The Principled Portfolio: Growth and Achievement in Student Learning Across the Curriculum (I) Sharon Hamilton Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.

The concept of portfolios in higher education is not new, with many writing programs having developed portfolios to document and evaluate improvement and achievement as long as twenty years ago. Moving to electronic format while concurrently including learning in more than just one course has been more recent, with Alverno (http://www.alverno.edu/academics/ddp.html) and Rose-Hulman (http://www.rose-hulman.edu/irpa/reps/demo/index.html) playing key innovative roles.

Building on the experiences and strengths of the very different portfolio concepts developed by each of those institutions, IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis) has been developing the conceptual framework for an electronic student portfolio for several years.

IUPUI is a large, comprehensive metropolitan campus situated in downtown Indianapolis, with almost 30,000 students in twenty-two academic and professional schools. After our 1992 NCA Accreditation Report requested improvement in our approach to and assessment of general education, the faculty worked over a period of six years to develop common learning outcomes. In 1998, our six Principles of Undergraduate Learning (PULs) were passed by our Faculty Council (http://www.opd.iupui.edu/TOIL Select "eport" from the navigation bar.) They include core communicative and quantitative skills; critical thinking; integrating and applying knowledge; intellectual breadth, depth, and adaptiveness; understanding diverse societies and cultures; and values and ethics (H:\PULs\Principles of Undergraduate Learning Official Version.mht) . These PULs are significant not in their uniqueness – they are very similar to the undergraduate learning values in almost any institution of learning – but rather in the fact that they are intended to permeate the undergraduate curriculum instead of being a set of courses or skills concentrated in a student’s first two years of college. Students are expected not only to improve their level of competence in each of the PULs during their first and sophomore years, but also to continue to improve their level of competence throughout their undergraduate learning experiences.

It quickly became evident that, while these PULs were implicit throughout the curriculum, there was almost no explicit attention to the PULs on syllabi, in course assignments, or in assessment of learning, at either the individual student level or the programmatic level.  Had someone asked, “How do you know your students are improving in their ability to think critically? Or to value diverse societies and cultures? Or to reason quantitatively in their respective majors or professions?” we would not have been able to provide any kind of evidence-based response. Because attention to these PULs was considered the responsibility of everyone, it became the explicit responsibility of nobody, as we discovered in our preparations for the 2002 NCA visit.

Faculty and administrators worked together to develop a conceptual framework for a student electronic portfolio based on the PULs. At the core of the portfolio is a the “Learning Matrix,” (http://www.opd.iupui.edu/TOIL/eport) with all the PULs listed in a column on the left hand side, and four levels of achievement across the top: Introductory (what all students should know and be able to do in this PUL, regardless of major, at the end of 26 credit hours); Intermediate (what all students should know and be able to do at the end of 56 credit hours); Advanced (expectations defined within the major); and Experiential (co-curricular learning of the PULs).

In these portfolios, students upload artifacts (word documents; videos; photos; graphics and charts; power points; etc.) to demonstrate competence of each PUL at each level. Most artifacts (other than the co-curricular) will already have been graded as course work, insofar as the portfolio is intended to demonstrate competence, rather than to serve as a forum for individual assessment. However, the infrastructure has been developed so that aggregated assessments of competence at each level may be made in ways to preserve the identify of individual students and faculty, while demonstrating, in broad strokes, levels of growth and achievement in the PULs in programs across the curriculum.

These aggregated assessments will be addressed in “The Principled Portfolio:Growth and Achievement in Student Learning Across the Curriculum (II)”.

How do we know what students have learned?

 

Resources

Teaching Composition

---

If you have a question or a problem about a specific book or product, please fill out our Product Feedback Form.
For further information about this site contact english@mcgraw-hill.com