Teaching with UW Technology

Quick Links to Resources:

Catalyst's Portfolio Home Page: Instructors and students go here to build a new Portfolio

Catalyst's Project Builder Home Page: Instructors go here to build or modify a Portfolio template

Catalyst's Help Center for Portfolio: FAQs for instructors and students

CIC Student Guide to using Portfolio: Student-friendly one-stop help with Portfolio

EWP Homepage: Link to EWP Homepage

EWP Portfolio "Packet" (password required): Template links, sample Portfolios, handouts

Table of Contents for This Page:

1. What is Catalyst's Portfolio Tool?

2. Why Use Portfolio in Your Class?

3. Making the Decision: Templates vs. Student-Designed Portfolios

4. Using Pre-existing Portfolio Templates

5. Creating a Portfolio Template

6. When to Introduce Portfolio to Your Students

1. What is Catalyst's Portfolio Tool? Back to Top

The Catalyst Portfolio tool offers instructors the ability to move traditional end-of-the-quarter paper portfolios online. It is a limited website building tool that provides instructors and students a place to collect and reflect upon various types of digital “artifacts”: essays, images, video clips, PowerPoint presentations, and web sites, to name a few. Portfolio not only gives students a way to organize electronic versions of all their homework, essays, and projects but it also allows them to easily create and web-publish a course portfolio.

Links to Sample Portfolios:

1. English 121 (by Paper)

2. English 131 (by Outcome)

Above: A Portfolio Homepage From an English 121 Course

2. Why Use Portfolio in Your Class? Back to Top

"If what we want is to deepen learning and to facilitate transfer of knowledge...e-portfolios provide a strategy that allows students to archive their work over time. The critical part is that they also use those artifacts for intentional and promoted reflection that supports connecting the learning aross courses and disciplines and to their own lives and passions."

(Judith Patton, associate dean, School of Fine and Performing Arts, Portland State University, qtd. in Miller, Ross, "The Benefits of E-portfolios for Students and Faculty in Their Own Words," Peer Review, Winter 2009, Vol. 11, No.1.)

Whether or not you choose to frame the use of portfolios within the context of your course only, or as a resource that a student can continue to use over the course of his or her education (as in the quote above), the structure and function of the Catalyst Portfolio tool supports the educational values of transfer and metacognition via the practice of extended reflection.

Aside from promoting these general values, here are four more reasons to use Portfolio in your course:

1. Portfolios are a mode of evaluation

Having students turn in a final portfolio of work for some portion of their course grade supports summative (outcome based) evaluation.
The collection of student portfolios over time generates an archive for a course or program assessment project.
The Expository Writing Program (EWP)100-level writing courses require portfolio-based evaluation. Click here (password required) for access to the EWP's extensive resources on portfolio-based evaluation.

2. Portfolios are a tool for teaching multimodality and multi-literacies

Increasingly, instruction in writing and English is asking students to compose, interpret and analyze multimodal texts. A Portfolio can serve as a collection and presentation tool for multimodal texts--and is itself a multimodal text.
In tandem with multimodality, instruction in writing and English reflects the recognition that text-based literacies are but one of the literacies students can expect to encounter in academia and beyond. Asking students to design a Portfolio is an opportunity to teach design literacy, among other literacies afforded by using Portfolio as an instructional tool.

3. Portfolios are a platform for introducing public writing

There is growing interest in the humanities to engage students in "public writing," meaning loosely that students write for audiences other than those implied by academic classroom genres, such as the academic essay. Security settings for Portfolio enable students to set access to their site to the open web affording instruction in writing for the web, or developing assignments that contribute to a public conversation.

4. Portfolios are a tool for students to put course work into the context of their long-term plans

Students can access their Portfolio as long as they have a UW NetID. They can continue to build their portfolio over time, and, as appropriate, can use it to showcase their work and development for a job or academic application process.

3. Making the Decision: Templates vs. Student-Designed Portfolios Back to Top

The Portfolio tool offers two formats: the self-initiated and the invited. The self-initiated format requires students to build their own portfolios. They decide the order of the pages, and they choose what information to include. Students may use self-initiated portfolios to reflect upon progress in individual courses, to chart how a paper or project emerged from a series of short assignments, or to showcase their best UW work for potential employers. Although self-initiated portfolios must be web-published for anyone to view them, students may restrict access by UW Net ID or specific password. Students may also configure the portfolio to let viewers comment on each page; such comments are visible only to the student.

