March 12, 2010

Soft Launching An Institutional ePortfolio Initiative

Today, I presented along with Elizabeth Nesius and Anita Kumar at the NJEDge.Net Annual Faculty Best Practices Showcase at Seton Hall University. Our presentation, "Soft Launching An Institutional ePortfolio Initiative," highlighted the Writing Initiative's use of ePortfolios.

Beyond our portfolio use in WI classes, our experiences are acting as a pilot for PCCC’s use of eportfolios with all students.

We are using a decision-making process approach to piloting online portfolios to support student learning and assessment.

The Initiative has been using ePortfolios since Fall 2008 as a part of all writing intensive course sections.

Each of us looks at one aspect of portfolio use in the presentation.  First, I spoke about issues of concern about portfolio use at the institutional level. Anita addressed how she is using portfolios for departmental degree requirements in the Early Childhood Education program. Elizabeth then brought the focus down to the course level with both what we do in the WI classes and what she has done personally in her own English course.

Electronic portfolios are frequently used to enable students to use new media technologies, do reflective writing, and document and showcase their learning across courses, disciplines and semesters. Our presentation (available below) talks about the kind of data we have collected over the past four semesters that will be used to help make decisions about using portfolios with all students.