Isaac Bell
Annotated Bibliography for Student-Influenced Assessment: Portfolios and Contracts in First Year Composition
Part of the discussion brought up in Chapter 11, "Invitation to Further Study" in St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing deals with evaluation and response, especially the question of "Whom are we testing, in the name of what standards, and for whose purposes?" Even more important is the discussion about "formative responses" and the need to give feedback to students with "probing questions, encouragement, ideas for sources, and general 'talking back' to the student text," during the process of learning to write (267).
The issue I see is that many students work for a few weeks on their assignments, and then don't bother to look at anything but the letter grade when the paper is returned. The grade is final; they cannot change it. This sets up a belief that there is no value in a teacher's feedback, and the student perceives no opportunity to make up for that grade later.
My theory, which I think my sources will back up, is that portfolios allow us to place the emphasis on the process of writing rather than the results. We can work together to a common goal, and then provide feedback after an entire semester of developing skills. Contract grading, tied to this idea, also gives the students more power over their learning, by allowing them to decide how much work to put into what goal. If a student truly does not care enough to get more than a C, then that student should be able to say so honestly. If a student strives for an A, then that student can feel like he or she will achieve that grade if they keep to the listed goals. Together, I feel this could change FYC classes to closer match our ideals of student improvement, rather than constant stressful evaluation that can discourage improvement.
Baker, Nancy Westrich. "The effect of portfolio-based instruction on composition students' final examination scores, course grades, and attitudes toward writing." Research in the Teaching of English (1993): 155-174. PDF.
Baker examines several attitudes about portfolio-based classrooms versus the standards in what she calls "standard process" instructional methods. Her goals are to examine the various claims about the benefits of portfolios and determine whether these benefits can be detected qualitatively. Baker goes over the basic advice given to instructors who wish to adopt portfolios in their classrooms, and summarizes some of the debate about grading essays throughout a semester as opposed to at the end of a term, the conversation about attitudes, and the workload on instructors. Her study was meant to answer questions such as whether there was a measurable difference in grades, would student attitudes toward writing be improved over the semester in comparison to their attitudes early in the course, and would an independent evaluation of the grades correlate positively with final course grades? The final result was disappointing for those who support portfolios, suggesting that grades and attitudes show no real improvement. However, Baker does note that the students had a generally positive reaction to the portfolios, even if they did not show much interest in writing afterword. She also addresses the issue of how the instructors adopted and made use of the portfolio grades, and suggested further research into whether portfolios could be better applied to certain kinds of classes, such as basic writers, over others. This article is extremely useful in pointing out the difference between idealistic expectations and real outcomes.
Chambers, Sharon M., and Leah E. Wickersham. "The Electronic Portfolio Journey: A Year Later." Education 127.3 (2007): 351-360. PDF.
This quantitative analysis of student portfolios as it applies to learning focuses on master's students in secondary education, but still provides a look at the effects of this assessment method on the learning process. There is some discussion about the use of electronic portfolios (called ePortfolios in the text). The study deals with the problem of judging the student learning methods within the program. Some responses were predictable, such as students considering the ePortfolio intrusive at first, but improving results after a semester to grow used to the process. The results of the process were generally positive, and the studies showed students claiming that the portfolios helped them understand their own learning processes and develop better transferrable skills. This source provides a quantitative basis for several claims and discussions that can be made about the overall feasibility and desirability of a portfolio-based basic Composition course.
Codde, Joseph R.. "Using Learning Contracts in the College classroom" Codde.com. Michigan State University, 1996. Web. 17 Oct. 2012.
Codde gives a brief overview of how contract learning has affected his classes Contract learning is a proposal that the student decides how much work he or she is willing to put into the class, and agree from the outset how much effort they will expend on their grades. This article makes the points that a learning contract does not stop the instructor from covering content, and in fact allows a shift to more clear focus on the content of the course. The process of learning, of the work expected from the student, becomes the responsibility of a student, who is treated as a competent adult able to make decisions about their own educational needs. This ties into the portfolio in that a student can work with the instructor to decide what will be in the final portfolio, and will understand in advance what their grades will be as a direct result of their work to that point — rather than facing the anxiety of not knowing how a paper will be assessed and wondering what that grade will mean for the overall semester score.
