Objectives: 

Speech Therapy students, as other non-medical students, tend to underestimate Physiology usefulness in their curriculum. Consequently, Physiology becomes a hard and tedious subject to learn. As portfolio is becoming a popular teaching tool, we have implemented the use of the student portfolio as a way to improve motivation and participation of students as well as to evaluate student progress in Physiology.

Materials: 

Portfolio can be defined as a collection of student works that evidences mastery in a set of skills, applied knowledge and attitudes. First-year Speech Therapy students (40) were divided in teams of five. Each team completed one portfolio throughout the semester containing the contributions of all team members to different proposed activities: case studies, question resolution, paper analysis, computer simulation, laboratory practical sessions and bibliographic search. Activities are weekly uploaded into a virtual platform (Moodle) for teacher feedback. Evaluation is performed by a rubric system. Portfolio also contains reflective thoughts where students are invited to a self-reflection about their own strengths and weaknesses as learners.

Results: 

Analysis of student performance from three consecutive courses using portfolio has been compared with previous courses without portfolio. Exam marks and personal observations indicate that the method promotes a greater number of successfully students with higher exam scores. Finally, a larger number of students reported enjoying learning of Physiology.

Conclusions: 

Results suggest that the implementation of portfolio as a teaching tool has a positive effect on student learning outcome. Although the activity requires time and effort for students and teachers, in our opinion, the time and effort devoted to it is worthwhile.