Assessment - Master of Higher Education

In line with the professional focus of the Graduate Programs in Higher Education, each Program employs portfolio-based assessment throughout its courses.

Why portfolio-based assessment?

Learning portfolios have been found to be a particularly effective method in courses of professional education for:

• encouraging participants to reflect on, and enhance, their practice; and
• enabling them to tailor their learning during the course to their individual needs and contexts.

In this way, the portfolio becomes a way of maximising participants' learning during each course, and not just a means of measuring participants' learning from each course.

Intended learning outcomes

The portfolio assessment used in the Graduate Programs is designed to help achieve the intended learning outcomes of the Programs, in particular:

• articulation and critique of the conceptual framework (or rationale) underlying participants' own practice (in the areas of undergraduate teaching, graduate supervision and/or academic leadership and management)
• ongoing development of this framework based on relevant literature, theory, research into practice, and evaluation of practice
• demonstration of an evidence-based approach to improving practice, based on the structured collection of appropriate feedback on effectiveness
• engagement in an ongoing cycle of reflection on practice, evaluation of practice and continuous improvement in practice.

In this way, the experience of preparing portfolios should facilitate a reflective and evidence-based approach to participants' own practice.

What would go into a portfolio?

Although the specific requirements will vary between courses, all portfolios will consist of a number of separate but linked entries, documenting a structured process of reflection on and improvement of practice. This reflection and improvement will be based on an evolving conceptual framework for participants' practice, as outlined above. The process of reflection and improvement is summarised as a cycle of reflective practice.

Even though the key aspects of the cycle should not be unfamiliar to most participants, it is rare for it to be consistently implemented in a structured way. Becoming adept at using this cycle to reflect on one's practice is one of the most effective ways of ensuring ongoing professional development throughout one's career.

Reflective practice cycle

In line with this model, individual portfolio entries will consist of structured opportunities for participants to:

• analyse their own practice, and their underlying goals and assumptions
• identify appropriate indicators of effective practice, to facilitate gathering feedback on and evaluating their practice
• review and evaluate their practice, using these indicators and relevant educational and/or organisational theory and literature
• prepare action plans for improving their practice, and where possible implement and evaluate these improvements

Assessment criteria

Portfolios will receive a satisfactory / unsatisfactory grade. Resubmission of unsatisfactory portfolios is permitted, in negotiation with Course Convenors. To receive a satisfactory grade, participants need to demonstrate in their portfolios:

• an understanding of key concepts involved in each course, through the ability to describe these concepts in their own words and integrate them with relevant theory and literature
• application of these concepts in analysing their past and current practice, in the design of action research projects (where relevant) and in planning and implementing improvements in future practice
• integration of these concepts, through clearly articulating a conceptual framework which explains their own practice, evaluation of practice and planned changes to practice. This framework would incorporate the literature and, where relevant, the outcomes of action research projects involved in each course.

Further information about portfolios

For more information on the use of portfolio assessment in professional education, see:

Roy Ballantyne and Jan Packer (1995) Making Connections: Using Student Journals as a Teaching/Learning Aid , ACT: HERDSA, Chapter 2.
Available from the CEDAM library)

John Biggs and Catherine Tang (1998) Assessment by Portfolio: Constructing Learning and Designing Teaching, in P. Stimpson and P. Morris (Eds) Curriculum and Assessment for Hong Kong: Two Components, One System. Hong Kong : Open University of Hong Kong Press, pp. 443-462.
Available from http://teaching.polyu.edu.hk/t6/t6b3.asp?topic=6&subtopic=29 [1]