Open Portfolio Research Brief Series Phase 2

Open portfolios are an important form of assessment within maker education because they can showcase examples of the kind of learning that happens in making beyond numerical assessment of knowledge and skills. Instead, collections of images, videos, and sketches can facilitate the exploration of a maker's personal creative process and ways of doing beyond a one-size-fits all model. Additionally, open portfolios can support youth taking ownership of their work and contributing to maker communities inside and outside of their own learning environments. Maker Ed's second Research Brief Series, published in early 2018, takes a deep look into the motivations, implications, and practices necessary to situate open portfolios as a means of assessment in maker-centered learning environments. The findings and briefs also draw on our analysis in the first phase of work (see Open Portfolio Research Brief Series; http: //bit.ly/MakerEdOPP1), continuing to reveal the many facets of portfolio implementation and assessment. This Research Brief series focuses on open portfolios as a form of assessment of youth-driven making and provides a broad survey of existing assessment practices in makerspaces that builds on and advances traditional portfolio assessment. We highlight aspects that educators in a range of maker settings consider when working to integrate youth practices.