The invited portfolio, created via Catalyst’s Portfolio Project Builder, allows instructors more control over the content and structure of student portfolios. As an instructor, you design the portfolio assignment template or modify an existing portfolio template and distribute it to your students. They collect the required artifacts and respond to your prompts. With invited portfolios, students may choose to web-publish their work or to submit the portfolio only to the instructor. Regardless of submission format, instructors can provide electronic feedback on the portfolio. Unlike self-initiated student portfolios, invited portfolios are linked to the instructor’s Catalyst tools; you may thus view all student portfolios from a single web page.

The table below summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of multiple portfolio assignment options. It also lists guidelines and instructions teachers should offer with each assignment type.

Option	Pros	Cons	Requirements and Instructions for Students
1) Students create their own portfolios, using the Catalyst tool.	Less preparation time for instructor. Numerous content/formatting choices available to students.	May be too unstructured for some students. May take too much time for students to build portfolios from scratch.	Portfolio assignment sheet that includes clear instructor guidelines for content and structure; grading rubric that considers content, structure, and design. Support for students who encounter difficulties. See online student guide at depts.washington.edu/engl/cic/sgonline.
2) Instructor designs a template that students use to create their portfolios.	Allows instructor to communicate concrete expectations for content and format. Places focus on content by limiting formatting options.	Significant preparation time for instructor to build template, prepare assignment guidelines, and distribute template via Portfolio Project Builder. Template restricts student choices regarding content and structure.	Clear instructor guidelines for content within template; grading rubric that considers content and perhaps design. Support for students who encounter difficulties. See online student guide at depts.washington.edu/ engl/cic/sgonline.
3) Instructor uses or modifies a pre-existing E-portfolio template and distributes it to students.	Saves time for instructor (compared to building a template from scratch). Using template developed by experienced instructors and researchers will help first-time E-Portfolio users to effectively structure future portfolio assignments.	Template may not fit instructor’s vision for E-Portfolio assignment. Template restricts student choices regarding content and structure.	Clear instructor guidelines for content within template; grading rubric that considers content and perhaps design. Support for students who encounter difficulties.See online student guide at depts.washington.edu/ engl/cic/sgonline.

4. Using Pre-existing Portfolio Templates Back to Top

Left: The "Major Paper #2" page from a paper-based template (see template choices below). Notice the two artifacts at the top of the page, an image and a Word document, both part of this assignment. This student has also illustrated his reflection with a photo that he modified.

There are three Portfolio templates that were designed for the EWP's 100-level writing courses (see images of representative template pages below) : one for portfolios organized around course outcomes, one for portfolios structured around analyses of featured papers and one that provides an electronic "homepage" platform for a paper-based portfolio.

Template Organized by Outcome	Template Organized by Paper	Homepage Template

If you do not want to modify the templates, you can simply give students the link to your prefered template. This link will prompt them to copy the template into their own Catalyst accounts. Once they have copied the template into their own accounts, they can fill in the template and publish it when they are finished. Here are the links:

Homepage Template: http://portfolio.washington.edu/optin.cgi?owner=ewprog&id=5675
Template by Outcome: http://portfolio.washington.edu/optin.cgi?owner=ewprog&id=5676
Template by Paper: http://portfolio.washington.edu/optin.cgi?owner=ewprog&id=5674

If you do want to modify the template before you distribute it to students, complete the following steps:

Contact a CIC or EWP staff member. You will be sent the requested template via Catalyst’s Portfolio Project Builder.
Go to the Catalyst home page and click Web Tools Login in the upper right corner. Log in with your UW Net ID and password. Your Catalyst account page will load.
Click on the Portfolio Project Builder icon in the bar of web tools icons near the top of the page.

It looks like this: . In the box that opens, select Go to Portfolio Project Builder.
Click View my projects from the I want to options on the left.
On the projects page, you should see Projects from the CIC Director or CIC AD under the Other Projects heading (see image below). The project list will include the template you requested.

