this stone basin and then relive them, taking Harry with him so he could learn from those memories. This is a good example of reflection and underscores the importance of learning from experience. It is not sufficient to just have an experience; reflect on that experience and evaluate it, and then apply that knowledge to another experience or activity. Deep and sustained learning – becoming able to do something you could not do before – only comes through experience, but experience on its own is not enough. Experience needs to be reflected on and made sense of to create knowledge, and this knowledge deepened when it is applied in fresh situations (Thomson, 2006).

So before reflective writing comes reflection. As part of your CPD you should try to get into the habit of being reflective – thinking about the task you have just performed, the course you have been on, the discussion you have just had at work, the article you have just read, and so on. Any activity that is part of your working life should be reflected on, and lessons learned. Keith Trickey reveals later in this chapter that reflection can also become a part of your personal development as well as your professional development.

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• Reflective writing
• Kath Owen , Margaret Watson
• Book: Building Your Portfolio
• Online publication: 08 June 2018
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.29085/9781783300723.005

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13 Reflection and Portfolios

The final assignment in your English course will include a reflective essay in which you describe your growth as a writer over the course of the semester. This activity of reflecting on your growth and performance is what is called a metacognitive activity: one in which you think and write about your learning.

Writing a formal reflective essay may be a new thing for you, so this chapter will provide an overview of why we write reflections on our learning and how to approach a reflection assignment.

Student reflection about their thinking is such a crucial part of the learning process. You have come to this course with your own writing goals. Now is a good time to think back on your writing practices with reflective writing, also called metacognitive writing. Reflective writing helps you think through and develop your intentions as a writer. Leveraging reflective writing also creates learning habits that extend to any discipline of learning. It’s a set of procedures that helps you step back from the work you have done and ask a series of questions: Is this really what I wanted to do?  Is this really what I wanted to say? Is this the best way to communicate my intentions? Reflective writing helps you authenticate your intentions and start identifying places where you either hit the target or miss the mark. You may find, also, that when you communicate your struggles, you can ask others for help! Reflective writing helps you trace and articulate the patterns you have developed, and it fosters independence from relying too heavily on an instructor to tell you what you are doing.

Reflective Learning

Reflective thinking is a powerful learning tool. As we have seen throughout this course, proficient readers are reflective readers, constantly stepping back from the learning process to think about their reading. They understand that just as they need to activate prior knowledge at the beginning of a learning task and monitor their progress as they learn, they also need to make time during learning as well as at the end of learning to think about their learning process, to recognize what they have accomplished, how they have accomplished it, and set goals for future learning. This process of “thinking about thinking” is called metacognition. When we think about our thinking—articulating what we now know and how we came to know it—we close the loop in the learning process.

How do we engage in a reflection? Educator Peter Pappas modified Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning to focus on reflection:

This “taxonomy of reflection” provides a structure for metacognition.  Educator Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has modified Pappas’s taxonomy into a pyramid and expanded upon his  reflection questions:

By making reflection a key component of our work, students realize that learning is not always about facts and details. Rather, learning is about discovery.

How is reflective writing in the academic setting different from journaling or writing in a diary?

If you write in a diary or a journal, recording your thoughts and feelings about what has happened in your life, you are certainly engaging in the act of reflection. Many of us have some experience with this type of writing. In our diaries, journals, or other informal spaces for speaking – or writing- our mind,  write to ourselves, for ourselves, in a space that will largely remain private.

Your reflection essay for college courses will contain some of those same features:

• The subject of the reflective essay is you and your experiences
• You can generally use the first person in a reflective essay

But writing academic reflections, like the one that is due for the English 100/101 portfolio assignment, is a bit different from journaling or keeping a diary:

What can be gained from metacognitive activities that ask you to reflect on your learning and your performance as a writer?

One of the major goals in any First-Year Writing class is to encourage students’ growth as writers. No one is expected to be a perfect writer at the end of the semester. Your instructor’s hope, however, is that after 16 weeks of reading, writing, and revising several major essays, you are more confident, capable, and aware of yourself as a writer than you were at the beginning of the semester. Reflecting on the process that you go through as you write – even if your writing is not perfect – can help you to identify the behaviors, strategies, and resources that have helped you to be successful or that could support your future success. In short, reflecting on how you write (or how you have written during a particular semester) can be quite powerful in helping you to identify areas where you have grown and areas where you still have room for more growth.

How can I write a reflective essay?

As with any essay, a reflective essay should come with its own assignment sheet. On that assignment sheet, you should be able to identify what the purpose of the reflective essay is and what the scope of the reflection needs to be. Some key elements of the reflective essay that the assignment sheet should answer are:

• What, exactly, the scope of the reflection is. Are you reflecting on one lesson, one assignment, or the whole semester?
• Do you have detailed guidelines, resources, or reference documents for your reflections that must be met?
• Is there a particular structure for the reflection?
• Should the reflection include any outside resources?

If you are struggling to find the answers to these questions, ask your professor!

Another wonderful resource for writing a reflective essay comes from  Writing Commons , in the article  “Writing an Academic Reflection Essay” . This article offers great information about the following:

• What it means to be “academic” or “critical” and at the same time personal and reflective
• How you can achieve focus in a reflective essay
• What “evidence” is in a reflective essay

Prior Learning

Fast and well-traveled roads may make for a quicker trip, but they also miss the nuance and beauty of the scenic route. For some, the long way around is just worth it. The adventures, mishaps, connections, and coincidences that happen along the way are a teacher like no other.

If this sounds familiar to you when you think about your journey in education, then this textbook is for you. Let’s take another look at those years of experiential learning along the scenic route: your work, travel, volunteering, community involvement, entrepreneurship, and whatever else you’ve explored while not in the traditional classroom setting.

Let’s reconsider that experience as Prior Learning, and dig in to see what you’ve learned on the way.

The portfolio is composed of an assortment of documents and artifacts demonstrating previous college-level learning.

• Examines your personal motivations and educational goals in the context of learning and how you will achieve them.
• This portion should address each course objective found on the course syllabus, and demonstrate that you have mastered the objectives. Showcase how your learning applies to the objectives for a specific course.
• You will need to supply documentation to support the narrative.
• Documentation is as individual as the learner, and it may include items such as sample work products, training certificates, workplace evaluations, letters of recommendation, and/or photographs.

The Educational Narrative is asking for a very specific thing from you so that your reviewers can understand the learning you’ve done and relate it to the course you’re challenging.

What is that thing it’s asking for?

A story . Several stories, actually.

