Kathy Harring has published an article in the latest issue of the AAC&U’s Peer Review, highlighting the varied uses and forms of eportfolios in practice at Muhlenberg. The article, “Eportfolios: Supporting Reflection and Deep Learning in High-Impact Practices,” can be found here: http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/2016/summer/Harring.
Harring, vice president and dean of institutional effectiveness and planning, together with Muhlenberg’s previous instructional designer Tian Luo (now at Old Dominion University), provide an overview of the evolution of eportfolios since their introduction on campus in 2010. Drawing on data from student surveys and participant observations, the authors provide insights on student experiences with eportfolios and their perceptions of the value of this kind of reflective and integrative work. Faculty and staff thinking about integrating eportfolios as a course assignment or program requirement can learn from the case studies presented in this article. They include:
In her neuroscience research lab, Gretchen Gotthard (associate professor of psychology and neuroscience) works with students as they develop eportfolios connected to their undergraduate research experience. “Eportfolios in this context provide a record of students’ research activity, develop students’ abilities to critically analyze and synthesize the literature, and support deeper reflection of undergraduate research.”
In “Digital Media Design Lab,” instructor Tony Dalton has students develop eportfolios to showcase and reflect upon their coursework in media studies and production, as well as co-curricular experiences. In this CUE course for media & communication seniors focused on media design and making, students “integrated the knowledge, abilities, and practices they had encountered across their major course of study.”
Dana Scholars developed eportfolios in their Sophomore Seminar, taught by Sue Clemens, as space to reflect on their service learning experiences. Focused reflections on issues of privilege, race, representation, and community challenged students to reflect on their service learning activities with high school students and connect these experiences to course readings. The eportfolios were also a space for students’ weekly blogging, “allowing them to make visible the ways that they applied the conceptual knowledge gained in the course to working with local communities.”
When students in the education certificate program undertake their student teaching semester, supervised by Kim Rohrbach, they develop eportfolios that serve several purposes. Student teachers use their eportfolios to produce a curated selection of teaching artifacts–including video and text–demonstrating their teaching abilities. Student teachers’ written reflections help contextualize these artifacts and serve as a meaningful developmental self-assessment tool for exploring both successes and challenges encountered during the semester. “Thus, the eportfolio served as a means for developing students’ teaching skills and their professional identity as an educator, as well as a way to distinguish themselves in job searches.”
The article brings together lessons learned from five years of teaching and learning with ePortfolios at Muhlenberg. The authors work with illustrative case studies that offer a glimpse at some of the ways faculty are effectively framing eportfolios as pedagogical practices. For more information on this work, please visit this site http://eportfolios.blogs.muhlenberg.edu/ and contact Jenna Azar if you would like to learn about the possibilities for ePortfolios in your course or program.
