Creating Digital Portfolio Assessments for Students with Special Needs
Submitted to the LearnGen Project
by
Steve Colson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Special Education
University of Kansas
4001 Miller Building
University of Kansas Medical Center
Kansas City, KS 66160
913-588-5974
scolson@kumc.edu
Abtstract
The
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that school interdisciplinary teams conduct a
comprehensive evaluation of a student’s present level of performance across
developmental domains for an initial evaluation, to monitor the student’s
progress on his Individual Education Program (IEP) goals and objectives, and
during an re-evaluation at least once every three years. Educators and related service professionals
have typically used a variety of assessment tools during these evaluations
including norm-referenced testing, criterion-referenced testing, student work
samples, classroom observation data, teacher interviews and rating scales,
parent interviews and rating scales, student interviews and rating scales (if
appropriate), and any information from sources outside of the school
(physician, mental health professionals, therapists, etc.). New technology gives these teams ways to
manage this often cumbersome amount of information and allows for new ways to
demonstrate student growth over time.
This project will explore ways to create a portfolio of all of these
kinds of data which can be put onto a CD-ROM for easy storage, viewing,
updating, and sharing with all members of the team, including the parents and
the student. The cohort for this
proposal will develop these ideas, design a sample digital portfolio, and
create a tutorial for teachers to develop digital portfolios for their students
with special needs, both in the general education classroom and in experiences
away from that setting. The professor
involved in this cohort will also use these products teaching SPED 785: Application of Assessment Information for
Students with Special Needs, a required course for all students in the masters
program in Special Education.
Purpose and Need
for the Cohort
Effective
planning and delivery of instruction cannot take place without assessment at
all stages of the process. This is even
more critical when evaluating the present level of performance of students with
complex special needs. Assessment
allows a team of professionals to gather pertinent data on the student for several kinds of decision making: to identify students who may have disabilities, to determine whether a student
meets eligibility criteria for special education services, to create an
individual education program (IEP), to monitor the student’s progress in the
educational program, and for program evaluation.
Traditionally,
school teams have relied heavily on norm-referenced testing, ignoring other
more powerful and useful types of data.
Alternative types of assessments are being encouraged because they
provide a dramatic shift in how assessments are conducted as well as what is
assessed. Portfolios as collections of a student’s work assembled over time. These portfolios can include a variety of
products created by the student as well as professional remarks and interpretation
of the student’s work. These can
include examples of written products by the student (from a list of spelling
words to student-generated sentences and stories), lists of books read,
quizzes, photos, audiotapes, videotapes, and written or oral remarks from the
various professionals working with the student, as well comments from parents
and the student.
Since
these portfolios are used to help the team make decisions about students, they are most valuable when they are
systematically planned. Steps in the process include identifying the
goals of the portfolio, determining the type of portfolio to be used, establishing
procedures for organizing the portfolio, choosing a range of authentic classroom
products that relate to the objectives of the portfolio, recording the
significance of items included in students’ portfolios and reviewing and
evaluating portfolios periodically.
Although
these portfolios offer a wealth of information about students over time, they
do pose challenges. It can take an
enormous amount of time to gather information from various professionals on a
continuing basis as well as issues involving storing these sets of often bulky
and space-consuming products which are difficult to maintain over time and to
be handed to new sets of professionals each year. New forms of technology can help solve many of these issues. CD-ROMS, digital photography, computer and
web-based activities, can provide solutions to gathering information from
professionals, the storage of these various forms of data, and the easy
transfer of the portfolio from school to home and back or from one professional
to another for updating.
Although
teachers in preservice training receive information about the use and creation
of portfolios during their undergraduate and graduate studies, they usually do
not have opportunities to learn about new forms of technology which can help
them streamline this process. Another barrier
can be the lack of knowledge and experience by the professor about how digital
portfolios can be created. This project
has the power to impact undergraduate teacher education students as well as
experienced teachers in graduate training programs who are mastering the
standards for state certification as teacher of students with special needs.
This
cohort will learn about traditional kinds of portfolio assessments then
brainstorm how this information could be gathered and stored in new ways. Possibilities include streaming video of a child reading or
practicing speech sounds over time, digital images of a student’s written
product accompanied by the voice of the student reading his own creation and video
clips of various professional interpreting scores from traditional assessment
tools. After creating several sample
portfolios on students with different levels and classifications of special
needs, the cohort will design a tutorial for teachers demonstrating how to
create their own portfolios in their own classroom. Teachers at both the preservice and inservice level of their careers will evaluate these products.
Members of the Cohort
Members
include:
Steve
Colson, Ph.D.
Assistant
Professor
Department
of Special Education
Andria
Stokes, 4th Grade Teacher
Prairie
Star Elementary School
Blue
Valley School System
Overland
Park, KS
Dr.
