By building in opportunities for students to reflect on the learning process and make assessments of themselves as learners during their career exploration experiences, we were able to witness the students as they sought to create patterns, articulate their thinking on complex experiences, internalize AAI criteria, and navigate a course from novice to mastery. We are still in the pilot stage of the Work-Based Learning Portfolio. One of our challenges is to develop an assessment rubric for Work-Based Learning Portfolios that honors the uniqueness of each student's learning experience and simultaneously documents the part that career exploration plays in a student's progression from health career novice to health career expert. Exploration and the spirit of student ownership and empowerment need to guide our work. We need to balance the use of portfolios for assessment with their use for instructional purposes.
Purpose affects design.
Possibly the best portfolios are combinations of both. We cannot underestimate the value of clearly stated, quality performance criteria for AAI entries in the portfolios and the importance of teaching students how to use these criteria in helping to shape the work they do. Only by doing so can we assure that employers and colleges value the student work and portfolios that result.