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Student Growth to Portfolio Network

Run the Student Growth to Portfolio Network MicroSim fullscreen

About This MicroSim

One pipeline, five stages, and the data changes shape at every one.

It starts as a mentor's note -- unstructured, specific to one session, written by a person who was there. It becomes growth metrics by being aggregated across sessions, which is where individual moments turn into a trend. It becomes mastery tracking by being classified into emerging, practising, or mastered for each named skill. It becomes a portfolio when actual saved work is attached as evidence -- the photograph, the code, the project file. And it becomes a parent portal by being scoped to one family and made read-only.

Two things are worth noticing about the shape.

Each arrow does real work. Nothing is simply copied forward; each step transforms. Ask of any stage "what was added here?" and there is an answer.

And the last node is a leaf. The portal shows; it does not feed anything back into the pipeline. A family cannot edit a mastery level from it, which is deliberate and worth stating to parents when the portal is introduced.

How to Use

  • Click any stage to see what flows in and where it goes next.
  • Follow the arrows left to right along the top row, then down and back to the left along the bottom.
  • Reset restores the layout.

Lesson Plan

Bloom level: Understand (L2) -- explain

Learning objective: Given a node in the growth-to-portfolio network, the learner explains what data flows into it and where that data goes next.

Before the sim (5 min). Ask what a parent currently sees of their child's progress. In most clubs the honest answer is "whatever a mentor says at pickup".

With the sim (10 min). Walk the chain and, at each arrow, ask what was added. Aggregation, classification, evidence, and scoping -- four different operations.

After the sim (15 min). Take one real observation from last session and carry it by hand through all five stages, writing down what it looks like at each.

Check for understanding. Ask: "A parent disagrees with a mastery level. Can they change it in the portal?" No -- it is read-only, and the change would have to happen upstream at mastery tracking. Being able to locate the right stage is the explanation this objective wants.

Embedding This MicroSim

Paste this into any page of the book, adjusting the relative path to docs/sims/ for the page's depth:

<iframe src="../../sims/student-growth-portfolio-network/main.html" width="100%" height="622" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Specification

The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 25: Analyzing Club Data and Choosing the Right Tools.

Type: graph-model
**sim-id:** student-growth-portfolio-network<br/>
**Library:** vis-network<br/>
**Status:** Specified
**Template:** https://github.com/dmccreary/theory-of-knowledge/tree/main/docs/sims/capstone-portfolio-web

Purpose: Show how raw session observations flow through growth metrics and mastery tracking into a portfolio, and finally into a scoped, view-only parent portal, so a mentor can see where each concept sits in the pipeline.

Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain

Learning objective: Given a node in the growth-to-portfolio network, the learner explains what data flows into it and where that data goes next.

Node types:
1. Session Observations (small gray circle) -- a mentor's in-session notes on what a student attempted
2. Student Growth Metrics (blue circle) -- aggregated measurements of a student's progress over time
3. Skill Mastery Tracking (green circle) -- the emerging/practicing/mastered level for each specific skill
4. Digital Portfolio System (amber circle) -- the actual saved work evidencing that mastery
5. Parent Access Portal (purple circle, leaf node) -- the single family's scoped, view-only window into the above

Edges:
1. Session Observations → Student Growth Metrics: "aggregated into"
2. Student Growth Metrics → Skill Mastery Tracking: "classified by skill level"
3. Skill Mastery Tracking → Digital Portfolio System: "evidenced by uploaded work"
4. Digital Portfolio System → Parent Access Portal: "exposed read-only to one family"

Layout: Left-to-right hierarchical, following the data-flow order above

Interactive features:
- Hover any node to show its one-line definition
- Click any node to highlight its direct neighbors and open a side-panel infobox with its full description
- Click any edge to reveal what the edge label means in this pipeline
- Zoom with the mouse wheel, pan by dragging the background

Visual styling: Node size uniform; edge arrows show direction of data flow, left to right

Legend: Node color meanings and an arrow explaining "data flows in this direction"

Implementation: vis-network JavaScript library, hierarchical layout, canvas size 800x450px.

References