ePortfolios?

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GERC in partnership with the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Development Committee is seeking input on the idea of ePortfolios for use in both general education and for the QEP.  Since the term ePortfolio is already in use on campus in a variety of ways, this blog post provides information on how the ePortfolio might be used for general education and the QEP and points to further resources.  GERC and QEP representatives are also visiting school meetings and slides from those presentations are available in box: https://stedwards.box.com/s/rxe7dh7emw909nmvz6h9kxbwnl4xshsz

ePortfolios and the QEP

For the QEP,  “Vocation: Discovering One’s Purpose in a Changing World,” an ePortfolio would be a repository for students to place artifacts related to their vocational journey and to reflect on a variety of experiences, both curricular and co-curricular.  For the QEP,

Reflection equals structured exercises for students to make connections across experiences and to develop a personal narrative.

ePortfolios and General Education

For general education, ePortfolios would be a tools for integration and assessment.  The new curriculum has reduced hours and moved from a set of very prescriptive, tightly structured courses to a more flexible system that allows students to take more responsibility for their own learning and integration of that learing.

Integrative learning is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond the campus.

The ePortfolio is a tool for integrative learning that helps students develop more agency.  Here’s how the process works:

Building a Portfolio

  • Collect. Students collect their work,
  • Select samples of work that show their learning,
  • Reflect on that work identifying and articulating skills and content in the artifacts, growth
  • Connect their experiences, course work, personal and professional goals.

If ePortfolios are adopted as part of general education, students would be required to place signature assignments and/or reflective essays in the portfolio in certain general education courses.  A percentage of these ePortfolios would be sampled for assessment of general education.

More about ePortfolios

For a good introduction to ePortfolios we recommend:

To find out more about ePortfolios, we recommend the following resources curated by J. Elizabeth Clark:

 

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About Rebecca Davis

Rebecca Frost Davis Director of Instructional and Emerging Technology Rebecca Frost Davis joined St. Edward’s in July 2013 as Director of Instructional and Emerging Technology, where she provides leadership in the development of institutional vision with respect to the use of technology in pursuit of the university’s educational mission and collaborates with offices across campus to create and execute strategies to realize that vision. Instructional Technology helps faculty transform and adapt new digital methods in teaching and research to advance the essential learning outcomes of liberal education. Previously, Dr. Davis served as program officer for the humanities at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), where she also served as associate director of programs. Prior to her tenure at NITLE, she was the assistant director for instructional technology at the Associated Colleges of the South Technology Center and an assistant professor of classical studies at Rhodes College, Denison University, and Sewanee: The University of the South. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. (summa cum laude) in classical studies and Russian from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Davis is also a fellow with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE). As a NITLE Fellow, Dr. Davis will develop a literature review relevant to intercampus teaching, which will cover contextual issues such as team-teaching, teaching through videoconferencing, and collaboration; a survey of intercampus teaching at NITLE member institutions; and several case studies of intercampus teaching at liberal arts colleges, including interviews with faculty, students, support staff, and administrators. This work will be summarized in a final report or white paper to be published by NITLE. At Rebecca Frost Davis: Liberal Education in a Networked World, (http://rebeccafrostdavis.wordpress.com/) Dr. Davis blogs about the changes wrought by new digital methods on scholarship, networking, and communication and how they are impacting the classroom. In her research, she explores the motivations and mechanisms for creating, integrating, and sustaining digital humanities within and across the undergraduate curriculum.

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