Day 2 - 14 July 2023

ePortfolio showcases are a vital part of many university ePortfolio programs. Showcases allow students to share their work with audiences beyond their peers, classrooms, and community stakeholders. The faculty and staff who manage these showcases often invest hundreds of hours developing, curating, and promoting student ePortfolios. But, we rarely take time to talk about the platforms, scope, and labor required to start and manage these showcases. 

At this special session, we’ll hear from a tech guru, coordinators, faculty, and administrators with experiences managing a range of showcases, from small-scale to university wide ePortfolio showcases including in person and online options. Then, we’ll discuss the benefits of showcasing student work as well as the role showcases play in advocating for ePortfolio buy-in. [Interviews moderated by Debbie Oesch-Minor, IUPUI]

Resources

• Portfolio showcases, galleries, examples:

  • Auburn University ePortfolio Examples

  • CUNY Commons in a Box and CUNY Site Directory

  • International Center of University of Florida Portfolio Examples

  • IUPUI ePortfolio Showcase

  • John Jay College of Criminal Justice 3rd Annual ePortfolio Showcase

  • KPU ePortfolio Gallery, faculty and students

  • KPU Fashion Marketing Portfolio Showcase

  • Old Dominion University ePortfolio Examples

  • Seattle Pacific Department of Interior Design Showcase

Faculty can support student ePortfolio building by taking the mystery out of the technical skills needed for basic website builds on popular platforms. Our homegrown strategy? ePortfolios on the fives. Students can build websites using five tools, design engaging pages following our three-by-five strategy, and better tackle course-based ePortfolios when they engage with ePortfolios five times during their semester. Oesch-Minor and Swinford have used these strategies in their courses and will share samples of student ePortfolios that demonstrate the wide range of ePortfolio designs students create using these simple guidelines.

"ePortfolios on the Fives" is an innovative way for a university ePortfolio program to support students and faculty during their ePortfolio building experiences because it simplifies what some see as a barrier to using ePortfolios: the technology.

Why should we simplify and streamline ePortfolios for faculty and students? Because ePortfolio help optimize HIPs which increase student success. In 2018, ePortfolios were formally recognized as a meta-HIP in NILOA's "Using ePortfolios to Document and Deepen HIPs for Dispositional Learning" (Kuh, Gambinio, Ludvik, O-Donnell). This and other research verifies that ePortfolios promote metacognitive engagement across HIPs to support student learning. ePortfolios can empower students during the learning process when they share stages of emerging projects, document learning artifacts, and reflect on what they take from these learning experiences which helps them better transfer what they learn in one environment into other settings.

The student benefits associated with HIPs, including ePortfolios, are well documented. Still, some faculty and students baulk at the technological learning curve or fail to see the benefits of building an ePortfolio. Our short session will dispel myths, affirm the benefits of ePortfolio use, and provide strategies to simply ePortfolio building.

Resources

• IUPUI ePortfolio Studio: ePortfolio Basics

• Slides for 'EPortfolios on the Fives' as Google Slides

• Slides for 'EPortfolios on the Fives' as PDF

The AAC&U LEAP Challenge pushes teachers to move beyond textbooks and classroom-oriented assignments to engage students through authentic assignments with authentic audiences. Transforming our teaching tools is a vital part of re-imagining and engaging students as they create and curate ePortfolios that bridge disciplines and reach authentic audiences. Modeling these strategies for students helps them better visualize and understand the what, why, and how of ePortfolios. Developing our own Instructional ePortfolios to help teach ePortfolio thinking is the next logical step; it is our digital field of dreams.

This presentation will share Instructional ePortfolio models and practical strategies that empower both faculty and students and make them feel more confident as they teach or build ePortfolios from the cornfields of their experiences.

Resources

• Slides for 'Build It and They Will Come'

• IUPUI Honors Experience Instructional ePortfolio

• First-Year Seminar Instructional Support ePortfolio

• VIDA Study Abroad Instructional Support ePortfolio

• Debbie's 200-level Writing Course ePortfolio

ePortfolio is known as the 11th high impact practice, but how do we know if we are doing ePortfolios well? Based on participation in the AAC&U ePortfolio Institute, a faculty team from the Kinesiology Department at IUPUI implemented an in-class reflective journey mapping activity as a precursor to the ePortfolio in a first-year seminar course. Specifically, journey mapping was used as an innovative tool to teach students skills for self-reflection.