The word Narrative means “story,” of course, so this component is asking you to tell the story of your learning. To tell that story, you’ll need to have several examples that clearly demonstrate your expertise with the course’s subject matter. And these examples need to be  specific . Here’s why:

In creative writing, teachers often say that the universe is in the specific. The more detailed the description, the better the reader can visualize the characters and scene. Take, for example, this line:

We got dressed up and went to the concert.

Who are they? What’d they wear? How old were they? What kind of concert was it? Who was playing? None of that is apparent, so every reader sees something different.

But what if that line was written like:

We teased our hair to the ceilings, doused it in White Rain, snapped on spandex and pleather. We tore out of the suburbs, left a mile-long streak of rubber on our way to go see Twisted Sister at CBGB’s.

Now can you see it? From the first description, it could’ve also easily been a black-tie evening at the Philharmonic, or a 7th Grade Band Concert, or… It’s the specifics that make the example come alive.

That’s  your task in the Educational Narrative.

Though, of course, you’ll be writing about your class experiences and not an 80s hair band (unless you are drawing connections from when you were a member of an 80s hair band…).

ATTRIBUTIONS

• Content Adapted from Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2020).  Excelsior College. Retrieved from https://owl.excelsior.edu/ licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .
• Content Adapted from Composition II. Authored by : Alexis McMillan-Clifton.  Provided by : Tacoma Community College.  Located at :  http://www.tacomacc.edu .
• Reflection.  Authored by : Daryl Smith O’Hare.  Provided by : Chadron State College.  Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative.  License :  CC BY: Attribution
• Image of woman against wall.  Authored by : VisualAge.  Located at :  https://flic.kr/p/CScnK .  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Content Adapted from Composition II.  Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington, Ph.D..  Provided by : Chadron State College.  Located at :  http://www.csc.edu/ .  Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative.  License :  CC BY: Attribution
• Image of Taxonomy.  Authored by : Peter Pappas.  Located at :  http://www.peterpappas.com/images/2011/08/taxonomy-of-reflection.png .  Project : Copy/Paste.  License :  CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• Content Adapted from   A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing  by Emilie Zickel is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License ,
• Image of pyramid.  Authored by : Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano.  Located at :  http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/06/20/reflectu00adreflectingu00adreflection/ .  License :  CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Content Adapted from Prior Learning Portfolio Development  by Baker Lawley is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

English 101: Journey Into Open Copyright © 2021 by Christine Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5 Documenting Your Learning and Personal Growth: Critical Reflection

One key aspect of a portfolio is reflective expression. According to Carole Rodgers, “Reflection is a meaning-making process that moves a learner from one experience into the next with a deeper understanding of its relationship with and connections to other experiences and ideas. It is the thread that makes continuity of learning possible.” While the resume and curriculum vitae show what you have done, a reflection shows what you think about what you have done. It allows you to demonstrate thought, and process and document personal growth.

“Reflecting means being intentionally thoughtful about defining an experience, explaining that experience, and determining future implications and actions,” according to Parkes, Dredger, and Hickes.  Reflection most often takes the form of writing, but it can also include video or audio reflections.  Reflection should take place throughout the portfolio and it “reaches its full potential” when it becomes progressive in that each reflection builds on the others.  It is woven into the about me and is an important part of the gallery of artifacts.

Guiding Principles of Reflection

Carole Rogers suggests there are several guiding principles of reflection and at the heart of these are meaning-making, systematic thinking, and personal growth.

• Meaning Making: Reflection is a meaning-making process that moves a learner from one experience into the next with deeper understanding of its relationships with and connections to other experiences and ideas.
• Systematic Thinking: Reflection is a systematic, rigorous, disciplined way of thinking.
• Focused on Personal Growth: Reflection requires attitudes that value personal and intellectual growth. 

Now that you know the role of reflection in a portfolio and that it is made up of meaning-making, systematic thinking, and personal growth, let’s look at several ways to get started with writing your reflection.

The Importance of Audience and Purpose

As with all writing, you should have a clear sense of purpose and audience. For example, “I am writing these portfolio reflections to be read by future employers for the purpose of getting a job in the field of marketing” or “I am writing these portfolio reflections to be read by the admittance committee for the purpose of getting accepted into graduate school.” Finally, your purpose may be, “I am writing these reflections as a way to help me better understand my skills so I can visualize a variety of paths in my future.” It is likely that your portfolio will have multiple audiences and you should proceed keeping those audiences in mind. As Gallagher and Poklop suggest, students should consider “inviting different readers to have different experiences of the portfolio by offering them guidance in how to understand, experience, and interact with the portfolio.”

Let’s look at one model of using critical reflection referred to as the what, so what, and now what reflection, also called the Driscoll Cycle. I will explain the cycle, share with you question prompts, offer a video review of the cycle, and then an example of what the cycle looks like when applied.

Critical Reflection Using the Three Step Model

The Driscoll Cycle of Reflection includes three very basic steps:

• What? Describe what happened.
• So What? Analyze the event.
• Now what? Anticipate future practice based on what you learned.

Let’s break them down one at a time.

In the “what” stage, you should recall what you did and write about it as objectively as possible. Just the facts. 

• What happened?
• What is your artifact? Name and describe it.
• What context/background information is important or relevant to your audience?
• What happened in a particular situation? What did you do? What were the results?
• How much did you know about the subject before we started?
• What process did you go through to produce this piece or complete this project/activity?
• What problems did you encounter while you were working on this project/activity? How did you solve them?
• What were the challenges?
• What were powerful learning moments?

Let’s look at an example from a student portfolio. Kaitlyn LaMaster answered the “what” step this way.

Undertaking the task of writing a paper on the “Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Paralysis from Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)” was an enormous challenge that tested my critical thinking and organizational skills. My neurobiology professor had challenged us to select a topic that interested us, dive into the relevant scientific journals, analyze the findings, and produce a final product of professional quality. Despite feeling overwhelmed, I approached the task step by step, reading one journal after the other, and using my available resources to help me prepare. After numerous drafts and revisions, I submitted the paper, and it earned me an A grade, which reinforced my dedication and hard work.

In the “so what” step, you begin to look for patterns and for what it means. You are talking about moments of significance. Your goal is to write about why this encounter or assignment matters to you.

• What insights did you gain from the project or assignment?
• What are your feelings about this?
• How does what you learned relate to your education or career aspirations?
• What did you learn about yourself from this?
• How does this connect to other skills, experiences, or knowledge?
• What was important about the situation?
• How did you apply course concepts?
• What skills did you use or acquire?
• How did you overcome barriers or challenges?
• What part are you most proud of? Why?
• What would you do differently?
• How was your experience different from what you expected?
• What is the most important thing you learned personally during this project/activity?
• How do you feel about this project/activity?
• What were your goals for this project/activity? Did your goals change as you worked on it? Did you meet your goals?
• What does this project/activity reveal about you as a learner?
• How does this project/activity link to previous experiences/knowledge?
• In what ways did this change how you looked at this subject/topic?
• What did you learn about yourself while working on this?
• What moments are you most proud of your efforts/involvement?
• In what ways have you improved at this kind of work?
• In what ways do you think you need to improve?

