This photo was taken by Kathi in Rosskirk, Ireland in May 2023
What we ask students to do is what we ask them to be. (Yancey 2004, p.739)
Kathi’s journey to ePortfolios began when she was learning German in graduate school and her instructor questioned if final “grades should be [solely] based on [a student’s] performance at the time that the course ended” instead of accumulating throughout the semester based on their ability to attempt and practice their learning along the way (Hoeppner, 2023). This proposition in 1979 prompted Kathi’s subsequent explorations and experiments with a portfolio approach to teaching, learning, and assessment, leading to a mindset and a methodology that would be foundational and enduring throughout her career in higher education. ePortfolios embody this value that learning is something that should be assessed in conversation with reflection, revision, and student identity, and Kathi’s work on ePortfolio assessment continues to make the argument that the stories students tell about their learning and why it matters are more valuable than their performance on a timed exam.
Read below to learn more about Kathi’s views on ePortfolio assessment, and read more about ePortfolio assessment as it relates to ePortfolios on our resources list.
As a pedagogical approach, portfolios are often purposeful in their intention to demonstrate and document student growth over time, and to make learning visible by allowing for iterative reflection and a-ha moments of realization of progress in one’s knowledge and skills. The connection to assessment lies in the meta-reflection and commentary that supports how the learner is making sense of their experiences via the portfolio (Yancey & Irwin, 1997). These reflections also serve to inform the educators who are reading ePortfolios how the curriculum they have delivered is actually being lived and experienced by students. Yancey (1997) expands upon this distinction, noting that the “intersection of the two curricula” (i.e., the lived, the experienced, and the delivered curricula) is “the most productive site for learning” (p. 258)
Assessing writing in virtual vs. physical formats—first through portfolios and then ePortfolios—revealed new challenges in defining and balancing pedagogy and practice. Yancey (2004a) noted: “But we seem decidedly discomforted when it comes time to assess such processes and products—regardless of whether by assess we mean responding to student texts or putting a grade to them; articulating the values demonstrated in the work of colleagues who help students create these texts; or even attempting to ascertain the value of our own digital compositions” (p.90). In 2019, Yancey revisits the expanded view of ePortfolio authorship that is collaborative, participatory, and engages the broader public, thereby reiterating the challenges of what and who is being assessed in the online environment. She goes on to highlight the importance of digital literacy as a strategy to support learning and assessment in an ePortfolio curriculum.
Hear from Terrel L. (Terry) Rhodes, Ph.D., former vice president for the Office of Quality, Curriculum and Assessment at AAC&U or read below:
Assessment and Portfolios have influenced learning in higher education for decades; yet the expansive utilization of these tools throughout all learning environments is directly related to Kathi’s dynamic intellectual and praxis leadership. In 2007, when I invited her to join a twelve member national advisory board at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to develop a new approach to assessing student learning – VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education), her work on Writing Across the Curriculum and writing in an ePortfolio environment were a model for bringing together faculty and students from diverse disciplines to engage in how to research and assess the effects of these practices on student learning, teaching pedagogy and the curriculum.
Kathi’s work helped us develop a set of rubrics to guide learning assessments focused on what students could do to demonstrate their levels of understanding of material through the work they produced in classes and in their lives. The rubrics were constructed for use across the formal curriculum as well as the lived curriculum. Building on AAC&U’s Essential Learning Outcomes that reflected core learning skills and abilities of a liberal education, Kathi’s work on Every Day writing allowed VALUE rubric assessment to expand the student evidence base for shared conversations among faculty, students and others across the curriculums and beyond. Recognized as a High Impact pedagogical practice in 2008, ePortfolios became a dynamic pedagogy to integrate assessment evidence from many places in many forms in support of quality learning.
The foundation of the combination of “portfolios” and “assessment” is learning, whether portfolios are a bridge within the content presented across an academic term within a course (Yancey & Irwin, 1997) or ePortfolio curriculum empowers students to become “agents of their own learning” (Yancey 1998, p.5). Akin to the discussions around assessment of learning (summative) and assessment for learning (formative), portfolios are well-positioned to support both processes. Assessment management systems often use portfolios as a means to create collections of artifacts that may be tagged to a specific learning outcome or objective and can be sampled and evaluated using a rubric, as Terry Rhodes speaks to above. Assessment of mastery over time is where portfolios truly excel as a pedagogy and a technology platform that increases the visibility and evidence of growth not only for the instructor but especially for the learner.
Kathi’s perspective and observations about portfolios and assessment have corresponded to advances in ePortfolio technology platforms, the emergence and expansion of ePortfolio scholarship, and a recognition of the value of ePortfolios for student engagement as a high-impact practice. As illustrated in the other sections in this chapter, improving the experiences of students has always been the North Star guiding Kathi’s efforts and those of us who follow in her path.