Portfolio Evaluation In Nursing Education
What Is Portfolio Evaluation
A portfolio is a purposeful collection of evidence that may be presented as hard copy or electronically, and is organized to showcase one's efforts, progress, and overall achievements over time in an educational program or professional role
Importance of Portfolio In Nursing Education
A portfolio is regarded as an authentic display of evidence created to highlight the realization of personal, educational or professional goals: document experiences that contribute to personal and professional development, showcase contributions to the scholarship of a profession; verify achievement of a program's learning outcomes; and/or document the acquisition of specific competencies or behaviors.
Development of a portfolio requires careful planning with ongoing critical appraisal of the quality of the evidence, as well as self reflection and self evaluation to discover personal strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth that are effectively communicated to others who will judge the significance of the evidence presented.
Specific academic and professional applications in nursing include the following: student learning and achievement within a course or program, attainment of curricular outcomes, professional experiences for academic credit and/or program admission, and scholarship for faculty promotion and tenure. Professional applications include documentation for job applications, career ladder promotions, annual performance evaluations, initial and continuing practice certifications, and continued competence for license renewal.
Portfolio as and Assessment and Evaluation Tool
The use of portfolios as a strategy for assessment and evaluation evolved out of a need to identify alternative approaches to traditional objective-item testing in order to improve document knowledge and competencies. Over the years, portfolios have become a popular means for judging accomplishments across all grade levels, as well as all professions Portfolio evaluation in nursing has a strong theoretical foundation that blends Kolb's experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) and Mezirow's transformational learning theories (Mezirow, 2000) with Benner's levels of proficiency in nursing model (Benner, 2001).
The creation of a portfolio enables an individual to identify and reflect on experiences that have been a powerful vehicle for learning and have contributed to professional development. Critical thinking to discover meaning in each of the education and practice activities showcased in the portfolio assists the nurse to realize, and others to judge, evolution in the professional role from novice to expert.
Portfolio evaluation in nursing, as in other disciplines, is challenged by three recurring issues. The first issue relates to how much and what sort of evidence is appropriate and necessary to include in a portfolio. The purpose for creating the portfolio will dictate the type of content that should be included. Basic criteria are usually available to guide the selection of portfolio documentation, with specifications for a minimum number of required and optional elements.
It is up to the individual developing the portfolio to appraise the quality of his or her documentation, and to select only those items that provide the best evidence to meet the portfolio goals (Clarke, Cortis, & Sowter, 2011).The second challenge relates to effectively integrating self reflection and self evaluation into the portfolio, Meaningful portfolio evaluation relies on the ability of the individual to consciously engage in ongoing reflection to identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as gaps in experiences that point to opportunities for further learning or personal and professional development.
This critical review of portfolio documentation enables the individual to recognize and articulate trends in personal and professional development, appreciate the significance of accomplishments, and explain relationships between various experiences and activities Personal summaries are typically added to a portfolio to allow the individual to explain the importance of a particular experience. or to convey the relationship among a set of documents. Portfolio entries consisting of personal summaries are necessary to prevent erroneous judgments about the significance among portfolio documents to the individual's goals.
The third challenge is how to judge the quality of portfolio evidence in a manner that is valid and reliable. Validity in port- folio evaluation requires empirical evidence that is generated through a process that objectively measures intended constructs. Reliability is established only when multiple raters, including educators, practitioners, and the public, are able to apply the same evaluation criteria and make independent, yet consistent, judgments about the quality and significance of the evidence (Karlowicz, 2010).
Efforts to develop sound evaluation methods for portfolio evaluation that demonstrate validity and reliability have been complicated by variability in the content and design of portfolios. Evaluation issues are scoring terminology that is not standardized; rubrics that are too complex for most raters; and lack of agreement by raters regarding characteristics, behaviors, and competencies most valued in nursing education and practice (Garrett, MacPhee, & Jackson, 2013; Hill, 2012: Karlowicz, 2000; McCready, 2007).
The difficulties associated with establishing any meaningful process for portfolio evaluation stem from the fact that it is largely a qualitative process while trying to produce quantitative results that can be compared to other objective measures of performance.
Portfolio Development In Nursing Education
Portfolio development is a worthwhile process for the learner and practitioner. The availability of systems to support the creation of e-Portfolios provides an opportunity to enhance the usefulness of the portfolio, as well as advance processes for portfolio evaluation. However, educators and practitioners need to fully consider the benefits and limitations of portfolio evaluation and determine whether this methodology will allow the effective measurement of outcomes and competencies in a way that will yield useful and relevant data to support decisions in education and practice.
Few studies effectively examine the meaning and usefulness of scores derived from portfolio evaluation; and there is no known attempt to determine how portfolio evaluation scores compare with other measures of academic and professional performance. Nursing education programs. accrediting/certification organizations, and others are encouraged to continue identifying ways to integrate portfolios into evaluation plans, to conduct research on the validity and reliability of scoring processes, and to publish experiences with portfolio evaluation.
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