This is the summary of a presentation given at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, January 10-13, 1996, Orlando, Florida.

A Portfolio is a collection of student work. This collection is evidence that certain goals have been met and should reflect progress by the student throughout a course.

Portfolios have been recommended in [1] as assessment instruments for the undergraduate curriculum. The composition of portfolios at the high school level is discussed in detail in [2], where problem solving, communication, conceptual understanding, technical command and investigation are the emphasized standards.

An introductory Linear Algebra course is one that lends itself beautifully for the incorporation of portfolios and adaptation of the standards mentioned above. The variety of mathematical concepts that are related to each other, the diverse level of difficulty, the numerous applications, the numeric, geometric and symbolic aspect of linear algebra all yield a variety of entries for a portfolio that can provide evidence of students' progress according to the standards. It is of immense importance to encourage the use of technology.

The author wishes to share with interested colleagues a year-long experience with the use of portfolios in an introductory Linear Algebra course. In this talk, the author will describe the goals of the course and how they are met with entries in a portfolio, how the portfolios were graded, the instructor's personal experience and student reactions.

[1] Assessment of student learning for improving the undergraduate major in mathematics, FOCUS, Vol. 15, No. 3, June 1995.

[2] High school teacher portfolio handbook, Mathematics, New Standards 1994.

Luz Maria DeAlba, Drake University