Laura Schwarz, Principal
Prairie
Star Elementary School
Blue
Valley Schools
Technology
assistants provided by the LearnGen Project
Both
Andria and Laura have degrees in special education as well as general
education. Prairie Star Elementary is
known for its successful inclusion program and in providing a first class
education to all students, including students with a variety of special
needs. Both of these professionals are
knowledgeable about portfolio assessment and are willing to devote the time to
this project. In first discussing this
with them last week they were both excited about using technology in this area
and already have come up with interesting ways to accomplish our tasks.
Scope of Work
The
cohort will first meet to look over existing professional literature about
portfolio assessments in general and to look specifically for any creative ways
teachers have already used technology to enhance this type of student record
keeping. We will decide on the types of
students we would like to focus on while learning how to use technology. We will obtain the necessary release forms
from parents and school district personnel.
We
will spend time working with the technology
members of the cohort in looking at ways to incorporate video and audio
into existing or new portfolios. We
will explore ways to have the elementary students themselves become part of the
process. We plan on producing 3-6 portfolios as examples, each on a student
with a different classification and complexity of special needs to show how
this concept can be used for a variety of school-aged students.
After
learning about using technology and producing a few portfolios, we will create
a tutorial showing teachers how to accomplish this process. I am not sure now what form this tutorial
will take—we will need to brainstorm this with our technological support
members of the cohort. After producing the
tutorial, we have it evaluated by a number of teachers for usefulness, clarity,
etc. and make necessary improvements.
We
will disseminate the information from the project in a number of ways. We will deliver an inservice presentation to
area special education teachers. We
will give a lecture in a graduate special education course on how to make a
digital portfolio. We could also write
an article for publication in a special
education journal (e.g. “Teaching Exceptional Children”, “Intervention in
School and Clinic”) or share this at a professional conference either locally
or nationally.
Deliverables
• White paper developed by the
entire cohort expressing the need and concept of creating
digital portfolio assessments
• 3-6 actual digital portfolios on
various kinds of children with special needs
• A tutorial for use by teachers to
create their own portfolio
• An inservice/preservice workshop
package that could be used to showcase this project
Timeline
February Meet
with all cohort members, set individual and group responsibilities,
February/March Review
existing literature on portfolio assessments and share this
will all members of the cohort. Look for examples of traditional
portfolios already at Prairie
Star School which could be transferred to
a digital format. Create white paper (see above)
March Meet with LearnGen PI to review progress
April/May Begin
using new techology to create portfolios
June/July During
summer school invlove graduate training teachers to create
digital portfolios.
Ask for comments on rough drafts of portfolios.
June Meet with LearnGen PI to review
progress
August/September Sample portfolios revised and
completed
Begin looking at how to create a tutorial for teachers
(format, etc)
September/October Finish creating tutorial for
teachers. Give demonstration to a
select
groups of teachers for feedback. Revise tutorial as needed.
Meet with LearnGen PI to discuss
progress
October/November Deliver graduate class lecture
about creating digital portfolios
November/December Deliver workshop/inservice to
professionals about this process of
creating digital
portfolios. Begin writing article to
submit for publication.
Meet with LearnGen PI to discuss/evaluate
progress
Resources
Resources
needed by the Learn Gen Project include a laptop computer (the school is
currently switching over from Macs to Dell computers), a digital camera,
CD-ROMS, access to a CD burner, materials necessary to create tutorial package
and inservice training package. The
school will offer its resources in the following ways: access to the school after hours, release
time for Andria Stokes during the day to meet with the cohort (within reason
since it is so difficult to find substitute teachers), access to school
computers although they are usually tied up with existing student use, access
to school supplies (paper, pens, copy machines, etc). The professor in the cohort will provide the assistance in
tracking down existing professional literature sources.
I am
unclear about all the different ways we can use technology to help us in this
project. I will have the technology
members of the cohort help us with that and we may need to revise our resource
needs after the first meeting.
Institutionalization/Extension
The
information/products from this project will continue to be used in the graduate
training program in special education beyond the life of the involvement with
the Learn Gen Project. The professor in the cohort will make this type of
information available each semester the Assessment graduate course is taught. Three would be an expectation that students
in the class check out the tutorial and create their own portfolios (if
possible—some graduate students have limited contact with students with special
needs during their training years). The
cohort will make this information available to other professors in the School
of Education and could be available for guest lectures. We will attempt to expand this type of
assessment tool to other schools/systems in the Kansas City area.
Evaluation
The
cohort will ask for evaluation from professionals after the rough draft of an
actual portfolio is created. They will
also ask for feedback during and after the completion of the tutorial. During the year the cohort will spend time
discussing how our team is working together and in what ways effective
collaboration was used to meet our goals.
During the written product for submission to a professional journal we
will discuss the importance of feedback.
Any assessment process on any child with special needs involves
collaboration and self-reflection about the process. All members involved in creating the sample portfolios will
evaluate its effectiveness.
Participants during the preservice and inservice trainings will evaluate
the content of the presentation.
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