The Portfolio tool is designed to allow students to reflect on their own learning. Students can add artifacts, design their portfolios, and share them. Instructors can also require a Portfolio as the submission in response to an Assignment in a Course.
Portfolio
The Portfolio subsystem is intended primarily as a tool for students to reflect on their own learning or as a tool for assessing student learning.
Visit Blackboard’s help portal for more information:
Accessing Portfolios
- Go to Blackboard.
- Click Tools.
- Click Portfolios.
Creating Portfolios
To begin creating a Portfolio the user clicks the Create Portfolio button.
Creating Personal Artifacts & Assignment Artifacts
Artifacts are evidence of learning, frequently accompanied by reflection by the learner. Artifacts are managed independently in the My Artifacts repository of the Portfolio, as an Artifact may be used in more than one Portfolio. Artifacts can be created ahead of time or “on the fly” while the user is authoring a Portfolio.
In the new Portfolio framework, there are two types of Artifacts: Personal Artifacts and Assignment Artifacts. Personal Artifacts consist of a Title, Description, and Content. The Content can be generated free-form using a Content Editor, or can be a file (or files) uploaded from the local computer or selected from the Content Collection, or both (free-form content + files). Assignment Artifacts are artifacts that are generated by converting a graded submission to an Assignment in a Blackboard Course into an Artifact. Assignment Artifacts not only include the submitted file/content, but they also include metadata about the assignment: the Assignment details, the grade the student received, and any feedback provided by the instructor.
Portfolio Sharing
Portfolio authors can share their Portfolios with individual Users, external users (via email), Courses, Organizations, Institution Roles, or All System Accounts (which makes the shared Portfolio discoverable via the Search button in the Received Portfolios area). Whenever a Portfolio author shares a Portfolio with other users, each “sharing event” creates a static snapshot of that Portfolio at that point in time. What is shared is the static Portfolio Snapshot, so even if the Portfolio author makes changes in his Portfolio, the recipient is still looking at the static Portfolio Snapshot of that Portfolio at that point in time.
Assigned Portfolios
This feature allows the instructor to require a Portfolio as the submission in response to an Assignment in a Course. This is not a separate type of Assignment; it is simply a new option on the existing Assignment capability. With Assigned Portfolios, portfolios are easier to use and assess as part of authentic assessment practices in a Course.