Technology-Enabled Teaching/eLearning Dialogue
ePortfolios Help Clayton State University Assess Student Learning and Program
By Martha Wicker,
Director of the Center for Instructional Development,
Clayton State University
Clayton State University's core mission is to provide superior career-oriented studies that will prepare its students to succeed in the world of work in the 21st century. A member of the Georgia University system with an enrollment of approximately 5,700, Clayton (www.clayton.edu) required its students to bring a laptop to campus as early as 1998. Now Clayton is introducing ePortfolios to campus, adding additional value to the students' use of their computers and providing a mechanism to document the outcomes of their education. Currently, we are using the portfolios in our department of Dental Hygiene and In the Department of Teacher Education."
http://www.campus-technology.com/news_article.asp?id=11801&typeid=156
"Jack Vinson provides a nice summary of what I had to say last week about personal knowledge management in his class on knowledge management. It's a notion that I am continuing to explore. Another cut at finding an answer to the question that I find intriguing in my newest column at Enterprise Systems Journal. I try to build an argument that it is in each of our selfish, best, interests to develop and adhere to a strategy for personal knowledge managemment. "
http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2005/05/26.html#a4627
Electronic portfolios (also referred to as eportfolios or webfolios) are gaining recognition as a valuable tool for learners, instructors, and academic organizations. Bold proclamations laud webfolios as “higher education’s new “got to have it” tool – the show-and-tell platform of the millennium” (Cohen and Hibbitts, 2004), and as a tool that “may have the most significant effect on education since the introduction of formal schooling” (Love, McKean, and Gathercoal, 2004). Laying aside new-technology hype and enthusiasm, eportfolios can best be viewed as a reactionary response to fundamental shifts in learning, teaching, technology, and learner needs in a climate where learning is no longer perceived as confined to formal education."
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/eportfolios.htm
People are capturing and storing an ever-increasing amount of digital information about or for themselves, including emails, documents, articles, portfolios of work, digital images, and audio and video recordings. Computer processing, storage, and software tools available to individuals are increasing in power, volume, and ease of use, year on year. Many issues arise from this more informal and increasingly empowered landscape of personal collection, dissemination, and digital memory, which will have major future impacts. This article provides a commentary on current research and emerging services in this area and discusses potential implications for individuals, libraries and their institutions."
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june05/beagrie/06beagrie.html
University of Minnesota is implementing ePortfolio in a major way. Other colleges and universities are in various stages, some starting with pilot projects. This article discusses how this new tool fit into the lives of students and faculty."
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=CSD3966
December 16, 2004
George Siemens
Introduction
Electronic portfolios (also referred to as eportfolios or webfolios) are gaining recognition as a valuable tool for learners, instructors, and academic organizations. Bold proclamations laud webfolios as “higher education’s new “got to have it” tool – the show-and-tell platform of the millennium” (Cohen and Hibbitts, 2004), and as a tool that “may have the most significant effect on education since the introduction of formal schooling” (Love, McKean, and Gathercoal, 2004). Laying aside new-technology hype and enthusiasm, eportfolios can best be viewed as a reactionary response to fundamental shifts in learning, teaching, technology, and learner needs in a climate where learning is no longer perceived as confined to formal education."
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/eportfolios.htm
The IMS ePortfolio public draft specification was created to make ePortfolios interoperable across different systems and institutions. The ePortfolio specification: - Supports the advancement of lifelong learning important to many government initiatives. - Makes exchanging portfolios from school to work transitions easier. - Allows educators and institutions to better track competencies. - Enhances the learning experience and improves employee development
http://www.imsglobal.org/ep/index.cfm
By Stephen Acker
Course management systems offer powerful support for teaching, but they truncate student learning at the end of every term. ePortfolios offer a longitudinal learning environment in which a student can organize and maintain learning connections, but they may lack the orchestrated vision of an experienced educator. These alternate structures for capturing, evaluating, and reflecting on student work should intersect on the student’s desktop to deliver a powerful multiplier effect to an institution’s eLearning environment.
Read more at:
http://www.campus-technology.com/news_article.asp?id=10041&typeid=155
eFolio Minnesota Achieve your education and career objectives with a personal electronic portfolio from eFolio Minnesota. Digitally document and share your education, employment history, activities, and goals with whomever you choose whenever you want. Electronic portfolios are similar to "hard copy" portfolios, except that they are much more versatile and are created in a virtual environment. No longer will you need to sort through boxes and files to find your best samples - they're all in your electronic portfolio. You can upload documents, pictures, computer graphics, audio, and video files into your electronic portfolio to give your audience an actual look at what you can do. It's easy to design portions of your site to meet the specific interests of your target audiences. Access your electronic portfolio at any time from anywhere to change or add content.
