Difference between traditional assessment and portfolio assessment

Portfolio Assessment is a collection or compilation of student's work. Portfolio Assessment is different from Traditional Testing and other Authentic Assessment. Why? Because portfolio assessment is a broader measure of a student’s knowledge compared to traditional testing and it shows more productivity than other Authentic Assessment. Portfolio does not represent only a mere collection of the student's work but tells or shows the story of the student’s efforts, progress or achievement in given areas. Portfolio is indeed differ from other assessment tools because it is an indispensable tool of authentic assessment and viewed as an organized collection of evidence used by the teacher and student to monitor the growth of student’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes in a specific content area. Portfolio assessment measures a student’s ability to apply and use knowledge learned in classes and also portfolio has been extensively used in the field of teacher education in which portfolio has a vital role in developing an in-service or a pre-service trainee teacher into a trained one and carried out to monitor the overall performance that he/she developed during the course of training.

Portfolio assessment and standard classroom tests are distinct ways to measure a student's academic progress. In a portfolio assessment, students present essays, cases, projects and other works developed over a particular class, grade level or throughout their entire middle school or high school career. Typical classroom tests require students to show what they have learned in a unit or semester in a class.

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Standard multiple-choice or true/false classroom tests are a common way teachers assess whether students have learned material taught in class. Portfolios allow students a more creative way to showcase their experiences and academic progress. In a typical portfolio assessment, students verbally present their work and argue persuasively what they have learned in a unit or subject. While schools and instructors sometimes believe a portfolio assessment is better for students, many still use standard testing to align with state and national standardized testing programs that assess school performance.

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About the Author

Neil Kokemuller has been an active business, finance and education writer and content media website developer since 2007. He has been a college marketing professor since 2004. Kokemuller has additional professional experience in marketing, retail and small business. He holds a Master of Business Administration from Iowa State University.

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With close examination of the student work produced in this activity, teachers were able to gain insight into abilities, skills, and understandings on which they then could provide feedback to the student. It also provided the teacher with information for additional lessons and activities on chemical and physical reactions. Box 3-5, Box 3-6, Box 3-7, Box 3-8 through Box 3-9 offer samples of this type of student work along with teacher commentary.

Ongoing, formative assessment does not solely rely on a small-group activity structure as in the vignettes. In a whole-class discussion, teachers can create opportunities to listen carefully to student responses as they reflect on their work, an activity, or an opportunity to read aloud. In many classrooms, for example, teachers ask students to summarize the day's lesson, highlighting what sense they made of what they did. This type of format allows the teacher to hear what the students are learning from the activity and offers other students the opportunity of learning about connections that they might not have made.

In one East Palo Alto, California, classroom, the teacher asked two students at the beginning of the class to be ready to summarize their activity at the end. The class had been studying DNA and had spent the class hour constructing a DNA model with colored paper representing different nucleotide bases. In their summary, the students discussed the pairing of nucleotide bases and held up their model to show how adenine pairs with thymine and cytosine pairs with guanine. Although they could identify the parts of the model and discuss the importance of “fit,” they did not connect the representative pieces to a nitrogen base, sugar, and a phosphate group. When probed, they could identify deoxyribose and the phosphate group by color, but they were not able to discuss what roles these subunits played in a DNA helix. After hearing their remarks, the teacher realized that they needed help relating the generalizations from the model to an actual strand of DNA, the phenomenon they were modeling. Regardless of the format —individual, small group, whole class, project-based, written, or discussion—teachers have the opportunity to build in meaningful assessment. These opportunities should be considered in curriculum design.

Cultivating Student Involvement in Assessment

Student participation becomes a key component of successful assessment strategies at every step: clarifying the target and purpose of assessment, discussing the assessment methods, deliberating about standards for quality work, reflecting on the work. Sharing assessment with students does not mean that teachers transfer all responsibility to the student but rather that assessment is shaped and refined from day to day just as teaching is. For student self- and peer-assessment to be incorporated into regular practice requires cultivation and integration into daily classroom discourse, but the results can be well worth the effort. Black and Wiliam (1998a) assert, “...self-assessment by the students is not an interesting option or luxury; it has to be seen as essential” (p. 55). The student is the one who must take action to “close” the gap between what they know and what is expected (Sadler, 1989). A teacher can facilitate this process by providing opportunities for participation and multiple points of entry, but students actually have to take the necessary action.

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