What: The Faculty Certificate Program at the University of British Columbia is a long standing in-service certification program for faculty leaders to develop their teaching and learning practice. The principle assessment for the course was based on a paper portfolio that faculty completed during the 8-month program.
I was brought on to this project to consider ways of bringing the paper portfolios into the online environment, with the goal of increasing the scope of the program, providing a more efficient portfolio system and introducing faculty to the online learning and media literacy.
In the process of selection we worked to adapt a platform that not only gave the faculty a structure that they could work within, also included the flexibility for them to creatively customize their site and would ‘own’ the site after program completion.
We selected the WordPress MU blogging platform for this purpose. WordPress provides a flexible platform that could be adapted by participants, shared openly and provides a way to develop media literacy
So What: One of the challenges and opportunity of this project, was to select a tool and developed an approach that allowed faculty to be creative when designing their portfolio and allowed for valid assessment based on the program components and did not create significant additional work for the faculty. We selected the WordPress MU platform for this project because the platform was flexible and could allow for creativity in design. At the same time we provided faculty with support and resources so that the portfolio would be relatively easy to set-up and faculty could focus on proving evidence and reflections about their teaching practice. Using a WordPress template, we set up the template, shared it with the faculty and met with them one-on-one to guide them through creating and publishing artifacts.
Now What: This process helped me understand the importance of scaffolding ePortfolio processes. By providing one-on-one and just-in-time support I was able to help build faculty confidence using the WordPress platform. Also by supporting faculty through the technical barriers of creating an ePortfolio, they were able to focus on developing artifacts, reflections and presenting themselves online.
