Why do educational organizations choose to employ portfolios? What value does the use of rubrics in evaluating activities and portfolios bring? How can peer review affect learning progress and growth?

Portfolios are good for instructors and educational institutions as they are for students. Portfolios help to facilitate good organization, which should make life a little easier for instructors who need to review a large volume of work. More importantly, educational organizations are realizing that portfolios are living documents that help students visualize themselves on their career paths. They can easily see where they are, which helps them visualize where they want to go. Portfolios are meant to be maintained throughout a career.

The rubric is of value because portfolios need to be engaging and easy for the intended audience to understand. The rubric provides a set of evaluation criteria that reviewers can clearly and consistently follow. Students should be able to understand the review feedback based on the rubric, and they know what they need to work on to make their portfolios stronger, at least in the eyes of the reviewers.

Peer review is often kinder and gentler than that of an instructor or industry professional. When I review the work of my friends, I usually compliment the strong points and overlook the weaker points (unless there are obvious mistakes that require correction). However, when students review the work of their peers, they often inspire each other to do better. If I stumble upon someone's work that is clearly more creativethan mine, I'm driven to rethink my own work.