Forbes, Cheryl. "Cowriting, overwriting, and overriding in portfolio land online." Computers and Composition 13.2 (1996): 195-205. PDF
This is an examination of two related issues: feedback in a student portfolio, and the temptation inherent in electronic evaluation which allows an instructor to write more (and more intrusively) than the instructor may have intended. Forbes discusses primarily the issues she had balancing her own voice with that of the student when commenting on and responding to student texts. The portfolio classroom made it possible for her students to see her feedback and adopt it or ignore it as they wished, but because she could directly edit and comment on texts, she felt she pushed her way into their work in a way that she found problematic. An outside evaluator was also concerned by this interference. However, Forbes insists that the error was hers, not the fault of either portfolios or the digital tools used to construct them. She is using her essay as a cautionary tale, trying to show other instructors how to comment on important concepts and global issues rather than worrying so much about sentence-level errors or trying to use immediate feedback to override a student's voice.
Gatlin, Linda, and Shirley Jacob. "Standards-based digital portfolios: a component of authentic
assessment for preservice teachers." Action in Teacher Education 23.4 (2002): 35-42. PDF.
Gatlin and Jacob provide a short overview of a program to train preservice (student) teachers using two closely-related ideas. First is the portfolio assessment, to record and evaluate progress, and second is the digital aspect, creating these portfolios on the Web, so that the papers and drafts could be managed easily and chosen quickly for final evaluation. The specific goal of this program was to help future K-12 teachers have direct experience working with various digital technologies so that they would be more proficient in instructing their students with similar technologies. The overall impression from this essay, short though it is, was that while there are questions to address about implementation and evaluation of portfolios, the experiment was a success. One particular advantage of a digital portfolio was the ability to add multimedia products such as PowerPoint presentations or video clips to the overall portfolio, an important factor in a time when English classes are increasingly focused on discussing the rhetorical aspects of all kinds of genres.
Hiller, Tammy Bunn, and Amy B. Hietapelto. "Contract grading: Encouraging commitment to the learning process through voice in the evaluation process." Journal of Management Education 25.6 (2001): 660-684. PDF.
Hiller and Hietapelto conduct an overview of the contract grading concept, defining it as a postmodern pedagogy that places the instructor in the role of a facilitator for finding information rather than someone who delivers pieces of existing information to young minds. To this end, they describe the value of contract grading systems that offer a variety of options for students with diverse interests and learning styles. They report positive student feedback to evaluation contracts, with most of the test classrooms reporting that they preferred this method to traditional grading systems. One element of these contracts is in negotiation of the weighting of certain assignments, allowing individual students to present one assignment as more important than the others, thus gaming the system so that the "easiest" assignments affect their grades the most. Another issue is the need to provide a basic structure to the course while permitting flexibility. Also, as others have noted, contract grades do require an instructor to provide more constant feedback and monitor student progress individually rather than in a group. The similarity of goals and concerns between this analysis of contract grading and most portfolio assessment articles give a solid basis for seeing where the methods are complementary and where they may not mesh together very well.
Tierney, Robert J. Portfolio assessment in the reading-writing classroom. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc., 480 Washington St., Norwood, MA 02062, 1991.
Tierney's purpose is to provide a how-to manual for developing, implementing, and evaluating portfolios in classrooms. He moves from an overview of the pedagogical theories behind the use of portfolios to the fact that portfolios can take on many diverse formats depending on the classroom. Tierney then focuses the issue of testing, learning directed toward test performances, and the need to refocus instruction to deal with student understanding of issues rather than scores on a test. Once he establishes his case, Tierney goes on to provide several strategies for dealing with a transition to portfolios in the classroom. He gives essential goals and assessment modifications, ways to train students and instructors in using the portfolios, keeping the portfolios active and directed toward the overall evaluative goals, bringing in self-assessment through the portfolio, and ways to analyze the portfolios for final grading. Tierney also shows several examples of portfolio-based classes as a way of demonstrating the wide variety of methods available to instructors. The text is older and does not really spend time on digital options, it is a useful nuts-and-bolts discussion of the real challenges facing teachers who wish to use portfolios.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Portfolios in the writing classroom." Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (1992).
Yancey edits a collection of essays by various teachers who have implemented portfolios in their classrooms. These instructors come from a variety of schools, ranging from middle schools to colleges, and practiced many forms of portfolio instruction for several reasons. In some cases, the portfolio was mandated by the institution or the state, in others, the instructors were trying to change their own methods. Yancey also writes introductory and concluding chapters, which provide overviews of the elements of portfolio instruction, the responses most teachers report, and summarizing issues such as workload and smooth implementation. Most of the essays are positive, although the authors also point out the issues they faced in their own circumstances. Yancey concludes by stating that widespread portfolio adoption is experimental and every teacher will necessarily modify the process for their own needs. While this book does not introduce significantly new ideas, it provides a useful overview of the uses and problems inherent in portfolio assessment. The multiple contexts effectively convey how to adapt to changing circumstances.
