I'm at Educause and I'm currently at a Lightning Round discussion of ePortfolios: five presentations at 7 minutes each. I'll try to capture some of the key points here.
Patrick Lowenthal, University of Colorado Denver
They created a staged gate system where students would have to assemble a portfolio at various stages in a teacher training program before being able to continue taking courses. This portfolio would be assessed by an evaluator, who would then approve the students progress to the next group of courses that would lead to the next gate. This is a much better system than the previous one, where students would create a paper portfolio at the end of their learning process.
Geoffrey C. Middlebrook, University of Southern California
Their approach is blog-based, similar to ours. In addition to static profile pages and ongoing blog posts related to their field of study, they create a list of sites in their sidebar that should be sources of reliable information for their field. Students are also expected to make comments on the blogs of other people in their fields and link to those external posts/comments in their own blog.
David L. Stoloff, Eastern Connecticut State University
Using Google sites to have students create their portfolios. Elements include a resume, annotated transcript, commentary on their program's goals, and a five-year plan. It's the kind of ePortfolio that we used to ask students to build, but using some newer tools. One interesting point is that when they talk to their students about an ePortfolio, they use Facebook as a point of comparison - their "social portfolio".
Ivy Tan, University of Saskatchewan
Online version of a traditional paper portfolio for people who are identifying their clinical practice skills. It was built using Mahara. They have also integrated a search tool that instructors or programs can use to find students who have/have not achieved a goal as well as identify gaps in their courses. Their system has a very administrative feel.
Lorna Wong, University of Wisconsin System Administration
They have 13 comprehensive and 13 two-year campuses. Some of the campuses were already using ePortfolio systems, but they decided to look for a centralized system to get central support, documentation, consistency, save money, etc... They launched the D2L ePortfolio product in 2008 because they are already using D2L for some of their courses. They had some initial problems (training materials, faculty training needs, production environment, etc...) but seem to be running well now.
Out of the five presentations and the following discussion, the USC approach is the most exciting to me. It looks great and blends students' development and interaction with professionals in their field.
Edit: I talked with Geoffrey Middlebrook after his presentation and he said that he knows about the Blogs at Penn State project and has been "borrowing" ideas from it. I said that's great as long as we can borrow ideas back! He has some additional thoughts related to building connections with outside experts - it's worth a conference call between him and Jeff Swain.
Patrick Lowenthal, University of Colorado Denver
They created a staged gate system where students would have to assemble a portfolio at various stages in a teacher training program before being able to continue taking courses. This portfolio would be assessed by an evaluator, who would then approve the students progress to the next group of courses that would lead to the next gate. This is a much better system than the previous one, where students would create a paper portfolio at the end of their learning process.
Geoffrey C. Middlebrook, University of Southern California
Their approach is blog-based, similar to ours. In addition to static profile pages and ongoing blog posts related to their field of study, they create a list of sites in their sidebar that should be sources of reliable information for their field. Students are also expected to make comments on the blogs of other people in their fields and link to those external posts/comments in their own blog.
David L. Stoloff, Eastern Connecticut State University
Using Google sites to have students create their portfolios. Elements include a resume, annotated transcript, commentary on their program's goals, and a five-year plan. It's the kind of ePortfolio that we used to ask students to build, but using some newer tools. One interesting point is that when they talk to their students about an ePortfolio, they use Facebook as a point of comparison - their "social portfolio".
Ivy Tan, University of Saskatchewan
Online version of a traditional paper portfolio for people who are identifying their clinical practice skills. It was built using Mahara. They have also integrated a search tool that instructors or programs can use to find students who have/have not achieved a goal as well as identify gaps in their courses. Their system has a very administrative feel.
Lorna Wong, University of Wisconsin System Administration
They have 13 comprehensive and 13 two-year campuses. Some of the campuses were already using ePortfolio systems, but they decided to look for a centralized system to get central support, documentation, consistency, save money, etc... They launched the D2L ePortfolio product in 2008 because they are already using D2L for some of their courses. They had some initial problems (training materials, faculty training needs, production environment, etc...) but seem to be running well now.
Out of the five presentations and the following discussion, the USC approach is the most exciting to me. It looks great and blends students' development and interaction with professionals in their field.
Edit: I talked with Geoffrey Middlebrook after his presentation and he said that he knows about the Blogs at Penn State project and has been "borrowing" ideas from it. I said that's great as long as we can borrow ideas back! He has some additional thoughts related to building connections with outside experts - it's worth a conference call between him and Jeff Swain.
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