How to Create and Manage Portfolio Tasks

Portfolio Tasks are structured prompts designed to guide students and inspire their best work within specific portfolios. By providing clear instructions and requirements, you can help students overcome the "blank page" effect and ensure they are creating meaningful, purposeful entries.

What are Portfolio Tasks?

• When students enter a portfolio, knowing where to begin can feel intimidating. Portfolio Tasks solve this by allowing administrators to provide custom tasks and prompts that guide students.
• If you are familiar with Class Activities, Portfolio Tasks function very similarly. They allow you to define clear instructions, attach relevant media, and set specific requirements (such as the number of posts needed to complete the task).
• However, rather than being tied to a specific class, these tasks are completed directly within a student's portfolio. They can be put to a wide range of uses, from supporting district-wide initiatives and competency-based education to Individual Pathways Plans and career-life planning.
• Tasks are an optional feature for districts licensing SpacesEDU Portfolios and myBlueprint+. If you'd like to create tasks as a district administrator, but you're not seeing the option, please reach out to our team with the messaging option in your account, or by emailing hello@spacesedu.com.

How to Create a New Portfolio Task

Tasks are created directly inside individual Portfolio Templates.

1. Navigate to the Portfolio Templates section from the left-hand navigation menu
2. Click + Add Template, or click the menu button (three dots) for an existing portfolio, then Edit Portfolio Template
3. Scroll down to the Portfolio Tasks section, located below your Sections setup.
4. Click + Add Task.

5. Define your task requirements:

• Task Name (Required): A short title for the task, up to 100 characters.
• Instructions (Optional): Rich text directions guiding the student on what to do, up to 5,000 characters.
• Grade(s) (Optional): You can tie a task to specific grades (e.g., Grade 9 only). If grades are selected, only students currently in those grades will see the task on their list of active tasks to complete.
• Section(s) (Optional): You can require that the post fulfilling the task be created in a specific portfolio section. If defined, the system will automatically pre-select this section for the student when they start the task.
• Required # of Posts to Complete (Required): Specify how many posts the student must create to fully complete the task (the default is 1).
• Media (Optional): Attach up to 10 files or links to support students in completing the task.

6. Click the blue checkmark to save the task
7. Repeat steps 1-6 for any other tasks you'd like to create, then Publish your template.

Accessing the Portfolio Tasks Report

Once you've created some Portfolio Tasks, you can access a report for each portfolio to monitor student completion.

1. Open the Portfolio Templates page
2. Click the checkbox button on the right-hand side of the page
3. From here, you can access a number of different options:

• You can adjust the benchmark at the top of the screen (from the default of 50%), to see how many students have completed that percentage or more of their portfolio tasks for the year.
• You can click Download Report to save an Excel file with a list of students and their completion of each task.
• You can click on a grade to view a detailed report of student completion for their tasks.
• Within the grade-specific report view, you can click on any column to directly view the post(s) that students have added for their tasks.

The Student Experience

We have designed the student experience of Portfolio Tasks to be intuitive and highly visible, ensuring students always know what is expected of them.

• Portfolio Dashboard: Students will see a new banner highlighting portfolio tasks, and their portfolio cards will display a quick progress indicator (e.g., Start Tasks, 1/3 Tasks, or Tasks Completed).
• Tasks Tab: When students open a portfolio with tasks, they will see a dedicated Tasks tab listing their "To Do" and "Completed" items alongside their regular feed.
• Task Instructions: Clicking on a specific task card opens an instruction panel—much like an Activity—displaying the directions and any media resources.
• Creating the Post: By clicking Start Task from the instructions, the Create Post screen opens with the relevant task and portfolio section automatically pre-selected, minimizing friction.
• Manual Selection: Alternatively, students can click to create a regular post and select the task from the Portfolio Task dropdown menu on the right side of their screen.

Updated on: 06/05/2026