My teaching career started in 1993 in a private school; I taught all four grades of high school English.  Despite my next statement, it really was a good school with talented and dedicated teachers. The “curriculum” I was presented with was textbooks.  That’s what I got–two textbooks, one literature and one grammar, for each level. I, a 22-year-old newbie, had to decide what we would read and write, construct all exams and lessons from scratch, and determine the timelines for how everything would fit into the academic year.  I had no life for a couple of years, but I had loads of energy and, clearly, tremendous academic freedom–the experience came with an intense learning curve, but an extremely valuable one.  Although I left the school after seven years and now teach at NCC, I’m still in touch with many of my former high school “kids” (some of them are only four years younger than me).  What they all remember most about our class was the writing portfolio. 

Each student had a folder with a chart stapled inside. On each line of the chart they recorded the title, type/genre, and date of a particular assignment.  Some of them were graded essays or creative assignments, but the most-loved was the “self-generated” (SG). Every quarter students had to submit three of these SG assignments:  any genre, any topic. I would comment on them, but not grade them. The day after an SG was due, the students would, no exaggeration, rush into the classroom to read my comments. At year’s end, on the last day of class, students would take their folders and review all they had accomplished throughout the year, and ultimately take their folders home.  

And then who knows what happened to those folders.  

Maybe this?   

Process and Reflection

In so many ways education has become a “ticking boxes” exercise for students– “as long as I pass” or “do we have to know this for a test?” are commonly heard refrains attesting to this sad truth.  One of my goals is to erase those remarks from my students’ brains and mouths, and have them see their time in the classroom as an experience to appreciate rather than a chore to complete. For that to happen, they have to value learning in general.  ePortfolios, in providing students the opportunity to archive and review their work, show respect to the work the students do and to the process of learning. My hard-copy version of this was clumsy, easily lost, and just not attractive. Every folder looked the same, and could only hold paper.  The ePortfolio, with its more attractive and personalization-welcoming format and easy digital access, gives more respect to the content within and, in turn, to the learning that content represents. And that content, much of it writing, becomes so much richer with opportunities to include artifacts of video, audio, image. One could say the ePortfolio format even “forces” meta-cognitive reflection, though I don’t like the sound of “force.”  Perhaps better is to say it prompts, even the unwitting, toward reflection of their growth and learning and toward recognizing strengths and interests they may not have otherwise had (or have) taken the opportunity to notice. For an even more focused reflection, Yancey notes “In general, a system that is keyed to outcomes can be very helpful in terms of assisting student learning; research shows that asking students to evaluate their learning in the language of outcomes is one of the two most important tasks we can set”  (Murphy & Yancey, 2007 in Technological Ecologies and Sustainability,2009), and the ePortfolio facilitates this deeper reflection.   

Collaboration

Lessig’s book, Remix:  Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, written 22 years ago, acknowledged the value of and cultural move toward collaboration as technology creates such vast spaces for it, though his discussion leans in the direction of the legal ramifications.  We can all clearly see the ever-increasing reach of collaboration–crowdsourcing pays medical bills, creates marketing campaigns and music, and helps us avoid traffic. In summing up her discussion of the Macaulay ePortfolio Collection in “The Social ePortfolio: Integrating Social Media and Models of Learning in Academic ePortfolios,” Klein writes,  “Indeed, social media and models for learning influence each other; incorporating social media into academic practices not only enhances traditional learning objectives, but also introduces new methods and skills with which to prepare students for productive roles in the workplace.”  The ePortfolio is one such model, offering a platform through which people can collaborate (the way of the world) and share ideas, and there is obvious practical value to that as people often communicate and meet from remote locations in today’s classes and professions. But there’s more to its value than that: Among other successful outcomes, The Macaulay study Klein discusses described how two students used an ePortfolio to collaborate on their learning process through their “design a day” challenge. What a brilliant and collegial way to energize one another and invest in learning that would benefit their interests and career paths, while simultaneously providing an accessible place for documenting that learning, providing feedback to each other, and reflecting on/responding to that feedback.  My hard-copy folders couldn’t support such a variety of skill-development. Sure, my students could have worked together, but who would get to keep the work at the end? I suppose I could have had them comment on each other’s work, but would the lack of the screen-buffer have made them less likely to write those SGs sincerely and comment as honestly? More recently, I did use a wiki for one of my NCC writing courses–a developmental composition course. It was not as pretty or personalized as an ePortfolio (two elements that, to me, make the ePortfolio a stronger vehicle), but it did demonstrate the value of collaboration. Each week had a new page with a somewhat creative but not-too-long writing task. Students had to write the assignment and comment on other students’ submissions; there were general guidelines for comments to ensure courtesy and “professionalism.”  I didn’t know what to expect, but the students responded more enthusiastically than I’d hoped. Their comments were richer and more meaningful than what they gave when a person shared work aloud in class. After a while, they put more effort into proofreading their comments. Still further on, they put more substance into their in-class comments, the wiki-work giving them practice and confidence and serving as an “on-ramp” for them to get to know each other a little better because today, when you enter a classroom, students are not talking amongst themselves, they are staring at their phones; it’s the comfort zone. The wiki provided that comfort until the class felt more at ease with each other. It even worked for something as ostensibly mundane as vocabulary development. I can instruct students to “be on the lookout” for new words they come across as they read–but if I just ask them to write them down or tell them to the class, their efforts are perfunctory.  When we put those words on a wiki, where we could see the growth of the list and perhaps even add a little friendly competition to the activity, we generated over one hundred words. 

Reiterative/Showcase

I am truly impressed by the examples of the students described in Yancey’s chapter, “Portfolios, Circulation, Ecology, and the Development of Literacy,” who created multiple ePortfolios through a reiterative process and equally impressed by the apparatus LaGuardia College constructed to oversee the ePortfolio process.  That apparatus does not exist where I teach, so for my students, even if they do create ePortfolios for my class, other classes, or for personal reasons, that reiterative process would not have a hub. It would stand or fall depending on the students’ growing facility with and knowledge of the platform.  I suppose I could have them create two ePortfolios, one for the process, and the other a more polished “showcase” version (going through the reiterative process) which they could use to present their finest work, creativity, and personality. Is that a real possibility considering time restraints and other elements of curriculum?  I’m not hopeful.

If a campus-wide effort could be organized, however, I see requiring the showcase ePortfolio for degree programs or capstone classes as having tremendous value as an instrument of learning and as means of providing a global representation of the student to teachers, and maybe more importantly, potential employers.  Klein convincingly highlights the ePortfolio’s ability to showcase skills, strengths, analytical ability, intellectual ability, and creativity genuinely and thoroughly.   

At the end of his discussion, Klein writes, “As businesses move to embrace the social environment of the Web as a new model for professional interaction, the academy must not only follow suit, it must innovate.”  What an apt challenge. In one of your comments on a post, Dr. Davidson (I can’t remember which one!) you commented that some feel that college is “on the way out.” In light of your comment, Klein’s quote takes on a warning quality.  It seems we need to do some serious reimagining of education; the ePortfolio, and continuing to discover and re-imagine its uses for learning and professionalism, is a positive step.