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Learning Portfolios Background About Learning Portfolios at UCSF What is a learning portfolio? It is a longitudinal, professional development tool that stimulates learners to select, record, and organize their learning; reflect and receive feedback on their professional development; and exhibit their efforts, progress or achievement. A learning portfolio explains the criteria for selection of materials to be included (called artifacts) and includes evidence of learner reflection. What's happening at UCSF? UCSF's Health professions schools are interested in incorporating learning portfolios into their core curricula, and several schools have begun piloting their use. The impetus for this move comes from a growing literature showing that portfolios support professional development, assessment, and lifelong learning (see below for references), and from interest in portfolios from accreditation and certification boards. In the spring of 2008, David Irby, Ph.D., Vice Dean for Education, charged a committee of educators to support the development of learning portfolios. The UCSF Portfolio Committee, co-chaired by Drs. Patricia Robertson and Michael Harper, is examining the approach to portfolios at other institutions, evaluating a variety of electronic portfolio management systems, and developing mechanisms for educating and supporting students, trainees, and faculty in how to make the best use of this important learning tool. The committee includes representatives from the School of Medicine UME, GME, and CME programs, medical students, and medical residents as well as representatives from the schools of Pharmacy, Dentistry, Nursing, Office of Academic and Administrative Information Systems (OAAIS) and the Library. The committee is building on the work of the School of Medicine's Electronic Portfolio Implementation Committee (ePIC), which convened during the 2006-2007 academic year to lay the groundwork for the current effort. How will learning portfolios change how we assess learners at UCSF? The introduction of portfolios will herald a 'culture change' in assessment at UCSF. The strength of a learning portfolio is that it gives learners a far more active role in their professional development. It allows learners to collect and present evidence of their mastery of competencies and their strengths in the core curriculum and associated professional areas. It also provides an important venue in which learners can reflect on their work and plan, with input from mentors, the next steps in their education. A portfolio will augment the examination scores, observation-based assessments, and opinions of their supervisors, peers, professional associates, and patients that serve as the current formative and summative forms of academic assessment.
How does it work? The portfolio requires an interactive process and robust mentoring that engages learners in self-reflection and individualized development as professionals with support and feedback from faculty mentors. With the mentor's advice and with a program's educational standards in mind, learners create and revise a learning plan and select examples from an assessment data repository and other sources of artifacts to best illustrate their learning, professional development and achievement of competencies. These examples help both the learner and relevant faculty judge competency relative to benchmarks and to craft further learning goals. Ideally, the portfolio can be used for personal reflection, self-directed learning, academic advancement, and application to a program or employer. The portfolio is longitudinal, covering the continuum of experience extending, potentially, from the beginning of medical school to well into your professional career. For example, a trainee who completes both medical school and residency at UCSF would have a single, ongoing portfolio. Eventually, portfolios may be integrated across institutions. What is reflection? Reflection is the critical analysis of personal experience to enhance learning and improve future behavior and outcomes. (Add link to reflection website/learning tool.) Without reflection, the portfolio would not be a portfolio at all - instead it would be a passive warehouse or database. Portfolios build a bridge between data and self-discovery by requiring purposeful thought and synthesis of past, present, and future experience. By reflecting on the evidence in their portfolios, learners identify their own strengths, opportunities for improvement, and development over time. Reflection creates new learning as people consider their achievements and emerge with a new evidence-based understanding of their progress and future goals. How would the portfolios be used? Periodically learners would be asked to review all the artifacts relevant to their learning, select a set to include in a formative portfolio, and write a reflection of the artifacts they selected. A faculty mentor would then review the portfolio, provide feedback, and work with the learner to refine an individualized learning plan. for receiving feedback from a faculty coach or mentor. When decisions need to be made about academic advancement, learners and their mentors would create a showcase portfolio according to guidelines for highlighting best work. Representatives of a course or educational program would then judge the portfolio in accordance with criteria for academic advancement. Isn't this just another administrative requirement? Like all learner-centered programs, the power of learning portfolios will depend on how much time, effort and importance people give them. Beyond the benefits accrued while in medical school and residency, portfolios will help learners prepare for a career of ongoing self-assessment and lifelong learning, two cornerstones of professional expertise and excellence. Moreover, it is likely that portfolios can be used to produce the documentation required for applications to educational programs and jobs, and for certifying organizations. Indeed, learning portfolios are becoming the norm in education from elementary school onward and in a number of other professions as well.
Articles Dannefer, EF, & Henson, LC. (2007). The portfolio approach to competency-based assessment at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. Academic medicine, 82(5), 493-502. Bowers, SP. (2005) The portfolio process: Questions for implementation and practice. College Student Journal, 39(4), 754-758. Driessen, EW, van Tartwijk, J, Overeem, K, et al. (2005). Conditions for successful reflective use of portfolios in undergraduate medical education. Medical education, 39(12), 1230-5. Kalet, AL, Sanger, J, Chase, J, et al. (2007). Promoting professionalism through an online professional development portfolio: successes, joys, and frustrations. Academic medicine, 82(11), 1065-72. Websites E-Portfolios for Learning (blog) by Helen Barrett, education consultant Portfolios at Dartmoth College - http://www.dartmouth.edu/~csrc/students/portfolio/index.html Dannefer's poster presentation - http://tinyurl.com/6sybw4 Efolio examples from Minnesota State Colleges & Universities website - http://tinyurl.com/6lmsqb
Artifact: These are pieces of evidence of learners' work and advancement. Artifacts can represent a wide array of information and materials. Examples include a video tape of you with a standardized patient, test results, a poster/abstract/journal article you wrote or contributed to, a letter from a patient or a patient's family member, reflections written as part of a course or clerkship, your resume, or select narrative assessments from the E*Value system. The best portfolios contain many types of artifacts, each of which communicates unique and important information about you and your professional development. Assessment data repository: A centralized system for storing formative and summative assessment data (eg., standardized test scores; instructor, peer, and patient evaluations). Ideally, the electronic portfolio system would allow you to seamlessly draw assessment data from this repository into your portfolio. Educational standards: Accepted criteria of what students should know and be able to do. These criteria are based on an educational program's outcome objectives and, increasingly in health science education, are organized into domains of competency. For example, an educational standard for a first-year clinical skills course might be that a student be able to perform a complete medical and social history. Educational benchmark: A reference point that serves as a basis for judging whether a student has met the associated educational standard. For example, an educational benchmark for a first-year clinical skills course might be that a student provides a summary of three patient interviews they performed during their first year. The summary would contain elements selected from feedback from peers and instructors who observed their interviews, their score on a structured interview with a standardized patient, and their own reflection of the feedback and score on the structured interview. This summary would clearly demonstrate the students' growth and current level of proficiency. Formative assessment: Assessment of a student's progress with accompanying feedback to improve performance. Used to aid learning, and not for formally determining the learner's readiness for advancing to the next phase of an educational program. An example is when a student takes a practice test in preparation for a course exam and the score is used to guide her/his studying for the exam but isn't part of the course grade. Learning plan: A student-specific program or strategy for learning which includes methods and goals and a timeline. Portfolio: A purposeful and longitudinal collection of tangible evidence of learner-selected work that exhibits the learner's efforts, progress or achievement. It features the criteria for selection and judging merit, and includes evidence of learner reflection. Reflection: The critical analysis of personal experience to enhance learning and improve future behaviors and outcomes. Summative assessment: The process of evaluating and grading or judging a student's performance for the purpose of determining their readiness for advancing to the next phase of an educational program.
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