September 2006

Using the DLC's Portfolio Tool to Improve Teaching and Student Success

Foster Senior High School, Tim Renz, Biology Teacher

"The DLC's suite of digital tools has had the greatest impact on my teaching practice in the sixteen years I've been teaching," Tim Renz, a biology teacher at Foster Senior High School, proclaims.

"I think I'm doing a better job of teaching. Portfolio, especially, has given me an opportunity to ask for more from my students, which means that I have to teach them better…It's really forced me to improve my practice so that students are prepared to be able to meet the standards that I've set for them." Renz regularly uses Portfolio, WebQ, and EPost*, three of the five digital tools available through the DLC.

From composition notebooks to electronic portfolios

Students used to write up their labs in composition notebooks and receive written feedback from Renz after a series of labs. "If I had the notebook, we couldn't do another lab," Renz explains. But now that his classes use Portfolio, Renz can give them timely feedback and students can revise their work up until the time it is due. Portfolio allows students to create and organize electronic copies of their work that their teachers and peers can easily access.

Renz started using Portfolio when the DLC first launched, as part of a digital tools pilot. "I sort of threw together a template, but when I saw the quality of the lab work, which was so much better than their handwritten work, I decided Portfolio was worth putting more time into."

Renz explains that students are comfortable using the computer and tend to be more verbose when typing than when handwriting, like himself. Portfolio has also allowed him to extend class time. Lab work is often due on a Sunday night, after a Wednesday finish. "They can put in the time that they want to get to that level that they're expecting from themselves," Renz says.

Individualizing learning and increasing performance

"When I'm grading a kid's portfolio, my class size is one," Renz says. Even though all of the students are working on the same lab, they are not necessarily working at the same level. Renz is able to adjust his teaching for students who want to go further and give extra help to those that are lagging behind.

Since students receive feedback from Renz on a regular basis, during class he is freed up to work closely with individual students and groups of students and to tailor his teaching to their needs. "This interaction has been great," Renz says. "I think they're learning more." Renz also finds that his students are working harder. "For conclusions, before I would get paragraphs. Now I get a couple of pages. They're really striving to do their best work."

Student success beyond the classroom

Renz happily reports that one of his student's work was picked up by an international annotated bibliography that focuses on a specific type of virus that she had done some work on. "It's pretty cool for a fifteen-year-old sophomore to have her work cited in this type of a publication." Another one of Renz's students, who was originally turned down by WSU, got in on an appeal after presenting his portfolio of work. And students who have gone on to the UW take their portfolios with them. (Since Portfolio is hosted by the UW.)

Portfolio also provides an alternative for students who don't fit the stereotypical mold. Renz had a second-semester sophomore, diagnosed with ADD, who hadn't passed a class other than his music class when he enrolled in Renz's biology class. The student was fairly antisocial and often reacted negatively to his classmates. "In my class he was able to get totally focused in on the computer and doing his work. He put on some headphones and sort of tuned out the rest of the class and would interact with his computer…and ended up actually passing my class…the rest of his teachers were amazed."

The student went on to graduate on time. Renz says: "He really turned himself around, and part of it was probably maturity, and part of it was probably the way my class was set up…It really gave him a sense that he could accomplish work and be academically focused. He wasn't a straight A student…but he worked his tail off to get to the point where he could graduate on time."

Not an add-on but a value-add

"For me, Portfolio wasn't an add-on. It allowed me to do something I was already doing, only do it better," Renz says. "On the same lab the other biology teachers were doing with paper and pencil, I was using the tools, and we were able to compare student work. It's not that I'm a better teacher; it's that I'm using a different tool. It's like trying to drill a hole with a screwdriver. You know it works, but it's a lot harder."

By now all three biology teachers are using the Portfolio tool with their classes and to collaborate with each other on creating new labs. Renz is also starting to get other teachers at Foster on board. "I'm not necessarily trying to push the DLC. I'm trying to push better teaching," Renz explains. "And I think better teaching is happening through the DLC."

* EPost has transformed into GoPost.

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