Kaitlyn LaMaster answered the “so what” step this way.

This experience taught me invaluable lessons about preparation and organization, which I can apply to any other aspect of life, including sales. I not only researched my topic but also familiarized myself with the best practices for writing a paper of that size. This helped me discover useful resources and applications that aided me in keeping track of the vast amount of information I needed to read, summarize, and cite. With these skills, I could effectively manage dozens of articles, citations, photographs, and other sources, leading to the success of my paper.

In the “now what” step, you will write about what you will do next.

• How will this influence the way you approach future projects or endeavors?
• How have you changed or grown because of this experience?
• What will change as a result of this?
• What would you like to learn more about?
• What are you going to do as a result?
• What did this experience teach you?
• How will you apply what you learned from your experience?
• What would you like to learn more about, related to this project or issue?
• What is the impact on others from your project?
• How does this advance the understanding of the topic?
• What is one thing you want people to notice when they look at your work?

Kaitlyn LaMaster answered the “now what” step this way.

Through this experience, I realized the importance of being organized and prepared, and I know this will be an asset in any career, including sales. It has taught me the value of breaking down complex tasks into manageable steps, using available resources, and being organized in managing information, all essential skills in a sales position.

As with all writing, you should have an engaging opening sentence, a clear thesis, and an interesting closing sentence. In essence, each of your reflections should follow this five-step process.

Now that you know the process, let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

Examples of Using the What, So What, Now What for Study Abroad Reflections

Xavier Smith, Career Counselor at the University of Arkansas helps students write about their experiences while studying abroad. Here is his advice and an example.

How can you explain your story in your portfolio?  A helpful method in describing your story is a technique called “What? So what? Now what?”  “What” calls for you to explain what took place in your involvement or what you noticed.  “So what?” calls for you to connect the relevance of it. What was the impact? Discuss any themes, skills, or lessons that were learned. Lastly, describe the “now what”. “Now what” calls for you to describe how you will use the new skills, experience, or insight in future endeavors.

“While studying abroad in Belize, I collaborated with 10 classmates to coordinate rural health clinics in villages in Belize. My classmates and I performed basic diagnostic tests such as the hip-waist test and blood-glucose readings.”

“Because the village was removed from the city, the locals had limited access to health assessments. I was able to connect with the locals and help work towards better overall community health. The experience allowed me to learn culturally competent communication. It was important that I meet the locals where they were to be able to connect with them. Additionally, I learned how to organize a health clinic and collaborate with local community leaders to be able to build rapport with the community.”

“The project informed me of the importance of actively listening to the people I am working with instead of trying to impose my values on them. As a career counselor, I am learning how to listen to the experiences of others and help them discover their unique path. Because of my time in Belize, I am extremely considerate of the perspectives and culture that people bring with them to any space. I intend to continue to grow in understanding through active listening to maximize the efforts of the students.”

Check out Xavier’s Portfolio to see how he uses the “what”, “who what,” “now what” in other examples. 

After viewing Xavier’s portfolio, answer these questions:

• Which of the “now what’s” resonated with you?
• How might an employer view his experience studying abroad?
• In what ways did the photos enhance the message?

Can You Identify the What, So What, Now What Parts?

Look at this post from Sydney Maples and see if you can identify the what, so what, and now what parts of this reflection.

The “Empathy” Study: A Virtual Exploration of Homelessness

“While I worked as a programmer in Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (the campus virtual reality lab), we received a grant to work on an Empathy-based study in virtual reality. I, along with another person within the lab, spent the summer creating a study that immersed participants in a virtual world in which they were homeless on the streets. This in itself required some aspect of science communication, as we both worked on separate components of the study and ultimately tied each component together — which required a lot of justification and debate over best programming practices for the study. I also worked on this study when I was still fairly new to programming, and while most of the knowledge was self-contained within the platform, working on a team to create something so important was part of what got me interested in science communication so early on. It was a wonderful blend of mediums (from video game engines to the Oculus Rift), and watching my programs being used in social psychology studies on participants – including demonstrations at nearby events – was what really made a difference to me and my ability to communicate with others about scientific topics. Not only did I communicate about the current state of homelessness, but I was also given further opportunities to discuss topics pertaining to the environment, such as ocean acidification, before placing participants into a virtual world to see for themselves. Between giving scientific information about the study to participants, to consoling participants if they got upset by what they were experiencing in the virtual world, I learned how to communicate both emotionally and practically as required in a scientific setting.”  Sydney Maples 

After viewing this example from Sydney, answer these questions:

• Could you identify the “what,” “so what” and “now what?”
• Did she give you enough information about her project that you would understand what it was and why it mattered?
• Compare the format of Xavier to the format of Sydney and talk about the impact of the different approaches.

Looking for more examples to examine. Look at these portfolios and see if you can identify the “what,” “so what” and “now what?”

Laura Barnum, Biochemistry major at University of Waterloo. 

Look at the Sample and Analyze

Analyze Hannah Gabrielle’s Course Reflection. 

Analyze Carrie Whites Report Reflection

Look at the sample reflections and rate the following items: (did not do)  1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9- 10 (excellent)

• The example answered the question, “What?”
• The example answered the question, “So What?” The example represented systematic thinking. ( There was evidence of thoughtfulness and connections were made).
• The example represented making meaning. ( It didn’t just give an example, it gave meaning to why this example was included or why it mattered).
• The example answered the question, “Now What?” The example demonstrated personal growth.
• The example was engaging.
• The example used college-level professional writing.
• The example had an engaging opening sentence.
• The example had an engaging closing sentence.
• The example had a clear thesis.

Key Take Aways

• Reflection should include meaning-making, systematic thinking, and personal growth.
• Reflections can be written but they can also be audio or videos. They are not limited by modality.
• Portfolio reflections should always be written with the author and purpose in mind.
• The three-step model of writing critical reflection is what, now what, and now what.
• Reflections should have an engaging opening sentence, a thesis statement, and an interesting closing sentence.

Ideas and Resources for Teachers

• Have students use the prompts from “Here are phrases you might use in your reflection” and complete every prompt.
• Ask students to print out their reflections and then in class have them use highlighters to color in what, so what, and now what in different colors.
• Go around the room and ask students to read only the first sentence from their reflection. Have them read only the last sentence. Challenge them to rewrite them to be engaging.
• Have students complete the artifact assignment and the artifact peer review.
• Have students write about a signature assignment.
• Have students do an in-class small-moment reflection about something that happened to them that week.