[From the same site] Following are links to resources on the use of electronic portfolios in general:
Dr. Helen Barrett's Electronic Portfolios contains her favorite sites on assessment Student Portfolios: Classroom Uses
The Urban Universities Portfolio Project: Assuring Quality for Multiple Publics AAHE's Electronic Portfolio Community of Practice
BMJ Learning: Welcome to BMJ Learning
The BMA has developed an online medical learners portfolio. See http://www.bmjlearning.com/planrecord/index.jsp You can create a free demo password to review the site. The BMA has also published a 38 page document called "Appraisal: a guide for medical practitioners" and it is free at
http://www.bmjlearning.com/planrecord/documents/appraisalGuide.pdf
UC Berkeley's iNews: Educational technology, student services EPortfolios: What's behind the hype? February 19, 2004
Electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) are creating quite a bit of hype within the higher education milieu. No question, they have become a growing trend PM
ong academic institutions, with a number of universities and colleges creating, implementing, and using them as tools for everything from institutionwide reflection and learning to assessment of student, faculty, and staff populations. And yet, the true excitement surrounding ePortfolios turns out to be not so much what they can do for administrators and faculty, but what they can do for students. In fact, some are saying that ePortfolios have the potential to transform higher education for students, by changing its most basic power dynamics.
ERADC: ePortfolio Research and Development Community This ePortofolio research and development community, ERADC, has been set up to provide a reference point for interested parties to contribute and learn about ePortfolio development and understanding. The
AUTHOR is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. ERADC blog
Using Online Education To Develop Graduate Portfolios
A summative portfolio is a document, either electronic or paper, that depicts attributes and corresponding competencies, artifacts, and statements of connectivity for the purposes of understanding and assessing an individual's worth for a given setting or climate. Guidelines for not only creating and managing these documents but also bringing them to closure and assessment are demonstrated using online techniques. Portfolios are classified mainly by function or purpose. The more common classifications are formative and summative portfolios. Formative portfolios are easily described as those reflecting an assessment mode for given circumstances. Consequently, they are not used to establish grades but to denote weaknesses and strengths for a particular course or situation. A formative portfolio's ultimate use is to improve or redirect rather than evaluate an individual. Summative portfolios depict an assessment mode executed ex post facto for individuals participating in given endeavors. Often related to a curriculum or degree program, they are used to denote attributes and proficiency levels for such individuals with the data being used to assign grades and/or validate certifications.
Personalizing Data with Digital Portfolios http://www.ascd.org/publications/class_lead/200303/niguidula_3.html The term "data collection" seems to turn off many good classroom teachers: The term suggests that all of the information about a student, a class, or a school can be reduced to a few key statistics. The process of collecting data doesn't seem to fit with the flow of teaching and learning. And the presentation of data in graphs and charts seems to slight an aspect of schooling that is key to learning: the personal relationships we have with students, parents, and colleagues. -from Classroom Leadership, March 2003 | Volume 6 | Number 6
Facilitating Student-Centric Learning: E-Portfolios and WebCT http://hub-images.webct.com/resources/marquis/april_04_facilitating.htm Using e-portfolios with WebCT allows students to create personalized, Web-based collections of coursework and other artifacts. Students have the flexibility to control which individuals or groups can access their e-portfolios and which materials within the portfolio they would like them to see. Additionally, faculty can evaluate students e-portfolios to ensure that course learning objectives have been met and to assess student performance on individual or group projects.
Electronic Portfolios are defined on this site "as a meaningful collection of work, experiences, and thoughts that has been created in an electronic format, and can published online." To that end, E-Teaching encourages the use of online publishing of student work using PowerPoint as well as other software to create a student "digital" online presence which then serves as a portfolio. The question is posed, "How can templates be effectively used to support student and teacher web site development?" Using templates simplifies implementing digital student portfolios. While this is a commercial site offering to assist schools in the creation of portfolios aligned with rubrics for a fee, there is an offer to send various sample templates if requested. Explanations as to why and how an online presence should be developed displaying student work make a compelling argument for developing student projects that are web based. The ideas presented are valuable and to not require product purchase in order to read why educators should implement many of the site's suggestions. http://www.atlantis-webportfolios.com/eteaching/
Facilitating Student-Centric Learning: E-Portfolios and WebCT http://hub-images.webct.com/resources/marquis/april_04_facilitating.htm Using e-portfolios with WebCT allows students to create personalized, Web-based collections of coursework and other artifacts. Students have the flexibility to control which individuals or groups can access their e-portfolios and which materials within the portfolio they would like them to see. Additionally, faculty can evaluate students e-portfolios to ensure that course learning objectives have been met and to assess student performance on individual or group projects.