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I think I'm a little confused about the workflow of how an evaluation portfolio would be setup and used. I'm thinking about an evaluation portfolio that would cover our undergraduate program, select classes over a four-year program. Would we create a non-academic Canvas course (shell? not sure the correct word) and that included all of our those select courses and then add all of our students and then create the portfolio in that shell? And we would need to recreate it each semester to add all new students that started in that semester since we can't add students once it is published? So in steady-state we would have potentially dozens of those shells running? Am I understanding how that looks?

Dalma_Schnell

Hi @Boardman

Thanks for raising this! Your understanding is spot on for how things work in the current Early Adopter Program, and this type of feedback is exactly what we need to improve the experience going forward.

Right now, the key thing to know is that you don’t need to create a separate non-academic Canvas course (or shell) unless that works better for your structure. The main approach is to use existing academic courses as the foundation for Portfolios. Instructors or admins can select which courses should be captured into a Portfolio with a teacher role within those courses selected.

You’re also right that, due to EAP limitations, students can’t be added to a Portfolio after it’s been published. That’s something we’re actively evaluating, especially for longer-term or program-level Portfolios where rolling enrollment is important.

Would you be willing to share a bit more about how you currently track learning or assessment over the four years? For example, are there milestone courses or checkpoints that naturally group students each semester?

Thank you!
Dalma

canvas61

Hi Canvas

Thank you for giving us the option to test the new tool. We did some first tests already and we want to share our findings. We plan on testing it further the coming week and will provide you with some other feedback later.

These are our findings up till now, we mainly tested the evaluation portfolio option (not the showcase):

The user-friendliness would be better if portfolios that are published can be unpublished and edited.
It’s very nice that the tool is fully integrated in Canvas. It’s unfortunate that the ‘create new evidence’ is different than how Canvas works.
- The ways to evaluate it are different (no rubrics, etc), plagiarism check is not possible, you cannot insert deadlines (in an ideal world you could work with and without deadlines), etc. Also, the way the marking happens is different: e.g. once you evaluated a student, they can immediately see their marks and there’s no option for hiding the marks, etc.
It would be great if data points can be assignable to sections, class groups, students, etc.
The different roles and accessibility options are an issue. Some examples.
- Once a portfolio is published, you cannot add learners to that portfolio.
  - This is really a problem. It’s very important that there is a sync on the one hand and that you can add students manually to a portfolio
- I thought you were going to create different roles in the portfolio like ‘editor’, ‘admin’, viewer’, ‘reviewer’ etc.?
  - When lecturer X makes a portfolio, how can other lecturers have full access to that same portfolio?
  - I don’t see how and were I can see the institutional perspective as an admin?
  - It is important that when viewing the portfolios of his/her students, teachers can only select those students from his/her class group. How does this work?
  - How does the accessibility to various stakeholders work like students, teachers, coaches, external people, peers, etc.?
  - It’s important that there is the option to control who can see what part of the portfolio: the visibility/access of different components can be adjusted both in terms of who can see what and what is visible. How does this work?
- It would be great to make the portfolio also more visual. Often, our students have to present their portfolio during a presentation. So having a nice, visually appealing presentation option would be nice.
- The ‘adding a cover image’ doesn’t work. I cannot choose ‘save’ after uploading an image.
- Will the Dutch version also be available in August?
- I have encounterd some issues when testing group assignments.
  - With ‘assignment from a course’
    - I have made a test group assignment in an Canvas Course and added that assignment to the portfolio. When I acted as a student to submit that assignment, I couldn’t submit the assignment
    - In my test portfolio, I had 7 evidence requirements of which one was the group assignment. When tracking progress it said that the portfolio only had 6 requirements and it seemed as if the group assignment didn’t count.
  - With ‘creating new evidence’
    - I tagged a team mate when acting as a student, but nothing happened further with it. Acting as the student that was tagged, I couldn’t see I was tagged. What is the goal of the possibility of tagging students?
  - Would it be possible to let students make a portfolio in group?
- What we don’t understand yet is how the portfolio as a whole can be evaluated? It would be nice if the tool can combine multiple data points and evaluations for a holistic assessment.
- What is not clear to us yet, is how the link with the learning outcomes work? Ideally, there is a link with the learning outcomes so that there is a structured way to formulate and manage learning outcomes.
  - How can learning outcomes be added to a portfolio? How can learning outcomes be added to an assignment in Canvas?
  - How can we track students’ pogress on the learning outcomes visually? It’s interesting to be able to track progress visually. Ideally, there is a visual dashboard of the evolution (per learning outcome) that can be filtered (per learning outcome, per assessor, etc).
  - Why is it only possible to add skills to ‘create new evidence’ and not to ‘assignments from a course’? Or how can we add learning outcomes to ‘create new evidence’? It would be nice to have a holistic view regarding the progress student make throughout the portfolio on certain learning outcomes/skills.
  - In one of my tests, I have added a skill, but I couldn’t choose that skill from a drop down when adding another evidence requirement. Is there a standardized library possible?

