1) The document discusses using ePortfolios to help students develop professional skills across various disciplines and business courses.
2) It provides examples of how courses in leadership, communication, and emotional intelligence incorporated ePortfolios, with students reflecting on criteria and connecting their work to the profession.
3) Rubrics, qualitative and quantitative ratings, and contextual frameworks are presented as ways to provide students structured feedback and evaluate their growth over time in developing competencies like self-awareness, relationship management, and emotional intelligence.
9. ePortfolio Qualitative RatingsPersonal Reflection (Evaluation of performance with regard to learning objectives, AHA moments, Individual progress measured against self, comparison of past and present work)Connections/ Contextualization (Citing of external sources, discussion of influences, Connections between imagery and text)Written Communication (Ability to write without syntax errors, development of the argument)Project Development Continuity (How many iterations does the design go through? Does the design get richer or do the cycles restart? How far is the student able to develop the design?)
10. ePortfolio Quantitative RatingsNumber of PostsNumber of Additional PagesAve. Length of PagesAve. Number of ImagesLevel of CustomizationWeb Authoring Tools UsedCross Pollination (Comments received, written)
17. Effective ReflectionStrong conceptual course frameworkAbility to put work into context Citation of specific examples as evidence for arguments“One of my previous frustrations was when a member would challenge others’ ideas in a way that halted group progress. … techniques I learned from class taught me a very effective way to deal with this. If someone didn’t like an idea or pointed out a flaw with an idea I would simply say, “I can see your concern. So what would you suggest we say?”
18. Emotional Competencies (Daniel Goleman)Self-awareness— the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact while using gut feelings to guide decisions.Self-management — involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.Social awareness — the ability to sense, understand, and react to others’ emotions while comprehending social networks.Relationship management — the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing conflict.
19. Emotional IntelligenceFrankness about feelingsWillingness to admit shortcomings“I found myself irritable and stressed. Most of the time, I was able to manage these emotions by staying calm, optimistic, and ethical. I did have a couple breakdowns, however.”“I also had problems managing other emotions effectively which caused me to withdrawl at times from the group.”“the encouragement level within our group fell…I have allowed poor self-management of my emotions to get the best of me and have stopped trying to develop [encouragement]”
20. Growth Process over TimeObjective PlanReflectionCompares blogposts to show development over time
21. Growth Process over TimeObjective Plan Reflection Compares blogposts to show development over time
22. One Size Does Not Fit All But, one size must fit allEngagement
Editor's Notes
Colleagues on campus and in the InterNational Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research helped me understand how powerfully electronic portfolios could support learning. Following Helen Barrett, we have shifted our emphasis from presentation “Showplace” to also include the developmental “Workspace”. Wordpress Multi-User supports polished portfolios, reflective blogging and feed aggregation to support a learning community. We adopted Barrett’s “No one size fits all” approach of customizing technology to fit specific learning contexts.
How have we incorporated this learning focus? First, assigning blog reflections required us to be more thoughtful about the mapping of assignments to accreditation performance criteria.
Second, we use Curriculum Maps to be explicit about WHAT skills and knowledge need to be demonstrated and HOW they could be shown and evaluated.
Third,we clarify performance expectations for our Pass / No Pass design studios with Rubrics.
We want our students not only to create beautiful design solutions, but also to understand how today’s work relates to last year’s class and how it contributes to long term goals. My AHA moment came from reading how much students understood about the problem, even though they couldn’t generate strong designs or graphical solutions. I had assumed that the level of their drawings showed their competency, but those who couldn’t draw could be effective at writing about their concepts.
Sharing ideas for real-world projects can engage the professional community. For University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative, 22 classes in Planning, Landscape Architecture and Architecture have been developing ideas for the City of Gresham, Oregon this year. Blogs have supplemented face to face interaction with city planners, architects and transportation planners.
How to do this in a traditional academic environment (silos).
Those who can’t write well can post images and links. Those who can't draw well can write thoughtful reflections.Important choices about what to standardize v. what to keep open.Wiggio choiceBlogging promptsNot as simple as student engagement on one end, faculty on the other. Real question is what is the value proposition? If it is a bit harder and takes more time, what do I get for that cost? So some of this is about design for learning and some is about getting engagement.Wordpress is the best balance of these we have found so far – but leans toward the flexibility. Will take work to standardize. But its also a great example of standardization by community – standardization of functionality by plugin. Standardization/functionality can be done by the masses as a community of users grows.