Supporting Personalized Learning Through Digital Portfolios
Organization Profile
On Track Academy, an alternative high school within Spokane Public Schools in Washington State, serves around 600 students through a unique continuous enrollment model, meaning they welcome new students throughout the entire school year. Operating within one of the largest districts in Washington State—comprised of 57 schools, serving 29,000 students, and employing 6,000 staff members across a diverse community speaking over 70 languages—On Track Academy offers a distinctive approach to education. “The consistency at our school is around students choosing to be here and choosing to access education differently. That’s really unique to our school,” explains Chris Burke, the Principal at On Track Academy.
On Track Academy stands out for its commitment to student choice and flexibility. Students move between multiple programs as their goals, life circumstances, and skills change. The school welcomes new students monthly and offers classes such as glassworking and robotics, which students actively choose to participate in. Unlike traditional schools, “On Track is not anyone’s neighborhood school. Students are not placed here” shares Chris Burke. This choice-driven culture heavily shapes their learning and documentation practices.
Challenge
The need for consistent documentation of learning over time
Before SpacesEDU, On Track Academy faced several documentation challenges. “Early on, when we were smaller, we had student portfolios in physical binders on classroom shelves” says Chris Burke.
Some students filled their binders with their work and documentation of learning, but the physical format limited their options. Teachers tried various solutions, including digital badges and stickers, which engaged students and tracked progress but fell short of a comprehensive solution. While these methods successfully captured individual achievements, they didn’t provide a consistent way to showcase student growth or allow students to effectively demonstrate their learning journey to post-secondary institutions, employers, families, and other stakeholders.
The school’s design philosophy of teacher autonomy, while valuable, led to multiple parallel systems for documentation. As Matthew Green, Assistant Principal, explains, “By design, our teachers have a large degree of autonomy and because that’s been such an important design component for us they ended up creating many parallel systems.” One of the challenges became finding a solution that could maintain this autonomy while providing a unified platform for documentation. “We’ve never had a fully electronic portfolio or documentation system everybody could use in the same way that was interchangeable between branches” shares Chris Burke.
Solution
Fostering reflective growth with student-driven digital portfolios
Chief of Student Success at Spokane Public Schools, Scott Kerwien, initiated the journey to SpacesEDU once he recognized how the platform could serve as a unified digital portfolio solution that aligned with On Track Academy’s documentation needs. After Scott brought it to the team, a small group of teachers began testing the platform. “We have a lot of opinions about software, and we were skeptical. We knew if kids could easily use it it would solve a lot of problems” says Matthew Green.
A small group of teachers came together to pilot the tool. After months of use and multiple check-ins, the team decided that the tool was exactly what they were looking for. The full school implementation went smoothly as the pilot group and SpacesEDU’s Customer Success Team trained the rest of the staff.
“SpacesEDU’s Portfolio tool checked all of the boxes for us in a really smooth, easy, and clean way so that we didn’t have to make a ton of accommodations.” - Chris Burke
Students now document their learning through multiple methods, from quick phone uploads, using the app, to sharing their evidence of learning in multimedia formats. Among the platform’s most valuable features is its accessibility beyond graduation. “The portfolio lives on after graduation, and students can input their work in whatever format it’s already in,” explains Matthew Green.
Teachers embrace SpacesEDU’s flexibility and ease of use. Chris emphasizes that “the barrier to entry is low. Students can share things with multiple adults in their circle. It’s simple for them to collect and reflect–that’s the biggest thing. It’s clean and easy.”
Result & Next Steps
Empowering student iteration in and out of the classroom
SpacesEDU demonstrated its impact last year during On Track Academy’s spring showcase, where one student pilot user displayed his portfolio. “He was so proud to show multiple pieces of work digitally alongside his physical samples” shares Chris Burke.
“He could document his process, showing the step-by-step progress on screen while displaying the final product.” - Chris Burke
The platform strengthens the school’s emphasis on iteration and growth. “Student iteration is important to us. We’re not going to get it right the first, second, third, or even fourth time, but we’re going to learn something from each iteration and continue to improve” emphasizes Matthew Green. This focus on process over product reshapes how students view their learning journey.
On Track Academy now plans to expand SpacesEDU beyond its classroom walls. After some reflection, Chris Burke shares that “the next step I’d love to see more students develop is using the tool outside of the school and in the community. Whether that’s at their job, internship, the place where they volunteer, or at home.”
SpacesEDU empowers On Track Academy’s student-centered approach to education.
We like to say student-centered education and that students need autonomy and agency. Those are fun things to say and hard things to do. And SpacesEDU is a tool that really makes that possible. Regardless of your model, if you’re truly serious about kids and their work and their reflection on their work being a center of focus, I haven’t seen a better tool.” - Matthew Green
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Assessment and Reporting, Digital Portfolios, Personalized Learning