Category — News

I’ve heard Helen Barrett speak a couple of times about e-portfolios, reflection & digital storytelling and I am always impressed and inspired. She brings so much passion to the topic and backs up what she says with solid research and personal experience. She has such a clear committment to what I see as the central ethos of folio thinking…that portfolios should be learner-driven.

She included some new references in her talk. One in particular that is worth a careful read is How to write reflections, step-by-step.” Here at UBC, we are searching for ways to encourage and teach reflection. We are currently working on a resource page for our website that will inlcude a wide range of example e-portfolios and reflections.

I attended the BCEd Online Pre-Conference Day yesterday. In the afternoon I participated in a panel with my colleagues from the BC Systemic Portfolio Working Group. The purpose of the panel was to report on our work and discussions and to get feedback from conference attendees on the issues our group have identified as central to the bridging of portfolio practice from K-12 through to post-secondary.

I podcasted parts of the panel…Rather than reading my extensive summary, I figured that hearing the panelists in their own words would be almost as good as being there. Click on the mp3 files below to listen to snippets from the panel.

• Paul Stacey’s introduction Download File (.mp3) 4.5MB
• Shelley Willcox (Surrey SD) outlines portfolio K-12 context Download File (.mp3) 5.5MB
• Joe Jamieson (CoolSchool), Jan Fee (SFU) & Kele Fleming (UBC) give overviews of stakeholder views and the post-secondary context Download File (.mp3) 8.6MB

This came through the EPAC listserv recently…An article by Stephen Acker that was recently published in Campus Technology:

Overcoming Obstacles to Authentic ePortfolio Assessment

This morning’s broadcast, co-sponsored by BCCampus, showed a wide-range of e-portfolio practice across a large geographical area (Canada, US, UK, Europe, Australia). The title of the broadcast was “Electronic Portfolios for Lifelong and Lifewide Learning: Research and Practice.”

The Minnesota eFolio system is statewide and currently has 30,000 users. Darren Cambridge (George Mason University) conducted a research project with UMinn on e-portfolio use and gave a good overview of some of the research questions pursued. Some of those questions were:
– how does reflection impact student learning?
– what impact do e-portfolios have on student’s engagement with their learning?
– do e-portfolios help improve the workplace experience?
– do e-portfolios help students and instructors reach their educational goals?

These questions are similar to the one being aksed by David Tosh in his PhD. research, as well as, some of our project leads here at UBC. It will be interesting to see how some of our findings compare with those of Darren Cambridge and the eFolio folks.

The hand-out from this morning’s broadcast has more information on the various systems that were highlighted and on the research project itself. It will soon be posted for CoP members in the Community area of the blog.

Dave Tosh has posted the latest iteration of the learning landscape model he has been working on with a number of colleagues in recent months. You can view a PDF on Dave’s blog.

It’s particularly interesting to see how they’ve connected all the various elements of learning together in one roadmap with ELGG at the centre. I’d like to see this model developed a step further to plug in the “real” (as opposed to virtual or online) instances and contexts of learning.

Alan Levine explores the possible links between podcasting & e-portfolios in this interesting post on his cogdogblog.
Check it out!

BCCampus is organizing this 2-day event to be held June 2 & 3 at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology. I’m very pleased to be co-facilitating one of the full-day sessions (on e-portfolios, of course!) on June 2 with David Tosh.

The full program and registration are now available on the BCCampus website.

Kathleen Yancey delivered both an excellent lecture and an informative workshop as part of our Teaching & Learning with Technology Series on March 29th. She brings a lot of passion to her work and our Community of Practice was very inspired by the day! She focused on the process of reflection and folio thinking rather than on the end product. A very refreshing and simple approach.

Here are some reflections on Kathleen Yancey’s talk & workshop from our community members…

From Marion Porath, ECPS:

I was particularly impressed with Kathleen’s integration of e-portfolio strategies with literature on learning and research on the effects of digital learning. The things that “go with” e-portfolios – integrative thinking, reflection, thinking in context, thinking in community, self-assessment, and peer review – all contribute to making them a learning tool with great potential.
Some phrases/questions I loved and that I think capture the essence of the digital learning experience are:
Genre of portfolio
What makes it digital?
A new site or space for learning
Creating portfolios (rather than technology) that both take off and take hold.

From Valeria Veripot, Enrolment Services:

I have a few thoughts I would like to share:
Kathleen’s passion for e-Portfolio is highly communicative. It was a wonderful experience to have someone that passionate as a speaker.
She highlighted the different styles of e-Portfolios she has encountered and helped me realise there is not one ideal portfolio…but each one is unique.
During the workshop, going through the different portfolios and the evaluations has given me an idea of what are the key elements of a good e-Portfolio. Kathleen has also helped me go through the major hurdle of creating an e-Portfolio and has shown me how easy it is once you are given proper direction. I enjoyed her approach very much.

From Bob Bruce, Education:

One point she made which I found interesting Kele was when she talked about combining co-operative, peer education with making learning visible. The practice of using a web based tool to have several peers critique one’s writing and then the author choosing which edits to apply and annotating the changes and why they were made, seems a very powerful way of creating reflection and community among learners.

The most recent EPAC chat took place on the morning of March 24th. This was a well-attended chat that focused on an update on EPAC activities, sessions, and discussions from the AAHE National Conference on Higher Education which took place mid-March in Atlanta, GA (http://www.aahe.org/National/2005.htm). The face-to-face EPAC meeting at this conference was facilitated by Tracy
Penny-Light from the University of Waterloo and Helen Chen from Stanford University.

These chats are always a great way to connect with people from other schools doing similar (and different!) work with e-portfolios. I connected with a couple of folks (Stanford, Kennesaw, Simmons) interested in hearing more about our International Peer Program here at UBC and how this group may leverage e-portfolios next year. They are also mapping out ways to use the e-portfolio to promote global learning/awareness for their students.

Congratulations are in order for Dave Tosh & Ben Werdmuller, who have released ELGG as Open Source. Here is some info from Dave’s blog:

It is now available – Elgg version 0.1 alpha has been released as open source software under the GNU Public License.

At present documentation is limited to install instructions, however, this will be rectified shortly!

You can also read more about this in Ben’s blog.