Day 3 - 19 July 2023

Link to Workshop Slide Deck and Handouts: https://oeschminoriupui.wordpress.com/2023-aaeebl-prec-workshop/

In 2020, Julie Lindquist, renown rhetorician at Michigan State University, suggested that faculty revisit and question the idea that "teaching inclusively is (only) a matter of teaching 'about' diversity, rather than a matter of creating storied learning experience, or making good on the ones students have." Lindquist's suggestion echoes the sentiments of Mary Louise Pratt's keynote address at the 1990 Responsibilities for Literacy Conference. Pratt recognizes the valuable tools schools give to students but found it "unforgivable that schooling itself" gives students nothing meaningful to do with these tools and knowledge. I propose that ePortfolios combined with other High Impact Practices [HIPs] can cultivate rich experiences that build on what students want to know as faculty design storied learning experiences. These storied learning experiences include networking with community stakeholders and the community-experiential learning opportunity is foundational to the curriculum as faculty design effective frameworks for engaged learning. These projects anchored on experiential learning are a critical component as faculty challenge students to move beyond rote memorization to address complex problems.

Through this innovative PBL/ePortfolio curricular model, students research, experience, draft and revise meaningful, storied projects that engage personal interests, and connect with a community stakeholder, while students develop mastery of core-course concepts.

Part of the success of this curriculum is that it fuses rhetorical awareness, course goals, and student agency. D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, and K. Blake Yancey (2009) verity that “students demonstrate their own development and self-awareness of where they came from and where they are going in their learning” through ePortfolio reflections (p. Xii). The metacognitive nature of ePortfolio retrospectives provide built-in, required activities that challenge students to make these connections.

Resources

• Workshop website

• Slides for 'Fusing High-Impact Practices to Expand Access and Equity'

Ten AAEEBL principles support stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, and platform providers implementing ePortfolios with digital ethics at the center of their design. In collaboration with the AAEEBL ePortfolio Review (AePR), the Digital Ethics Task Force is proposing a special issue sharing open educational resources of the principles in practice. This issue will join efforts to make evidence-based ePortfolio practice explicit and accessible (Eynon & Gambino, 2018; Yancey, 2019; Donaldson, 2022). This workshop helps participants brainstorm and start drafting a submission for that special issue.

Knowing the ePortfolio community includes colleagues who may struggle to find the time and support to publish, we must provide explicit support, mentorship, and community for publishing. Specifically, this workshop is designed to reduce barriers that the AAEEBL community may face to publishing on ePortfolio practice. To achieve these goals, we propose the following workshop agenda:

1. Introduction to Digital Ethics Principles and AePR special issue call

2. Brainstorming manuscript focuses activity

3. Activity exploring potential manuscript organization (aligned with review criteria)

4. Active manuscript work time delivered pomodoro-style with ePortfolio scholars as guides

5. An action plan activity that helps participants take stock of draft progression timeline

6. Connection activity that creates support groups based on desire for ongoing writing support

The VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) rubrics have become some of the most popular pedagogical and assessment resources in undergraduate education. Released in 2009, the rubrics provided a clear counterexample to the predominant mode of student learning outcomes assessment of the time—standardized tests. The VALUE approach, which evaluates student mastery of a core set of 16 Essential Learning Outcomes through original academic work produced by students themselves, provided a new lens through which to assess student learning and growth during their postsecondary education. Did you know that one of the 16 rubrics was designed with portfolio-based work in mind? 

This session will take a “deep dive” into the Integrative Learning VALUE Rubric with a focus on student work in ePortfolios. Participants will engage in a “taste test” of calibration training where, together, we will apply the integrative learning rubric to samples of student work and then discuss how the rubric can be applied to ePortfolios within participants’ specific educational contexts. Calibration sessions are excellent professional development activities designed to foster interdisciplinary and authentic dialogue and reflection focused on assessment and broad learning outcomes.