Student perspectives about how to best support portfolio assessment in project-based learning environments

This study examined students’ perceptions of the portfolio assessment supports offered in a first year project-based learning (PBL) course. The course was chosen as it follows recommendations for implementing PBL and provides students with their first encounter of both PBL and portfolio assessment. 42 students (27% response rate) answered 18 questions (i.e., 9 multiple choice, 5 free response, and 7 matrix questions with rating scales) measuring their opinions about the difficulty and value of varying portfolio components, their effort and attribution of success, their perceptions of resources, and their suggestions for improvement. Students identified the individual workbook used to document their contributions to the team projects as the most valuable part of the portfolio task. The individual grade nomination attracted the highest values for both task difficulty and student effort, suggesting students were challenged by this task. For five out of eight portfolio tasks, static resources on the Moodle website were rated as most helpful, with this choice being selected by 37% of participants on average across all tasks. This was followed by spoken tips from lecturers during lectures, tutorials or labs (18%) and collaboration with peers (18%). These data suggest it is highly worthwhile for lecturers to invest time in developing quality static resources as students do use and value these over more time-consuming personal communication. It is also important to realise that forums will not replace opportunities for face to face or one on one interaction, meaning that especially in distance contexts, further thought is needed on how to best facilitate peer and lecturer interaction in practical ways which students will value.