Wade, Anne, Philip Abrami, and Jennifer Sclater. "An electronic portfolio to support learning." Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie 31.3 (2005). Web. 21 Oct. 2012.
Wade and Sclater write about a project implementing portfolio assessment through an online program developed for that purpose. They discuss the purpose of a digital portfolio as allowing the collection and presentation of materials without the need for file folders, file cabinets, or sorting through large amounts of paper to evaluate the portfolios. A useful addition from online portfolios is the ability for a student to work on the portfolio remotely (presumably from home or other comfortable environments) and for an instructor to evaluate the portfolios anywhere they can get online. Wade and Sclater emphasize the value of self-regulating learning and the "metacognitive" thinking about the process of learning. The article also distinguishes between low-context and high-context portfolios, showing a varying degree of support from traditional learning models and how central the portfolios were to the classroom environment. The article concludes that it is important for students to be given clear goals and expectations about the portfolios, because otherwise they may be confused and unwilling to accept the change from the more comfortable traditional methods. Much of the rest of the article deals with the specific software being implemented, which is valuable primarily because online and digital issues can be extrapolated beyond the limits of a certain program.
Wilhelm, Kim Hughes. "Combined assessment model for EAP writing workshop: Portfolio decision-making, criterion-referenced grading, and contract negotiation." TESL Canada Journal 14.1 (1996): 21-33. PDF.
Wilhelm looks at the use of a modified method of assessing students by combining aspects of portfolios and criterion-referenced grading to determine overall workload. She summarizes the value and concerns of the various methods in the overall methods. Portfolios, she says, can give students greater feelings of ownership over their efforts, although the increased workload required of both students and teachers can be overwhelming. The criterion-reference is brought in at the end of the semester, when the portfolio is evaluated, giving the students both an idea what the standards will be (for use in selecting the works that will appear in the portfolio), but allowing the instructors to meet institutional standards for grades. Wilhelm then addresses whether it would be useful to add in contract grading and negotiation to this model. The contracts and negotiations would specifically occur at the level of determining the final criterion for assessment. This example of combined methods provides a useful road-map for other efforts to develop rigorous standards in a class based around portfolios and contracts.
Annotated Bibliography for Student-Influenced Assessment: Portfolios and Contracts in First Year Composition
Part of the discussion brought up in Chapter 11, "Invitation to Further Study" in St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing deals with evaluation and response, especially the question of "Whom are we testing, in the name of what standards, and for whose purposes?" Even more important is the discussion about "formative responses" and the need to give feedback to students with "probing questions, encouragement, ideas for sources, and general 'talking back' to the student text," during the process of learning to write (267).
The issue I see is that many students work for a few weeks on their assignments, and then don't bother to look at anything but the letter grade when the paper is returned. The grade is final; they cannot change it. This sets up a belief that there is no value in a teacher's feedback, and the student perceives no opportunity to make up for that grade later.
My theory, which I think my sources will back up, is that portfolios allow us to place the emphasis on the process of writing rather than the results. We can work together to a common goal, and then provide feedback after an entire semester of developing skills. Contract grading, tied to this idea, also gives the students more power over their learning, by allowing them to decide how much work to put into what goal. If a student truly does not care enough to get more than a C, then that student should be able to say so honestly. If a student strives for an A, then that student can feel like he or she will achieve that grade if they keep to the listed goals. Together, I feel this could change FYC classes to closer match our ideals of student improvement, rather than constant stressful evaluation that can discourage improvement.
Baker, Nancy Westrich. "The effect of portfolio-based instruction on composition students' final examination scores, course grades, and attitudes toward writing." Research in the Teaching of English (1993): 155-174. PDF.
Baker examines several attitudes about portfolio-based classrooms versus the standards in what she calls "standard process" instructional methods. Her goals are to examine the various claims about the benefits of portfolios and determine whether these benefits can be detected qualitatively. Baker goes over the basic advice given to instructors who wish to adopt portfolios in their classrooms, and summarizes some of the debate about grading essays throughout a semester as opposed to at the end of a term, the conversation about attitudes, and the workload on instructors. Her study was meant to answer questions such as whether there was a measurable difference in grades, would student attitudes toward writing be improved over the semester in comparison to their attitudes early in the course, and would an independent evaluation of the grades correlate positively with final course grades? The final result was disappointing for those who support portfolios, suggesting that grades and attitudes show no real improvement. However, Baker does note that the students had a generally positive reaction to the portfolios, even if they did not show much interest in writing afterword. She also addresses the issue of how the instructors adopted and made use of the portfolio grades, and suggested further research into whether portfolios could be better applied to certain kinds of classes, such as basic writers, over others. This article is extremely useful in pointing out the difference between idealistic expectations and real outcomes.
