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News

e-Portfolios: the Nordic Experience

Apologies for the late posting of this call for papers notice…Looks like an interesting conference, though. This message came from Helen Chen via the EPAC listserv.

    We are delighted to invite you to our conference E-Portfolio & Talent Management, – the Nordic Experiences. The development of digital portfolios is of great importance for education, industry and government. The portfolio is more than a tool – it is a way of handling learning and competence challenges within a rapid changing world.

    This is a great opportunity to meet researchers, people with practical experiences and explore new technical possibilities.

    Call for Papers
    We invite practitioners and researchers to sign up with papers for the various workshops.

    All abstracts are to be submitted to the conference secretariat March 21, 2005.
    Acceptance will be announced April 1, 2005.

    Themes for papers:

    * E-PORTFOLIO – An organisational challenge?
    * E-PORTFOLIO – As a tool for professional development
    * E-PORTFOLIO – Scaffolding learning in the school
    * E-PORTFOLIO – New progress in beneficial software

    Notification of acceptance of a full paper: End March.

    The enclosed programme tells you the basic – a full programme will be available late march.

    The conference takes place On May 30 – 31, 2005 in Odense, Denmark

    For further information: contact Niels Henrik Helms nhh@ipfu.sdu.dk

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News

Kathleen Yancey Day @ UBC

We’re very pleased to have Dr. Kathleen Yancey coming to campus next week to give a talk and lead a workshop as part of UBC’s Teaching & Learning with Technology (TLT) series. The title of Dr. Yancey’s talk is “Outside the Course Box: Digital Portfolios as New Spaces for Learning.” Dr. Yancey is well-known for her work with e-portfolios and writing in higher education and is currently based at Clemson University.

To register for the talk and to see a full description, please visit TAG’s website.

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Community

BC Systemic Portfolio Meeting #2

See below for a summary of this meeting held @ BCcampus on Feb 28th. This group’s primary goal is to create a roadmap for bridging e-portfolio use & practice between BC schools & universities & colleges.

Meeting Summary

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Community

CoP Meeting Summary- Feb 2005

Below is a link to a summary of our Feb 2005 CoP meeting and discussion with Barb Ross & Jennifer Gurrie from WebCT. Thanks to Michelle for leading the meeting & to Alison for taking notes!

Meeting Summary

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News

EPAC Chat this Thursday

EPAC will host it’s next chat this Thursday, March 3 @ 10AM PST.

This chat session will focus on the next EPAC face-to-face event, which will take place at AAHE’s National Conference on Higher Education (March 17-20 in Atlanta, GA). The group will be meeting on Friday, March 18th, from 3 to 5 p.m

I have found these chat sessions a very valueable way to connect with colleagues at other institutions and, also, to hear about others’ experiences. I highly recommend them!

Some of the topics that will be discussed (from Helen Chen’s post to the EPAC listserv) at both the F2F event and in the chat include:

  • Eportfolio case study/design review: For as much as we talk about eportfolios, there’s nothing more useful than to actually “see” an example. This would be an opportunity for eportfolio programs to spend a few minutes describing their eportfolio programs and share an example or two. But instead of just being a “dog and pony show,” we would invite programs to pose a question or issue for which they would like to have some input or feedback on. This issue could be related to the technical design of the eportfolio, implementation issues such as student motivation or faculty support, etc.
  • Best practices: Building upon the above, there is always strong interest in eportfolio tools — who’s using what, what are the advantages/disadvantages — as well as best practices for implementation into the curriculum. Again, we would invite programs to share examples and questions perhaps in discipline-specific small groups.
  • Resource sharing: What eportfolio resources have been especially useful to you? Please bring a resource to share and discuss with the group.
  • Eportfolio Assessment: As a group, we will review a ePortfolio according to a rubric or we can try to design our own, considering questions addressing, for example, the context, reflection, and evidence of learning.
  • Pre-conference reading/resource sharing: Here’s an opportunity for us to explore a topic in greater depth such as digital storytelling.

* See extended entry for directions on joining the chat.Directions for joining the chat (with thanks to the Practical Assessment
COP for the instructions):

1. Enter the following address into your browser:
http://webcenter.aahe.org/chef/portal. This takes you to the AAHE WebCenter.

2. If you do not have a Username and Password, click on Create New Account
and fill in the information requested. (Record your Username and Password
for future use.) If you do have a Username and Password, enter them in
the spaces provided and then click on the Login button.

