E-Portfolios: An Emerging Authentic Assessment

1. E-Portfolios: An Emerging Authentic Assessment Yves Labissiere, Ph.D., labissy@pdx.edu Portland State University Portland, OR April 17, 2008

2. Context  PSU’s 4 level general education program  Four goals: – Inquiry and Critical Thinking – Communication – Diversity of Human Experience – Ethical and Social Responsibility

3. UNIVERSITY STUDIES REQUIREMENTS credit FRESHMAN INQUIRY 15 TT 210 SOPHOMORE INQUIRY 12 1 2 3 UPPER DIVISION CLUSTER TT 310 12 1 2 3 6 SENIOR CAPSTONE 45 credits

4. The Portland State Model  Freshman Inquiry – Students in Class of about 35 for entire year – Two hours per week students are in small groups (12) led by a student peer mentor  Sophomore Inquiry – Students take 3 different courses during the year in classes of about 35 – One hour of small group mentor sessions led by a graduate student mentor

5. The Portland State Model (cont.)  Transfer Transition Courses include mentor sessions  Three Upper Division Cluster Courses  Capstone Courses – Interdisciplinary teams of students – Address problems in the community over two to three terms – Projects led by faculty and/or community practitioners

6. Emphasis on Connections  With your faculty  With your mentor  With your colleagues in the class  With the material

7. More Context  Freshman Inquiry is an interdisciplinary, team developed year-long course  All students in the course create culminating portfolios structured around the four goals  Most are e-portfolios

8. E-Portfolio Assignment Index Page—guide for the viewer Organized around goals  – Reflection on each goal Provide your definition of the goal Why important to your education? Why important to your life? How would you recognize this goal?  – – – – Evidence for each goal from work products Including bulletin postings, websites, group projects, PowerPoint presentations, essays, term papers, journal entries  –

9. E-Portfolio Assignment, cont.  Reflection on Evidence – For each work product, describe what specifically in the work product is fulfillment of goal-- “highlight themes, passages, insights or processes” – What insights did you gain from the assignment? – What part did you do particularly well? – With which part are you least satisfied? – If you were to do it over again, which part would you do differently?

10. E-Portfolio Assignment, cont.  Reflective Essay – Sum up what you have accomplished this year – What impact freshman inquiry had on you – Assess your place in the world and state your hopes for the future – For end of term portfolio: What would you like to see more of next term? (think of activities, movies, readings, assignments, group projects, service, etc.) **

11. Portland State’s Portfolio Sample  Example of a portfolio

12. Underlying Guideline for success  Place Student Learning at the center of this practice NOT just assessment or showing “best work”  Identity Transformation as core element of Learning

13. Underlying Guideline for success  What happens when we elevate learning to the level of Identity?

14. Epiphany

15. Underlying Guideline for success  Congruity between eportfolios practices and pedagogy-culture – Embeddedness – Emergent

16. Underlying Guideline for success  Embeddedness as the extent to which a practice is reinforced and supported by other practices, norms, pedagogies, values, beliefs, and technology tools, etc. of that a particular learning community.  Scaffolded Practices

17. Underlying Guideline for success  Emergent as the extent to which a particular practice or trend flows from a leaning community’s extant needs and or past practices.

18. Strategy One  Make the creation of the e-portfolio a social activity – Capitalize on the fact that learning is inherently a dynamic, social activity (e.g., Vigotsky, Erikson, Dewey, Rogoff)

19. Examples of Strategy One  Create to opportunity to work together on the creation of e-portfolios – Mentor sessions – Inventory of skills – Group assignments

20. Strategy Two  Build in the practice of public review  Builds motivation  Need to think about audience  Reinforces norms that scholarship is a public enterprise  Sets norms regarding effective standards and practices  Develops coherence – e.g., Social comparison theory (Festinger) Reinforces Norm of Scholarship as a collaborative practice

21. Examples of Strategy Two  Portfolio Feedback Sessions – Students provide formal feedback on content and design to each other  End of year competition where student scholarship is honored and recognized

