The Applied Biology program at the HAS-Green Academy in Venlo (HAS) practices programmatic assessment. This entails that it is very important that students work with larger units and that both they and HAS have good insight into their personal development. The department was looking for an online portfolio tool that fits its educational vision. Since September last year, the course has been using Scorion.
In this customer case, Niels Bohnen, educational coordinator for the Applied Biology program and educational expert at HAS, explains how Scorion helps to provide insight into the personal development of Applied Biology students.
Niels: ”HAS has always been a smaller university, but over the past 15 years we have grown tremendously. We are originally an agricultural university of applied sciences, but we have also broadened considerably by offering new programs such as Applied Biology and Food Innovation. This has led to a larger amount of students. In order to keep track of the development of all these students we started to test using programmatic assessment, and started looking for an online portfolio system. We didn’t want students working with weird Excel tables or Word files. We made a list of requirements that we felt a digital portfolio should meet, and that’s how we ended up with Scorion. This portfolio tool best fits what we want.”
Meanwhile, the first year of Applied Biology has started with programmatic testing and next September a second course, Food Innovation (also in Venlo), will also start with this. There, too, they will start working with Scorion. Niels: ”We are implementing the entire curriculum from the ground up. We already had an assessment program and assessment forms in place. We then had discussions with Scorion about our vision and what the possibilities are within Scorion. People with educational knowledge work there, so they can think along about how their portfolio tool best fits our educational vision and make suggestions on how to do something in a certain way. They also think along about the technology. I have found this to be really nice.”
Niels: ”We are also entering this track for Applied Biology year 2. In the beginning it really took some getting used to for everyone, for both student and teacher, but we really value the feedback that students get. So not the assessment, but the feedback underneath. We really find that very valuable. Scorion works for the teachers technically absolutely fine, it’s well put together and it’s clear what’s happening. Also, the digital portfolio tool gives a very quick clear insight into how a student is doing, so we needed much less time for the first decision moment – in which we are going to look at the portfolio as a whole – than we had thought beforehand. The students and teachers received training from us, which is very convenient. Scorion is a very important instrument to make development visible, so that you are not surprised, but the student can make adjustments in time.”