The purpose of the portfolio is to make a personal statement about what you are learning during this module and how it has impacted on your development as a thoughtful practitioner. You should use it to present evidence of your progress towards achieving the learning objectives of the module. You would do this by clearly making connections between the work you have created and the learning objectives of the assignment. A portfolio also serves as a means for you to reflect on what it means to make ethical choices, both in your professional and personal capacity. You use it to tell your own personal story about what these themes mean to you. One way to think about your portfolio is in terms of collecting, reflecting, selecting and connecting.

A learning portfolio in the context of this course is about using your personal clinical experiences to explore concepts in ethics that you learn about through this online course. You must use those experiences to do research on the ethics concepts, and then to explore alternative points of view, which you then include in your reflective writing. You will need to use the final collection of your writing to demonstrate a more nuanced, complex understanding of the topic as a result of the research that you integrate into your writing. Your portfolio must therefore present evidence that you understand that context is important in ethics discussions, and that the “right” answer is often dependent on the specific situation. See the post on Writing for specific steps to the writing and blogging process.

Additional reading

Klenowski, V., Askew, S., & Carnell, E. (2006). Portfolios for learning, assessment and professional development in higher education. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(3), 267–286. Only read from the Discussion. If you do not have access to this paper, please contact your course coordinator.