AACU January 20, 2009 - ePortfolio Day

The Search for VALUE: Innovation, Economic Uncertainty, and ePortfolio Assessment
(This was a one day workshop preceding the Annual AACU meeting.)
Elizabeth Clark and Bret Eynon teamed up for the opening plenary.

Bret:
Other countries are ahead including India.
Showed Casey Green’s graph of ePort usage on the rise.
Five Types:

Career and Credential
Assessment
Course
Learning
Integrative

It’s a pedagogy, not a technology.

Over 9000 active ePortfolios at LaGuardia 2008-2009.
According to Bret, employers are ready for ePortfolios per surveys, focus groups, meetings w/ employers.

Elizabeth:
Keys to success
• Rigorous faculty development
o Course rerelease/stipend
• Pervasive elements of classroom pedagogy
• built-in general education
o disciplinary & curricula
• visible linkage between teaching and assessment
• tech support from IT staff and student mentors c
• college-wide leadership

But how do you know they are learning?

La Guardia’s ePortfolio is a “whole college” ePortfolio.
Meant to communicate evolution from course focused to capstone (major, personal, learning experiences)
Course >>> multi semester >>> capstone
Mentioned John Gardner and Greetchen Van Derin
ePortfolios: collection/reflection, then they added transition and closure

Faculty inquiry process
>what they teach
>re sequenced

What we ask them to do is who we ask them to be. Kathleen Blake Yancy

Gary Brown at Washington 2-3000 inquiry learning, presentation to faculty > students > professionals. Feeback/reflection/rubrics.

Dewey (Art & Experience)– The characteristic of artistic design is the intimacy of relations that hold the parts together.

Vertical integration at Queensborough College (Jean is here). Using in Freshman Composition. Students read and give ‘gifts’ quotes, paintings, youtube, cartoons … anything that relates, and they reflect on the relation between their gift and the reading. This reaches multiple intelligences, and then there is a presentation project using the ‘gifts’.

Susan Kahn - UIPUI
UIPUI undergrad research science has ePortfolio, also Engineering
English majors using Sakai and Open Portfolio – a course portfolio basically.
They developed PUL – Principals of Undergraduate Learning and have a PUL Matrix and Learning Matrix – they’ve adopted matrix thinking. Alverno Matrix on reflective thinking:
Provide questions/prompts for students to respond to (be explicit)
Teach students about reflection, using a rubric, set of criteria, or other guidance.
Give students opportunity to practice and peer review if possible.

Trudy Banta (UIPUI & studied ePortfolios forever)
Argument against assessment; canned tests only tested 20% of what the college prioritized. The connection to SAT and success was not high. Student motivation: pizza, cash, free whatever… will bring them in but won’t make them do the best work.
Challenges in using ePortfolios for assessment: reliability in rubrics, motivation, non-standardization.
900 people attended the UIPUI Assessment conference and 300 used ePortfolios. General skills required. We don’t believe standardized test improves student learning.

Wendy Morgaine – w/ AACU but used to be w/ Portland State
Polled audience – ½ new to ePort, ¼ uses eport, and ¾ here to find out how to use ePort for assessment.
VALUE Rubrics
LEAP – essential learning outcomes
Rubrics on AACU Website and they are free
OR there is a book you can buy: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics, includes calibration. She’s available for consulting, too.

Melissa Peet – University of Michigan
She's currently their academic director integrated learning and in the portfolio initiative at University Michigan
program should grow by attraction not promotion
they believe that fact that their faculty is learning to teach differently
more people are knocking on their door than they have room for
Generative Knowledge Project
Office of Development shows off "The Michigan Difference" by sharing ePortfolios
she was often told that real researchers do not show passion but she shows a lot of passion


After lunch. They had Carousels where they had 10 minute summaries by five people

Nate Angell - rSmart ---- look at OpenedPractices.org
It is not about the technology it's about the philosophy.
Five categories
books
ad hoc - web tools form best user experiences
filing cabinet to the sky -- describe
most vendor products
stand-alone specifically dedicated for one purpose
assessment - tests, bullet
Integrated w/ LMS - not the best user experience, not the best for assessment, just not the best
government supported such as in Pennsylvania and Minnesota

Show of hands: quite a few folks in the room wanted institution-supported portfolio
Where can the technology stick? Where is practice already happening:
students inward looking, and outward for the world am in.
instructor >>students
institution
Pick an area where things can happen.
Small: Analogy small garden you put in an area where it will grow
Parasite: gloms on to something larger like an LMS
Rhizome model: foster many portfolio projects capture and recycle back

Gail Ring from Clemson (gring@clemson.edu)
previously used blackboard
they connect work to core competence
Google docs not 100% student acceptence and not 100% faculty buy in.
early on it was up to the student to tell a story
students live in the cloud with Facebook and YouTube
take to the technology pretty easily
online tutorials
connect to competencies
Introduced as freshman and use it right away then revisited in the junior or senior year for capstone Experience

Bret Eynon - In general, you need to be asking: what will happen when the grant runs out?

Closing was by Randall Bass
he opened with pictures of America and articles of Confederacy.
He talked about Sir Ken Robinson quote "We have mind our minds for one commodity".
Coins the phrase post-course era
Did some studies and found "a Georgetown education is different than the Georgetown degree" as it's the experience outside the class that makes it.
Look up NSSE - National survey of student engagement
We are in a place where courses and a formal curriculum does not dominate learning experience.
Life is bigger now.
See his "All of the above" slide when available.
Goals: make courses better - class learing is not just in the class; start using outside experiences more; more support.
Now:
what can we do with ePortfolios despite courses and faculty.
Courses are dead, they just don't know it.
Participitory culture - Henry Jenkins, et al.
High Impact Practices >>>> align w/ extra curricular experiences.
Heidi Elmendorf: Georgetown: Air your bafflement.
Jose Feito - St Mary's - theme of not knowing - acknowledge lack of understanding.
The process of "coming to know"
Grant Wiggins "Understanding by Design"
Our knowledge of learning exceeds our knowledge of assessment.
New thoughts: Yahoo Pipes - links blogs together by certain entries.
Queensland - Tim Kastella talks about Business Survival: aggregate, filter, connect.
Post-course era: shift in how we add value.
Aggregate/Filter - was the course era.
Filter/Connect - is the post-course era (in the hands of students)