Post your questions about Portfolio

[Dalma_Schnell]

For any questions about functionality, setup, or use cases, post in this discussion.

[Boardman]

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

[Boardman]

Hi Dalma,

I do understand what you are saying about not needing to add a shell.  But I don't understand how we would add classes across multiple years of a program.  Each Canvas course is tied to a semester.  So if a student is starting in Fall 2025 I could only add a class to the portfolio that was being taught in Fall 2025, not classes that will be taught in Fall 2027, for example.  Can classes/assessments be added to a portfolio after it has been published?  That would make it doable, it would require someone to add the current classes/assessments to each portfolio at the beginning of each semester.  (I may still not understand the vision.)

Right now we track assessment of a class using Canvas Outcomes...which we love.  But we are mainly looking at it as a summative assessment and we don't look at how a particular student progresses over time, just how a group of students did, on average, in any given semester.  That is our main impetus for wanting to add portfolios.  We'd like to be able to look at a particular student's progress (via the Canvas Outcomes) over time. 

We have a flowchart of the optimal path through the program, but very few students actually follow that optimal path, for a variety of reasons.  But we could probably identify some gateway-like classes.  So when a student finishes Class A they are roughly a quarter through the program, when the finish Class B they are roughly halfway through the program, etc. But all students who start in the Fall 2025 wouldn't meet those gates at the same time. 

I'm happy to talk about this as much as necessary.  We are really excited about the value that would be added for our students with this program-view.

Bonnei

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @Boardman,

Thank you so much for walking me through your use case, this is incredibly helpful context.

You're absolutely right that courses in Canvas are tied to specific terms, and learners move through them at different times.

Right now, once a Portfolio is published, you can’t add more learners or courses — but we’re actively working on improvements to support both. The goal is to make it possible to dynamically add courses and expand the learner list after publishing, which would support the kind of multi-year, flexible tracking you're describing.

As for our broader vision: we want to support both single-course and multi-course assessments, giving institutions the flexibility to assess student progress over time in a way that aligns with their unique structure.

I believe your use of Canvas Outcomes as a summative view is a great foundation. I can definitely see how pairing that with a Portfolio view — where students’ growth is tracked longitudinally and curated with context — would offer a lot more value to your program and your learners. It also makes perfect sense to anchor the Portfolio around a few key gateway or milestone courses. That way you can structure the Portfolio around meaningful checkpoints without needing to capture every single course.

I’d love to talk through what this might look like using your current structure. We’re learning a lot from partners like you, and your input is shaping how we build a more flexible, scalable solution.

Thanks again, and looking forward to continuing the conversation!

[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!

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi Eef,

Thank you so much for taking the time to test the new Canvas Portfolio tool and for sharing your detailed, thoughtful feedback. 

We want to acknowledge up front that this tool is being developed iteratively. That means we're intentionally releasing early versions to gather input like yours and evolving the product based on real-world usage and needs. Your feedback is essential to helping us get this right.

Below are my responses to your findings:

• You're absolutely right—it should be possible to unpublish a portfolio and make edits post-publish. This is a key limitation we're working to address.
• It’s great to hear that full integration with Canvas is working well overall.

  You're right that the 'Create New Evidence' experience feels different from standard Canvas assignment flows. This workflow is designed to support:

  • Evidence creation outside the course structure (e.g., internships, extracurriculars, self-directed learning).

  • Competency-based assessment models, where iteration, feedback, and progress toward mastery are more important than traditional grading.

  • Assessment workflows that emphasize reflection and development over numeric scores.

That said, we know a balance is needed. We’re working to improve familiarity and consistency while retaining the flexibility required for broader assessment models. We hear you on the need for rubric support, deadline options (both optional and required), hidden grading, and plagiarism checking. 

• Today, the portfolio creator is also the only reviewer, and only one person can currently take that role per portfolio. We know this is limiting, especially in scenarios where multiple educators, assessors, or mentors need to provide input. Our roadmap includes support for multiple reviewers.
• We’re actively evaluating how to enable adding learners manually to a portfolio, even post-publication, in a way that maintains data integrity and avoids confusion.
• Today, educators can only add learners who are enrolled in their Canvas courses. This is enforced through the initial course selection step when creating an Evaluation Portfolio—learners enrolled in that course are automatically assigned to the portfolio. This ensures that teachers only have access to students within their own class or section.

• Regarding the issue you mentioned about the cover image not saving:
  If you’re able to send us a screenshot or short video of what you’re seeing, we’d be happy to investigate this further and work with the team to identify the issue.

• Also, to answer your question about language support:
  Yes — the Portfolio tool will support all the same languages as Canvas, including Dutch. 

