key: cord-0938448-4l3pr7jo authors: Chavis, Jai; Wong, Kelvin; Linden, Monica L. title: Online Portfolio: An Alternative to a Research Paper as a Final Assessment date: 2021-03-31 journal: J Microbiol Biol Educ DOI: 10.1128/jmbe.v22i1.2469 sha: 23b31c048a38810b4386c1fd21187a1b1a306ba9 doc_id: 938448 cord_uid: 4l3pr7jo Research papers are a common end-of-semester assessment for senior-level seminars. The mid-semester switch to remote learning due to COVID-19 provided an opportunity to rethink this model and offer an alternative final assessment using a multipart online portfolio that addresses the learning goals of the course and the objectives of research paper–based final assessments. The smaller weekly tasks coupled with ongoing peer feedback reduced student stress and allowed for creativity and community building. Students responded positively to the novel assignment. Senior seminars in life sciences departments often conclude with a research paper serving as the final, summative assessment. The unique circumstances of the spring 2020 semester, occurring during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, provided the opportunity to rethink the final assessment to accommodate students engaged in remote learning and likely working under conditions of significant stress. Here, we describe an online portfolio approach to a final assessment used in a senior seminar with a curriculum based on close reading of primary literature. This assignment allowed students to complete smaller components weekly and package them together into one final product. Additionally, students were able to infuse creativity into their portfolio work while still ensuring that the assessment was aligned with course learning goals and the objectives of the original final project. Online portfolios are a common form of assessment in fully online learning environments and have been used in multiple disciplines in higher education (1) . Online portfolios can be used as summative assessments and can be aligned to learning goals, including goals related to higher order cognitive skills (1) (2) (3) . Google Sites is one of several platforms used by instructors to include online portfolios in their courses (1) . Further, by infusing creativity into the portfolio activities, the portfolio approach can increase students' motivation and engagement (4) . This assessment was used in NEUR1930L: Neurobiology of Love, at Brown University, but is applicable to typical life sciences seminars. NEUR1930L is an advanced neurobiology seminar with an enrollment of 15 students. This discussion-based course explores the underlying neurobiological principles of love and attachment through the reading of primary literature, review papers, and popular press articles on similar topics. Course learning goals include understanding the mechanisms underlying love and attachment, interpreting and evaluating neurobiological research relevant to love and attachment, predicting the results of some experiments, proposing and designing experiments, and becoming a critical reader of popular scientific articles. The course's original final assessment was a research paper addressing all but the last of these goals, while the switch to an online portfolio allowed for all to be addressed. Further, the original research paper had objectives around synthesizing information and giving and receiving peer feedback, as well as giving an oral presentation. These additional objectives were preserved in the online portfolio assessment. The complete assignment, with assessment rubrics, is provided in Appendix 1 and summarized here. For both the original research project and the novel online portfolio, each student begins by proposing their own focus question on a relevant topic to explore more deeply. Students also create an annotated bibliography of course readings throughout the semester, with this focus question in mind. The question should be established and the annotated bibliography begun near the beginning of the semester. With the questions set and bibliography already in progress, we restructured the final research paper into a project with smaller components distributed over five weeks. Based on a Google Sites template provided by the instructor (see https://sites.google.com/brown.edu/neur1930lsampleproject), each student created a website to serve as their portfolio. Appendix 2 shows an example customized by a student. No students in the class reported any difficulties using Google Sites with the template. Table 1 outlines the activities that the students added to their portfolio each week, aligned to the course learning goals. These activities include captioning a pre-existing figure, proposing new experiments, creating and capturing a novel figure, developing a creation for the general population related to their question, and writing an abstract of their work. The presentation and peer review components from the original paper are retained in this final assignment. Students briefly shared their project with the class in an online group meeting. For the peer review, students are placed in groups of three or four and provide feedback to each other after each component is due. This also serves to maintain class community in an online setting. The online portfolio project was designed to allow students to both explore science that intrigues them and demonstrate their ability to evaluate the course materials in a manageable and forgiving medium considering the acuteness of the COVID-19 pandemic. An advantage of the online 1 Week-by-week portfolio description and learning goals alignment. Week Week 0 Prior to Week 10 (recommend around Week 4) Propose a focus question on a topic relevant to the course Begin an annotated bibliography of course readings with the focus question in mind Week 1 Week 10 Week 4 Week 13 Popular "Creation" Create something that communicates and answers the focus question for a scientifically lay audience, such as an online article, podcast, or video Improving students' abilities to be critical readers of popular scientific articles Week 5 Week 14 Abstract Write an abstract to accompany their portfolio and link to their completed annotated bibliography Week 5 Week 14 Presentation Give a brief presentation about their work to the class This table contains the week within the portfolio project for each activity, the corresponding week within the course (assuming a 14-week semester), a summary of the weekly activities, a brief description of the weekly activities, and the alignment of the activities to the course learning goals. More details of the portfolio activities can be found in Appendix 1. portfolio is its structured, manageable, weekly tasks. The temporal spacing of the workload allowed students to meaningfully engage with the content in an approachable manner, without the acute stress of a standard research paper. The compartmentalization of the online portfolio was designed so that each week's assignment would build on the prior work, creating a clear through-line and connecting the assignment to the learning objectives of the course. Additionally, the weekly structure of the novel assessment created natural checkpoints for students to provide feedback on their classmates' progress. This resulted in community building through helping others improve the quality and clarity of their work. The students especially enjoyed the popular creation, where they presented the scientific findings and concepts related to their question to a scientifically lay audience. As the most open-ended and personalizable portion of the novel assessment, this component sparked creativity ranging from podcasts, to imitations of popular science communication, to a computer animation, to a song written about the neurobiology of attachment (see Appendix 3 for examples). We did not formally assess the effectiveness of the online portfolio as the final summative assessment for the course. However, the student feedback about the online portfolio was universally positive and centered around how the project translated well to remote learning and did not overwhelm students going through an already high stress period. The students broadly agreed that the novel assessment was a manageable format and gave them the opportunity to demonstrate their scientific acumen and their writing skills without provoking undue stress. A number of students remarked that they benefited much more from the novel assessment than they would have from a standard research paper as previously planned. Instructors interested in formally determining the effectiveness of the online portfolio could assess students' perceptions using a tool such as the survey described by Buzzetto-More (2) or the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) (7, 8) . Because of the success of the new final assessment, we will continue to refine the online portfolio and incorporate it into other primary literature-based courses for both remote and inperson learning in future semesters. Appendix 1: Complete assignment instructions with rubrics Appendix 2: Example portfolio cover page Appendix 3: Example student popular creations A cross-case analysis of the use of web-based eportfolios in higher education Assessing the efficacy and effectiveness of an e-portfolio used for summative assessment Electronic portfolios in e-learning The six C's framework for e-learning Identify and Interpret (I2) strategy Identify and Interpret (I2) strategy Creating a better mousetrap: on-line student assessment of their learning gains Best practices for measuring students' attitudes toward learning science The authors would like to thank Melissa Kane and Stacey Lawrence for their helpful input to this project. Additionally, the authors would like to thank the Brown University Judith H. Zern 1964 Endowed Teaching Fund and the Brown-Connect Collaborative SPRINT (Short-term Projects, for Research, Internships, and Teaching) Award for Summer 2020 Faculty Collaborations for funding parts of this work. The contents of this article do not meet the definition of human subject research, but permissions were obtained to include the student work presented in the article. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.