Creativity Workshop
Registration is now open for the upcoming creativity workshop hosted by the Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG). If you are interested in using technology for your portfolio, then this will be a great resource!
ETUG Spring 2008 Workshop
CREATIVITY
Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design
Granville Island, Vancouver, BC
May 28 to 30, 2008
For more information, visit the BC Campus website.
New Article
In the latest issue of Educause Quarterly there is an article on e-folios that may be of interest to you titled “Implementing Electronic Portfolios: Benefits, Challenges, and Suggestions” by Barbara Meyer and Nancy Latham.
Meyer and Latham describe the lessons learned during the initial implementation of e-portfolios at four teacher education programs in the United States.
eportfolio conference!
La Guardia Community College is hosting a national conference, “Making Connections: eportfolios, intergrative learning and assessment” on April 10-12, 2008.
From the conference website:
LaGuardia has emerged an ePortfolio leader, with a large and successful ePortfolio initiative that helps students to engage more deeply with their learning. While many colleges are piloting ePortfolio, LaGuardia has achieved broad implementation. Working with thousands of poor, immigrant, and minority students, LaGuardia’s data shows improved learning outcomes, from writing and critical thinking to pass rates and retention.
The Making Connections conference will provide opportunities to hear from the students and faculty who are pioneering this new educational media. Addressing issues of teaching, learning, and assessment, as well as ways to link ePortfolio to the new possibilities of Web 2.0, the conference will combine voices of the LaGuardia experience with presentations from international leaders in the field, such as Helen Barrett and Trent Batson. Presentations will spotlight ePortfolio projects from schools ranging from Portland State University, the University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech to the University of Westminster in London and Kapi’olani Community College in Honolulu.
ePortfolio vs. Dossier
What is the difference between an electronic teaching portfolio and a teaching dossier? Other than the obvious fact that an eportfolio is electronic, there are other features that set them apart. The ruling distinction is that the eportfolio allows for more creativity and self-expression because it has not (yet?) become as regulated as the dossier. Traditionally, teaching dossiers are standardized documents that are used “to document capabilities of employees and students in order to streamline institutional business processes” (Interface 2006 ePortfolios). But this is not necessarily the purpose of eportfolios. On the contrary, “portfolios are a process of creative expression” (D’Arcy Norman).
The eportfolio gives us the opportunity to create dynamic and often interactive platforms for presenting our work and reflecting on our learning experiences. We can also include additional resources such as pdf files, images, sound clips, video clips, and hyperlinks, that help to link the content of the portfolio to a concrete context by capturing the learning process in a variety of ways.
Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to the eportfolio is that it is not recognized by all institutions in the process of applying for tenure and promotion, and this is why most instructors should think about having both. Still, the eportfolio is a valuable tool for maintaining an on-going reflective journal on your experiences in teaching and learning.
Upcoming E-Portfolio Conference
LaGuardia Community College, an internationally recognized leader in the fast-growing field of Electronic Student Portfolios, is pleased to announce a national conference, “Making Connections: ePortfolio, Integrative Learning, and Assessment,” to be held April 11-12, 2008, at LaGuardia’s bustling New York City campus. Making Connections will draw leaders in the field from across the country and provide a unique opportunity to hear directly from LaGuardia students and faculty. The Making Connections conference provides a unique opportunity to examine the transformative promise and practice of ePortfolio in higher education.
Electronic Student Portfolios are gaining wide popularity in as a way to document, assess and enhance learning and teaching. Hundreds of universities around the world have begun using ePortfolio to help students reflect and create digital portraits of their evolving identities as learners. And as the political debate over assessment heats up, educators have found new ways to use ePortfolio to analyze the impact of the learning/teaching process.
LaGuardia has emerged an ePortfolio leader, with a large and successful ePortfolio initiative that helps students to engage more deeply with their learning. While many colleges are piloting ePortfolio, LaGuardia has achieved broad implementation. Working with thousands of poor, immigrant, and minority students, LaGuardia’s data shows improved learning outcomes, from writing and critical thinking to pass rates and retention.
