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Learning Collection: Overview

Julia
Updated

Introduction

In this article we will walk you through the intended pedagogical purpose of Learning Collection, also called the Learning Collection.

Throughout a course, students take part in many smaller learning moments, peer reviews, assignments, discussions, self-assessments, that each demonstrate part of their development. But these moments are usually assessed in isolation, and there's no easy way to step back and judge the sum of them: has the student done the required work, developed as expected, and reflected critically on their journey?

Learning Collection is built for exactly that moment. Students curate a collection of their work from across their courses, reflect on what it shows about their learning, and submit it to be assessed as a whole. This makes it well suited to competency-based and portfolio-based programmes, and to mid-stake progression checks such as the end of a block or semester — the moment of asking "is this student where they should be?"

The design puts students in the driver's seat of what they present, while teachers stay in control of how it's assessed by defining the criteria. Because students choose and explain their evidence, the activity builds the metacognitive habit of reflecting on their own growth.

Here you can find our user guides for Learning Collection:

How It Works

A typical Learning Collection activity follows these steps:

  1. The teacher sets up the activity: writing general instructions and specific instructions for the collection (what it should contain), setting a required number of activities, choosing whether students can upload extra files, and defining the criteria the collection will be assessed on (rubrics, scales, or comment-only).
  2. The student builds their collection: browsing all the FeedbackFruits activities they've taken part in across their courses, grouped by course, and adding the ones that best demonstrate their learning. Each added activity brings its submissions, ratings, and comments with it. If enabled, students can also upload supporting files.
  3. The student reflects: writing a reflection on the collection as a whole, and optionally on individual activities, to explain the thinking behind their choices and articulate their growth.
  4. The student previews and submits: checking the collection before handing it in. Submitting locks the collection and saves it as a snapshot at that moment.
  5. The teacher (and any additional assessors) assess the collection: reviewing the selected activities and reflections, then rating against the defined criteria and adding written feedback. Collections can be assessed by multiple assessors independently.
  6. The student reads their assessment: once results are released, the feedback appears like any other feedback they receive in FeedbackFruits.

The key design choice is that the teacher defines what assessment looks like, while the student controls which evidence they present and how they frame their learning journey.

Fig. 1: Workflow steps in the Learning Collection activity

 

Benefits of Using Learning Collection

Assessing students holistically across many activities is valuable but hard to do in practice. Teachers often face challenges such as:

  • Fragmented evidence: Competency is demonstrated across many activities but assessed in isolation, with no single place to see it all.
  • Manual collation: Tracking participation and piecing together scattered rubric scores and feedback is time-consuming and doesn't scale beyond small cohorts.
  • Thin sense of the journey: It's hard to judge a student's growth and critical reflection from one final deliverable alone.

Why use Learning Collection

Through implementation of Learning Collection, you can address these common pain points:

  • See the whole picture in one place: All of a student's chosen evidence — submissions, ratings, comments, and reflections — is aggregated into one collection to assess.
  • Assess growth, not just a final product: Students demonstrate development through multiple pieces over time, rather than a single exam or deliverable.
  • Build student agency and reflection: Curating and reflecting on their own collection encourages students to think critically about their learning journey.
  • Maintain teacher oversight: Teachers define the criteria and the collection requirements; students make their choices within that framework.
  • Support competency-based programmes: The activity is designed for mid-stake progression checks and portfolio-based assessment at scale.
  • Familiar setup for teachers: Criteria and deadline configuration follows the same patterns as other FeedbackFruits tools, keeping the learning curve low.

 

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