|
Component Activities for Some
ePortfolios |
Other "Ingredients Also Needed for this Activity |
Functionality needed to Support this Activity |
|
Support operation of
learning communities
(e.g., by
assessment of projects, by supporting
collaborative assessment of student work by two
or more instructors or by peers in the
community). The term 'learning community' covers
many kinds of programs; in this table we focus
mainly on two or more courses that are taught in
a block schedule so that (mostly) the same
students are registered for each course and so
that some assignments can be used for all the
courses. |
Programs that help students learn by drawing on
two or more 'course's' worth of material and
people.
Faculty who care about such synergistic
collaboration and learning.
Interdisciplinary assignments that have value
from more than one perspective
Option:
assignments that take advantage of online
collaboration in developing or critiquing those
assignments
|
Ease in granting access to everyone in the
community
Option: ability to manage projects created
by two or more students
Option: Ability
to store and organize comments about an
ePortfolio from many members of the learning
community
Option: ability to use either
one reflection for all 'courses' or different
reflections for different 'courses.' |
|
Student deepens learning via
reflection
(e.g., reflection on how the work itself,
sometimes in combination with other artifacts,
provides evidence of capability; reflection on
development of a capability) |
Instructors who have learned to understand and
value reflection Assignments that gradually
develop student ability reflect, and to
appreciate reflection (probably assignments in a
set of courses that the student takes)
Marketing that attracts students who value
reflection and self-direction |
Features that make it easy for students to
relate reflections to artifacts, including the
ability to point to elements of an artifact from
inside the reflection Ability for students to
see reflections of others, and how those
ePortfolios were assessed (role models) |
|
Student integrates/synthesizes
experiential
(life) learning
with course learning (credit for prior learning
in some cases) |
Academic staff who value experiential learning
Academic structure that enables credit to be
assigned for prior learning (e.g.,
credit-bearing course in which student creates
the portfolio based on life experience and in
which faculty 'grade' it
|
Ability for student to include, and reflect on,
artifacts that may be stored on the site of an
employer, other university, etc. |
|
Student deepens learning by
taking more personal
responsibility
for self-assessment, guidance, learning |
The program needs to
offer sufficient freedom, options, and
orientation (in the student's view) to warrant
the student spending time in creating
personalized goals.
To be motivated to plan, student needs to
expect to remain
for some time in the program, and to expect that
program requirements won't change much |
If the intent is for students to align their
plans to program goals, then the ePortfolio
needs to display and explain those goals |
|
Student deepens learning by
setting, describing
personal goals.
These goals may be framed in a purely personal
way and/or in interaction with options offered
by the program. |
To be motivated to plan, student needs to expect
to remain for some time in the program, and to
expect that program requirements won't change
much |
If the intent is for students to frame their own
goals, then the ePortfolio ought to make it easy
for them to see ideas for goals, frame their
own, relate their artifacts to their own goals,
etc. |
|
Student develops a sense of
self-as-professional (professional
identity) |
The program needs to project and value a
professional identity (e.g., "Photographer,"
"engineer") which can be exemplified through
artifacts.
It helps if the student has an
audience of professionals and/or employers who
will pay attention to the student's work. |
It would help if the student's ePortfolio could
be exhibited online in a space where members of
the profession are likely to see and comment on
it.
Option: if the graduate is continue to
document his or her professional identity in
this way, the records must be exportable, in
case over the years that the original software
and vendor disappear. |
|
Guide, deepen learning, and
develop relationships, by having meaningful
assessors (outside experts, peers, other
faculty, and others whose opinions will matter)
to assess the student's achievement or
development. (authentic
assessors). One
potential side benefit (outcome) of this
activity is creation of lasting relationships
between students and professionals in the field
- see also "developing professional identity"). |
Academic staff need help to find, engage,
reward, orient, communicate with, and retain
authentic assessors
As with the activity
of 'developing professional identity' above,
this goal is not equally meaningful in all
disciplines. |
Access for people outside the course and
university to see and add assessments or other
comments to the student's ePortfolio. |
|
Academic staff
redefine program (degree) goals
and instruction in terms of competences that are
developed cumulatively
as students progress toward a degree (using the
ePortfolio to monitor and guide that
development) |
This activity depends on the ability of the
discipline/profession and of the academic staff
to agree on core abilities that (partially)
characterize what a graduate can do.
The
staff should also agree on how to measure
progress toward those goals (probably by
developing rubrics, linked to examples of great,
adequate and inadequate achievement at each
level). |
Display the learning outcomes, levels and
rubrics to the student
Help the student
map specific artifacts and reflections to
illustrate the level of achievement achieved to
that point.
This network of artifacts,
reflections and standards must be easy to export
and maintain, even if the original software and
vendor disappear.
Options: see earlier
activities such as 'students creating their own
goals' |
|
Academic use the ePortfolio to
see one another's assignments and rubrics,
thereby sharing
good practices
|
Academic staff want to learn more about their
students (by looking at prior work) in order to
teach better.
