Developing an assessment portfolio/Narratives and Reflections

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You have been asked to provide a narrative for each section of your portfolio. This means 'describe and discuss' or Tell your story about how you ...(insert words of the learning outcome), eg for the first unit: Talk/write about your work and identify and demonstrate a range of digital literacy skills necessary within your own practice context.

You may also choose to use reflective discussions as part of your evidence. More information on reflective discussions can be found in the topic Reflective Practice/How can I use this?

The narrative for each portfolio section can be written or spoken depending upon the chosen format of your portfolio but there are certain expectations from this narrative.

The narrative for each section must:


 * explore what you have learned related to the topic and the relevance of this to your work


 * this means
 * reflecting on what you are learning (a learning journal could be helpful for this)
 * the unit on reflective practice will help with tools for reflection
 * discussion with support from educational literature and other sources of information considering what your learning around each topic means to you and to your work


 * includes discussion of how your new learning has impacted on your practice and influenced future actions you may take


 * this means
 * considering how your learning has changed your practice
 * exploring what you are doing differently and why
 * what other things are you thinking about doing in your practice (or would like to try) that you haven't done before
 * what things would you like to find out more about


 * is supported with educational literature and other forms of information
 * this means
 * that when you are talking about your learning it is important to acknowledge the perspectives of others in influencing your learning
 * you need to be able to identify where your thinking came from and what information influenced your ideas
 * this involves acknowledging material that you have read, watched or listened to. (Referencing).


 * is supported with your choice of evidence, that is authentic, current, sufficient and relevant.
 * this means
 * that the evidence presented is your own learning, knowledge and skills and not someone else’s work
 * that the evidence supplied is recently applicable to your skills and knowledge
 * that there is enough variety of evidence of learning without being too much to overwhelm the assessor
 * that the evidence clearly links to the learning outcomes that are being demonstrated.

Referencing
Referencing helps your reader/assessor to know where the information that supports your learning and thinking has come from.

To aim for the highest marks with your portfolio assessment you are asked to provide:
 * Comprehensive integration throughout narrative and reflective discussions of a broad range of educational literature and other forms of information that strongly support the discussion.
 * This supporting literature and information can be easily identified and located.

A specific referencing format has not been requested to ensure that you are not restricted in your choice of portfolio format.

When presenting written work it is the APA referencing format that is preferred but for this course not required.

For more information on APA referencing explore the following sites:


 * What is referencing?


 * APA referencing

There is also Citation Machine a great website that takes you through all the steps of adding the information required for a reference then produces the formatted reference for you. You can then cut and paste it into your document. Very handy.

Additional Resources

An easy guide to referencing from Writing with Confidence

A handbook with an easy question and answer approach from Massey University