Screen shot of portfolio project builder

6. Click on the name of the template you want to copy. From the project summary page that appears, click Copy this project from the I want to options (see image below).

Screenshot of portfolio project builder page

7. On the copy project screen that appears, rename the template in the Name of new project box (in the sample below, we’ve used the name “Copy of EWP Homepage Template”). Leave the Location of new project box set to My Projects and click the Next button.

Screen shot of portfolio project builder page

8. On the project summary page that appears, you will see yourself listed as the owner of the newly named portfolio. You can now view and edit the portfolio project’s pages, description, instructor information, objectives, and instructions for completion. You may also add new pages to the portfolio project.

Now that you are the owner of the template, you can make changes to suit your course. Catalyst offers support for how to make changes to the template and how to distribute it to your students. Click on the following topics to be directed to the relevant Catalyst support page:

Edit template pages, including adding and deleting sections, moving a section, editing instructions, changing the type of artifact students must submit and previewing your template.
Distribute the template to your students. If you want to make all the pages of your template available to students at the same time, make sure that you check the box for each page of the template. Students will not be able to access pages of the template that have not been distributed.

When you are ready to view your students' portfolios, you have several choices. When students publish their portfolios (see online student guide for directions on how to publish portfolios), you can ask them to submit the URL to you in a variety of ways:

1. Students can email you their URL.

2. Create a Catalyst GoPost online discussion board (see Catalyst GoPost instructions here) where students can post their Portfolio URL.

Have all the URLs in one place; avoid having to sort through your email.
GoPost time stamps posts. Portfolio also time stamps the last update time.
Since it is web-based, students (and you) can access it from anywhere.
Students can also use this as a central site to trade URLs for peer review.

3. Students can post their URL to another class webspace, such as a blog or wiki.

WARNING: Be aware of how publicly available the URLs are. Think carefully about whether you and your students want their Portfolios available to the open web. Portfolio also has security settings to restrict acces to UWNedIDs only (highly recommended for most courses).

3. If you want to use the submit, review and comment feature of Portfolio, click here for the Catalyst instructions.

WARNING: Most instructors find this system difficult to implement.
Students can still modify their Portfolios even once they have been published. Most instructors ask students to post their URLs early and then design their own feedback tools for peer review and instructor feedback.

5. Creating a Portfolio Template Back to Top

The Catalyst web site includes extensive instructions for creating new project templates with the Portfolio Project Builder. The template pictured below, created for a cinema studies writing link, asks students to select and reflect upon their most improved essay and their most and least effective essays, homework, and peer reviews. Students could also submit one post-grade revision. In addition, students had to include an introduction and final reflection. Screen shots of individual page instructions appear below. To view the complete template, go to: portfolio.washington.edu/optin.cgi?owner=kgb&id=4625. You will be prompted to login with a UW NetID.

Sample Custom Template Created for English 197

Portfolio Homepage:

Screen shot of sample instructor built template

Page Instructions: Introduction and Overview:

Screen shot of instructor designed template

Page Instructions: Evaluation of Peer Critiques:

Screen shot of instructor-designed template

Page Instructions: Optional Essay Revision

Screen shot of instructor-designed template

Page Instructions: Final Reflection:

Screen shot of instructor-designed template

6. When to Introduce Portfolio To Your Students Back to Top

Research conducted on writing classes using E-Portfolios during the 2005-2006 academic year found that instructors who introduced the Portfolio too late in the quarter were more likely to have technical problems. Also, the quality of reflective writing about class artifacts improves if students are asked to do it throughout the quarter. Below are two ways to integrate Portfolio into your course:

Option 1:Mini-Portfolio
The mini-portfolio is a small-scale version of the final course portfolio that can be assigned early in the quarter. Ask students to collect via Portfolio all short assignments submitted during a single essay sequence. Introduce students to reflective writing by prompting them to connect their work during this sequence to the course outcomes.

Option 2: Storage Portfolio
Another option for early integration of the Portfolio tool is the storage portfolio. Each time students submit an assignment, require them to upload an electronic copy via Portfolio. By the end of the quarter, they will have a wealth of materials they can use for their final portfolios. If you have created a template for students, it can include a location to upload all coursework. If students are building their own Portfolios, see the Catalyst Portfolio instructions for how to create a new artifact.