Scott Wilson, Assistant Director of CETIS, has posted a ppt that gives an excellent and very thorough overview of the world of e-portfolios. He covers a lot of ground in the presentation and does a great job of trying to answer these 4 core questions:
Definitely worth a careful read-through.
Earlier in June, I co-facilitated a day-long session on e-portfolios with Dave Tosh. Some of you likely remember Dave as the researcher from the University of Edinburgh we’ve been collaborating with on e-portfolio research this past year. Our session was titled “Through the Looking Glass: e-Portfolios for Reflection.” It covered many different angles, inlcuding:
Some of the issues raised in one of the discussion periods sounded very similar to those raised here at UBC by faculty & students. Here’s a sampling:
Dave and I have both posted our ppts from the session.
It was a very busy day, full of interesting discussions with and interesting questions from our participants. One of our participants, Jeremy Hiebert, has posted his impressions of the day to his blog.
On the second day, I attended 2 great sessions…one on authentic assessment online and the other, on weblogs & wikis, lead by our very own Brian Lamb and Jeff Miller. Brian & Jeff’s session was very entertaining and delivered with a lot of passion for the topic. It was a packed room and everyone was very engaged. Impressive for the last session on Friday afternoon!
Leah Macfadyen, a Research Associate in UBC’s Faculty of Science, Skylight (Science Centre for Learning and Teaching) sent in this reflection from the Innovative Teaching Forum at SFU last month. There’s lots of good info on how the some of the conference content relates directly to our UBC efforts with e-portfolios and promoting reflective learning. Thanks Leah!
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From May 18th – 20th, Joanne Nakonechny and I (both of Skylight,
Faculty of Science) attended the ‘7th Annual Symposium on Innovative
Teaching’, at Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby Campus
(http://www.sfu.ca/symposium2005/)
SFU has approved sweeping changes to its degree requirements that will
apply to all undergraduates admitted for September 2006 and thereafter.
In part, these requirements ask students to complete at least six credits each of courses identified “writing intensive”.
This year’s Symposium therefore had a strong focus on the concept of
“writing intensive learning” – in theory and in practical application –
paralleling the exciting efforts of faculty members across the disciplines to develop writing-intensive courses. Keynote speakers included Chris Anson from North Carolina State University, and Daniel Shapiro of California State University, Monterey Bay. Both of these Universities have made significant strides in consciously incorporating more writing into teaching and learning across the disciplines.
For me, the key take-home message from this Symposium – and one that is
also relevant for ePortfolios work – is the understanding of writing as a tool that can promote learning, thinking and critical analysis – not simply a tool for assessment. In other words, writing has value as a formative as well as summative process for students (and not just in traditional ‘writing intensive’ disciplines, either).
Of particular interest was a session entitled “Timing and wording of low-stakes writing: Making it work to help students’ learning and thinking”, led by Kathryn Alexander of SFU’s Centre for Writing Intensive Learning (CWIL).
Kathryn characterizes ‘low stakes writing’ as short pieces of exploratory writing that “can provide the intellectual building blocks and scaffolding for formal writing assignments”. Low-stakes writing can be used in class, may typically be unassessed (or students may be assessed for participation rather than quality) and helps students develop questions, summarize ideas and develop new ones – all while developing a more natural writing praxis. She quotes Peter Elbow
(1997), who wrote:
“The goal of low stakes assignments is not so much to produce excellent
pieces of writing, as to get students to think, learn and undertsand more of the course material. Low stakes writing is often informal and tends to be graded informally. In a sense, we get to throw away the low stakes writing but keep the neural changes it produced in students heads’.
It seems to me that this perspective directly supports the reflective practice wishes in ePortfolio teaching and learning projects.
SFU’s CWIL site (http://www.sfu.ca/cwil/) is worth a visit – they regularly run workshops and other events in this area.
Other useful references and resources include:
Bean, J. C. (2001) Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating
Writing, Critical Thinking and Active Learning in the Classroom. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Elbow, P. (1997). High Stakes and Low Stakes in Assigning and
responding to Writing, In M.D. Sorcinelli & P. Elbow (Eds) Assigning
and Responding to Writing in the Disciplines. New Directions for
Teaching and learning. No. 69, Spring 1997. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Leah
During the first week of June, Alison & I attended the orientation for new students entering UBC’s Transition Program. The core mission of this program is as follows (from the website):
e-Portfolios are one of the methods being used to help students acheive their goals within the program. One of the orientation activities was to have students from last year’s cohort present their e-portfolios to the new students. We saw 4 students present their e-portfolios. The students used a wide-range of software tools to build their e-portfolios…KEEP Toolkit to Dreamweaver to LiveJournal. It was exciting to see the students so engaged in the process and talking about portfolios and reflection with such enthusiasm. This coming year will see all students in the program building e-portfolios. I believe they’ll be using ELGG as a tool.
