My growing role as a blogmeister here at PSU has been intersecting with the notion of eportfolio for learning and program assessment. To help me get up to speed with the use of eportfolio for enhacing student learning, I went to Academic Impression's ePortfolio conference in Park City, Utah this week. It was what I would consider a small gathering, around 40 people. A group of four thought leaders in this topic led the discussion over the course of three days. The attendees were made up of faculty, administrators, instructional technologists, designers.
While a few lively discussions did break out, and I did take advantage of multiple opportunities to share the story of eportfolio and blogs at PSU, I was a bit disappointed in just how much of the experience followed the sage on the stage model. The event was more along the lines of training/workshop than what the word conference evokes in my mind. After working with Dr. Carla Zembal-Saul this summer, I was already thinking about the ideas presented at the conference. In fact, the material presented aligned very closely to the work with blogs as portfolio we have been doing at ETS. The conference leaders even dipped their toes into what I feel are some of the newer ideas as far as
portfolios as life-long learning communities. This is where I see the lines between portfolios and blog breaking down, and in fact I now use the words and concepts interchangeably.
Many of the attendees seemed focus on portfolio in the sense of collecting evidence for program assessment/ accreditation purposes. I have to the give the conferences leaders credit for working hard to help the audience see portfolios as an important part of student learning experience, and not just an administrative information system.
Just to lay out what the ideas I and others have around blogs for student learning:
(You could probably use the word portfolio instead of blog in the the statements below, but I feel "blog" has more of a connotation of being social and dynamic, which is why I tend to use that word) (These have been eluded to in my previous posts and presentations, but I felt like listing them here for clarity. Plus, some of these points have become a little sharper after the conference)
* Blogs allow students to contextualize their knowledge and learning in their identity and community.
* Ownership of learning content - student can continue to change, add, and learn from this content.
* Blogs help students collect and chronicle diverse evidence/learning experiences. In this way, blogs help students look at ideas from diverse points of view.
* Blogs can help integrate different facets of a student's life. Forget the multiple blogs for each class, special interests, and various communities. Let's use blogs to tie this all together.
* Deliberation. Blogs allow the capture and hence further reflection upon decisions made through deliberation. In fact, I believe in cases were blogs are going to be assessed for learning, part of the rubric should include conclusions reached through discussion.
* Reflection. Reflection is the key to portfolio learning. Reflection can happen as part of a conversation. Again, this is where the social feature of blogs have a role to play.
* Through comments and interlinking, an intentional network of blogs can form a learning community. Will the participation in such a learning community become a practice that will continue after graduation? Can it foster the value of life-long learning in students? I think a big challenge is figuring out how to jump start these community. Blogging will only be successful if students know there is an audience for their work.
* Blogging is really practicing writing, collaboration, discourse, critical thinking, creativity. All traits and skills that higher education should be cultivating in students.
* Today's traditional students know how to communicate online. But the role of educators is help these digital natives learn to participate online with intention. This can be difficult when faculty are digital immigrants who may not be as comfortable participating online.
After saying all this, I have to wonder, is the notion of class-blogging dead to me? Is there really that much value in a blog that exists only for a specific course for a specific semester. All of the notions around blogs and learning I listed above only start to make sense when they are realized across course, semester, and even formal/informal learning.
At PSU, how do we make portfolio part of the ongoing student learning process? Across faculty, across department, and really across realms: academics, community service, campus life, etc. All these wonderful opportunities for integrative learning are provided by blogs. Who coaches the students? Does someone need to be formatively assessing it for the student? Does blog have to be at the center of curricula? How does it get there?
