Effective Assessment for Student Growth

We are often asked for the records of our accomplishments throughout lifetime such as documents of academic results, progress report in mastering a particular field, provide certificates of special skills, internship program and work experience for a job. ePortfolio is one of the most advanced and functional online tools that collect, save, share and update all academic and career concerning information of students or employers respectively. This software enables the users to represent and share their work of art with teachers, friends, prospective employers and colleagues with administrative controls.

Basically, there are four different types of ePortfolios, the Academic ePortfolios, Learning ePortfolios, structured ePortfolios and Showcase ePortfolios. Today, sophisticated Academic online tools are used for solving various purposes of students, teachers and parents such as developing individual learning plans, improving learning and teaching of students, faculty RTP reviews, for students counseling, collection of students data related to their learning programs for further management, accreditation and promotional purposes.

An academic ePortfolio is all concerned to the collection of academic records, achievements and work of the students that represents their knowledge and skills earned during their academic career. It's more like a developmental record of achievements, skills and work that the students want to include in their personal profiles reflecting their accomplishments in visual and impressive format. The entire degree requirements, educational goals and close progress tracking are summed up in an academic ePortfolio. This is used in schools, colleges and universities for academic purposes.

Today, sophisticated academic ePortfolio software used for compiling course projects and assignments with academic standards and learning results. The projects are scored and information from the scores are combined and disaggregated into reports representing entire performance of programs, courses, departments and students. Along with this, it helps in accreditation systems management and brings positive changes in the existing way of teaching and learning.

Academic ePortfolios provide precise information and data to registrars and other students admittance authorities who take decisions for their admission to graduate programs, undergraduate courses and potential employers. The content of an academic ePortfolio should meet the PESC (Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council) and international standards. Its content can include:

• A record of degrees, achievements and skills that the student has gained during his learning period, and might be directly connected to student's academic results.
• Personal academic reflection and what its contribution to student's development.
• Feedback of faculties and other concerning academic authorities.

Assessment is an essential aspect of learning and teaching, which plays an important role in collection of useful information and data of students, teachers and parents. Usually, it is carried out especially for two purposes, to assess the student's learning reports in different areas and to improve and support their classroom teaching and learning. In schools commonly two types of assessments are conducted, the Authentic assessment and Holistic assessment.

Authentic one is related to reading, writing and different types of literacy abilities of students in context to real world. This technique is used to assess, how they use their skills in closely realistic situations like reading texts, writing meaningful content, discussing books etc. On the other hand, Holistic assessment is applied where learning objectives are complicated and inter-related, which are measured against the standards established by the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). This assessment method is more relevant to social work practices where students need to demonstrate the integration of learning aspects. However, the assessment of learning outcomes is tricky as no one is efficient enough to evaluate students' learning expertise. Holistic assessment can be categorized into six, the constructive alignment, peer assessment, reflection and reflective journals, group presentations, self assessment and report writing.