E-portfolios are a big bet
By: Katrina Carter-Tellison, Ph.D.
The saying goes, “you have to bet big to win big” and there’s no doubt about it –e-portfolios are a “big bet.” Whether it is the effort needed to engage students, the time required by faculty, or the commitment of institutional resources, e-portfolios are an enormous endeavor. However, what has emerged from The Search for VALUE Symposium, is that there can be no more effective way to assess student learning and no greater tool to make changes to that learning process than e-portfolios. The workshops focused on three key areas: the philosophical argument of “why” use e-portfolios; the nuts and bolts of using e-portfolios for assessment; and how to accurately evaluate institutional technology needs.
As educators, we find ourselves facing a difficult challenge. As Darren Cambridge stated in his session, “the outcomes we most value are often the most difficult to measure.” How do we measure empathy and personal and social responsibillity? Can there be a standardized test for such outcomes? E-portfolio methods allow us to examine these principles and concepts in a contextual way across time. E-portfolios allow students to engage in the all-important principles of Integrative learning. Students can make links and synthesize learning across courses, semesters, and disciplines over time. In fact, that time does not have to be restrained to the period during which the student is enrolled, but depending on the technology employed, the e-portfolio can be utilized indefintely throughout students’ lives.
Learning is such a complex and complicated process, however, that the e-portfolio method can allow educators to answer the call of the ‘accontability drum’ while simultaneously allowing for the individual differences that are essential to the learning process. The war may have well been fought and won on what is essential for the twenty-first-century student, but the battle is only just beginning on the most effective ways to assess this learning. The e-portfolio method as it was presented in the symposium, although extremely ambitious, seems to be the most comprehensive and accurate way to do just that.
Dr. Katrina Carter-Tellison is the Chair for the Center for Liberal Education and the Chair, Dialogues of Learning in the College of Liberal Education at Lynn University.
Dear Katrina,
Thank you for your report-back, ‘e-Portfolios are a big bet’. My instinctive response is ‘Nothing to gamble – it’s a certainty!’ As a keen follower of anything ‘e-Portfolio’ I do hope that published proceedings of all the meetings will be available, particularly for those of us ‘the other side of the pond’.
Possibly one aspect appears not to be covered, that of ‘ownership’. My argument which applies to all ages, ‘5-95′, is that pride of ownership, through tools that allow for the learner to represent themselves in their own way is perhaps the highest motivator to so many aspects of learning.
I appreciate the fact that your Annual Meeting is a voice for HE. However, as one who is involved in providing mainstream education with a Lifelong and Lifewide e-Portfolio tool (here in the UK and Europe), I would suggest that it is time that the universities looked at the impact of e-Portfolios on learning both in K-16 education and also the continuum of learning throughout adulthood. It is therefore important that HE does not dig itself further into a silo whereby e-Portfolio strategies outside their remit are ignored to their own detriment.
HE will steadily experience a serious influx of ‘Web2.0 students’ who are used to collaboration, peer review, mentoring, a range of learning styles and formative feedback. My repeated question is, ‘How are teachers and lecturers changing their resources and presentation methods in order to take advantage of these new teaching and learning skills?’
Kind Regards,
Ray T