Additional Resources

Check out this Reflection Toolkit from the University of Edinburgh for ideas and resources.

For an overview of other reflection models, check out the University of Connecticut’s page on Reflection Models and the Global Digital Citizen Foundations Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Critical Thinking.

Consider the suggestions on how to have students reflect from an article on Developing Innovative Reflections from Faculty Development: Lessons Learned: 

 Reflection Exercises

Looking for some creative reflection prompts? Try out one of these ideas.

Letter to Your Future Self

Write a letter to your current self from your future self.

• What did you learn in college that was instrumental to your growth?
• What goals have you accomplished?
• What thing did you learn in college that you didn’t think was that important at the time but is important to you now?
• What obstacles did you overcome to get where you are?
• What core belief did you cling to?
• What do you want your current self to remember as it moves forward?

Write About Small Moments

The goal of a small moment reflection is to focus on something that was meaningful to you in the moment. For example, in a service learning experience, what is a small thing that you remember that taught you a big lesson? Why was this meaningful to you? When studying abroad, what was a small thing that someone did that made you think? What was a small moment where you realized something important about yourself?

Write Six Words

 Choose six independent words that describe an experience. Write your reflection telling why you chose those six words and what that says about the lesson that you learned.

Write About a Signature Assignment

A signature assignment is something that illustrates something that you learned in the course. This signature assignment can be connected to the objectives of the course, the objectives of your program of study, or the objectives of the institution.  For Roach and Alvey at the University of Michigan-Flint, it means

A signature assignment is a substantial project within a course that illustrates something quintessential about course content, embeds at least one general education learning outcome, asks students to synthesize and apply learning, gives students agency and choice in the application of their learning, and requires a significant and intentional  reflective component to help students identify and articulate relationships between course material, the curriculum, their community, and their sense of self.

One common feature of portfolios is the inclusion of signature assignments. Typically, this involves showing what you did in the class (what), why that mattered (so what), and how you will apply that or how it impacted you in some way (now what).

Serenna Hammons writes about her coursework. In the final part of her reflection, she writes the impact of what she learned:

The most important thing I learned in this course is that I matter. My lazy decisions have a negative impact on the environment, and I have the power to make a positive influence. There are so many things I can do and so many ways to get other people involved. Just my actions alone won’t be monumental, but if everyone made small changes, we can make a big difference. Educating yourself on these things and taking on responsibility is the best way to make a difference.

Tell Your Story Digitally

• Tell us the story of how you overcame an obstacle using pictures and videos.
• Create a visual journey of the highlights and insights from your collage journey using pictures and videos.

Write About Your Study Abroad with the Four P’s

Career Specialist Xavier Smith writes about using the 4 P’s of reflection: What are the cool people, places, perks, and projects that you were involved in? By focusing on these areas in your experience, you can provide context to all the cool things you indulged in while abroad. Listing these items is not enough; however, you need to be descriptive of those cool items by utilizing what, so what, and now what. This formula allows you to state what happened, describe its importance to your development, and describe how your new understanding will influence how you navigate the world. Taking this thorough approach in your portfolio will demonstrate your deep thought process and provide viewers with a broader scope or perspective of your experiences and what they mean to you and the larger world.

For a quick review, watch this video published by the McLaughlin Library at the University of Guelph:

Here are phrases you might use in your reflection.

From the Reflective Practice Toolkit, University of Cambridge LibGuide on Reflective Writing and Reflective Prompts by University of Cumbria

Bleicher, R. E., & Correia, M. G. (2011). Using a “Small Moments” writing strategy to help undergraduate students reflect on their service-learning experiences. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 15(4 ), 27-56.

Dewey, J. (1910). How We Think. D.C. Heath and Company.

https://www.schoolofeducators.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/EXPERIENCE-EDUCATION-JOHN-DEWEY.pdf

Eynon, B. & Gambino, L. (2017). High-impact ePortfolio practice. Stylus Publishing.

Gallagher, C., & Poklop, L. (2014). ePortfolios and Audience: Teaching a Critical Twenty-First Century Skill.  International Journal of ePortfolio ,  4 (1), 7–20.  http://www.theijep.com/pdf/IJEP126.pdf

Gladd, J.  Write What Matters . Open license.

Global Digital Citizen Foundation.  Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Critical Thinking.

House, A. T. (2021). Reflection Paper. Student Success, University of Arkansas.

Illinois Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. Artifacts and Reflective Self-Expression. 

Lengelle, R., Meijers, F., Poell, R., & Post, M. (2014). Career writing: Creative, expressive and reflective approaches to narrative identity formation in students in higher education.  Journal of Vocational Behavior , 85(1), 75–84.   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2014.05.001

Parkes, K., Dredger, K., & Hicks, D. (2013). ePortfolio as a measure of reflective practice. International Journal of ePortfolio ,  3 (2), 99–115.  http://www.theijep.com/pdf/IJEP110.pdf

Reynolds, N. & Davis, N. (2014). Portfolio keeping: A guide for students. Bedford St. Martin.

Reynolds, C. & Patterson, J. (2014). Leveraging the ePortfolio for integrative learning. Stylus Publishing.

Roach, S. & Alvery, J. (2021). Fostering integrative learning and reflection through “signature assignments.” American Association of Colleges and Universities

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: A user’s guide. Palgrave Macmillan.

Rodgers, C. (2002). Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking. Teachers College Record, 104 (4), 842–866.

Ryan, M. (2011). Improving reflective writing in higher education: A social semiotic perspective,   Teaching in Higher Education,   16:1 ,   99-111, https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2010.507311

Spandel, V. (1997). Reflections on Portfolios. Handbook of Academic Learning,  Academic Press.

Speller, L. (2019). TIPS for Teaching with Technology: Using ePortfolios to Increase Critical Reflection in the Classroom. https://tips.uark.edu/tips-for-teaching-with-technology-using-eportfolios-to-increase-critical-reflection-in-the-classroom/

University of Cambridge LibGuide. Reflective practice toolkit. 

University of Connecticut Center for Teaching and Learning. Reflections  and Reflection Models and Sample Reflection Questions

University of Cumbria. Reflective Prompts

University of Edinburg. Reflection Toolkit 

Utrel, M. Swinford, R, Fallowfield, S. Angermeier, L (2022). Developing innovative reflections from faculty development: Lessons learned. AAEEBL Portfolio Review.

Walters, S & Jenning, J. ePortfolio Presentation. Teaching and Faculty Support Center

The example of the Driscoll cycle was developed by a student at The Robert Gillespie Science of Learning .