22. Strategy Three  Practice dual coding principle of learning – Learning is generally enhanced when learners are required to represent their learning in more than one way – Visuospatial and auditory-verbal

23. Examples of Strategy Three  Meta-cognitive Reflection  Mind Maps or Concept Maps  Can be either an individual or a group activity

24. Strategy Four  Embed activities for creating the e-portfolio throughout the process (e.g., courses, projects, programs)  Not just a culminating product  Need to be working on the portfolio throughout  Students need to understand and experience how the portfolio fits into their learning  Creation of portfolio is a developmental process – There is ample evidence that effort and practice enhance learning and facilitates transfer (e.g., Halpern)

25. Examples of Strategy Four  Journals  Blogs  Mid-term assignment  Periodic mind mapping  Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)

26. Strategy Five  Provide opportunities to develop reflective practice  Can’t expect students to know how to reflect  Complex cognitive skill – Directed – Frequent – Reflective practice is an important component of learning (e.g., Dewey) – Activities that demand reflection, organization and connection enhances meta-cognition (e.g., Alexander, et.al, 1995; Shaw, 1994)

27. Examples of Lesson Five  Prompted reflection  Practice at reflection – Journals – Mind Maps – Blogs – Letters to professor

28. Evidence Growth  Shift focus from best work to improvement and growth  Ask students to provide evidence of their progress  Self location as a critical aspect of learning – Developmental theory (e.g., Erikson)

29. Reflection  Directed Reflection – Comparison of early and later work  Encourage learning from mistakes or failure – Public critiques – Faculty feedback

30. Strategy Seven  Invite the ineffable  Creating a space for unanticipated connections  Bridges academic knowledge with their life experience. Making the work personally relevant and meaningful. – What and how much is learned depends heavily on prior experience (Bransford, et. al., 1999). – Multiplicity of connections enhances learning.

31. Examples of Strategy Seven  Prompted reflection – Make connections between the content of the class to your life – Make connections with this class and other classes  Allow flexibility in requirements for the portfolio – Invite additions

32. More information and examples: http://www.cyborglab.pdx.edu/portfolioproject

33. Assessment of Portfolios  Freshman Inquiry Rubrics – Locally developed six point rubrics for 5 areas Average freshman would be expected to score at Levels 2- 3 – Portfolio review process Faculty across campus serve on committee 1 rubric per day Norming/calibration 2 raters for each assignment 3Rdrater if scores do not match – Summative evaluation for program – Formative assessment for faculty teaching teams

34. Student Benefits-Identity Development “Creating my teaching and learning philosophy seemed easy at first. The assignments in the class as well as my pre-existing ideas about what made for good teaching made me overconfident in my ability to articulate my thoughts. I found, however, that when I went to “upload” my philosophy, that again and again, I had to stop myself and ask once more is this what I believe? Is this what I can live up to? Knowing that others would see this and that I would be held accountable (even if only in my own mind) caused me to take this task very seriously. I was comforted when I realized that the process of naming my beliefs, seeking feedback from my peers about them, and then being able to reflect back on them as I began to mentor was exactly where I needed to be. I realized that one’s teaching and learning philosophy was not a static or individual endeavor. I must return to it repeatedly and I must constantly engage in discussion about it. I finally pushed the “upload” button with both the hope and fear that my teaching philosophy wouldn’t change.”

35. Meta cognitive development One mentor commented on the survey: “As a student who has participated in University Studies since I was a freshman, I have completed several reflective paper portfolios. I thought at first that doing this electronic portfolio would be a repeat of that process and frankly, I was bored thinking about doing it. However, as I started the process of building the webpage and making my links, I discovered that there was a richer and deeper process happening. I began to see how my own learning has influenced my teaching and learning philosophy in new ways. The process of creating links made me think about links more. Because a webpage is more easily navigated than a paper portfolio, it called upon me to think more about the linkages and how things fit together.” An English Literature graduate student commented, “Call me lazy, but the electronic portfolio allowed me to make links easily to examples of skills I possessed. Because of the ease of making these linkages, I found myself searching for more of them. At the end, I found it amazing that I had so many ‘marketable’ skills as an English major and so much evidence to document them.”