3. You are now in an area called My Workspace. If you have already joined
the EPAC COP, the name will show up at the top of your screen next to the
label My Workspace. If you don’t see EPAC with a hot link, the system
doesn’t recognize you as a member. No problem. Just go to Membership on the
left side. Up pops several groups you can join. Scroll down to find the
EPAC COP, check the box, go to the bottom of the screen, and click Join.
From now on when you enter My Workspace, you will have a EPAC Tab at the
top of your screen. Click on it.

4. Click on Chat in the menu on the left.

5. In the Box called ?Main Chat Room? click on Click to join now.

6. Say hello and away we go!

Categories
News

OSPI Conference 2005 Call for Proposals

This message came through the EPAC listserv from Darren Cambridge earlier this week…

The OSPI Conference will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, June 10-11, 2005.

Call For Proposals open until March 15. If you have experience with
the Open Source Portfolio in implementation or evaluation, please
consider sharing with the broader community. Bring a student; bring a
colleague; most importantly, bring your ideas!

For the full text of the call, please visit the OSPI website.

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News

To “e” or Not to “e” – BCcampus Webcast

I attended a very informative webcast this morning led by Dr. Helen Barrett. The webcast was part of a great series sponsored by the BCcampus EdTech Online Community.

Some of you may remember Dr. Barrett’s very moving keynote address at our e-portfolio event in November. Dr. Barrett will also be providing the keynote address at the BC EdOnline Conference in April. In this morning’s webcast, titled “To ‘e’ or Not to ‘e’: the High School Portfolio”, Dr. Barrett focused on a few core themes:

  • the positivist (standardized checklist of skills) versus the constructivist (reflective story of deep learning) approach to e-portfolio development
  • the assessment of learning versus the assessment for learning approach to evaluating e-portfolios
  • extrinsic versus instrinsic motivations for students

Dr. Barrett suggested some ways to help promote reflection amongst student learners:

  • provide models & examples
  • begin with forms or prompts; ie., ask a question that students answer
  • make use of journals/blogs
  • create tasks that challenge learners to integrate new learning into previous learning

An archive of the webcast is available on BCcampus’ website.

Categories
Community

CoP Meeting Summary- Jan 2005

Here’s a brief summary of our last CoP meeting…

Discussion Points

1. Project/dept updates: Representatives from Science, Education, Nursing, and Agricultural Sciences gave short updates on e-portfolio activities in their departments.

2. Interesting conversation of how to introduce folio thinking to larger classes. How to encourage students to reflect on their learning & make connections between their courses. One point made was that there is a definite benefit to continuing with the same software from year to year. By doing this, students don’t have to engage so much in learning new technology from year to year.

3. Sample e-Portfolios: Everyone agreed that sample e-portfolios should be available on the website. Many students in the pilots are eager to see example e-portfolios when embarking on their own. Members also suggested that we include examples of reflections. Kele & Alison will take the lead on assembling examples and will poll the community for input & feedback.

4. iWebfolio demo: A few members shared their thoughts on the iWebfolio demo that was held on Jan 19th. Scott Johnson from Nuventive travelled to UBC to demo iWebfolio 3.0, their latest version. This was not a live demo & consisted of a series of screen shots and a teleconference with Dave Choban, Nuventive’s CIO. A live demo should be available in late March. Initial reaction was very positive and many felt that Nuventive had indeed listened to feedback from it’s users. One huge improvement is the ability for users to choose themes and navigation schemes for presentation.

5. K-12 e-Portfolio Initiatives: Kele reported on a couple of meetings she attended with BCcampus & school district representatives on the potential to bridge portfolios from K-12 to higher ed. See seperate summaries of these 2 meetings in separate blog postings in “Community” area.

6. Upcoming events: see a list of the internal & external events in the attached agenda.

Categories
Resources

UBC Teaching e-Portfolio Wiki

Bjorn Thomson, our MEd. student who coordinates 3 of our pilots, has started a Teaching e-Portfolio wiki. Bjorn’s done a wonderful job of collecting examples of teaching e-portfolios as well as building his own in the various softwares we’re piloting. This is an excellent resource for our community!

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News

e-Portfolio Samples

One of the gaps on the e-portfolio website identified by our community is the lack of example e-portfolios. We’re working on a series of examples to post in the next month or so. We’ll also include examples of reflections as one of the top questions asked by students in the pilots is “Can you show me an example of a good reflection?”

Aligned with this effort, Bjorn Thomson, our MEd. student who coordinates 3 of our pilots, has started a Teaching e-Portfolio wiki. Bjorn’s done a wonderful job of collecting examples of teaching e-portfolios as well as building his own in the various softwares we’re piloting. I think you’ll find this is a great resource for the community. We’ll certainly add this resource to the website!

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