Assessment - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 196

In the case of CS education, a portfolio can include learners' individual and
group projects, intermediate versions of these projects, a description of the process
in which these projects were developed, peer reviews (see Sect. 10.1), learners'
presentation of their work, learners' reflective assessment of their learning process,
teacher observations of learners' learning process, and tests.
Activity 86: The Portfolio in Computer Science Education
• Stage A: Portfolio design, team work
The students are asked to work in teams and to design a portfolio for a high
school CS class. Specifically, they are asked to address the following top-
ics and to explain each of the pedagogical decisions:
− The purpose of the portfolio.
− The scope of the portfolio, that is, will it focus on a specific CS topic?
the learning process during the entire school year? a specific shorter
period of time?, etc.
− The specific period of time during which the pupils will organize their
portfolios.
− A list of items to be included in a pupil's portfolio that enable to achieve
the purpose of the portfolio determined above (the rational for the inclu-
sion of any item should be explained).
− The portfolio organization (online, off-line, blogs, discussion groups,
etc.).
− An assessment framework (a kind of an evaluation rubric) for the port-
folio that includes the assessment time line, the teacher-learner dis-
course mechanism (online, off-line, face-to-face, etc.), and the actual
grading policy of the portfolio.
• Stage B: Group presentations of their portfolio
At the end of the group work, each team presents its portfolio descrip-
tion (scope, elements, periodical schedule, and assessment framework)
together with the pedagogical considerations that guided its work.
• Stage C: Class discussion and summary
After all groups presented their portfolio, a discussion takes place in
which the different portfolios suggested by the different groups are dis-
cussed and compared: Do they achieve their pedagogical purposes? If
so—how? If not—how should they be changed to meet their purposes?
Do the different portfolios reflect the same pedagogical approach or dif-
ferent pedagogical approaches? What are the differences between their
pedagogical approaches? What are the advantages and disadvantages of
each portfolio? etc.