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Utilizing the WebTycho Portfolio

CSI Staff

Staff Writer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: March-April 2006

Category: » Webtycho » Gradebook-assignments-portfolio

Every person in every class on the WebTycho system has an individual portfolio containing a record of all their own conference participation in that class. Portfolios also record each student's assignment grades and any feedback provided by the instructor via the Gradebook. While existence of the student portfolio seems to be common knowledge, faculty members and teaching assistants also have portfolios capturing a record of all their own "tracks" in a class.  Each individual's portfolio is automatically updated any time new tracks are left, such as a new conference note submitted or a completed assignment graded. All class members can gain from using the WebTycho portfolio features to their own benefit.

Students should be encouraged to use their WebTycho portfolios to track their own progress in a class. They can tell at a glance whether they participated in a particular conference or study group discussion, and from the portfolio they can use title links or "Download Conference Notes" to access the text of their postings and thus easily follow their own work throughout the semester. The portfolio is also where students' completed assignments appear after they have been graded by the instructor, along with any comments the instructor has made on the assignments. It is important to note that students cannot see anyone else's portfolio but their own.  This keeps the grades and comments on individual assignments confidential between just the individual student and his or her instructor.

Faculty members can access each student's portfolio from either the student name link in the Gradebook or from the "Portfolio" link in the Class Members roster. Since each portfolio has a link to each conference note posted by the owner of the portfolio, an instructor can quite easily follow a student's class participation. Faculty members are a click or two away from knowing, first, if a student participated in the discussion, and second, if the student participated substantively or simply added a "me too". The link in Portfolio, "Download Conference Notes," facilitates this review by collecting in one document the text of all notes the portfolio owner has posted in the class conferences.

In the students' portfolios, instructors are also able to see how their assignment feedback appears to their students.  The top portion of the student portfolio displays the grade and the comments the instructor has recorded in the "Brief Comments to Students" section of the Gradebook assignment form. ¹

Faculty members and teaching assistants can also use their portfolios to track their own conference activity in a class. By accessing their portfolios from the Portfolio link on the Class Menu (or from the Class Members roster), they can verify, for example, that they posted that end-of-week conference summary or are spacing out their conference responses. Likewise, Program Directors and Course Managers with WebTycho Inspect access can view each individual faculty member's portfolio to see the individual's participation record in the class.

The WebTycho portfolio does have limitations in terms of full and qualitative assessment of the owner's work. For example, it does not track an individual's participation in collaborative documents in the study group area. For a view of participation in collaborative documents, a reviewer can use the study group link to visit the study group and then look individually at the collaborative documents -- where the group may or may not have left tracks of individuals' contributions. Also, while the portfolio does display conference partipation statistics, it is only by viewing each conference note text that the reviewer (student, instructor, administrator, etc.) can adequately assess participation quality.

Overall, however, the Portfolio does offer reviewers an easily accessible, at-a-glance view of an individual's participation in an online classroom, with direct links to other classroom locations where fuller review is necessary.

Relevant WebTycho Support Pages

• Student Instructions on Using Portfolio
• Faculty Instructions on Using Portfolio
• WebTycho Help Desk