Contact:

Kellye Crockett – crockettk@missouri.edu

What purpose does your assessment tool serve? 

• Allows education professionals completing advance degrees to document their knowledge and skills acquired in their advanced degree
• Used by student seeking advance degrees (Master, Ed. Specialists, Ed.D. Ph.D.) in school leadership and school counseling
• Based on ISLLC and School Counseling standards and NETS
• Portfolio system allows student to show their growth over time
• Portfolio evaluation takes the place of comprehensive exams
• Portfolios are required for principal, superintendent and counselor certification
• Incorporates peer review and presentation portfolio capabilities
  
  

Please indicate which category best describes your tool:

a.        _____ Tools that allow users to ask questions of data (tools for collecting and disaggregating data, including surveys, self-reported data and standardized data)

b.       ____ Tools for observation (including teacher observation and observation of student behavior or performance)

c.        _X__ Tools for reviewing student products (including electronic or digital portfolios)

Who is the audience for this assessment tool?

• Advanced degree recipients in School Leadership and School Counseling (60)

• Faculty and staff in the College of Education (100)
• Public school partners who work with our students in their field placements (80)
• Potentially any other school leadership and/or school counseling degree program
• Potentially K-12 schools interested in incorporating electronic portfolios into continuing professional development activities
  
  

What technology is used?

The portfolio system (Foliotek) is a Web site hosted in a secure data center. Users simply connect to the system via the Internet.  Users need only a Web browser to connect to the portfolio system and begin using it. 

The portfolio system is built on the following components:

• Hosted system with a Web-based interface
• Runs on a Windows 2000 server with the .NET framework
• Data is stored in Microsoft SQL Server database and XML
• Data can be exported to a file or transferred to another system through a Web service

Approximately how many people are currently using this system?

What professional development (for students or assessors) is required to use the tool?

The "students" in our system are often practicing education professionals.  They are often enrolled in their degree programs part time and/or online.  Therefore our system needed to have a very easy to use structure.  Students receive very little training prior to using the system (1-2 hours total).  The layout of the navigation is built to reflect the structure of the initial teacher certification portfolio system, which many of these students have completed.

Faculty attend one initial training session when they begin using the electronic portfolio system (one hour).  Faculty responsibilities in the electronic portfolio system are focused on providing formative and summative evaluative feedback to students as they produce and revise their portfolios.  The electronic portfolio system provides vehicles for formative comments, summative evaluation records, and coordinated peer reviews. All of these functions are covered in the 1-hour training session.

To use the tool effectively, what else should the school have in place?

The University of Missouri-Columbia principal, superintendent and school counseling portfolios are standards based.  School leader portfolios are organized around the Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards.  School Counselor portfolios are organized around the Missouri Quality Indicators for School Counselors.  These standards are infused throughout the program, so students are already familiar with them prior to beginning work on their portfolio.  Each set of standards has an accompanying scoring rubric upon which the portfolio is evaluated.

The portfolio system uses a web-based interface that is equivalent in skill level to web based email or online shopping.  For those students interested in increasing their technology skills, the portfolio system can accommodate, images audio files and video files, in addition to text and graphic files.

The portfolio system follows a "common tools" approach that allows students to utilize their knowledge of common applications and formats such as MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, and HTML.  Allowing users to keep their artifacts in these common formats means they can begin immediately adding artifacts they have already created, they don’t have to learn a special tool or format to create their artifacts, and their artifacts are in a common format that can be used in other contexts outside of the portfolio system. 

If you haven't already addressed it, how does your tool help students or teachers demonstrate that they are meeting standards?

The portfolio system provides multiple levels of assessment beginning with the individual student and going all the way to programmatic assessment. 

There is a standards view on the portfolio that allows the student and teacher to see how different items in the portfolio are associated with different standards.  At a glance they can do a standards gap analysis to see which standards they are addressing well and which standards may need more attention. 

Additionally, scoring guides are set up that allow teachers to evaluate a student based on the standards in the portfolio.  This information will allow the teacher to provide formal feedback to the student on how they are meeting the standard.  Completed evaluations can be published to for the student to view, allowing the student to see where they may be excelling or where they may need to focus their attention.  The student is then able to revise any artifacts in their portfolio and resubmit it for evaluation.  This formative process of assessment/feedback and revision continue as long as deemed necessary by the program or teacher.

Although not directly addressed in the questions, it is also worth noting that the portfolio system allows us to extract programmatic data related to the successful implementation of standards within the College.  Viewing cross sections of this data helps us to understand how different areas of the College are successfully infusing the knowledge and skill of the standards within the curriculum.

What questions would you like participants to address?

• If you were using this tool in your education environment, what other components would you find useful to include in this system?
• Where does portfolio assessment fit into your overall strategy for assessing students and/or faculty in your educational environment?
• Does your educational institution use portfolios for school leaders in professional development and/or certification?