Kathleen Yancey: I Think I’ll put this in My Portfolio

Yancey’s major contribution comes in the form of promoting new forms of assessment, especially digital portfolios. By focusing on assessment, Yancey believes that curriculum will improve, and she focuses on portfolios because of the easy way it lends to tracking student development.

Focusing of assessment will improve curriculum because it forces educator to ask themselves, “What is our intention?” The better one understands what he or she demands of students, the more obvious the skills that need to be taught are made. Focusing on assessment not only helps establish what should be taught, but it also turns the teacher’s toward how the information should be taught. Just as above, better pedagogy means clearer assessment and better student performance.

The mode that Yancey promotes the most is digital portfolios. The portfolio is well liked by Yancey because it provides an easy avenue for both teachers and students to examine the student’s progress. Whereas traditional assessment is only a snapshot of the student’s understanding at that moment, the portfolio presents as series of snapshots that show either stagnation, improvement, or decline in a student’s work. The portfolio also provides the student with the potential to reflect and revise his or her work; traditional assessment only provides one opportunity to “finish” a work. This revisionary system allows students to continue refining work, a feat that would require multiple assignments using traditional assessment (one assignment per draft).

Portfolios offer benefits beyond assessment. As Rhonda pointed out, many students enjoy using digital portfolios because they allow the student to express themselves in a non-linear fashion. Piggybacking on Selfe’s ideas of using technology in the classroom, this form of assessment allows students to apply their computer background in a manner that is not indulgent, but rather uses their knowledge to accomplish a real world task.