At the Faculty of Medicine, “the portfolio” is short for the mandatory PhD course “Generic knowledge and skills – portfolio”. Throughout the PhD program, students are expected to use their portfolio for continuous documentation and reflection on the activities they engage in.
Room for improvement
The purpose of the portfolio is twofold. Firstly, it supports the achievement of competences needed for the degree. It also provides an opportunity for the PhD student to monitor their progress – we call this the learning portfolio. Secondly, it is used as a basis for demonstrating and examining attainment of the PhD degree outcomes at the end of the program. We call this the assessment portfolio.
“Based on input from PhD students and Assistant Department Heads responsible for PhD studies (FU Heads), we have over the last years identified a number of points with room for improvement. With the current updates we hope to address some of these, while at the same time keeping the overall structure, purpose and expected content the same – to avoid confusion and minimize additional work for already admitted students. I believe the changes we are now implementing will simplify and clarify the work for both new and current PhD students and assessors”, says Olga Göransson.
New instructions
“The aim is to make outcomes and the workflow more logical and simple for PhD students to take on board, and for the examination to become more uniform. The changes will not impact on the content of the learning portfolio. They will to some extent affect the structure of the assessment portfolio and PhD students are expected to follow the new instruction for what to include in the assessment portfolio when it is to be examined”.
