Guiding Questions for ePortfolio Development

Guiding Questions for ePortfolio Development
These are the kind of questions that we ask faculty/programs interested in using ePortfolios:

• Describe your student ePortfolio Project [Will ePortfolios be used at the Course, Program, Dept., Campus levels? Will the ePortfolios need to be shared with other institutions? FALL, 2006 or SPRING, 2007 roll-out? Focus on one project.] How are you defining ePortfolios?]

• What are your core goals in using ePortfolios? [Formative/summative assessment, capstone/culminating, professional development, demonstrating examples of work linked to institutional goals. Will multiple faculty need to view a student site, or comment directly on ePortfolios?

• What knowledge, skills, values/reflections will you want students to share in their portfolios?

• What types of media/artifacts/evidence do you want students to use/archive to demonstrate competencies in these areas? [Signature assignments/Documents, ppt., multimedia (audio/ video), websites/links]

• What resources will you need to support student’s creating/uploading various media?

• What standards/processes for evaluation of ePortfolios will you use? (Peer review, rubrics, signature assignments, instructor comment boxes etc.)

Please share any other approaches you may have with us!

View from the Hill--Carnegie's KEEP Toolkit as ePortfolio

The view from the top of the hill is magnificent as we drive up next to the 18th fairway on the Stanford Golf course to the Carnegie Foundation. Our consortium of community colleges and CSU's in N. California has been meeting once a month all year (Fall 2006-07) to scheme on ePortfolio solutions. We've been working all year on cracking open the puzzle of migratory students, who move between 2 year campuses as well as the 2 Yr. to 4 Yr. transfer issues using ePortfolios as as way to document and track students.
Yesterday and today, we are exploring the use of the KEEP toolkit for student portfolios. developed at the Knowledge Media Lab at Carnegie, KEEP was designed for instructors to be able to make quick "snaphot" websites of their best practices.
But on several of our campuses, we have been using the KEEP tool to create student sites.
For example, at SFSU, our English Education students are documenting their work:
http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=16037422061001&id=70274436911824
The URL's for these portfolios have been unfriendly--today we learned that there is a new version of the toolkit that will shorten URL's and add a tagging function to make it easier to find one's work.
Our 2 days of work together (CSM, SFCC, De Anza, Skyline, SFSU, East Bay, Stanford) was fruitful. We deepened our discussions around use of ePortfolios in advising, transfer and at the course, program and institutional levels. Small group work yielded insights and anchored some pilots for the coming year within and between our campuses.
At Carnegie, we heard about their new "Teaching Commons" archive--an extension of a search able Gallery of snapshots, and a renegade "build-out" of KEEP by some grad students at Claremont College "KEEP Social Learning Suite 1.0".
Lots of potential & we will be creating a KEEP site for our DTLC (Digital Teaching & Learning Consortium) activities.

EPortfolios in Higher Ed--Blogging The Quest!

Have wanted to begin documenting my adventures in ePortfolio land for a while, so this is the first plunge into these blogwaters. Starting this blog in Santa Monica at the Google teachers academy,to learn more about tools like Sketch up, google earth, and docs/spreadsheets and the ways that teachers are using the tools to support classroom activities.

The call to adventure (heroine's journey!) began almost 4 years ago, when I walked one summer into the chair of the Health Education Department's office one summer. Next to Mary Beth Love's desk was a pile of paper-based culminating portfolios from the class of 2004. Portfolios were required of all Master of Public Health students in the program, and it fell on her to grade them at the end of a 3 year program.
Opening one, I was struck by the reflective writing, evidence of community-based work, and how unique each portfolio was--scrapbooks of their time in the program.

"We could do these electronically," I naively suggested. Little did I know that a simple comment would inititate a journey into ever widening circles of vendors/solutions and opensource debates, conferences, research, and a new position within the university.
We did launch the MPH eFolio pilot, with our first eFolios completed by the class of 2005. I will hope to tell some of the unique, individual stories of how having an ePortfolio changed student's lives in this blog.
To learn more about that project: http://www.sfsu.edu/~hed/masters/portfolio.htm

New jargon, new academic technology friends, new pilots each semester within a wide range of disciplines. We made this site this year to assist with the effort: http://eportfolio.sfsu.edu

So while I begin today, hoping and imagining a web-based/Google eportfolio tool, or the big dream of giving each student upon admission a "toolkit" with email, LMS access and an ePortfolio, we are not quite there.
But it's time to keep track of what has happened on our cmapus, and this blog is the tale of my journey--or in the re-telling the best that I can muster at this point!

In the beginning...

there was the portfolio process...

My background is in the performing arts, so the concept of product/performance based review and assessment comes naturally...at Cal Arts, portfolios were required for admission, and both formative and summative review. We were asked to write a reflective statement for each course, which was met by instructor review of your work--this provided a kind of reflective dialogue between students and faculty.

While this may not be possible or desirable in all disciplines, the concept of reflecting on your work and projecting how the product, performance, or evidence might be of use in your professional development is central to my definition of a portfolio.

So when we required all of the students in the Master of Public Health Program to create "eFolios", I figured I'd better set one up for myself as well: http://ruthcox.sfsu.myefolio.com
Luckily, the Minnesota-created software (Avenet & MNSCU) made it easy and fun!

Master of Public Health ePortfolios:2004-2007

The MPH program at SF State is an innovative program with unique features:

• Educational partnerships with Bay Area Departments of Public Health and community-based organizations to strengthen the link between theory and practice through hands-on experience.
• Students move through the program together for three years in a “learning community.”
• Supervised practice with a team of community-based, experienced public health professionals.
• Participatory learning that is focused on complex contemporary problems in diverse communities.
• Evening classes to accommodate working professionals.
• An ecological approach, emphasizing the importance of addressing multi-level determinants of health to achieve health equity.
• Student electronic portfolio development.
• Emphasis on written and oral communication skills development.
• Reflective Seminars to strengthen students’ skills in collaborative leadership.
• Faculty committed to social justice and active in advocacy and public policy work.

Students are introduced to their eFolios in Year 1 and use them throughout their time in the program for formative (advisor meetings) and summative review. Here are a few examples of completed MPH eFolios:
http:pedroarista.efolioworld.com
http://catherinemagee.efolioworld.com
http://rachelpoulain.efolioworld.com