Published: March 29, 2007

Digital Portfolios: An Alternative Approach To Assessing Progress

Student mastery is being tracked by something other than tests.

In the not-so-distant past, a paper handed back at Rhode Island’s Ponaganset High School would most likely have gotten shoved in a notebook, never again to see the light of day. Once graded, student work was rarely referred to again.

How things have changed. Today, students at the rural secondary school regularly cull through their past work and analyze what they have learned. In annual presentations, they give tours of their best creations.

What has made the metamorphosis possible is a digital-portfolio system, a computer-based method of storing, organizing, and sharing the fruits of students’ labor. The school began using the technology tool in earnest...