36. Sense of Mastery  “I can’t believe I made webpage! I sent the URL to my mother. She can’t believe it either. I learned by making this portfolio that I can complete something that is frightening to me. It shows me that it is possible to learn something difficult and be proud of the outcome when one works hard and seeks help. I plan on sharing this story with my students and helping them see that hard things are possible to achieve.”  “Completing the electronic portfolio assignment helped me see that I have a lot to offer my future students. I am a good student; I have skills to offer, and I can now teach them how to do a webpage!”

37. Confronting fears  “The biggest learning I had was that I am not alone. Other new mentors and those before me have been scared too. I am not the first. I learned a lot from watching others practice their lesson plans but also learned a lot from reviewing others’ electronic portfolios. Again, I am not the only one who feels as passionately as I do about teaching and who is petrified at the same time;. I also realized that while others have skills in certain areas, that I have skills in others. We can work together to help each other out.

38. Developing competencies  “As I finish my third year of mentoring along with finally graduating, I take my electronic portfolio with me. I have updated it continually and added and subtracted from it over the years and it has provided me with a framework for thinking about what I have learned and what I have to offer a future employer. I have added the link to my resume but even if they never look at it, I can still speak more articulately because of the electronic portfolio.”

39. Scholarship as collaborative  “I am indebted to my fellow future mentors for their support and assistance as I was learning the ropes of being a mentor and starting on this new and scary adventure. Everything we did in this class allowed me to understand more fully that academia does not need to be competitive and individualistic in order for it to be rigorous or of value. Creating our electronic portfolios is an example of this. I was (and still am for the most part) a technophobe. With the help of my peers I learned about the technology and got valuable feedback about the content. While the work in the portfolio is mine it would be less without my peers help as theirs would be without mine. I will take this lesson to my work in the classroom.”

40. Benefits to Students:  Students understand and can articulate what they have learned.  Students can organize and display key performances and other material to demonstrate what they know and can do.  Digital medium allow a variety of kinds of work samples (i.e. art, oral presentation, performances…).

41. Benefits to Students:  Digital structure gives students the flexibility to organize their presentation portfolios in different ways for different audiences.  Provides students with the opportunity to communicate their accomplishments to graduate programs and employers in ways that give meaning to the transcript and grade point average.

42. Benefits to Departments  Evidence of student learning integral to departmental review, accreditation, and for curriculum and resource planning.  Departments and programs have the capacity to demonstrate the quality of their programs by organizing and displaying the key performances of their students for both departmental and institutional learning goals.

43. Benefits to Institutions:  Digital portfolio system provides a systematic means to document institutional quality as determined by student work.  Student achievement as determined by their work in the key performances is documented and displayed.

44. Benefits to Institutions:  Evidence of institutional quality can be communicated to accrediting and policy- making bodies.  Institutional policy-making is based on evidence of student achievement.

45. Logistics  Tools (Webct, Frontpage, FTP)  Privacy issues (sharing with other students/faculty)  Container –WebCt  Design--Netscape, Frontpage, Dreamweaver  Maintenance

46. Logistics  Training – Faculty  New faculty orientation (webct, website, etc.)  Ongoing support during the year (OIT, other faculty) – Mentors  Spring and fall training  RAM mentors support  Student helping each other support  Institutional support (CAE– ongoing training)  Maintenance

47. Recommended Resources  Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, Editors. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Available to read online: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/6160.html  Huba, M. E. & Freed, J. Learner-centered assessment on college campuses: Shifting the focus from teaching to learning. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000.

48. Recommended Resources  Tagg, John. The Learning Paradigm College. Anker Publishing, 2003. http://www.ankerpub.com/books/tagg.html  Wiggins, Grant, McTighe, Jay, McTiche, Jan. Understanding by Design. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 1998.  Zull, James E. The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning. Stylus Publishing, LLC., 2002.

49. Examples  http://www.cyborglab.pdx.edu/portfolioproject  http://www.elon.edu/student/portfolio  `