At the Making Connections conference, you’ll meet faculty and students who do groundbreaking work with this new educational tool. Addressing issues of teaching, learning, and assessment, as well as ways to link ePortfolio to the new possibilities of Web 2.0, the conference will combine voices of the LaGuardia experience with presentations from international leaders in the field, such as Helen Barrett and Trent Batson. Presentations will spotlight ePortfolio projects from schools ranging from Portland State University, the University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech to the University of Westminster in London and Kapi’olani Community College in Honolulu.
For more information, see http://www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/conference . Or contact Susan Lambert, slambert@lagcc.cuny.edu or 718-482-5404.
Don’t Miss the January Online Webcast!
The EPAC Community of Practice ( Electronic Portfolio Action &
Communication International) is hosting an online webcast on eportfolios this Monday, January 28th at 1 p.m. PT/4 p.m. ET/9 p.m. GMT.
Darren Cambridge will be presenting a version of his plenary address from ePortfolio 2007 on “Layering Networked and Symphonic Selves with Electronic Portfolios: A Critical Role for ePortfolios in Employability through Integrative Learning.”
A brief description:
The role of ePortfolio in promoting employability must be situated in a larger critical discussion about the relationship between citizens, employers and the state. While also helping individuals develop their employability, ePortfolios ought to contribute to creating agency, satisfaction, and meaning in their lives as a whole.
A copy of the accompanying paper can be downloaded from here.
Instructions on how to join are available on the EPAC wiki at http://epac.pbwiki.com/
Personal Learning Environments
Have you noticed a growing reference to eportfolios as “personal learning environments” or PLEs? Jeremy Hiebert ponders how they might be different from eportfolios and asks if and why a shift occured on his HeadSpace blog:
“Did vendors and institutions kill the initial promise of e-portfolios by trying to turn the concept into a single tool (product) used to measure student achievement?”
In trying to distinguish the different kinds of tools used in a PLE over the traditional eportfolio, Hiebert draws a concept map to represent how someone might use a PLE as an eportfolio.
Visit his blog to see his new eportfolio model and to learn more about his project.
What is a Philosophy of Teaching Statement?
Philosophy of teaching statements are concise statements of what you believe about teaching and learning. Your teaching philosophy statement is reflective and personal and normally written as a narrative. This statement is generally is between one and two pages in length.
- What are your goals with respect to student learning?
- How would you describe the atmosphere in your classroom? How do you think your students would describe it?
- How do you help students to learn?
- What steps do you take to encourage higher level learning (such as synthesis, analysis, application, problem-solving, etc.)?
- What skills and values do you bring to the instructional aspect of your job?
- What is active learning and how do you use it in the classroom and in assignments?
- In which ways has your teaching changed in the last five years? Are they changes for the better (for you, for your students)? Explain.
- What qualities would you like to be remembered by as a teacher?
Sheree Rensel, http://www.wizzlewolf.com/philosophy.htm
John R. Meyer http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/j/jrmeyer/www/philosophy.html
Michele Doney http://www.msu.edu/user/costabil/academic/portfolio/philosophy.htm
Lucie Moussou, http://www.moussu.net/TP/philosophy.html
Jeff Phillips, http://www.physics.uci.edu/~jeff/phil.html
This information is also available on the TAG website. For more information, visit TAG’s page on teaching portfolios.
Choosing the Right Software for your ePortfolio
If you decide to start an ePortfolio, you might be asking yourself “Where do I start?” But before you hit the internet search for software that will publish your portfolio information electronically, you might want to consider what your particular purposes are for your ePortfolio. EPortfolios serve different purposes depending on the author’s objectives. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do you want your portfolio to be a finished presentation or do you want it to be interactive and dynamic?
Is your portfolio primarily for employment purposes or do you want to use it to document your own learning processes?
What kinds of artifacts will you present? (i.e videos, photographs, pdfs)
Will your portfolio be public or private?
Your answers to these questions will allow you to choose the publishing tools that best suit your ePortfolio needs. Now you can decide if you want to use a static service such as an iWebfolio, an interactive blog such as Edublogs, or a collaborative service such as a wiki.
For more information on the various publishing services available, you can check out Helen Barrett’s website. Helen Barrett has done an extensive 4-year study on the features of various ePortfolio software, complete with personal reflections on each service.
