Electronic Portfolio as Assessment tool
In this paper I would like to summarize and reflect on a journal article written by Patricia W. Cummins and Celine Davesne (2009) entitled “Using Electronic Portfolios for Second Language Assessment.” In the article, the authors discuss some overview of Electronic Portfolio (EP) models and their assessment scales they use in Europe and The United States. Those are European Language Portfolio (ELP) and its American adaptations, LinguaFolio (LF) and Global Language Portfolio (GLP). Then, they discuss the affordance of EPs, their effectiveness for language assessment, and future direction of EPs and their implementation for language learning. From the paper, I learned that electronic portfolio could be an authentic and effective self-assessment tool for language learning that make me think to implement it for my English class in Indonesia. At the beginning of the paper, the authors started by introducing brief description of electronic portfolio. According them, the differences between electronic portfolio and paper-based portfolio is that the type of artifacts that they use. EP uses multimedia files that are stored in a single location. The files are organized chronologically, thematically, and according to specific purpose. It is interactive enough that allow feedback from peers or instructors. Further, they said, “By 1980s and 1990s, portfolios came to be regarded as a vehicle to collect and store concrete evidence, or artifacts, to attest to a learner’s skills and knowledge.” (Cummins and Davesne, 2009). For some people, electronic portfolio is considered to be a trustworthy assessment tool. Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) plays important role in language learning assessment in Europe. In 1990s CEFR was developed because of
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European language and education policy in Europe. The author mentioned that major testers in Europe included in the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) correlated their assessment scales to CEFR. In United States, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) creates the foreign language assessment scales. The levels are novice, intermediate, advance, and superior. Both CEFR and ACTFL apply “can do” checklists and grids for learners’ self-assessment that are used in ELP and DIALANG: Diagnostic Tests for Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Most people doubt the reliability of EPs. Therefore, to refute that argument, the author mentioned a result of study conducted by Luoma and Tarnanen that there is high correlation between self-assessment results and formal testing (90% or higher). They also provide some statements from other authors such as Alderson, Nunan, etc. to support their arguments. Based on their literature review and descriptive research they convince readers that electronic portfolio is authentic and reliable. Both ELP and GLP use CEFR scale in assessment. There are three formats they use: language passport format, language biography, and language dossier. Language passport is a summary of learner’s language experience that contain learner’s name, date of the assessment, and an indication of his or her mother tongue. Language biography is a format with templates for learners to do self-assessment related to language skills and cultural competence and to set up their future learning goal. Language dossier is where all L2 written and oral evidences are stored online in a form of multimedia files. This will also allow learners to include their professional certification in the EP. This will be done without any pressure.
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According to the authors, the challenge in implementing EP was learners tend to have low motivation and willingness to use the tools that were available. Therefore, for the future study they suggested to conduct research and collaboration related to learners’ attitude toward reflective process and the portfolio project. Other challenges were weaknesses of open source programs for EP, learners’ ability in using computer, and limitation in infrastructure. Based on the summary of the paper above, although there is a tendency that all diagnostic tests provider are bias, I could see that ELP, LF, and GLP is innovative in using electronic portfolio as assessment tool. Especially for language learning, it is authentic enough although it requires learners to be able to use computer. However, if we look at current schools, we commonly find that most students are digital dossiers. They are born in digital environment that automatically train them to be computer literate. Thus, EP can be one of reliable and effective assessment tool in the future. Perhaps in order to fully apply EP as the assessment tool is still a long journey to go because there are many challenges that we have in our education system. Government and society still believe in state tests and standardize test. In fact, we know that those tests only measure students’ cognitive intelligence and ignore the others. Electronic Portfolio enables students to include their artifacts that indicate many aspects of competencies not just cognitive aspect. In order to implement Electronic Portfolio in education, I have to emphasize my teaching and learning process on project-based learning instead of testing. Then I need to teach students how to record all the artifacts they have and organize them according to the purpose. EP is appropriate for my students because many of them were computer
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literate. They enjoyed using computer and Internet. Thus, I think using EP as an assessment tool might be effective not only for self-assessment, but also as their curriculum vitae that they might use to apply for their future jobs. I created my teaching portfolio when I was a student teacher in Indonesia. When I applied a job as lecturer at Satya Wacana Christian University in Indonesia, I attached my EP along with other documents. According to the admission committee they were interested in looking at my digital portfolio. That is one of the strong factor that made me were accepted as lecturer there.
Reference:
CUMMINS, P. W., & DAVESNE, C. (2009). Using Electronic Portfolios for Second Language Assessment. Modern Language Journal, 93848-867. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00977.x
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