Research and Practice Portfolio Guidelines
NOTE: Your Program Portfolio will be submitted towards the end of your program, in either EDUC 5470 or EDUC 5910
Introduction
The Research and Practice Portfolio is an important part of a student’s learning experience. It serves as a repository for research findings, sample units, and lessons. Students use it to archive ideas and resources related to pedagogical approaches, classroom management, and assessment. Throughout their coursework, students are asked to reflect on the how, what, and why of their learning experiences, and to connect these to their teaching philosophy and practice. The Portfolio also supports the summative self-reflection on growth in professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes that is an important part of the Capstone experience.
Master’s students should begin building their Research and Practice Portfolio in the very first week of their program and continue the practice over the course of their studies. Effective teachers often continue using portfolios throughout their entire career.
Creating and Using the Research and Practice Portfolio
NOTE: Download the Program Portfolio Template here.
What is a research and practice portfolio?
A research and practice portfolio contains information related to teaching and teaching practice that is assembled by an individual for his/her own personal and professional use. It is a record of efforts to expand one’s professional knowledge and skills and to find ways to positively impact the lives of the children and youth in one’s classrooms.
Can I see an example of a completed Program Portfolio?
In the Program Portfolio template, there is an example of a completed class that can be used as a model for completing your Portfolio.
Why should teachers create a portfolio?
A research and practice portfolio serves many purposes.
- It is a digital repository for storing information that you want to save.
- It creates a picture of you as an educator.
- It fosters your reflective abilities and leads to continual self-improvement.
- It enables you to think about teaching in a non-linear manner, allowing you to encounter and explore aspects of teaching in novel ways.
- It is a way to take ownership of your own learning.
- It documents for you and for others your accomplishments as a student, scholar-inquirer, and practitioner.
- It provides evidence of your evolving professional growth, and your understanding of teaching as a dynamic process that involves planning, experimentation, assessment, reflection, and further experimentation.
- It facilitates conversations with colleagues about professional practice.
- It is a tool for assessing the extent to which you have met program standards.
What kinds of things go into a portfolio?
The contents of a portfolio are referred to in the literature as “artifacts. Artifacts can take many forms:
- excerpts from and/or entire scholarly articles (e.g., journals, monographs, book chapters, etc.)*
- excerpts from and/or entire research reports*
- excerpts from texts and other course readings*
- content from blogs*
- URLs for websites*
- videos*
- photos/snapshots with explanation
- powerpoints
- curricula
- unit and lessons plans
- teaching materials
- sample assessments
- sample rubrics
- ideas from the classrooms of other teachers with supporting documentation
- materials you create in your M.Ed. courses as you progress through the program (e.g., teaching philosophy, assignments, group projects, reflections, descriptions of efforts to improve your teaching, etc.)
- other items of your own creation
- anonymized examples of student work (these should never be posted on the web in ways that would make them accessible to others, e.g., on social media, and great care should be taken to protect student privacy even for portfolios/portfolio elements not housed online)
- And more - there are no limits to what one can decide to put into a professional portfolio, as long as it is relevant and can be explained
NOTE: Writing down or logging citations at the time these artifacts are collected will save time searching for them later.
Should I date entries in my portfolio? If so, why?
It is important to date every artifact when you enter it into your portfolio. Over time, doing this will grow in importance. In the early years, you will remember when you found something to put in your portfolio. Over time, its size will make that no longer feasible, and you will want to be able to track the age of items.
Some artifacts will stand the test of time and be valuable until the very end of your teaching career. Others will be supplanted by subsequent research, will no longer reflect thinking about how something should be done, will be based on out-of-date technology, etc. Date-stamping helps with deleting these items. Date-stamping can also be a tool for looking back and reflecting on your continuing professional development.
How do students work with their portfolio?
There are a number of actions that master’s students take with respect to their portfolios.
The following actions will occur more frequently and require little intentionality or analysis:
- Collect
Students gather and preserve artifacts for future reference and/or use. There is no need to make judgments about their value. Anything that seems interesting, informative, useful, insightful, etc., should be collected. - Organize
Students decide into what tag to initially add to the artifacts that have been gathered so that they will be easily searchable. It is not necessary to invest too much energy in imposing some overarching structure on them at this time. Tags can always be updated and multiple tags can be added.
These actions require you to consider and reconsider, change your perspective, impose order, deepen your understanding, and make connections as you engage with the artifacts in your portfolio:
- Reflect
Your portfolio is a place to note not only what you have collected but also how you might use it, where there may be connections among artifacts, what you have learned from the collected items, etc. These reflections will also show which artifacts have personal meaning and importance to you. You will be asked to do reflective exercises involving your portfolio in all of your M.Ed. courses. - Evaluate
It is important to regularly evaluate the artifacts in your portfolio and determine their continuing value and importance. You may find it helpful to insert a brief comment or reminder about an artifact as you are considering its merits/shortcomings, advantages/disadvantages, possible uses, and applications, etc. - Edit
Portfolios are dynamic and flexible. Some artifacts will be saved forever. Others will be retained until replaced with more up-to-date information and/or practices. Still, others that initially seemed of value, will be discarded within a relatively short period of time.
As noted above, tag updates and revisions will happen on an ongoing basis.
How does the Program Portfolio differ from my weekly portfolio activities?
