What is the purpose of a portfolio? Is it meant to show growth – movement from one level of learning to the next, where we take our weaker pieces and reflect on what improvement is required (and why we didn’t do as well on them) – or is it meant to showcase our best work, those areas in which we have proven successful?

Last week, George Couros, an educator and author I follow on Twitter, posted about “The (Nearly) Invisible Portfolio”, talking about sites and apps such as FreshGrade, which – as anyone from the Surrey School District knows – is a fairly major player in the portfolio-as-assessment game. His main point, as I understand it, is that portfolios such as these do not provide the major advantage of a portfolio in general: that it can be shared with the wider world. (FreshGrade allows teachers, students and parents to have access to and comment on the learning posted; there is no option to select pieces to share publicly.)

I agree with his argument up to a point. Certainly, as he notes, it is unlikely that “a potential employer [will ask] a student to see their Edmodo account,” or their FreshGrade portfolio either. However, I don’t think that there is a problem with having both public and private spaces for learning. That’s what FreshGrade provides: it isn’t exclusively for the polished pieces, or the learning reflections, but for demonstrating the progress of learning.

I’ve been struggling with the idea of purpose a lot this year. Changing from elementary to high school is only a part of it; in addition, the movement in my district from traditional percentage grading to communicating student learning has prompted me to take a long look at how I assess students. Last year, I spent some time playing around with FreshGrade (it was still a pilot program in our district, and so my principal preferred that I not use it exclusively in the classroom), and got a sense of the “how” of it.

What I have been considering since beginning to explore its strengths and weaknesses is the “why.” Should I be using it to display only work that is well done, or should I require that it show the learning journey as a whole? The curation method my students and I use depends on the answer to that question. A portfolio can be a celebration of learning or an exploration of learning, but it can’t be both – or more accurately, in order to include both, it cannot also be exclusively either.

In a response to a comment I made about needing private spaces as well as public ones for sharing learning, Couros noted that there is power in showing growth in public spaces; after all, some of his posts are written more to share thinking more than provide any sort of answer.

It’s true that when I consider this blog, my purposes are multiple: I use it to ask questions and to wrestle with ideas (displaying my process of learning) as well as to share my learning (my end products, if you will).

However, I also know that I don’t publish my entire learning process to this blog. I am aware that what I write here can be seen by the general public, which includes my students, parents of my students, and my employers. As such, I filter what I put up here. I consider my public image when I publish to various social media, including this blog (and others). As a growth portfolio, it is incomplete.

Now, I definitely think we should be having the conversation about creating an online presence with students: there has been of research around the idea of creating an online portfolio for educational as well as career purposes. There is also value, though, in providing a place where students can fail and not worry about what future employers … or their peers, for that matter! … will think of them.

I value public portfolios for the opportunity to create and curate your digital footprint. On the other hand, private areas allow for the opportunity to document the learning process without fear of public commentary or censure. For example, I have written in a journal since I was twelve years old, both to celebrate joys and to struggle through problems; those journals, while certainly part of my learning, are decidedly not for public consumption. I wouldn’t be able to use them the way I need to if I knew they would be subject to others’ eyes.

Outside of the public/private portfolio dichotomy, I also want to note that the point of things like FreshGrade isn’t exclusively the provision of a private place for documenting learning but also the place where assessment happens. Private portfolios such as this, shared between students, parents and teachers, simply provide a more permanent record of the learning journey and the assessment of that learning – and one that is visible to parents in a way that this journey generally hasn’t been. (Most of my students do not take their work home to show their parents, even when they are proud of it.)

I think, in the end, I come down on both sides of the fence. Our students should be creating a public space to share evidence of their learning, a space where they choose what to display and how to communicate their learning. Couros is correct when he says that portfolios should be assessment as learning: a place where students don’t just share the perfect products, but also reflect on the imperfect and what they would do differently next time. Yet I also see great value in using private growth portfolios as an alternative to traditional methods of grading.

Do you use portfolios in your classroom? What medium do you use? What is the purpose of your portfolios?