Essay Example on Student Portfolios: Tracking Academic Progress & Success

Introduction

A student portfolio, being a collection of student academic works, student activities, accomplishments, and successes, demonstrates improvements made by students and teachers over time. It also includes other forms of academic evidence that provide an alternative reliable assessment for students and their tutors to evaluate coursework quality and progress. Working portfolios also trace the steps made by students to meet their learning standards hence helping them to make better academic decisions (Rowley, 2017). Some of the benefits include self-evaluation by students, promotion of proper communique, and responsibility.

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Self-Evaluation

Assessment portfolios encourage learners to reflect their school work, which helps them to perform proper self-evaluations. Teachers encourage students to come up with their portfolios, which allows them to carry out their studies effectively. Students use these learning portfolios to judge their works, which enables them to identify their weaknesses and strengths as they monitor their academic progress (Darling-Hammond, 2017). According to various studies that have been carried out by academicians, learners who partake in self-evaluations are inspired and have a view towards education.

Individualized Assessment

Portfolios provide an opportunity for students to carry out personalized evaluation. Since some learners are poor test-takers, portfolios give these students with an alternative method to showcase their understanding of content. Frequent work assessments can guide learners towards their objectives to acquire advanced skills by demonstrating continuous learning progress (Rowley, 2017). Students and teachers can choose academic works that they may want to be included in their portfolio since it an individualized assessment portfolio. The benefit of a personalized portfolio is that it allows learners to make decisions aimed at improving their academic work.

Promote Communication

Developing proper learning portfolios encourage good communication between tutors and learners. Portfolios help shy learners who are unable to initiate discussions in their classrooms to have one-on-one interaction with their tutors. These students find it easy to talk about their accomplishments (Joseph, 2020). Students can converse about their progress in conventions by asking questions that improve their academic works. Communications with friends and parents also help learners in setting SMART educational goals.

Accountability

Students are held accountable for the mastery of content standards by assessment portfolios in a given subject area. These portfolios provide learners concrete evidence to show their academic accomplishments (Joseph, 2020). Students are prepared to participate in serving various community service projects. Also, portfolios provide the students with alternate measures to demonstrate their documentation of collaborative work skills, which are essential in their future academic lives.

Conclusion

Conclusively, developing a good learning portfolio will help students to attain their academic goals easily. Portfolios have proven to be useful as educational professionals have used it, and students to highlight their best work and showcase their successes and skills. Display portfolios showcase learners' best work, and assessment portfolios offer particular curriculum standards learners have learned.

References

Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Developing and measuring higher order skills: Models for state performance assessment systems. Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), 49.

Joseph, A., & Lawler, J. (2020). Expanding Active Collaborative Learning on Diversity Projects Through E-Portfolio Systems. Network.

Rowley, J., Munday, J., & Polly, P. (2017, October). Supporting critical thinking through digital learning and teaching: A portfolio process. In European Conference on e-Learning (pp. 461-465). Academic Conferences International Limited.