Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Portfolio writing vs Assignments

What are your views on this topic? Those of you who have done both, which do you prefer. Would you rather do an assessment or engage in portfolio writing? Please provide reasons for your preferences

16 comments:

  1. From a personal perspective the portfolio assessments allowed me to go beyond the standardized topics that assignment assessments could afford. Even though the portfolio focuses mainly on practical case investigations, each case had a greater depth of study that could be achieved; one only had to apply the mind to find these potential topics of investigation. I suppose that the thrill of finding a phenomenon by simply studying the diagnostic casts, encouraged me to dive deeper and think more critically about potential problems, solutions, and clinical procedures. I often found myself intrigued more in the clinical constitution of these cases; because I could understand that our work extends from this foundation. I can say with conviction that my own investigations I included in my portfolios have afforded me to be a better communicator with the clinicians I have come in contact with. Assignments, in my opinion confine the imagination to a single isolated topic and cannot spark other areas of interest and development.

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  2. Personally id rather engage in reflective portfolio writing, For many reasons.. it helps as a reminder for one.. having to recall practical work and writing about experiences encountered throughout out the various procedures on a daily basis, helped me recall work at times i least expected too.

    Also writing about problems and how they were solved leaves a reminder one doeant easily forget. Especially when its written in the students own words or as he/she understands it to have happend or occured.

    The portfolio in many ways is like doing an assignment, Just alot better with more chance for personal individual improvement. As far as i remeber we were required to find valid references to personal points or problems encountered during the various procedures. Factual Information that supported any of the situations documented by the students from their practical experience. Along with personal reflective writing it provides a much more vast oppertunity or window for any individual student to remeber what he or she did and went through with which ever procedures they undertook in the lab. A personal experience.

    It further in my mind could give a the academic staff not only a better understanding of what the individual
    students needs are but a general understanding of "hot points" possibly raised by the class collectively.. lectures can tackle both individual needs and the classes needs at the same time. And that way improve as lecturing staff themselves.


    Im all for the reflective portfolio writing. It has alot more to offer to the students than a simple research topic as may be the case with the conventional research assignments.

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  3. I personally prefer doing the portfolio than assignments. Reason being that assignments have a specific topic that one needs to discuss at the time. Whereas with portfolios, one takes their own time to discuss all the problems they encounter along the way in terms of their practical work. At the same time, one gets to engage with the lectures and discuss how one's work can be improved and how one, together with the lecturer, can make learning easier and much more exciting.
    However, it does take up quite a lot of time to keep track of the portfolio. :)

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  4. I prefer an assignment, because a portfolio is an on-going assessment which I personally find quite challenging to do as you constantly need to re-evaluate the work done throughout the year, which could be time consuming- compared to an assignment which is a once-off. Although doing a portfolio has its benefits such as reflective learning.

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  5. I personally prefer doing the portfolio than assignments. This is because an assignment focusses on only one topic whereas as a portfolio is a journal where you can relative all your challenges and problems you had with your practical work throughout the year.

    A portfolio is a continuous journal where us as students can engage with the lecturer. They can then help us improve our work.

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  7. I have acknowledged the importance of the portfolio in regards to improving our practical work,moreover,it is essentially important to theory and practical,however,it is time consuming and too demanding.But those are just two minor problems one can work on.On contrast, assignments are short term tasks which can be completed within a short of time.Nevertheless, assignments are not easy and they require full attention and need in depth research whereas portfolio is based on practical work done in the laboratory.From my point of view I think it is quite easier and less challenging to deal with what you do on daily basis than compiling large data from different resources and analysing it to get relevant information for an assignment task.

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  8. I prefer to write portfolio.Because we can write about the process that we are busy with that and we can use different resources.Also we have more time to do that.But assessment is about a specific topic which may not be done by us and it can be written by reading articles,not practicing.

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  11. regarding to my experience during studies, I prefer assignment, because students engage with their studies and It helps the students improve their understanding of the subject also those who have trouble in grabbing the concepts will learn better.
    how ever, it motivate us to make more research and attempt to get more detail about our studies.

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  12. i prefer to do an assignment because a portfolio one have to focus on multiple cases and continue updating the portfolio has one receives a case where as a assignment focus on one topic and one case

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  14. Comparing portfolio writing to doing an assignment in my eyes, I would say i'm sitting on the fence. When one is doing a research assignment, you are given a topic and and you can do in depth research about that topic. Mostly the subject of the assignment will be a method or a material that we as students have not come across in the syllabus and thus a assignment exposes the student to other methods, technologies and materials that they don't cover in the syllabus, and this helps in broadening knowledge about our field of studies as well as helping us to better understand terms and methods used outside of the university at laboratories when we go out for in-service training.

    The portfolio in my experience is mostly about cases come across done in the university laboratory practicals. However it also covers new aspects of dental technology that we have not done till thus far. It focuses more on the theoretical aspect, and the materials has to be brought in with conjunction of what is being done practically. The student has to apply the appropriate materials aspect to the section they are doing. The portfolio write up however is good practice for remembering cases because ideally after each case the student writes up about problems faced and how they were solved, and thus in future can go back if a similar case is come across.

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  15. Based on my experience i will prefer portfolio writing than assignment, the reasons being, in an assignment one can basically focus on one or two topics only but portfolio writing is like many assignments in one, "A collection of coursework" This gives the student to present his/her intellectual track record, showing where you have been and how you have been developed as a student.

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  16. Based on my personal experience I would I would prefer portfolio writing as this gives one more room to do research and cover more than one topic in one assessment. One can keep track of his/her progress throughout the term. It is also a reminder to do follow-ups on what one has done.

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