Academic staff are curious
about how their colleagues make assignments,
what rubrics or other means they use to grade
student work, etc. |
Ability for instructors to see the assignments a
student received that resulted in an artifact,
along with the rubric used to assess that
artifact.
Option: ability for instructors to use the
system to easily send a question or comment to
the instructor whose assignment or rubric
they're seeing. |
|
Academic staff agree on goals for
learning (shaping the architecture of the
ePortfolio) and then agree on the progress being
made by students toward those goals, thereby
developing a
shared, grounded ability to discuss learning in
their program. |
Discipline that makes it more likely that
faculty and external stakeholders can agree on
core skills that all graduates need to attain
(note: this does not imply that all the skills
that any graduate develops in the major must
also be developed by all majors, just that some
of these skills are widely shared).
Decision by faculty to improve the assessment of
student progress by having at least two faculty
participate in providing feedback to each
student periodically (e.g., two or more times
during the student's work in the program) |
Ability for the faculty assessing the student's
portfolio to communicate easily online about the
student's work (although they may also meet face
to face)
Option: the ability for the
faculty to 'point' easily to elements of the
portfolio in their email or other online
communications with one another. ("This
element of the portfolio [pointer or link] is a
good reason to judge that the student is making
good progress because...") |
|
"Larger Activities" of which ePortfolios
are sometimes a component |
Other "Ingredients Also Needed for this Activity |
Functionality needed to Support the
ePortfolio Component of this Activity |
|
Support process of
applying for a job,
promotion, or further schooling
by exhibiting work, reflections and external
assessment of the person's achievements or
development. |
Desire by individual students to use ePortfolios
for this purpose
Readiness by employers
and universities to make use of such ePortfolios.
For example, do they use computers during
screening? Does it matter whether an interviewer
has easy access to a computer while interviewing
the student?
Option: desire by the
program to foster this use of ePortfolios |
Ability for the student to pick elements from
the larger portfolio and arrange them so that
they are easy for employers and schools to a)
screen quickly, b) study relatively quickly if
the student is a finalist for a position. |
|
Support operation of
learning communities
(e.g., by
assessment of projects, by supporting
collaborative assessment of student work by two
or more instructors or by peers in the
community). The term 'learning community' covers
many kinds of programs; in this table we focus
mainly on two or more courses that are taught in
a block schedule so that (mostly) the same
students are registered for each course and so
that some assignments can be used for all the
courses. |
Programs that help students learn by drawing on
two or more 'course's' worth of material and
people.
Faculty who care about such synergistic
collaboration and learning.
Interdisciplinary assignments that have value
from more than one perspective
Option:
assignments that take advantage of online
collaboration in developing or critiquing those
assignments
|
Ease in granting access to everyone in the
community
Option: ability to manage projects created
by two or more students
Option: Ability
to store and organize comments about an
ePortfolio from many members of the learning
community
Option: ability to use either
one reflection for all 'courses' or different
reflections for different 'courses.' |
|
Guide
program evaluation (formative)
by identifying
areas where learning is a strength and areas
where there are opportunities for improvement |
Program has a shared notion of how such evidence
can be useful for analyzing their own work and
fostering performance. (Some people may
oppose this idea on principle. Some might
support it only if they see agreement on core
skills that need to be developed. Some might
support even if they expect each student to be
setting and personal goals and documenting
personal progress; their 'program review'
criterion might be to understand whether
students are doing well at setting and achieving
individual goals. |
Easy shared access to ePortfolios for all
faculty.
Option: if the aim is to analyze student
progress on core skills, then the system needs
to be able to easily display progress toward a
given learning outcome across students (e.g.,
what percentage of our students have thus far
reached the intermediate stage of development of
this skill, and when did they each attain it?
show me the artifacts and reflections we've
accepted as documenting that level of
achievement." |
|
Guide program evaluation
(summative) by providing evidence of goals and
performance to external agencies. |
External agency needs have the
skills and desire to accept this kind of
evidence. |
Option: if the aim is to analyze
student progress on core skills, then the system
needs to be able to easily display progress
toward a given learning outcome across students
(e.g., what percentage of our students have thus
far reached the intermediate stage of
development of this skill, and when did they
each attain it? show me the artifacts and
reflections we've accepted as documenting that
level of achievement." |
|
Support
capstone courses
(i.e., student creates portfolio
to reflect on prior work and/or to exhibit work
done in the capstone course) |
The capstone course may get more advantage from
the activity of assessing a project illustrating
what the student has learned from the degree
program if the assessment is done by more than a
single faculty member (several faculty; faculty
plus authentic assessor). |
Option: ability to manage the grading process
for a project when two or more people are
participating (e.g., time stamped comments;
voting procedure; option for student response;
option for recording the final consensual
judgment) |
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