Chambers, Sharon M., and Leah E. Wickersham. "The Electronic Portfolio Journey: A Year Later." Education 127.3 (2007): 351-360. PDF.
This quantitative analysis of student portfolios as it applies to learning focuses on master's students in secondary education, but still provides a look at the effects of this assessment method on the learning process. There is some discussion about the use of electronic portfolios (called ePortfolios in the text). The study deals with the problem of judging the student learning methods within the program. Some responses were predictable, such as students considering the ePortfolio intrusive at first, but improving results after a semester to grow used to the process. The results of the process were generally positive, and the studies showed students claiming that the portfolios helped them understand their own learning processes and develop better transferrable skills. This source provides a quantitative basis for several claims and discussions that can be made about the overall feasibility and desirability of a portfolio-based basic Composition course.
Codde, Joseph R.. "Using Learning Contracts in the College classroom" Codde.com. Michigan State University, 1996. Web. 17 Oct. 2012.
Codde gives a brief overview of how contract learning has affected his classes Contract learning is a proposal that the student decides how much work he or she is willing to put into the class, and agree from the outset how much effort they will expend on their grades. This article makes the points that a learning contract does not stop the instructor from covering content, and in fact allows a shift to more clear focus on the content of the course. The process of learning, of the work expected from the student, becomes the responsibility of a student, who is treated as a competent adult able to make decisions about their own educational needs. This ties into the portfolio in that a student can work with the instructor to decide what will be in the final portfolio, and will understand in advance what their grades will be as a direct result of their work to that point — rather than facing the anxiety of not knowing how a paper will be assessed and wondering what that grade will mean for the overall semester score.
Forbes, Cheryl. "Cowriting, overwriting, and overriding in portfolio land online." Computers and Composition 13.2 (1996): 195-205. PDF
This is an examination of two related issues: feedback in a student portfolio, and the temptation inherent in electronic evaluation which allows an instructor to write more (and more intrusively) than the instructor may have intended. Forbes discusses primarily the issues she had balancing her own voice with that of the student when commenting on and responding to student texts. The portfolio classroom made it possible for her students to see her feedback and adopt it or ignore it as they wished, but because she could directly edit and comment on texts, she felt she pushed her way into their work in a way that she found problematic. An outside evaluator was also concerned by this interference. However, Forbes insists that the error was hers, not the fault of either portfolios or the digital tools used to construct them. She is using her essay as a cautionary tale, trying to show other instructors how to comment on important concepts and global issues rather than worrying so much about sentence-level errors or trying to use immediate feedback to override a student's voice.
Gatlin, Linda, and Shirley Jacob. "Standards-based digital portfolios: a component of authentic
assessment for preservice teachers." Action in Teacher Education 23.4 (2002): 35-42. PDF.
Gatlin and Jacob provide a short overview of a program to train preservice (student) teachers using two closely-related ideas. First is the portfolio assessment, to record and evaluate progress, and second is the digital aspect, creating these portfolios on the Web, so that the papers and drafts could be managed easily and chosen quickly for final evaluation. The specific goal of this program was to help future K-12 teachers have direct experience working with various digital technologies so that they would be more proficient in instructing their students with similar technologies. The overall impression from this essay, short though it is, was that while there are questions to address about implementation and evaluation of portfolios, the experiment was a success. One particular advantage of a digital portfolio was the ability to add multimedia products such as PowerPoint presentations or video clips to the overall portfolio, an important factor in a time when English classes are increasingly focused on discussing the rhetorical aspects of all kinds of genres.
Hiller, Tammy Bunn, and Amy B. Hietapelto. "Contract grading: Encouraging commitment to the learning process through voice in the evaluation process." Journal of Management Education 25.6 (2001): 660-684. PDF.
Hiller and Hietapelto conduct an overview of the contract grading concept, defining it as a postmodern pedagogy that places the instructor in the role of a facilitator for finding information rather than someone who delivers pieces of existing information to young minds. To this end, they describe the value of contract grading systems that offer a variety of options for students with diverse interests and learning styles. They report positive student feedback to evaluation contracts, with most of the test classrooms reporting that they preferred this method to traditional grading systems. One element of these contracts is in negotiation of the weighting of certain assignments, allowing individual students to present one assignment as more important than the others, thus gaming the system so that the "easiest" assignments affect their grades the most. Another issue is the need to provide a basic structure to the course while permitting flexibility. Also, as others have noted, contract grades do require an instructor to provide more constant feedback and monitor student progress individually rather than in a group. The similarity of goals and concerns between this analysis of contract grading and most portfolio assessment articles give a solid basis for seeing where the methods are complementary and where they may not mesh together very well.
