Answers parents' most common questions about alternative assessment. Discusses: why there is a need for change in the way students are evaluated; what alternative assessment is; how parents can recognize the components of an alternative assessment; when alternative assessment occurs; and how alternative assessment contributes to children's…

Summarizes two trends in teacher education: using performance-based portfolios for assessment, instruction, and professional development and transforming computers from complicated instruments to universally available tools that facilitate tasks involving knowledge access and processing. The article explores connections between the two trends and…

Discusses an innovative process that was used for engaging prospective teachers in collaboration and reflection on their learning as they developed a multi-media portfolio. (Contains 15 references.) (WRM)

Teacher preparation programs are continually seeking ways to document teacher candidate performance. With the inception of the new physical education NCATE standards, documenting P-12 student performance is of utmost importance. The purpose of this article is to identify one way of achieving both of these goals--digital portfolios. With digital…

In this action research project, undertaken in a Grade 2/3 classroom, I posed the question: How can I encourage the readers in my class to become reflective and critical thinkers as they read? My aim was to support students in becoming reflective about what they read as well as about the strategies they used while reading, and to support the…

A central dilemma of portfolio assessment is that as the richness of the data available to readers increases, so do the challenges involved in ensuring acceptable reliability among readers. Drawing on empirical and theoretical work in discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, and other fields, we argue that this dilemma results, in part, from the fact…

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers', students', and parents' perceptions of the effectiveness of student-led conferences using portfolios on promoting the real world skills of responsibility, reflection, self-assessment, and goal setting. This study suggested that using portfolios in student-led parent conferences carries…

"Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning in Higher Education" provides a resource for researchers and practitioners in the area of computer-supported collaborative learning (also known as CSCL); particularly those working within a tertiary education environment. It includes articles of relevance to those interested in both theory and practice in…

Estimates indicate that as much as 80% of an engineer's work time is spent on communicating. Studies done by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Arizona show that engineering firms, as well as ECE graduates, rank writing ability as the most important skill in determining engineers' success, even above…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 11th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2014), October 25-27, 2014, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and endorsed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in…

This paper reports on the implementation of an educational collaboration project providing 40 preservice teachers with training and experiences in authentic/performance based portfolio assessment. Three professors and a public school teacher designed and facilitated activities in portfolio establishment and assessment for university students…

This paper is a preliminary report on a grant-funded project to use multimedia technology to create teacher portfolios. The workshop was the first step for testing the feasibility of multimedia for portfolio development for preservice and inservice professional development. The goals for the participants in the workshop were to begin learning…

Portfolios are developmental pictures of students' progress, providing alternative ways to evaluate both products and processes of students' learning. Portfolios also serve as vehicles for involving students in self-evaluation and goal-setting. This sourcebook was written to help teachers begin to use portfolios as an authentic assessment method.…

Classroom assessment measures, in the past often limited to multiple-choice and standardized tests, now can involve the creation of portfolios, or collections of pieces of work which the student selects as the best representation of his or her efforts, progress, skills, and accomplishments. Portfolios also usually include teacher evaluations and…

This article examines one of the challenges to the integration of classroom and large-scale portfolio assessment, a challenge posed by the use of a student's classroom portfolio for large-scale assessment of his or her individual competencies. When work is composed with the support of peers, teachers, and parents, whose work is being judged? The…