• Since assignments are submitted directly in Canvas, the Portfolio tool simply syncs the submission status and result. If a student couldn’t submit the assignment, the issue is likely related to the Canvas course or assignment configuration itself.
  • If you could share a few screenshots of how you tried to submit the group assignment (e.g. what the student sees in Canvas), we’d be happy to take a closer look and help troubleshoot from our side if needed.
• As for the evidence requirement count discrepancy (e.g. 7 items in total but only 6 counted), it would be really helpful if you could also send a screenshot of your evidence setup and progress tracking view, especially showing how the group assignment is displayed. This will allow us to dig deeper and determine if something went wrong in the sync or setup logic.
• Teammate tagging - Right now, tagging other students is meant to highlight collaborative work — for example, to indicate that a piece of evidence was created as part of a group effort. However, it does not yet trigger any actions on the tagged student’s side, and it does not create shared evidence or link it across learners. This is an area we’re actively exploring, and we do plan to expand this functionality in the future.
• Group portfolios are not supported at this time.
• Reviewing Portfolio as a whole - The entire portfolio can be evaluated through the individual evidence items it contains — each item can be reviewed, given feedback, and marked as complete. As evidence is reviewed, the overall status of the portfolio updates accordingly, and once all required evidence is completed, the entire portfolio is marked as complete.
  • When you mention evaluating the whole portfolio, are you referring to assigning a single overall grade to the portfolio?

• Canvas Learning Outcomes are not supported in the Portfolio yet. In this initial phase, we’ve intentionally limited skills to Portfolio-specific evidence. This helps us avoid complexity with existing Canvas logic and grading flows, especially for course-based assignments, while still allowing competency-based assessment within the Portfolio environment.

• At the moment, skills must be added manually, and they are not yet connected to a centralized library. However, going forward, we will introduce a standardized skill library, allowing you to select from existing skills to ensure consistency and support tracking across learners and portfolios.

• We’re also exploring ways to visualize progress on these skills and competencies through dashboards and filters and your feedback here helps shape that direction!

Really appreciate your engagement and ideas!

[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. 

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @ErikaRydberg 

Thanks so much for the feedback and I hope you had a great vacation!

Just a quick note that the cover image adjustment feature is already available — you should be able to reposition the image after uploading it.

Regarding your question on data storage: we don’t use the current Canvas personal storage limits. All portfolio content, including images and attachments, is stored in a separate system. We’ll be sharing more details soon about how that storage is managed and what the limit looks like from a user perspective.

Really appreciate you taking the time to test and share this input!

[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?

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @CvdB,

Great question! The export functionality will be available during the Feature Preview phase launching on July 31st, so you’ll be able to test it very soon. The export options will include PDF, HTML, and a file dump.

Looking forward to your feedback once you get a chance to try it out!

[JamesSekcienski]

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

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @JamesSekcienski ,

That’s a really interesting point! We haven’t planned for this so far but I’ll go ahead and add this as an option to the idea exchange page so others can rate and weigh in as well.

[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?

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi James,

Great questions! Sharing via a public link and posting to LinkedIn is part of our initial plan — we see this as the basic sharing approach to start with. From there, we’ll rely on feedback to see where the experience needs to improve.

As for institution-wide search or discovery of shared portfolios, that hasn’t been on our radar so far, but it’s a really interesting idea — I’ll add it to the idea exchange board so others can weigh in as well.

Thanks again for helping us think ahead!

[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.

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @JamesSekcienski,

Yes, that will be possible. If global navigation isn’t preferred, institutions can choose to enable the Portfolio tool either at the course or at the account level instead.

[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?

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @JamesSekcienski,

Great question!

All educators added to a course with an educator role can create Evaluation Portfolios from those courses. The educator who creates the portfolio becomes its reviewer and can view and evaluate any Portfolio-specific evidence (e.g., projects) submitted to that portfolio.

When portfolios use a course assignment requirement, all educators assigned to that specific course will be able to review submissions and provide feedback as usual through the standard Canvas assignment workflow (not Portfolio), and the grade will then sync back to the Portfolio as well.

Roles like Designer or custom roles not based on an educator-type role currently won’t have access to the Portfolio tool.

We are looking to refine and expand this experience in the future.

[JamesSekcienski]

Hello @Dalma_Schnell,

Thank you for the additional information!  To clarify, when you say educator role are you referring to the "Teacher" and "TA" roles (and any roles based on them)?

I see you noted Designer (and roles based on it) won't have access, which is similar to how New Quizzes currently functions.  For further clarification, are Observers also excluded from having access to the Portfolio tool (including Showcase)?  Similarly, do students (and roles based on it) have access to create Showcase portfolios and complete their assigned Evaluation portfolios?

As for permissions, are all educator type roles treated the same in the Portfolio tool even if it is a custom educator based Canvas role that doesn't have permission to edit content and/or edit grades?

[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?

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @JamesSekcienski,

Notifications will be implemented and available in the first release of the Portfolio tool. While integration with the Canvas To-Do list is not part of the initial release, we’re actively exploring deeper integrations like that for future iterations.

[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.