Tierney, Robert J. Portfolio assessment in the reading-writing classroom. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc., 480 Washington St., Norwood, MA 02062, 1991.
Tierney's purpose is to provide a how-to manual for developing, implementing, and evaluating portfolios in classrooms. He moves from an overview of the pedagogical theories behind the use of portfolios to the fact that portfolios can take on many diverse formats depending on the classroom. Tierney then focuses the issue of testing, learning directed toward test performances, and the need to refocus instruction to deal with student understanding of issues rather than scores on a test. Once he establishes his case, Tierney goes on to provide several strategies for dealing with a transition to portfolios in the classroom. He gives essential goals and assessment modifications, ways to train students and instructors in using the portfolios, keeping the portfolios active and directed toward the overall evaluative goals, bringing in self-assessment through the portfolio, and ways to analyze the portfolios for final grading. Tierney also shows several examples of portfolio-based classes as a way of demonstrating the wide variety of methods available to instructors. The text is older and does not really spend time on digital options, it is a useful nuts-and-bolts discussion of the real challenges facing teachers who wish to use portfolios.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Portfolios in the writing classroom." Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (1992).
Yancey edits a collection of essays by various teachers who have implemented portfolios in their classrooms. These instructors come from a variety of schools, ranging from middle schools to colleges, and practiced many forms of portfolio instruction for several reasons. In some cases, the portfolio was mandated by the institution or the state, in others, the instructors were trying to change their own methods. Yancey also writes introductory and concluding chapters, which provide overviews of the elements of portfolio instruction, the responses most teachers report, and summarizing issues such as workload and smooth implementation. Most of the essays are positive, although the authors also point out the issues they faced in their own circumstances. Yancey concludes by stating that widespread portfolio adoption is experimental and every teacher will necessarily modify the process for their own needs. While this book does not introduce significantly new ideas, it provides a useful overview of the uses and problems inherent in portfolio assessment. The multiple contexts effectively convey how to adapt to changing circumstances.
Wade, Anne, Philip Abrami, and Jennifer Sclater. "An electronic portfolio to support learning." Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie 31.3 (2005). Web. 21 Oct. 2012.
Wade and Sclater write about a project implementing portfolio assessment through an online program developed for that purpose. They discuss the purpose of a digital portfolio as allowing the collection and presentation of materials without the need for file folders, file cabinets, or sorting through large amounts of paper to evaluate the portfolios. A useful addition from online portfolios is the ability for a student to work on the portfolio remotely (presumably from home or other comfortable environments) and for an instructor to evaluate the portfolios anywhere they can get online. Wade and Sclater emphasize the value of self-regulating learning and the "metacognitive" thinking about the process of learning. The article also distinguishes between low-context and high-context portfolios, showing a varying degree of support from traditional learning models and how central the portfolios were to the classroom environment. The article concludes that it is important for students to be given clear goals and expectations about the portfolios, because otherwise they may be confused and unwilling to accept the change from the more comfortable traditional methods. Much of the rest of the article deals with the specific software being implemented, which is valuable primarily because online and digital issues can be extrapolated beyond the limits of a certain program.
Wilhelm, Kim Hughes. "Combined assessment model for EAP writing workshop: Portfolio decision-making, criterion-referenced grading, and contract negotiation." TESL Canada Journal 14.1 (1996): 21-33. PDF.
Wilhelm looks at the use of a modified method of assessing students by combining aspects of portfolios and criterion-referenced grading to determine overall workload. She summarizes the value and concerns of the various methods in the overall methods. Portfolios, she says, can give students greater feelings of ownership over their efforts, although the increased workload required of both students and teachers can be overwhelming. The criterion-reference is brought in at the end of the semester, when the portfolio is evaluated, giving the students both an idea what the standards will be (for use in selecting the works that will appear in the portfolio), but allowing the instructors to meet institutional standards for grades. Wilhelm then addresses whether it would be useful to add in contract grading and negotiation to this model. The contracts and negotiations would specifically occur at the level of determining the final criterion for assessment. This example of combined methods provides a useful road-map for other efforts to develop rigorous standards in a class based around portfolios and contracts.