Week 3: Blog Reflection

Assessment for learning is the effective strategy to see how a student have learned so far. The portfolio in details and with specific learning information is the ground to develop the progress toward learning goal. From ten research-based principles of Assessment for Learning (AFL), I found that the most related tenant to me is "AFL develop learners' capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing". There are some reasons I would like to support as the following:

• Stories telling: As Paulson & Paulson (1991) pointed out, story tell about what the learners know about things, themselves, and audiences. It is the collection of the knowledge and meaning of the worldview around them. They perceive what is meaningful and interpret accordingly. Schon (1988) suggests that a learner should develop the habit of recording the stories so that they can be the narrative description of learning logs. I also agree that stories can be any tales that happened in the life of a person. It is not necessary to meet the requirement of the program, but rather relevant to the goal in some aspects.
• Assessment: The portfolio plays an important role as the evidences of the learning outcomes. It is not only a static evidence from what has completed, but will also predicted that direction to the future learning. Assessment in my meaning, is not only the decision to judge whether the learners would pass/fail, instead it is the indication of the accomplishment of individual one.
• Self-reflective: I believe that every learner has different learning curve. The portfolio allows learner to express the way his/her learning is. It represents the voice of each person in learning style.

In order to employ portfolio into my learning development and assessment, I see that e-portfolio in the form of blog can record what I have learned as the evidence. It allows me to create the personal stories of my learning goal as a graduate student. As I am now on the final stage after the required coursework, then will be on for the comprehensive examination in Fall semester, it is necessary to keep reading journal and thoughts provoking concepts and ideas related to the research topic in the systematic pattern. Most of the time, reading becomes confusing because of I try to interpret every single idea rather than the overall concept. This is communicative problem of a bilingual speaker whose mind switches in two languages. What I like more on e-portfolio as the assessment tool is the way I can include different media into the project. The mentors can see how I have developed the ideas and give feedback appropriately.