Thanks in advance!

ErikaRydberg

I was away on vacation, but I was testing the Showcase portfolio functionality this morning.

Just some quick feedback from initial testing - For adding a cover image, I didn't see the capability to adjust the image to be centered as I would want (which would be great). Also with other tools we work with a pop up image size might be recommended or some text to emphasize what size is optimal. This got me thinking about student data storage and with this additional functionality how that might change or not - our settings currently allow for 50 MB personal storage for students. Just curious about what that might look like with e-ports we might need some specific guidance around storage.

CvdB

Right now we can't yet test the export functionality. This is an important point for our usability when it comes to assessments and checking the assessments by an different party. Will we be able to test this later on or can you tell us something about the possibilities so far?

JamesSekcienski

Will there be the ability to moderate and/or for users to report content once portfolios are shareable?

JamesSekcienski

What will the sharing options be in the future? Will users have share options like a Google Doc or OneDrive file that allows them to provide a shareable link that anyone can access and/or allows them to share access to individual people? Will they be able to revoke shared access? Will there be a global search/discovery within our institution that users can share to and see each other's shared showcase portfolios without needing a direct link?

JamesSekcienski

Will we have the option to disable the global navigation placement? Until we reach a point that the tool is widely used throughout their degree program, it seems better to limit the access point primarily to a link under the user account links rather than the global navigation if it isn't being used regularly.

JamesSekcienski

What roles from Canvas are currently recognized by the Portfolio tool and what level of access do those roles receive within the Portfolio tool? Are there any roles that won't have access (similar to how Designer based roles don't have access to New Quizzes)? How will custom roles and their permissions be handled?

JamesSekcienski

Will the Portfolio tool be integrated with the Canvas To-Do list and/or notification system? How are students notified when they have received feedback on their evaluation portfolio? How are instructors notified of portfolios that are pending review?

Charlotte_Lew

Hi Dalma and team,

We are looking forward to use this tool in our institution. Thanks for all the work done!

In addition to what is already written in previous replies I add some first ideas of the portfolio starting with the evaluation portfolio:

You cannot move sections, it would be nice to drag and drop to get them in a logic order. As a teacher you have to think about the order on beforehand. It would be nice to be able to add a spacer between sections to give a brief description.
You cannot add skills to course assignments, now a portfolio can be seen as completed even if not all course assignments are finished (see screenshot 1) because skills only come from 'Requirements'
As we are not using credentials have the 'achievements' option is confusing for our teachers as they cannot do anything with it. Will it be possible to create achievements as a teacher?
the publish button is hidden under the edit button. As already written, being able to make smaller edits and added learners should be possible after publishing
How can a teacher inform students about the portfolio? Will it be possible to assign it to a section, group, differentiation tag (in the future) with a due date. Although the portfolio is based on the learners and assignments of a course, as a teacher/leaner you cannot find a link to the portfolio in the course (e.g. in the gradelist)
teachers of different courses will need access to evaluation portfolio's created by other teachers
admins need an overview of the portfolio's and have the rights to edit all portfolio's
When you add attachments as a student you click on add but the loading takes some time but there is no indication of that so as a student accidentally added my attachments multiple times.
As a teacher I have to download all attachments one by one and have no option to preview the uploads
As a teacher I want to be able to have more feedback options on the assignments

Showcase:

nice that you can choose from all assignments over all courses
no option anymore to add skills to requirement, only able to add skills from achievements but not possible to create achievements
will a student be able to upload the portfolio in a course assignment?

Thanks!

Charlotte

canvas61

Hi @Dalma_Schnell

We did some further testing. I'd like to share my feedback/questions with you.

