Category — Community

Thanks to Shona Ellis for sharing her experience with e-Portfolios in her Biology course with the Community of Practice back in November. Also, Shona kindly gave us permission to post her presentation here to share with the community.View the presentation:

* 6 Slides Per Page (.pdf)
* PowerPoint Slides

During this month’s CoP meeting (see agenda here), Bjorn Thomson & Alison Wong lead a demo of the KEEP Toolkit, another one of the e-portfolio tools we’re looking at.

Background Information
The KEEP Toolkit was originally intended to be used as a faculty/instructor presentation tool by Carnegie Mellon. In the recent past, users have been using it as a showcase e-portfolio tool. It is a free tool that is currently hosted on Carnegie’s servers in the U.S. There are plans afoot to allow schools to install the software’s source code in order to host the software at their schools. This is an important step for Canadian users concerned about privacy & the U.S. Patriot Act. The KEEP Toolkit has been used in 2 of our pilots over the last year, Teacher Education and Master’s of Education. The UBC Transitions Program (provides university instruction to gifted high school students) has also used KEEP.

Some Features Outlined

• highly customizable; works well as a middle ground tool
• widgets allow inclusion of up to 20MB of multi-media
• works well as a presentation tool/showcase e-portfolio
• create presentation pages called snapshots that can be “stitched” together to create a showcase e-portfolio (note the KEEP-specific terminology!)
• advanced layout options are available to control colours, navigation positioning, etc.
• includes a gallery tool that allows users to share a number of different e-portfolios (they appear in a clickable list)
• privacy: can only send snapshots to other KEEP users; but can copy & paste snapshot URLs into emails to external reviewers (ie., non-KEEP members)
• users are able to download snapshots as zip files (series of HTML/web pages) that users can upload elsewhere
• contains a rich text (WYSIWYG) editor
• does not have a set limit for storage (except for media files)
• does not have a central file manager view; users do not get a display list of all the files they have uploaded to KEEP

A Case Study
The KEEP demo was followed by a presentation from Marion Porath, an instructor in the Master’s of Education program. Last year, Marion’s students created e-portfolios to document their capstone experience or their culminating reflection using the KEEP Tool Kit. The students were asked to do the following:

• present artifacts that demonstrated mastery of their educational and professional goals
• link theory and research to practice
• generate and apply ideas across courses

Instructor Findings
Marion found that the KEEP Tool Kit was a great middle ground tool that allowed technically advanced students to be creative while supporting those who were not overly tech savvy. Her students were very engaged in the process of creating an e-portfolio; the e-portfolio spurred them to think deeply and engage with their learning on a new level. The built-in reflective nature of the folio thinking process helped Marion’s students conceptulize their throughout the program and articulate their culminating experience.

The e-Portfolio Process
Marion’s students truly bought in to the e-portfolio process. They were well-supported on the technology side, with a comprehensive introduction provided by Bob Bruce’s CMS group and ongoing support provided by Bob’s group as well as a graduate student assistant. The students also participated in the Community of Practice’s collaborative research project (they completed online surveys and participated in a focus group).

What was Learned?

Marion showed a number of student examples that demonstrated creativity, strong conceptual integration, individuality and thoughtfulness about learning goals. Students chose a metaphor to represent their journey through their master’s program.

Students learned…

• mastery of content and technology
• new ways of thinking
• how to build strengthened collaborations

Thanks Marion for such an informative presentation! It’s clear that one of the key reasons the e-portfolio was so well-received by the students was the effort their instructor put into the process!

UBC-O Joins the CoP Meeting
Peter Arthur, UBC-O’s Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning, joined the meeting via videoconference. There is growing interest in e-portfolios and folio thinking at UBC-O,, so expect more UBC-O attendence at our CoP meetings.
Peter reported that UBC-O is in an exploratory phase and they are currently looking at giving their faculty the option of creating faculty e-portfolios. There is also interest within UBC-O’s Education faculty in having their students build reflective and presentation e-portfolios.

Next Meeting
Wednesday, November 30th (TAG Seminar Room)

During this month’s CoP meeting (see agenda here), we saw a demo of WebCT 6 in the e-portfolio context.

