SF State is gearing up for the AACU conference to be held in our home city in January. We are offering two presentations that relate to our ePortfolio adventure. 

Friday, January 28, 10:30-11:45 am
E-Portfolios for Global Learning: Connecting High Impact Practices, General Education and Authentic Assessment within the Metro Academies Program
Enabling students to be successful citizens and create sustainable change in an increasingly global society rests on relevant curriculum, integrated instruction and a meaningful interaction with technology. This session is designed for administrators and faculty to develop a deeper understanding of how ePortfolios can be used in their institutions as well as the Metro Academies (partnerships of 2-year and 4-year institutions) model of utilizing high-impact practices to engage and challenge their students.

Kevin Kelly, Director of Online Teaching and Learning, Ruth Cox, ePortfolio Faculty Liaison, Academic Technology, Savita Malik, Curriculum Director, Metro Academies, and Mary Beth Love, Department Chair, Professor, Department of Health Education – all of San Francisco State University
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Saturday, Jan 29 2:00–3:30 pm Concurrent Sessions

Best Practices
Growing an ePorticulture: Steps to Planting and Sustaining Deeper Learning and Assessment with ePortfolios
This interactive workshop will share practical strategies for starting, sustaining, and harvesting evidence of student learning through an ePortfolio program. Drawing on six years of experience working “from the ground up” at San Francisco State University, we will share examples and resources from our ePortfolio projects. Themes with supporting case stories will include: Successful "planting" tips with getting-started steps and examples of discipline specific portfolios; maintaining and growing, with examples of "mapping" and "tagging" student work to learning outcomes at course, program, and institutional levels; harvesting student work through Capstone courses and strategies for the use of portfolios in program reviews.

Ruth Cox, ePortfolio Departmental / Faculty Liaison, Lecturer in Health Education, Kevin Kelly, Manager, Online Teaching & Learning / Media Distribution & Support, Tanya Augsburg, Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, Angie Portacio, Academic Technology Consultant, Maggie Beers, Director, Academic Technology – all of San Francisco State University

AAC & U Annual Meeting Features ePortfolio Innovation

• Just back from Washington, DC where the AAC & U annual conference offered a day-long symposium: The Search for VALUE: Innovation, Economic Uncertainty and ePortfolio Assessment.

We were heartened to participate and see how much new interest there is in the use of ePortfolios across the country.

In our work on the VALUE (Valid Assessment in Undergraduate Education) project, we've worked to create a set of rubrics that will be useful in evaluating portfolios and the work within them. Led by Terrel Phodes and Wende Morgaine, the VALUE project (and 15 rubric/scoring guides) I believe will prove to be a powerful driver in the continued development of using ePortfolios for curricular, co-curricular, and institution-wide outcomes.

Two VALUE publications worth checking out are:

• Assessing Outcomes & Improving Achievement: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics
• Electronic Portfolios and Student Success: Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Learning

Mapping

This diagram (created by Kevin Kelly at SF State, click to enlarge) shows how ePortfolios can be used to map individual student work to the overarching campus goals. Campuses can build on the process from the top down during program review cycles by helping departments align their program objectives with university strategic plan goals and/or graduation requirements. These graduation requirements often include General Education (GE) content objectives, campus student learning outcomes (SLOs), or both. At the same time, campuses can promote the use of ePortfolios to assess students' achievement of program objectives. Academic technology units and faculty development centers can work with departments and instructors from the bottom up to map course objectives to program objectives. Next, staff and faculty-in-residence can work with individual instructors to identify student projects that would generate appropriate artifacts to demonstrate student competencies. When these two approaches meet in the middle, it is then possible to show the connections between student work and institutional goals.

We will be sharing more ideas about how to use ePortfolios at the course, dept.,and campus levels...

The DEBATE

At SF State, we are approaching assessment with a multiple strategies.
Recently, there has been a lot of discussion re: an article: The Limitations of Portfolios (10/16/09)
October 16, 2009
Inside Higher Ed

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/10/16/shavelson

Richard Shavelson, Stephen Klein and Roger Benjamin write that "Electronic collections help show the range of students' work, but are not standardized or scalable enough to be used for broad assessment purposes."

The reactions to the article are really worth reading as are AAC&U President's Carol Schneider's response here: http://blog.aacu.org/index.php/2009/10/19/the-proof-is-in-the-portfolio/

Our response? Assessment need not be an "either/or" between testing or portfolios. We are addressing the "scalability" issue through the use of "tagging", wherein students can tag artifacts that map to course, dept., institutional and national learning outcome/goals. We no longer feel that there need be a dicotomy between ePortfolio and Assessment systems, as tagging can address both needs.

ePortfolio Conference, August, 09, CSU/Merlot

ePortfolio Day of Planning August 13, 2009 ~~ San Jose, California

A great post-conference website has been set up as a source of information and support:
Videos of presentations are available and cover these topics:
Day of Planning Home
Orientation
Mapping
Creating an ePortfolio Culture

ePortfolio Overview Video

Here is a great overview PPT movie about ePortfolios made by a student at BCIT.
I especially like the emphasis on developing a positive online "reputation". With employers now checking social media before hiring candidates, having an ePortfolio will be an important distiction for students.

We've continued to build out our ePortfolio clearinghouse website at SF State--
http://eportfolio.sfsu.edu
Our Gallery includes new examples of student sites, department archives and information on the 2 "build options" or approaches we are supporting on our campus.

This year we are focusing on assisting faculty and students with reflective writing as a core element in the creation of a meaningful portfolio. A recent essay in Wired by Clive Thompson on the "New Literacy" underscores our understanding of the relevance of student writing tied directly to projects/artifacts/evidence.

ePortfolios are a direct way to educate students on the larger discipline specific competencies that they are required to demonstrate.
Reflective writing with links from coursework to goals for a student's major empower students to publicly demonstrate their growing expertise.
Here is an undergraduate example from a Child and Adolescent Development student: http://elinagonzalez.sfsucad.efolioworld.com/
and an example of a Master in Public Health student among many others in the Gallery: http://ingridochoa.sfsu.efolioworld.com/

Thompson writes: "We think of writing as either good or bad. What today's young people know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all."
We couldn't agree more!