General

It’s important that the portfolio of a student is accessible for different kinds of stakeholders like other students, lecturers, external people with the option of deciding who can see/do what/who has what rights. (viewer, give feedback, etc). This is not the case right now or cannot be tested yet. What are the plans regarding this point?
In Evidence, it would be great to add subsections when organizing the evidence. For example:
- Section: Year 1
  - Sub section: Communciation
  - Sub section: Collaboration
- Section: Year 2
  - Sub section: …
  - Sub section:
- Could it be possible to make templates that educational programmes can use and edit?
- The launch of the tool will be in August/September.
  - How will this go? Will this be with an option that we have to enable?
  - We have some educational programmes that are using Folio (Portfolium). When will the information available on how they can export their data from Folio to the new Canvas portfolio tool?
  - I don’t think we have eductional programmes using the current native eportfolio tool in Canvas, but we are not sure. Are we correct that the native tool will be available for the academic year 2025-2026 (mid September 2026), or how does this transition go?

Showcase portfolio

What’s exactly the reason why lecturers can also make a showcase portfolio? Is this in anyway related to what students do when making a showcase portfolio?
There is nowhere an option to add skills?
What is the difference between tags and skills?
As a student, I could not add all the assignments that were already assigned to me. The overview was not complete.
I wanted to add professional experience as a student, but when I clicked on ‘create’, it didn’t work.
Like with the evaluation portfolios, it’s a problem that students cannot change the portfolio anymore once it’s published.
There is no option to share/create group work?
How can lecturers follow the portfolios of their students?
Some feedback that we also already mentioned for the evaluation portfolio’s, that is the same for showcase
- What we don’t understand yet is how the portfolio as a whole can be evaluated? It would be nice if the tool can combine multiple data points and evaluations for a holistic assessment.
- It would be great to make the portfolio also more visual. Often, our students have to present their portfolio during a presentation. So having a nice, visually appealing presentation option would be nice.
- It’s very nice that the tool is fully integrated in Canvas. It’s unfortunate that the ‘create new evidence’ is different than how Canvas works.
  - Will students get a notification when feedback is given?
  - it’s important that students can add skills to ‘create new evidence’and to Canvas assignments. Otherwise, the skills don’t show an overview of all the skills obtained in this portfolio.
  - It’s important that learning outcomes/goals can also be attached to ‘create new evidence’ so that they can also be graded with a rubric and that you have an overview of progress of the students regarding the learning outcomes.
  - See also our previous feedback

Thanks in advance!

heather_monti

I am setting this up in production in one sub-account, only using the "course navigation" placement. I noticed that all the courses in the sub-account now have "Portfolio" in the left-hand navigation. Is it possible to set the default to NOT make "Portfolio" visible in the left-hand navigation, only making it available from "Settings" - "Navigation"? There are only a few courses in the sub-account that want to use this but if all the courses have "Portfolio" visible in the left-hand navigation, it's going to invoke lots of questions from faculty and students.

Thanks for considering!

VPundir

Hi @Dalma_Schnell,

The Feature Preview announcement thread seems dead, so re-posting here.

It would be great to have a decent portfolio working within Canvas. A few requirements from such a feature (based on a review of the current Feature Preview):

Evaluation portfolios should have the option to add due dates.
Instructors should be able to Limit the number of files and file types for evidence in evaluation portfolios.
"Portfolio" should be one of the options when creating assignments.
Allow instructors to edit evaluation portfolios.
Like discussions and pages, the WYSIWYG/rich text editor should include the ability to insert images and embed video/audio.

Unanswered Questions

Sharing Showcase Portfolio Outside Organization
Started testing the new Portfolio today. Our K-12 district is new to Canvas and never implemented a portfolio solution. I was testing the share as a studnet using the 'Anyone can view link' to an outside user = does not have a login ID for our instance of Canvas. As the outside user, I am able to open and read the…
Recurring error message with Portfolios
I am experimenting with Canvas Portfolios (the Evaluation type), which we have enabled in one subaccount in our production environment, and this morning, I keep getting a red error message, reading that "You are not allowed to perform this action. Please contact your administrator." Except, I'm one of the root account…
Multiple portfolios for students not working
We installed the new Portfolio on our beta server. I created an evaluation portfolio for a course with a test student I added to the course. The portfolio was generated for the student. I created another evaluation portfolio using a different teacher account and attaching a different course but with the same test student…
503 error
When trying to launch the Portfolio tool in Beta, anyone else get a 503 error? Not allowing creation of either portfolio type- spinning when trying to load the list of coures for evaluation portfolio.
Teacher Admin Controls for K12
Hi, I've mentioned this before and also brought it back up in the recent K12 updates. Please can we see some better admin controls for portfolio for K12 use? I am a huge fan of portfolios and badges but would like to have greater controls for how they are used by students. At a certain stage, it will be important to share…