This message came through the Educause listserv…
NLII Becomes EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
We are pleased to announce that the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) has completed its transition to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI).
Under the leadership of EDUCAUSE Vice President Diana G. Oblinger, the strategic planning team and our current NLII members have reframed the organization’s mission to be advancing learning through IT innovation. ELI will be focused on learners and
successful learning-a unique emphasis in the teaching and learning with technology community. We will explore three areas in particular: learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies.
7 things your should know about…
ELI is taking the best of NLII programs and services and building on them, offering extensive online resources; member-only Web seminars; a new briefing series called “7 Things You Should Know About…”
Here is another reflection from the BCEd Online Conference. This one from Bjorn Thomson, a Master’s of Education student who is working in 3 of our e-portfolio pilots. Thanks Bjorn!!
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BCEd Online
Natasha Boskic, Educational Technology Manager at EPLT , sent in this reflection from the recent BCEd Online Conference to share with the community…Thanks Natasha!
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Whenever I go to a conference I am always faced with a difficult challenge of choosing one session to attend over the other. It was not easier here with 13 different rooms with simultaneous presentations. And, of course, the most interesting part
Dr. Marion Porath from the Faculty of Education forwarded this conference information to the CoP. Thanks Marion!
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On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to extend a cordial
invitation for you to attend one of the upcoming IPSI BgD
multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary conferences.
The first one will take place in Sveti Stefan, Montenegro:
IPSI-2005 MONTENEGRO
Hotel Sveti Stefan (arrival: 1 October 05 / departure: 8 October 05)
Deadlines: 1 May 05 (abstract) / 1 July 05 (full paper)
The second one will take place in Venice, Italy:
IPSI-2005 VENICE
Hotel Luna Baglioni (arrival: 9 November 05 / departure: 14 November 05)
Deadlines: 1 June 05 (abstract) / 1 August 05 (full paper)
The third one will take place on the Bled lake, Slovenia:
IPSI-2005 SLOVENIA
Hotel Toplice (arrival: 8 December 05 / departure: 11 December 05)
Deadlines: 1 July 05 (abstract) & 1 September 05 (full paper)
All IPSI BgD conferences are non-profit. They bring together the elite of
the world science; so far, we have had seven Nobel Laureates speaking at
the opening ceremonies. The conferences always take place in some of the
most attractive places of the world. All those who come to IPSI
conferences once, always love to come back (because of the unique
professional quality and the extremely creative atmosphere); lists of past
participants are on the web, as well as details of future conferences.
These conferences are in line with the newest recommendations of the US
National Science Foundation and of the EU research sponsoring agencies, to
stress multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary
research (M+I+T++ research). The speakers and activities at the
conferences truly support this type of scientific interaction.
One of the main topics of this conference is “E-education and E-business
with Special Emphasis on Semantic Web and Web Datamining”
Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Internet
* Computer Science and Engineering
* Mobile Communications/Computing for Science and Business
* Management and Business Administration
* Education
* e-Medicine
* e-Oriented Bio Engineering/Science and Molecular Engineering/Science
* Environmental Protection
* e-Economy
* e-Law
* Technology Based Art and Art to Inspire Technology Developments
* Internet Psychology
If you would like more information on either conference, please send an email to bled2005@ipsiconferences.org
If you plan to submit an abstract and paper, please let us know
immediately for planning purposes. Note that you can submit your paper
also to the IPSI Transactions journal.
Dave Tosh pointed me to TeacherEd.com, a new community tool to connect teachers online. The tool is powered by ELGG and was developed by David Ernst from the University of Minnesota. Perhaps this a tool that could be used to create a forum to connect K-12 teachers and post-secondary instructors on e-portfolio practice?
The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning will be holding its 2005 Annual Meeting in Vancouver this October 14th-16th. The general theme for this year’s event is “Commitment, Community and Collaboration.” The deadline for submissions is June 1st.
For more information, www.issotl.indiana.edu/ISSOTL/call.htm