Portfolios Referenced

Martin Causan 

Laura Barnum

Serenna Hammons

Sydney Maples

Xavier Smith

Documenting Your Learning and Personal Growth: Critical Reflection Copyright © 2023 by Lynn Meade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Cumulative Portfolios in the Writing Program

Program-wide assignment (wr 111-wr 153).

Since Fall 2023, all WR students create a portfolio in their first WR course and continue to add to it throughout subsequent WR courses. This cumulative portfolio assignment will create a shared experience for WR students, offering them a space to reflect on their growth and their developing identities as college writers and communicators over several semesters.

Instructor Guide

The WR Portfolio Instructor Guide contains everything you need to incorporate the WR cumulative portfolio in your class. It includes information about why we use portfolios and an overview of the cumulative portfolio assignment, including information about videos that guide students through creating portfolios for the first time, how to access your students’ portfolios, and who to contact if you or your students need help.

The cumulative portfolio assignment includes a literacy narrative and a final reflective essay. In addition to this pair of reflection assignments, common across all 100-level WR courses, instructors should integrate reflective writing throughout the semester and in a variety of ways.

Students should be referred to this set of videos and the student-facing FAQ in order to receive guidance on how to create and update their portfolios. Periodically, the Writing Center may also offer portfolio workshops for students.

Cumulative Portfolio Assignments

Portfolio Assignment for WR 111, 112, & 120

Literacy Narrative Assignment

Portfolio Assignment for WR 151, 152, & 153

Final Reflective Essay

Reflective Writing

While the assignments above should be assigned as written and shared across sections, there is plenty of opportunity for instructors to be creative as they tailor the other reflections they ask students to do to their own course content, course level, and/or teaching style. See Reflective Writing Activities for ideas and adaptable examples, as well as our guide to teaching the literacy narrative . Remember that you should not specify which reflective writings students will post in their portfolio, and you should be assigning enough reflective work for students to have a meaningful choice in the matter when they choose three reflections.

Portfolio Reminders for Instructors

• Discuss the portfolios in class at several points in the semester. Near the beginning of the semester, you’ll need to make sure students new to WR are setting up their Digication portfolios and writing and posting their literacy narratives. Throughout the semester, you may want to remind students that they can be posting their reflective writing to their portfolios; building in a few short portions of class to encourage students to work with Digication might be helpful. At the end of the semester in WR 15x, be sure you are assigning the final reflective essay, and for all classes, that you remind students to post their featured assignment and reflective writings.
• Advise students to paste text right into the Digication modules, or to post a Word or .pdf document. Students should  not  post links to Google docs or embed a Google doc, as there are too many permissions issues that arise.

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74 Reflective Cover Letters

Joel Gladd and Liza Long

The previous chapters in this section on Writing Reflectively introduced you to the basics of critical reflection and offered a few different approaches to practice it. Those strategies, including Driscoll’s “So What?” cycle of reflection and K-W-L learning, are often deployed in a variety of academic and professional situations. They can be adapted to many different scenarios. In academia, however, one of the most common reflective assignments is a simple cover letter written at the end of an assignment, project, or entire course.

The cover letter genre can be very informal or intensely rigorous, depending on the preferences of the instructor. But nearly all such assignments expect the student to reflect on completed work in such a way that they successfully demonstrate growth  in the course. The audience here is key: cover letters are often targeted directly towards the instructor and aim to convince them that the student did indeed learn what they were supposed to. Unlike other reflective forms of writing, the cover letter borders on a hybrid status: it’s primarily reflective, yes, but it must also persuade the audience that something was learned.

This hybrid nature of the cover letter genre can make writing it more challenging than students often assume. The metacognitive aspect of the letter demands that the student monitor their own learning, as well as how certain kinds of knowledge might transfer to other areas; but the persuasive aspect of the letter also expects the student to provide evidence for each point that they make, somewhat akin to a thesis-driven persuasive essay. In fact, as Laurel L. Bower suggests in the  Journal of Basic Writing , a compelling letter will employ all of the persuasive appeals, including  logos, pathos, and ethos .

Ethos : The student demonstrates care and attention to writing as a craft; and, in the case of research-intensive courses, a dedication to quality sources. The metacognitive reflections throughout the letter also contribute to the image/character of the writer.

Pathos : Cover letters often have an affective dimension , focusing on the extent to which writing is often a deeply emotional form of labor. Persuasive letters will track the student’s experience during periods of hardship and show how they responded.

Logos : Effective letters are persuasive in part because they offer concrete evidence for each point. Any generalization and transferable nugget of wisdom should emerge from a specific experience in the course. Otherwise, the letter can quickly devolve into empty platitudes that simulate reflection without actually demonstrating it. [1]

The main purpose of a cover letter is to persuasively demonstrate the student is familiar with the course outcomes, is aware of the extent to which they practiced them, and can project how those practices contribute to future learning (transfer). However, it’s not uncommon for cover letters to devolve into crude flattery and unconvincing pseudo-reflections, when “students seem more concerned with pleasing the teacher and appealing to his/her set of values than analyzing their priorities and thinking.” [2] To avoid these inauthentic reflections, follow the assignment criteria closely and remember to practice the persuasive appeals above.

Assignment Example: Reflective Cover Letter

Length: 3-4 pages double-spaced, times new roman 12 pt. font.

The Reflective Cover Letter is a vital part of your portfolio. It should be written last, after you’ve completed your revisions. This cover letter is a highly detailed, thoughtful reflection on your work in this class; on your sense of yourself as a writer; on the “learning behind the writing projects” that you’ve done; and on what conscious, deliberate connections you can make to work you will be doing next semester and in your future academic, professional, and/or technical lives/careers.

Imagine that you’re writing for someone who doesn’t know you or your work, and you want to show that person all you can about what you’ve done and written and learned, using your own included drafts and revisions as evidence. This letter is basically an argument, where you—the writer—are aiming to convince the reader that you’ve learned X, and here’s all the evidence. Writing the Reflective Cover Letter gives you the opportunity to look hard at what you’ve done with writing in this class and where you’re going with writing in the future.   

Please write this assignment in letter format. You can address the letter to your instructor, and/or to your instructor and your class colleagues. If your portfolio is chosen (at random) to review, other English teachers may read it too. The cover letter provides a lens for anyone reading your portfolio to understand the writing and revision moves you’ve made.

