Portfolio Testing observations

[AM_Learning]

Hi, here are our observations from our testing at QUT: 

Students attached to the Portfolio:

We noted that in our testing, a course with 15 students enrolled initially had only 5 added to the Portfolio when the course was linked. This may lead to some confusion for instructors. We believe it may be related to the students’ engagement in the course, but further testing would be required.

Evidence Requirements:

Sections: This was confusing for testing, as we were expecting Canvas “Sections”. We would suggest renaming this to something appropriate to Evidence Requirements – perhaps ‘Categories’.

Also noted that “Evidence requirements” does not have a help label to explain the feature (this is attached to Achievements). This will help instructors with configuring portfolios.

Student view:

The help label doesn’t really explain what tags are. E.g. ‘Enter a tag to categorise your portfolio’ or some descriptor of how they are used as part of the portfolio.

Teammates: This potentially may be unclear as there is different terminology used (like Group members or collaborators). A help label would be useful here to understand what adding a team mate does in terms of access to the portfolio e.g. “add another person to your portfolio to… view, collaborate, etc”

Publishing is by default unless you press draft. We believe it makes more sense to have a draft by default and publish when it is ready (having a clear indicator that it is a draft or unpublished).

Instructor view:

Grading area: There was some confusion on how the grader works when it is attached to new evidence, not from a course. There should be an ability to attach uncategorised evidence to an appropriate area.

[AM_Learning]

Positive observation: We like the breadcrumb trail across the top of the portfolio, which allows Instructors to move quickly back to their portfolio after viewing a student submission. 

Feedback: The New requirements options window are all coloured grey, but when they are added Projects, Extra Curricular Activities, & Professional Experiences have their own colours. It would be good to see those colours replicated at the Add New level to build user familiarity with distinguishing between the evidence types. 

  

[Dalma_Schnell]

Thank you so much for the positive feedback! We’re glad to hear the breadcrumb trail is helping instructors navigate more efficiently between student submissions and the main portfolio!

Regarding your note on the “New Requirement” options: Currently, once you select an evidence type before you press Select, the card updates with its respective color before you proceed to create a new item.

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @AM_Learning,

Thank you so much for your detailed observations!

I am sorry to hear that the Portfolio was not reflecting all enrolled learners. When we tested this internally, all learners were added as expected upon linking the course. One possibility is that learners may not have had the appropriate learner roles when the course was connected or the learners have been enrolled to the course after the Portfolio was created. We’d be happy to investigate further if you experience this in your production environment during our Feature Preview phase!

Regarding your suggestions:

• Tags: You’re absolutely right — clearer guidance would help. Help labels for tags are already planned and will be included in the next iterations to support learners in understanding how and why to use them.

• Sections: We understand the confusion here. These "Sections" refer to how evidence elements are grouped, not Canvas Sections. We’ll explore updating the terminology to reduce confusion.

• Uncategorized Evidence in the grading area: Could you clarify whether this point also relates to the earlier mention of “Sections”?

• Teammates: Thank you for calling this out. We agree that clearer terminology and a help label explaining what adding a teammate entails would improve the experience.

• Drafts and Publishing: That’s a very helpful point. We’ll update the Showcase Portfolio to include appropriate status indicators so it’s clearer which portfolios are in draft versus published states. Additionally, we’ll revisit the default publishing behavior to better support users during the creation process.

Thanks again for sharing these insights — they’re incredibly valuable as we continue refining the tool.

[DeliaGeorgescu]

Hello! I also noticed that some of the enrolled learner were not showing in the Portfolio tool, but then when I went back to the People list, I noticed that the missing learner was still 'pending' joining the course. May be worth checking that before counting it as an issue 🙂