In this session, the facilitators will share their experiences and what they learned from this journey mapping project that has now been used for two years in a variety of courses to introduce ePortfolios

Resources

• Slides for 'Innovative Journey Mapping'

• Journey-mapping session Jam board

• Findings from a 6-Year Program Level ePortfolio Initiative in Kinesiologie

This year's AAEEBL Student Panel features a general session, Q&A chat options, and breakout rooms to maximize our time as we hear and learn from our students.

Panelists worked together to build a presentation ePortfolio featuring commentary on their ePortfolio experiences and links to their ePortfolios. Panelists include a variety of perspectives, from a student who is relatively new to ePortfolios to seasoned pros with ePortfolio experiences from undergraduate and graduate programs. 

Resources

• 2023 panel website

• Recording of the student panel from 2022

Janet VanLone and Rebecca Thomas (Bucknell University): Unleashing the Power of ePortfolios: Innovative Ways Education Majors are Showcasing Their Learning and Skills

Sophie Carrison (IUPUI): Portfolios as Nesting Dolls

Lisa Angermeier (IUPUI): Implementing a Degree-Oriented ePortfolio: Reflecting on an 8-Year Journey

Debbie Oesch-Minor (IUPUI): Strategies to Simplify Portfolio Building

Amy Vaughan and Geoffre Sherman (IUPUI): Leveraging ePortfolios in Learning Communities, Careers Courses, and Internships

Resources

Blog post 'Cultivating Equitable Engineering Pathways with the Capabilities Approach' by Sarah Appelhans

Recognizing the multiple ethical issues intersecting with ePortfolio practice, the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) created the Digital Ethics in ePortfolios Task Force. Composed of staff, faculty, and industry professionals from 3 countries (the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand), this Task Force developed 10 Principles promoting ethical ePortfolio practices, one of which is Visibility of Labor. Inspired by the International WAC/WID Mapping Project and the National Census of Writing, the Task Force decided to put the Visibility of Labor principle into action by conducting a year-long survey in the North American context that seeks to determine who does ePortfolio work, how that work is supported, and what inhibits ethical and sustainable ePortfolio implementations.

AAEEBL’s 2023 Annual Meeting will mark the close of the survey year. Thus, the presenters propose to offer a concise presentation of the results thus far, highlighting the findings that are most relevant to the AAEEBL community and inviting participants from the Pacific to participate in the next iteration of the survey, which we expect to start in October. This will also be the last opportunity to participate in this iteration of the North American version of the survey.

Resources

• Slides for 'Mapping ePortfolio Labor' as Google Slides

• Slides for 'Mapping ePortfolio Labor' as PDF

• North American mapping survey

• ePortfolio labor mapping survey for Australia and New Zealand

In this session we explore the value of an eportfolio signature assignment as it pertains to student self-understanding. In the Socratic sense it is necessary to “know thyself”: reflecting upon one’s thoughts, actions, and motivations is important for self-awareness, personal growth, agency, and empowerment. 

Aiming to go beyond the acquisition of subject matter knowledge and cognitive skills as vocational preparation, our e-portfolio signature assignment encourages students to recover their autobiographical voices (Pinar, 2004) and tell and retell their lived stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The pilot signature assignment is designed for first-year university transition courses and aims to connect course activities (e.g., class discussions reading activities, reflections) to student self-understanding. Using a “life journey timeline” framework and through a set of guiding questions (who are you, what is important to you, what are you passionate about, what do you hope to become) students will create a developmental eportfolio highlighting “praxis”, which Aoki (1993) understands as reflection in action, action in reflection. It also incorporates an authentic self-portrait: a space where they can release their imaginations and present their notions of “self” in creative forms other than writing (which importantly is an embodied and decolonial endeavor as well).

References

• Aoki, T.T. (1993). Legitimating lived curriculum: Toward a curricular landscape of multiplicity. In Pinar, W.F., Irwin, R.L., Eds., Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (2004). 199–218. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

• Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. Jossey-Bass.

• Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Resources

• Jam board for the reflection

• AAEEBL ePortfolio Review (AePR)

• International Journal of ePortfolio (IJeP)