BACKGROUND: Portfolios are effective instruments for assessment of teaching skills among professional teachers and have recently been adapted in medical education. However, scoring rubrics are needed to effectively guide assessors.

INTERVENTION: Portfolio assessors reviewed and made assessment comments about the resident-as-teacher sections of 11 internal medicine residents' electronic portfolios and discussed their assessments in an assessor group discussion. We performed qualitative analyses of written and oral comments. Major themes were identified, and member checking and triangulation with the literature was performed to evaluate the trustworthiness of the qualitative analysis.

RESULTS: Three faculty educators reviewed and commented on 241 uploaded e-portfolio documents accompanying reflections. Three major themes were identified: Application of Teaching Skills, Presentation Skills, and Insights as a Teacher. Themes and subthemes matched closely to several components of the conceptual framework of effective presentations formulated in Glassick standards for scholarly work, as well as themes found in assessments of professional teachers' portfolios.

CONCLUSIONS: Assessments of portfolios by experienced faculty educators appear to be useful for identifying many important facets of formal teaching presentations and may be useful for creation of a scoring rubric.