All R/P Cover Letters should address the following at a minimum:

• Discuss what your own expectations were for you as a writer, thinker, and learner at the beginning of 102. How have you grown as a writer (if you have)?  
• What are you especially proud of this semester?  Why? 
• Take us behind the scenes for the two significantly revised essays included here. For each one, discuss: 
• What specific changes you’ve made, why, and what the results of those changes are;  
• How it demonstrates your ability to write for different audiences and/or purposes. What kinds of decisions do you make?  How? 
• Your evolving sense of yourself as a researcher, as represented in this portfolio.  What kinds of research can you do that you couldn’t do at the beginning of the semester?  How is that represented in your portfolio pieces?
• How the process of both giving and receiving peer feedback affected your writing. What did you learn about feedback? How did your experience with peer feedback in this course compare with previous courses?
• How your conception of your writing process(es) have changed this semester. If so, in what ways? 
• Consider where you’re headed next as a writer – choose one or two “next places” to make some projections about (this could be next semester’s classes, your major classes, your life, your work).  While you won’t likely be given these particular kinds of writing tasks again, what underlying strategies about writing or how to approach writing/research have you learned about in 102 that you’d like to remember for other situations?  Why? 
• The ethos, pathos, and logos approach to Cover Letters is from Bower's article, "Student Reflection and Critical Thinking: A Rhetorical Analysis of 88 Portfolio Cover Letters," Journal of Basic Writing , Vol. 22., No. 2 (Fall 2003), pp. 53-55. ↵
• Bower, p. 60. ↵

Write What Matters Copyright © 2020 by Joel Gladd and Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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ePortfolios and Self-Reflection: Powerful Pedagogical Tools for Learning

The Program in Writing and Rhetoric offered its first Notation in Science Communication ePortfolio course in Spring 2014. As PWR’s Academic Technology Specialist, I co-instructed the course and in the process learned a great deal about ePortfolio pedagogy and the technology that underlies these all-digital platforms.

Why ePortfolios? 1,2

Studies on metacognition, or knowing about knowing, and scholarship in self-regulated learning, suggest that self-reflection plays an important role in academic achievement and performance. 3 Students, however, are often too busy to spend time reflecting on what they’ve learned, let alone their own learning process. One way to encourage reflection and metacognition is through the development of an ePortfolio. 4,5 An ePortfolio, when combined with strategic self-reflection, becomes a powerful pedagogical tool that extends the ePortfolio far beyond a visual resume.

Artifacts, Reflections, and Evidence

ePortfolio scholars refer to the materials students collect in ePortfolios as “artifacts” and “evidence.” Artifacts can be research papers, videos, photos, PowerPoint presentations, or any other form of digital media. Written reflections in ePortfolios require critical thinking about what artifacts mean, what expertise was gained from creating those artifacts, and how the artifacts are connected. Asking students to collect artifacts from a class or classes, extracurricular activities, and work experiences and write reflections on those items helps them to think in a focused way about their learning and learning achievements.

Artifacts in combination with written reflections form “evidence.” The term evidence suggests that artifacts and reflections collectively make an argument. The argument put forward by the ePortfolio depends on the audience—teachers, employers, graduate school admission committees—and the purpose, usually to demonstrate acquired knowledge and expertise.

An ePortfolio is like an athlete’s highlight reel: it shows the athlete's best work, as opposed to a scorecard that simply represents it. In addition, the ePortfolio includes the student’s written commentary, providing insight into their work and thinking.

Decisions: Curating and Designing an ePortfolio

Curating artifacts and reflections into the evidence of achievement that forms an ePortfolio requires deep rhetorical self-reflection, engagement, and consideration of visual communication skills. A student must consider the argument she is trying to make, the expectations of the audience that will be viewing the ePortfolio, and the collective and individual meaning of her artifacts and reflections. She must decide how the design, appearance, and order of those artifacts will shape their meaning. She also has to decide whether to show only her best work or to represent the arc of her learning over time. These difficult curation and design decisions move the ePortfolio from an archive of student work to a learning tool.

Making Multiple Versions of an ePortfolio

Students can create multiple versions of their ePortfolio for various audiences and purposes with relative ease. This is important because what an instructor wants to see in an ePortfolio and what a graduate school admissions committee or potential employer will want to see in an ePortfolio could be different. Creating versions is also pedagogical opportunity.

In our Notation in Science Communication (NSC) course, we asked students to create three different ePortfolios. The first contained introductory self-reflections, the second combined written reflections with personal artifacts, and the third contained curated evidence of artifacts and reflections to demonstrate their expertise in science communication. These versions allowed students to familiarize themselves with the platform, write low-stakes reflections, and experiment with artifacts before creating their primary Notation in Science Communication ePortfolio that would show their expertise in science communication.

ePortfolio Platforms

There are many ePortfolio tools with varying features that emphasize different learning outcomes. Some tools offer more customization, while others offer more standardization. Most commercial platforms have assessment and grading functions.

Two commercial platforms currently being explored by the Office of the Registrar at Stanford are Pathbrite and Digication. There are also a number of open-source platforms, tools connected to Learning Management Systems, and a variety of free services like WordPress and Google Sites that offer the ability to create websites that have ePortfolio-like features and functionalities.

Departments considering ePortfolios must weigh the rhetorical implications of using a commercial platform, an open source platform, or a “free” tool like WordPress or Google Sites.  Some writing program administrators argue that the choice of platform should be yet another rhetorical decision made by each student and that each student should figure out how to build their own ePortfolio(s); practically, however, that may be unfeasible for departments and instructors who need consistency or desire uniform assessment tools. Departments must also consider technical concerns around scalability, security, and privacy.

In our case, we piloted Pathbrite, one of the platforms being explored by the Registrar’s Office, for our Spring 2014 NSC course, in part because we needed the structure a preconfigured ePortfolio application provides for consistency between students. We also liked the user interface design of Pathbrite, which is as intuitive and as sleek as the common digital platforms that students are familiar with outside the classroom.

Success with ePortfolios

If you are interested in using ePortfolios as a pedagogical tool, you must overcome a few learning curves for success. You must grasp the technical details of the platform because those often small details affect the usability and functionality of the platform. You should carefully consider how to integrate metacognitive learning and written reflections into assignments to make them the most meaningful to students. Finally, you should be comfortable evaluating and discussing visual and multimodal artifacts.

As PWR moves toward our second NSC course in Fall 2014, we will be taking a close look back at our pilot course to see how we can improve. We were happy with the Pathbrite platform, but we had our fair share of technical challenges, mostly related to our unfamiliarity with the tool. We’ll be correcting those problems this fall, and, hopefully, Pathbrite will integrate some of our usability suggestions over the summer. We also have a better sense of how written reflections provide critical context and meaning to the ePortfolio as a whole and the individual artifacts; as a result, we’ll be focused on making sure students are telling their most compelling story with those reflections.

What's your experience with ePortfolios? What questions do you have?

Megan O’Connor is the Academic Technology Specialist for Stanford Introductory Studies.

