Digital portfolios are fantastic motivational and guidance tools for students.
Students, parents, teachers and administrators can show progress and make informed decisions about instructional options and performance targets.
In addition, portfolios provide an antidote for the mindless compulsion that our national learning community places on "one-slice-of-time," high-stakes test scores.
Digital Portfolio Success Depends on your Goals
The strength of digital portfolios is also their weakness. For a digital portfolio program to be successful, everybody in a school district has to use the program. This means everybody… every teacher, every student.
And what does everybody mean?
- Each and every teacher
- Every student
- Every administrator who keeps track of students’ and teachers’ progress
- Parents
The "every teacher" is the "catch." "Every teacher" represents the sticky point, the hang-up for an entire digital portfolio scheme, i.e., plan.
The reason is that patchwork implementations; i.e. some teachers using portfolios this year, some student with portfolios from last year, some students with portfolios from two years ago; but not last year…you get the idea.
Unless portfolios are used year to year, by every teacher, the effectiveness of this tool diminishes.
How to Ensure Portfolio Use
Someone with authority and determination to see a digital portfolios project though to success must insist that every teacher starts and maintains a portfolio record for every student.
And, that person must check to ensure that these portfolios are started, must check to ensure that every portfolio is maintained, and must determine that the quality of each digital portfolio represents each student's finest accomplishments.
Without this "directed compliance," some (a few) teachers will "backslide" and abandon the portfolio juggernaut in midstream. Other teachers (quite a few), if given a choice, will decline to participate, still other teachers (almost every teacher) will set sail, then "abandon ship" when they see all the extra work that the portfolios require. The extra work will seem like too much to bother with, since little observable evidence will demonstrate that the extra work is worth the effort.
Balance the Extra Work
Everyone, especially teachers and students, will have surplus (extra) work to do once a digital portfolio project is implemented.
And, there will be few observable, measurable payoffs for a long period of time.
So, the success of a digital portfolio system depends upon…
- Compensating teachers for the extra time that they must invest
- Decreasing other job requirements so that teachers work load is held constant (preferably decreases)
- Implementing the "back-end programming and processing" system so that as much of the digital portfolio system is as automated as possible
- Commitment to adequate technical support and Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) because system requirements become "mission critical" and need to be "highly available"
This means increasing servers, network infrastructure, database administrators, network administrators, technicians and help desk support staff…even if the digital portfolio system is hosted outside the school district (as a Web service).
Summary
Digital portfolios offer a valuable learning resource for students, a valuable communication resource for teachers, and a public relations resource for the school district.
But, all of these benefits are lost if implementation is spotty, haphazard, and erratic.
Digital portfolios are worth the extra time and effort, but only if there is a commitment to fully fund the digital portfolio project. There must also be an equal commitment to 1.) increase compensation to teachers for the extra work, or 2.) better still, to eliminate useless and time-draining, non-productive tasks from the teaching day.
Unless top-level leadership is strong, committed and eternally vigilant, digital portfolio systems will fall short of their potential. And, school districts that embark on a system that lacks adequate funding and leadership will suffer political and community relations damage.
The old adage: "Look before you leap" applies to the grand design and wishful thinking that goes into prescribing a digital portfolio system. With planning, funding and commitment a digital portfolio system can become the backbone of a marvelous learning resource for students.
Without these basic requirements, the potential benefits garnered from digital portfolios turn into "egg on the face, let’s find some teachers to blame" fiascos.
