The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning

The learning portfolio is a rich, flexible document that engages students in continuous, thoughtful analysis of their learning.

Developed through a process of reflection, evidence, and collaboration, the portfolio may be paper, electronic, or another creative medium; at its center, the power of writing and reflection are combined with purposeful, selective collection and assessment of learning endeavors and outcomes in order to improve learning.

Straightforward and easy to understand, this book offers readers both an academic understanding of, and rationale for, learning portfolios along with practical information that can be custom tailored to suit many disciplinary, pedagogical, programmatic, and institutional needs.

Organized into four parts, the book includes

• A foundation for and review of the value of reflective practice in student learning and how learning portfolios support reflection, sound assessment, and collaboration.
• Diverse contributions by practitioners in two-and four-year institutions in the United States and Canada who implement portfolios in a variety of ways, including the use of digital technology. The array of specific models of how to use portfolios across disciplines, courses, and programs provides many practical ideas that can work on different campuses.
• Fourteen practical and adaptable examples of actual student-learning portfolios.
• A wealth of assignment sheets, guidelines, criteria, evaluating rubrics, and other materials used in developing print and electronic learning portfolios from across disciplines, programs, and types of institutions in higher education.

JOHN ZUBIAZARETTA is professor of English and director of honors and faculty development at Columbia College, South Carolina. A Carnegie Foundation/Council for the Advancement and Support of Education Professor of the year for South Carolina, he has also earned awards and recognition for teaching and scholarly excellence from the American Association for Higher Education, the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English, the national United Methodist Board of Higher Education, the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, and other educational organizations.
John is a frequent conference presenter and consultant on improving college teaching, learning, and academic leadership, and he has mentored educators nationwide and internationally on developing teaching and administrative portfolios. His work on portfolios—often in collaboration with Peter Seldin—include many articles and chapters in journal and book publications such as The Journal on Excellence in College Teaching; The Department Chair; Phi Delta Kappan; Seldin’s Changing Practices in Educating Teaching (1999), The Teaching Portfolio, Second Edition (1997), Improving College Teaching (1995), Successful Use of Teaching Portfolios (1993); Roth’s Inspiring Teaching (1997); and Wright’s Teaching Improvement Practices (1995). He has also contributed to Seldin and Higgerson’s The Administrative Portfolio (2002).