Footnotes and References

1  Promising Portfolios, Inside Higher Ed.

2  Why Large-Scale E-Portfolios Make Sense by Dian Schaffhauser

3 Metacognition and Student Learning by James M. Lang

4  Light, Tracy Penny, Helen L. Chen, and John C. Ittelson. Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors . John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

5 Principles and Practices in Electronic Portfolios.

Coming to Genre Part Four: Songs in Conversation (the Burkean Jam)

• The Marvin Quadrant

From the Archive: September 2009

• From the Archive

Summer collaborations: PWR and the Stanford Summer Fellows Program

• PWR in the Community

• Teaching Tips

Portfolios in Psychology Classes

In this Teaching Tips article, our goal is to share our experience using portfolios in psychology courses and dispel some of the “myths” we encountered along the way. Our hope is that our experience can help others considering the use of portfolios who may be hesitant to implement them due to concerns such as: They are a haphazard collection of student work, are too time-intensive to incorporate into a large course, are independent and non-collaborative projects, or are technologically impossible to implement. The article that follows describes our collective experience implementing portfolios in a course taught by one of the authors (MB). ~Melissa, Linda, and Sue

“By doing this portfolio, I want to continue to learn more about {the topic}, even after the class is over.” Student comment, Fall 2009

What instructor wouldn’t like to see a comment like the one above at the end of the semester?  As an instructor of a sophomore-level Introduction to Neuroscience survey course several semesters ago, I found this comment especially rewarding. That semester, I  decided to implement portfolios for the first time in the course, a decision that I made after much deliberation. Along the way, I encountered a number of portfolio “myths” that could have stopped me in my tracks. Looking back, I’m glad that I did not believe the myths, and that my students and I were able to learn and grow from that first portfolio experience. Now, after using portfolios in the course for nearly three years, I would like to share what I have learned, and help to both dispel some of the more prevalent myths and offer some practical examples and suggestions for other instructors considering a portfolio project for their classes.

Why consider a portfolio project in the first place? In reflecting on my experiences in the survey class, I found myself thinking about some of my conversations with students in the course. Some students were passionate about topics in psychology that related to our course but that were not going to be covered that semester. As I thought more about these students, I realized that all of their topics could not be covered in the course and was disappointed  that these innate interests could not be cultivated and engaged. I wanted a way to allow students to explore a topic of their choice, particularly something they personally connected with or had an interest in as part of the survey course. I decided to try a portfolio project to allow students to pursue these topics in a more focused way than our in-class lectures and activities allowed.

In my course, students developed a working “personal interest” portfolio based on written assignments completed throughout the semester. There was an assignment approximately every two weeks, which involved researching causes, symptoms, and treatments for diseases of the nervous system and how the disease affects various parts of the nervous system. For each assignment, students were provided with a prompt about which aspect of the topic to research, ideas for locating primary or secondary research materials, and expectations about the use of American Psychological Association (APA) style format. Each assignment included a grading rubric available to students as they completed the assignment. Accompanying each assignment, students included a two- to three-paragraph reflection. Students selected three assignments as the focal points of their final portfolios at the end of the semester and wrote a one-page self-assessment of the entire project. This general approach could be used for other areas of psychology as well: for example, stages of development in developmental psychology, disorders in abnormal psychology, statistical techniques in a research methods class, or development of theories in social psychology.

As I designed and implemented the personal interest portfolio in the Introduction to Neuroscience survey course, I grappled with several portfolio myths:

Myth 1: A portfolio is a scrapbook.

Many professors’ understanding of a portfolio is that it is a collection of assignments put together to display student work. Admittedly, when I first thought about using a portfolio for my undergraduate psychology survey course, I, too, thought that it was just a collection of assignments, perhaps loosely woven together with a common research theme. As I discovered, however, portfolios are much more. The lesson artifacts gathered in a portfolio have a specific purpose, and that purpose includes “exhibiting to the student and others the student’s efforts, progress, or achievement” (Johnson & Rose, 1997, p. 6). By engaging in the portfolio process, students and/or professors carefully collect, select, and reflect on their work. While professor feedback is part of the process, student reflection is the key to “promoting student engagement and learning” (Birkett, Neff, Pieper, 2012, p. 49) and allowing students to get a full view of their own learning.

In designing my first portfolio project, I wanted to move beyond a scrapbook approach and guide students in creating an organized and professional presentation of their work, showcasing their reflection, learning, and progress over a semester. Efforts to produce a high-quality, professional product that students could be proud of took a big leap forward this past semester with the help of a teaching assistant. The teaching assistant organized and led APA-format writing workshops for students outside of class and provided additional feedback on APA-formatting on all assignments throughout the semester. She also helped select examples of “professional” work from past semesters to share with students and explained to students the importance of a professional writing style. Together, we implemented more thorough and descriptive rubric categories for “professionalism” for each assignment. These changes resulted in a notable increase in the quality of portfolios this past semester. Taking time to explain the importance of professional presentation and to make expectations explicit helped avoid a scattered scrapbook approach to our portfolios.

Myth 2: The amount of time it takes to provide quality feedback makes it impossible to implement portfolios in a large course.

When I first thought about using portfolios in my classroom, I was a little overwhelmed with the thought of grading 70 written assignments each week, but I was determined to create an environment that promoted student learning and engagement. As a result, I decided to spend a little more time in the planning stages and found that careful planning is one of the first steps to ensuring a successful portfolio project. As a part of this first step, I defined a purpose for the portfolio and then aligned the portfolio project to the course learning objectives. Next, I designed assignments and rubrics with these learning objectives in mind. I had to allocate an appropriate amount of time for each assignment, break assignments into smaller components, and find or build links between what students were learning in class and their port folio assignments.

Once I understood the connections between the assignments and course content, it was much easier to explicitly communicate to students the purpose of the portfolio in a clear, organized, and concise manner. During each class, I demonstrated the connections between the course content and the portfolio assignments. One way I did this was to model the reflection process by showing student assignments and reflection examples. In doing so, I set high expectations where students made connections between portfolio assignments, course/class concepts, student backgrounds, and the real world. As a result, students better understood that the portfolio was not just about organization and presentation, but also about reflection and making connections.

There were six graded portfolio assignments throughout the semester, which made the final portfolio submission easier to grade at the end of the semester. In fact, the total amount of time I spent on grading was equivalent to the time I would typically spend grading homework or disconnected written assignments (Birkett, Neff, & Pieper, 2012, p. 60). One other modification that helped facilitate written feedback while using time efficiently was to allow students to omit one assignment or drop one low writing assignment grade during the semester. This not only reduced the total number of assignments that were graded throughout the semester, but it also allowed students some control over the directions of their portfolios and provided them with the flexibility to modify their schedules/work loads over the course of the semester.