Background information:
Some of our pilot projects are currently using WebCT’s **Student Presentation Tool** as a tool for students to build e-Portfolios. The Student Presentation Tool provides students with their own webspace to store artifacts. The instructor usually provides a one-page e-Portfolio template so students can build their e-portfolios following the template structure.

Currently the Student Presentation Tool is a separate tool in WebCT CE 4. It does not link with the My Grades Tool or the Assignment Tool. In the next version of WebCT CE, the Student Presentation Tool will be incorporated into the Assignment Tool, and thus, will also link with the My Grades Tool. This [case study](./private-docs/ce4_vs_ce6.pdf “Case Study”) compares the process of creating a e-portfolio course in WebCT CE4 and CE6.

Below are some notes I gathered during the demo:

* WebCT will be releasing a e-Portfolio module for CE6 next year (expect beta version around February 2006.)
* In CE6, students will have access to their own **Content Manager**
* This basically gives student access to their own file manager (a private webspace/storage in WebCT.)
* The Content Manager will be separate from their courses.
* System administrator can set different storage limit for different roles (i.e. students, designers, instructors.)
* It supports automatic WebDAV so students do not need to set it up manually on their computer.
* Students can also upload multiple files at once using the web interface.
* It also provides a WYSIWYG HTML editor for students to create HTML files.
* Instructors can use the **Group Manager** to generate groups for collaborative group work.
* Students can share discussion board, chatrooms, and files in the group.

Some new features in the next version of WebCT CE 6:

* Peer review
* Active Learner Tool – to track learning goals
* Rubric Builder
* Weblogs
* Wikis

The group expressed interest in continuing with software demos in the next few meetings. Our next CoP meeting will be Oct. 26th and we’ll plan a 20-minute demo of one of the following tools: OSPI, ELGG or Keep Toolkit. Also, at our next meeting, we’ll move forward with some of the visioning we did as a group in the summer. Please review the summary Kele handed out at the meeting. Identify the priorities for for the next 2 years and think about how we can put those priorities into action.

Here’s a copy of the summary if you missed it…Download file

Just a quick heads up to our community members about my response to the OSPI 2.0 load test:

Q1) Did you get any system errors? If yes, describe in details (script name and step, or describe what you were doing).
No… but probably some browser display errors.

1. I can’t join a worksite at first, I tried several times in Firefox for Mac, and Safari. Then I tried it out in Firefox on a WinXP machine. It still took me a few tries to join the TESTSITE
2. Step 3: Adding contact info. The drop down menu simply doesn’t show anything on the Mac. I have to use the Windows machine to add contact info.
3. Adding reflection page, it crashed Firefox for Mac.
4. Resetting the Matrix didn’t work in Firefox for Windows.

Q2) Describe system response time in seconds. If response is slow, please note the function that is slow.
It is pretty slow at all times.

Below is a link to a summary of our April 2005 CoP meeting and demo of the iPeer tool by Jim Sibley from Applied Science.

Meeting Summary

Earlier in April, Kele, myself and a handful of CoP members attended a demo session for the new version (version 3) of iWebfolio. This demo showed us the live version of what was demo-ed back in January. This version of iWebfolio will be released later in the summer.

There are some new features in iWebfolio that we would like to share with the community.*New Features*

* There will be a social networking component in iWebfolio. This would mean adding a “permission tree” and group-based access level to portfolios and/or parts of portfolio content. [not available in early v3.0, but possibly later releases].
* Users will be able to use WebDav to upload files to iWebfolio (instead of using the web interface). Given the ability to use WebDav, users can download all associated files and e-portfolios in one go.
* Report function.
** Nuventive is working on making the reporting mechanism more robust.
** Improve ability to use reports for assessment.
* Flexible look and feel –> puts more responsibility on the students to manage the look and feel; gives them more control.
* Attachments, reflections, self-rate all on one page now (fewer mouse clicks).
* Built-in HTML editor/WYSIWYG, similar to WebCT

Attached is the handout from this morning’s e-portfolio broadcast.

Download file

For those of you who couldn’t attend the lecture or the workshop on March 29th, I’ve posted the handouts below. We will also have Kathleen’s ppt, as well as audio & video of the event available here soon.

Lecture Handout

Workshop Handouts

• Download file
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Below is a link to a summary of our most recent meeting. Note that I will be sending a call out to the community for feedback on future goals and directions of the CoP. Details are included in the meeting summary. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Download file

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