Project: ePortfolio
Primary UITS contacts: Stacy Morrone, David Goodrum, Sara Chambers, Karen Watkins, and Lynn Ward
Last update: October 11, 2009
Description: Electronic portfolios allow for the gathering and organization of various electronic media, including assignments, documents, multimedia files, and other source material, in order to demonstrate the portfolio owner's achievement. In an academic setting, this achievement relates directly to more encompassing learning outcomes at the course, department, and institutional levels, so students, faculty, and potential employers can assess and evaluate learning in an authentic and comprehensive fashion. Originally developed through the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Open Source Portfolio (ePortfolio at IU) is now part of the larger Sakai project, with its own unique and diverse community development (see the final Mellon report). The ePortfolio project is now entering an especially ambitious and exciting period of development, as the software is being further customized to enhance what is already a compelling platform for innovative advancements across a diverse range of teaching and learning.
Outcome: ePortfolio represents not just another example of the power and benefits of open-source software development, but also the opportunity to significantly transform a nearly century-old practice of teaching and learning within higher education. Rather than viewing a student's academic progress as a series of unrelated courses, ePortfolio (integrated with the larger Oncourse CL environment) offers a unique perspective on the interconnectedness of courses across an entire program of study.
Milestones and status: During the 2008-2009 academic year, in direct response to needs identified by the IU campuses, the following features were introduced. These functionalities highlight the overarching requirements of collecting and evaluating student work in relation to course, program, and institutional learning outcomes and improving the overall usability of the ePortfolio tools:
- Continued enhancements to the existing ePortfolio tools
(with specific focus on the Matrices tool) to improve general
usability (e.g., redesign of icons, color schemes, placement of tools
on screen)
- Email notification for students when new feedback or evaluations
have been added to a matrix cell
- A suite of standard reports for the Matrices tool. As data is
collected within a matrix, the need to report on that data, in
various formats, becomes paramount. The following reports are now
available for use with all matrices that use a standard evaluation
form:
- Summary and detailed (per user) evaluation statistics for every cell in a matrix
- Summary and detailed (per user) cell/page status information for every cell in a matrix
- Summary and detailed link information for every cell in a matrix
- The ability to synchronize the ePortfolio site roster with the rosters of associated course sites. This feature eliminates the need for project coordinators to manually update the ePortfolio roster as students are added or removed from courses engaged in ePortfolio work.
In summer 2009, as part of the Oncourse upgrade to Sakai 2.6, enhancements developed at IU from fall 2008 through spring 2009 were merged with the Sakai community version of the ePortfolio tools, providing users with the following additional features:
- Compete redesign of the Presentations tool
- Ability to edit and delete feedback and evaluations
- Better group awareness and filtering in the Wizards tool
- Ability to apply an OSP Style to more screens of a Matrix
- Ability to control whether and how many general and item-specific feedback forms may be completed in Matrices and Wizards
Development plans for the 2009-2010 academic year include:
- Customization of University of Michigan's Page Composer environment, providing students with a flexible tool for creating and sharing personal presentations
- Reports with support for evaluation forms with multiple rating fields
- Exposing the Matrix evaluation form within the grading screen of linked assignments, which will allow instructors to evaluate portfolio submissions from within the Assignments tool
- Enabling assignment linking from the new Oncourse Assignments tool
- Consolidation of Wizards and Matrices into a single tool, which will provide Wizards with all of the functionality of the current Matrices tool
Note: As befits an application of ePortfolio's complexity, suggestions for new functionality are under constant review. All functionality targeted for development includes additional functional requirement clarification by the ePortfolio Functional Requirements Committee (eFRC) as well as final approval by the ePortfolio Executive Committee (eEC). Developers present iterations of the software for final review/approval.
Comment process: Email Lynn Ward.
Benefits: Too often, attempts to improve or otherwise change best practices of teaching and learning via technology have been unsuccessful, as instructors and students are often asked to compromise and are forced to work with a technology infrastructure that doesn't really address essential pedagogical requirements. ePortfolio is a direct response to this frustration; rather than force-fitting pedagogy with technology, ePortfolio seeks to align the central academic mission and focus of the university with a technology that is aligned with good pedagogy.
Client impact: ePortfolio offers students the ability to actively reflect on their learning, not just in a single course, but across their entire curricula. As a result, teaching and learning are transformed, as both instructors and students view learning as a life-long opportunity, and not something that occurs only in a classroom.
Project team:
- Lynn Ward, UITS Learning Technologies
- David Goodrum, UITS Learning Technologies
- Karen Watkins, Enterprise Software
- Sara Chambers, UITS Enterprise Software
- Susan Kahn, Office of Institutional Effectiveness, IUPUI
Governance:
- Anastasia S. Morrone, PhD
Associate Dean for Learning Technologies
Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO
Associate Professor, IU School of Education, Indianapolis