Finally, because individual assignments had already been graded once and students had received feedback to incorporate, with the help of a rubric, grading of the final portfolios was relatively efficient. The final portfolio rubric included weighted components for: the inclusion of required elements, the quality of those elements, and how well the student demonstrated basic principles of neuroscience as determined by the course outcomes. Overall, I provided very few comments on the final portfolios. A copy of the rubric used in past semesters was recently published in the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching (Birkett, Neff & Pieper, 2012). While it does take longer to grade a portfolio than a multiple-choice exam, I believe the benefits of using an authentic, in-depth learning activity far outweigh the loss of time spent grading each assignment. With careful planning and deliberate decisions about where you would like to spend time providing feedback to students, the grading process can be made manageable.

Myth 3: Portfolios are a self-contained course project for students to work on independently.

This myth might only be half-myth. In my experience, it is important for students to work on developing their research and writing for a portfolio independently. However, the portfolio is not a self-contained course project. Creating a successful portfolio experience has involved students collaborating with assessment and technology experts, librarians, and classmates.

Before beginning a portfolio assignment for the first time, I sought advice from campus experts on assessment and technology about the best ways to implement this type of project. These individuals became instrumental in informing decisions about how to structure assignments, how best to use features of the learning management system (LMS) on our campus (e.g., Blackboard Learn or similar systems), and how to develop rubrics and efficiently provide feedback to students. Key questions I asked these experts included:

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using portfolios as opposed to other assignment options?
• What potential portfolio assignment delivery and grading options are available through the LMS at our school?
• What grading rubric options are available and which will best suit the needs of the assignments?
• What types of assessments best align the portfolio project with the learning outcomes for the class?

Next, because this portfolio project involved student use of research resources to investigate self-selected topics, I sought the assistance of librarians. Who better to teach students about the research resources available at your school than the people who specialize in the process? Our university has a librarian dedicated to helping students and faculty in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, from whom I learned that the Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL) has outlined a set of information literacy standards for undergraduate psychology students, which align closely with the APA’s Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (see Hughes and Birkett, 2011). The overlapping nature of these guidelines helped us discuss the relevance of a portfolio project involving research in both of our disciplines. As a result, we were able to set goals for the project that could benefit students in a more comprehensive way than I had initially envisioned. Near the beginning of the semester, the librarian visited the class to discuss research strategies and processes with the students. Over the past several semesters, this librarian-led instruction has evolved to include visiting a computer lab during class, leading students step-by-step through the process of selecting keywords and search terms, refining search results, and evaluating the quality of research resources.

Finally, I wanted to give students a personal responsibility over the portfolio projects. I wanted students to see that their work mattered, and to engage them in an authentic effort to create a professional piece of work that could be read by colleagues.  I’ve tried several different approaches over the semesters but most recently found that in order to strive to make a portfolio worthy of being read by colleagues, it must actually be read by them. I did this by organizing small groups of informal student “review panels” at the end of the semester and asked students in each panel to bring their completed portfolios to class and share them with their peers. To facilitate the process, I provided students with short prompts about what aspects of the portfolio to share. In the future, it might be beneficial to establish these reviews periodically throughout the semester so that students can receive peer feedback and suggestions during the portfolio creation process.

Myth 4: E(lectronic)-portfolios are the best solution.

Working with our e-Learning Center, I considered using an e-portfolio, or an online storage system for the course portfolio assignments, but upon further assessment, I decided against it. I was more interested in students learning how to engage in the research process and reflect on their learning than being technically savvy presenters of information. On the other hand, should your portfolio purpose include “learning that involves reflection, community, and making connections” in an online environment (Hyland & Kranzow, 2012, p. 70), then you may want to carefully consider both the challenges and benefits involved in building an e-portfolio.

Introducing an online e-portfolio system takes time. You will need to ensure that either you have the technical competency to answer students’ questions about the system or that you can partner with an instructional technology expert who has the time and expertise to answer these inevitable questions. Another obstacle to consider is the need to provide students “with clear guidance on confidentiality and the use of digital media” (Moores & Parks, 2010, p. 47). Students need to understand how to cite electronic sources and when to acquire consent to avoid plagiarizing or breaching individual confidentiality. E-portfolios may have many benefits in your learning context; however, you need to clearly evaluate “what added value the electronic portfolio can bring to the group of students” (Moores & Parks, 2010, p. 47).

If e-portfolios fit your needs, they offer a number of benefits over paper portfolios. E-portfolios allow students to incorporate multimedia products or research elements into their final portfolios and make it easy for students to link to additional sources or non-traditional resources, such as videos, interviews, animations, or artwork. E-portfolios can facilitate sharing student work outside the classroom, for instance, by posting them on websites to or setting up on-line collaborations with peers to receive feedback. Finally, e-portfolios provide a unique opportunity for students in online or hybrid courses to partake in the benefits of the portfolio process. For those considering e-portfolios, Vigorito (2011) provides a wealth of ideas for beginning to implement them in psychology classes.

My current plans do not include implementing e-portfolios because I still find value in having students bring a physical copy of their work to class on the final day. Anecdotally, students also report that they like to have a final hard copy to share with classmates and a physical representation of what they have learned over the course. However, if I were to develop a fully online section of this course, I would consider many of the unique e-portfolio options available from education companies and new tools or modules being added by learning management systems.

Altogether, my experience with portfolios has been overwhelmingly positive. This brief description of the process illustrates only one form that a portfolio project may take and addresses only a few of the portfolio myths and benefits. Other educators have tailored portfolios to suit the needs of their individual courses and written at greater length about their experiences (see References and Recommended Reading section). Although research about implementing portfolios has been slow to develop (Herman & Winter, 1994), empirical studies are slowly accumulating to help inform this evidence-based practice (see References and Recommended Reading section).

I have now been using this portfolio project in the survey class for nearly three years.

Each semester brings more refinement of the process and new ideas to evaluate. Implementing portfolios and dispelling myths has proven to be a rewarding and engaging process. Our hope is that in thinking about the ideas, examples, and myths raised in this article, you may find an opportunity to consider a portfolio project for your class and realize the benefits too.

Do you have any materials for teachers wanting to implement a portfolio assignment in their classroom that you would be willing to share?

I would be happy to share materials! Please email me directly at Melissa dot Birkett at NAU dot EDU.

Would you still be willing to share examples and rubrics? Thanks

Melissa do you still have materials regarding student portfolios? I would appreciate any help you can provide. Both examples & rubrics would be GREAT! Thanks.

I would appreciate receiving rubrics and handouts on instructions. I am implementing this for a large (over 100) lecture course. Thanks!

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