Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
A nursing portfolio is a means of documenting skills such as communication, creativity, and critical thinking. More important, it reflects professional development, self-evaluation, and achievement of goals. Designing and implementing a portfolio enables traditional nursing students and RNs returning to school to describe their achievements during a specified period of time. For the adult student seeking scholastic or clinical credit for past work or life experiences, the portfolio provides a creative and structured way for this to be obtained without taking a standardized test.
For the traditional undergraduate nursing student, college and a nursing program are more than a stated curriculum and grades. For the RN mobility student (RNs returning to obtain a bachelor of science in nursing [BSN] degree), nursing experiences are not just derived from clinical nursing experiences. Faculty at the Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford University sought to establish a method in which experiences could be translated into educational outcomes for academic credit and progression in the nursing program. The nursing portfolio was the process defined.
The nursing portfolio is a purposeful collection of student endeavors from the classroom, clinical, work, and service settings. Contents of the portfolio could include a student's personal philosophy of nursing, a resume, examples of individual and group projects, letters of recommendation or appreciation, awards, transcripts, mission or service activities, research, and selected educational and work evaluations. Through these written and photographic items, evidence is provided of a student's communication skills, academic performance, professional organization participation, clinical experiences, leadership and management skills, service activities, team or group work, and scholarly presentations. Through the portfolio, traditional and RN mobility students can creatively display a structured marketing tool for self-expression, self -evaluation, goal setting, and analysis of achievements.
BACKGROUND
Portfolios have been used in education, art, architecture, and journalism to document, monitor, and evaluate students (Centra, 2000; Cole, Ryan, & Kick, 1995). Based on the need to document students' exposure to varied, high-quality educational experiences, portfolios began to be used in nursing schools since the early 1980s (Budnick & Beaver, 1984). The portfolio has been seen as a more realistic evaluative tool of student learning and accomplishment oí program outcomes (Karlowicz, 2000; Wenzel, 1998; Williams, 2001). Collection and organization of materials can vary, but...