Your first meeting with LTU

In your first meeting with us you can decide on what type of portfolio you’d like your students to produce: a PDP Portfolio, an About Me Portfolio, a Research Portfolio or a competency Portfolio.

When developing your assessment idea, it is important to think about which learning processes your studentsare expected to utilise so that Learning Technologies can show you which tools within myPortfolio you could utilise.

Tools

Tools available in myPortfolio to evidence skills, processes and understanding:

  • CV Builder 
  • Embed.ly (lets you ‘embed’ many items uploaded to web tools) 
  • File storage & display facility (students can have up to 1GB of online storage space!) 
  • Log Book/CPD Log 
  • Multiple Journals for different purposes 
  • Notes area 
  • Planning Tool/Checklist 
  • Self Analysis questionnaires (My Learning – Learning Styles & Multiple Intelligence)

 
Before you go any further, please take a look at some examples of student work from previous years (this can be found in the What is an ePortfolio guide)

What do you want your students to do?

It is important to use words such as 'present' and 'showcase' rather than 'upload' and 'add'. You are asking your students to use a tool that can incorporate so many different types of media. You don't want to see a webpage full of uploaded word docs...image if this site was just a load of word docs! How boring would that be!

Things to consider:

  • Could your students do a 5 mins 'show and tell' of their ePortfolio to their classmates?
  • Could your students include a 5 min screen recording of them introducing their ePortfolio on their home page?
  • Could you get your students to formatively peer assess each others work?

You just need to really make sure that what you're asking your students to do is what you actually want.

Writing the Assessment Brief

Writing a great assessment brief can help reduce the number of student requests for support. When putting it together there are a few fields that need to be clear:

  • Assessment Type: ePortfolio
  • Restrictions on Time/Length: less than 50MB
  • Mode of Submission: Online via myCourse

When writing your assessment task you should state exactly what you are expecting your students to produce with perhaps a list of key elements that you’re looking for. 

Tip:

Some lecturers take this a few steps further and supply a ‘Tick list’ for their students to download and use. It’s up to you how much guidance you include in your assessment brief, however the more you include, the lower the amount of support needed just before the hand-in date.

Once you have written your assessment brief you are encouraged to then share it with a member of Learning Technologies who can give you feedback, and will make sure it complies with SSU’s assessment regulations.

Learning Technologies will then show you how to set-up your ‘Assignment upload’ links within myCourse.