Weekly Portfolio Activities are weekly graded assignments similar to essays or reflections that are graded according to a rubric and are formative in nature. In contrast, the Program Portfolio is a comprehensive document that encapsulates your growth and experience across your Master's program.
How will the portfolio be useful to me?
While you are a student:
- You will be building a collection of artifacts to expand your knowledge and increase your skills.
- It will help with your coursework because you will have a rich collection of articles and other resources to which you can refer when you are working on assignments and contributing to the discussion forums.
- Reflecting on certain aspects of your portfolio is a part of nearly every course in the M.Ed. curriculum.
Later, when you start teaching:
- You will have a rich array of resources to call upon right from the outset.
- You will have a portfolio structure already in place on which you can build throughout your entire teaching career.
When should I begin putting things into my portfolio?
A portfolio is only of any real use if one begins collecting immediately. You might want to start with artifacts related to course assignments and readings. Once you start collecting, it will become a habit. As soon as you encounter or write something, you will automatically be thinking about whether or not it is something that you want to keep. It is okay to “over-save". While you are required to submit a minimum of two artefacts per course, you have the flexibility to add more than this. Better to have it than to wish you had saved something and later try to remember where you might have seen it. An additional benefit of building one’s portfolio from the start of your studies is that you can begin referring to it in your everyday work settings too.
If you wait until later in your program, or worse until it is time to submit your portfolio for review, it will not have the depth and breadth of entries necessary to demonstrate professional growth. It will also not have the content richness that can be a valuable resource for your coursework and your everyday work settings. The portfolio will only be a real benefit if you are gathering artifacts as you go along.
It is not possible to know in advance whether something you see today could be useful six months, or two years, from now, so err on the side of collecting, wherever and whenever.
Is putting things into my portfolio something that I should continue doing even after I graduate?
Good teachers treat their portfolios as an essential teaching resource, and never stop collecting, organizing, evaluating, and editing its contents. They rely on it, for example, to recover that motivational technique tried five years ago with Student X that might be what is needed today to help Student Y. It might contain the list of questions for which one could find no reasonable answers at the time that they were generated, but for which the teacher is continually monitoring to see if something relevant might suddenly be written. It is a record of all of the ways in which a teacher has tried a particular instructional strategy over the years, with limited success, so that when something new about it appears in the education literature, there is context for trying it again.
How will I store the artifacts that I want to put into my portfolio?
You should add them to the Program Portfolio template. This template is required and will be graded in each class.
Who will see my portfolio?
You will submit your portfolio in each class to earn credit for the artefacts for that class, and you will submit the portfolio for a final grade near the end of your program. Outside of required class submissions, you are in complete control of who has access to your portfolio.
Sometimes prospective employers ask to see an applicant’s professional portfolio. In those instances, you may wish to create a curated mini-version of your UoPeople research and practice portfolio, one that will showcase your best work and most insightful thinking.
What tool will I use to make my portfolio presentation?
You may use any screen capture software to prepare a 10- to 15-minute presentation on your portfolio. Screenpal, formerly known as Screencast-o-matic, is a free option that is an application that allows you to capture both the screen and camera to deliver a video presentation; in this case, about your portfolio. The viewer, i.e., your course instructor, will hear you discuss and analyze what is visible on the screen. The portfolio may be screen-captured from your desktop/laptop or it may be prepared with presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint and then captured on video with Screenpal.
How does Screenpal work?
With Screenpal you can create video presentations. Screenpal is an easy-to-use, rich media capture tool that is free to use. Three is a web-based version or you can download and install the application. With just one click, you can capture multi-stream recordings, easily record videos, or capture your screen.
Screenpal Overview and Tutorial
Beginner’s Guide to Screencast-O-Matic’s Free Screen Recorder
NOTE: While we recommend Screenpal, you may use any tool you prefer as long as it shows both your face and your portfolio at the same time.
How will I submit my portfolio presentation to my course instructor?
You will be given the instructions for submitting your portfolio presentation to your course instructor in a course near the end of your program.
How will I submit my actual portfolio to my course instructor?
You will be given the instructions for submitting your portfolio presentation to your course instructor in a course near the end of your program.
When will my portfolio presentation and portfolio submission be due?
Both your presentation and your Program Portfolio will be due during EDUC 5470 Research in Education, near the end of your program.
What rubric will be used to evaluate my portfolio presentation?
Your portfolio presentation will be evaluated using the Portfolio Presentation rubric.
What grading scale will be used for the portfolio presentation?
A student must earn at least 80% in order to pass the portfolio presentation.
What rubric will be used to evaluate my portfolio?
Your actual portfolio will be evaluated using the Portfolio Submission Rubric.
What grading scale will be used for the portfolio?
A student must earn at least 80% in order to pass the portfolio requirement.
What happens if I do not earn a passing grade on my portfolio presentation but have done satisfactory work on the portfolio and my applied research report?
The first thing to remember is that “Does not yet meet expectations” is not a statement of failure. Rather, it is a description of current professional preparedness and, with additional work, it can be possible to achieve the necessary level of preparedness.
If you do not earn a passing grade on your portfolio presentation but you still earn an overall grade of 2.67 and you are in good academic standing, you will be permitted to move forward toward graduation.
NOTE: Some of the information in this document may be subject to change.