In the fall of 2023, the University of Denver’s first-year Spanish program did away with traditional exams and replaced them with a portfolio-based assessment system. Over a year later, students, instructors, and course learning outcomes are all reaping the benefits. This post will discuss why our program made the switch, what our portfolios consist of, and the benefits we have seen since adopting them.
The problem with exams
Our program uses a communicative, task-based approach to language learning. Yet, high-stakes, error-based assessments were at odds with our pedagogical goals and teaching methods. For example, I regularly tell students not to worry if they forget a particular vocabulary word, so long as they can find a way to communicate their idea using whatever linguistic tools they do have (e.g. you don’t need to remember the word for ‘zebra’ if you can improvise ‘horse with black and white stripes'). This advice unfortunately did not apply to our exams, where students were expected to memorize and recall finite vocabulary lists.
Not only did this feel disingenuous as an instructor, students picked up on this disconnect. Consider two comments from students’ evaluations:
“[I didn’t like] the emphasis put on the ability to perform on tests and losing points for not having 100% accuracy. For example, when I have used Spanish during trips I have been on, I am not losing points when I say something the wrong way or have to say it another way for clarification. We both make the best effort to understand each other and work through any misunderstandings we have. It is a process not a set answer.”
“In class we were told not to focus on the grammar and that it was more important to get our point across, but the exams were extremely grammar driven.”
These students were absolutely right. Think about the languages that you know: at what point— outside a classroom—has anyone ever handed you a paragraph and asked you to fill in the blanks with a variety of verb forms? If our goal is to prepare students to use the language in real-life situations, we shouldn’t prioritize highly artificial assessments they will never again complete after graduating.
Our solution: ePortfolios
This growing discomfort with our traditional exams led us to replace them with a portfolio-based system. The portfolio is prepared in the Digication platform, and contains the following elements:
Artifacts: low-stakes assessments throughout the 10-week academic quarter as ‘time capsules’ of their learning trajectory. Specifically:
3 journals: in-class writing assignments where students extemporaneously write about a topic for 5-10 minutes
3 recorded activities: a typical conversational activity (spontaneous, not scripted) completed in pairs and recorded in class
2 projects: homework assignments putting the language to use for a variety of tasks, such as a recording of an interview with a native speaker or a creative presentation of a cultural topic (examples from previous students include a virtual tour through a Minecraft recreation of Gaudi’s Parc Güell and illustrating a children’s book describing Christmas traditions in Colombia)
End-of-term reflection: Students look back through their portfolio, reflect on their progress throughout the quarter, and how this is demonstrated by their artifacts.
Language skills at a glance: Students highlight on their portfolio’s home page the three artifacts which best represent their language abilities in writing, speaking, and creativity. Students write brief descriptions of their chosen artifacts and why they are proud of each. This provides an easily-digestible showcase of their language capabilities which they can share with family, employers, study abroad programs, etc.
Students maintain the same portfolio throughout each course in the first-year sequence. By the time they finish, they have a chronological timeline of their language-learning journey they retain access to even after graduating.
Benefits
Structural coherence. Homework and class time now more clearly serve as foundations building towards the portfolio artifacts, which themselves fill out the finalized portfolio at the end of the term.
Low stress. Low-stakes assessments—presented as normal activities/homework which serve as timestamps along students’ learning trajectory, not just as exams under a different name—minimize anxiety so that we are more accurately measuring proficiency and not test-taking skills, extroversion, etc.
Positive mindset. Where our exams punished students for any gap in their knowledge, our portfolios instead reward students for what they can do with what they have learned. ‘Important’ vocabulary does not mean the words most likely to appear on a test, but rather the tools students can use to talk about their own life and interests.
Instructor freedom. Individual instructors have more room for customization than they did when everyone in our program was bound to common exams. For example, one of our instructors this fall adapted the journal activities to initiate a pen pal exchange with the local Hispanic community via DU’s IRISE program.
Learning Outcomes. The numerical data we collect every year on student proficiency at the end of the first-year sequence indicates equal or superior performance across all skills; students still successfully learn the language even without the threat of exams.
Student feedback. Portfolios and the associated emphasis on learning over high-stakes assessments received countless mentions as the best aspect of our program in our end-of-sequence exit survey. For example:
“[The best aspect] was the portfolio assignment instead of a final exam, this gave me the valuable opportunity to show off what these two 1000 level courses have taught me and also what I can do with {Spanish] instead of simply regurgitating the two quarters of [Spanish] I took in a test.”
“I liked that [the sequence] was mostly based on effort and that there were no tests. Something that I struggled with in high school Spanish was how tested we were on our knowledge. I think with the format and expectations of this course it allows for more space to actually learn/understand concepts rather than memorizing them for a test/conversation.”
“I really enjoyed the environment the department made. It was a great switch from HS to see less focus on grades and more on learning + comprehension. When learning Spanish it can be very interesting and fun but it’s so hard when there is an emphasis on grades.”
Conclusion
The only real downside to our adoption of portfolios has been the clunkiness of the Digication platform supported by our university. We mitigated that this year by streamlining the template provided to students, but we may search for a more elegant third-party platform in the future.
Otherwise, however, the positive results of our switch to portfolios mean we won’t be going back to traditional exams. Hopefully our experience will encourage you to make a similar switch; as instructors, we are creatures of habit, and it can be difficult to replace something so prevalent in many language programs and in our education system in general. But having made the leap here at the University of Denver, we can confidently say that it has been worth it!
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Stefan DuBois currently coordinates the first-year Spanish program at the University of Denver. He enjoys keeping class fresh for both himself and his students by drawing inspiration from videogames, board games, and podcasts to create fun, communicative activities, many of which are available online at TPT. |  |
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