eportfolio tools

Creating eportfolios as a course project is a good way to engage students in their coursework, if you present the eportfolio as an exercise in digital storytelling–specifically the story of their work and progress. If your institution has a campus-wide deployment of an eportfolio system, such as Epsilen or the Carnegie Foundation’s KEEP Toolkit (see comment below about availability), you can draw on common resources with which to introduce and support your students’ work.

There are a variety of free tools on the web, though, with which you and your students can be creative in crafting eportfolios to suit your course situation. Yours might be an essay-driven course, or perhaps yours requires students to create a lot of graphs and data-driven material. Or yours might focus on research and collaboration. Sometimes its easier to find the tools that work best for you than to reconfigure a template-based system.

Helen Barrett is a name you will run across in your research on eportfolios, and she not only provides expertise on the purpose of such work and lots of links to resources, she puts her money where her mouth is and has created a staggering list of eportfolios using all sorts of tools and methods, so that you have good models to view. Here are some of her resources:

Online Portfolio Tools (with links to models): http://electronicportfolios.org/web20portfolios.html

Portfolio and How-To on WordPress: http://hbarrett.wordpress.com/my-portfolio/

• Dr. Barrett’s Portfolio in a blog format with a special tab on how to create a portfolio in a WordPress blog.

Electronic Portfolios.org: http://electronicportfolios.org/

• This is a gateway site to many of her pages. She’s been at this for almost two decades and her examples are well worth visiting

I have used course portfolios in composition courses, in which students select drafts and graded papers, reflect on the process of creating them, and evaluate their own writing process and progress in a course. It is the truth that I find some of their best writing in their reflections and in their presentation of the portfolio. I have not asked students to use online tools for such a project, but look forward to doing it soon. Now that we can take advantage of more methods of telling stories, using audio, video, and photos, I think the results could be very interesting.

How would you use today’s tools to suggest creating an eportfolio?

Filed under: Web 2.0, blogging, collaboration, computers, digital literacy, education, grading, innovation, online learning, presentation , eportfolio

evolution of clickers to no clickers?

I’m collecting information on how faculty can employ classroom response (clicker) technology on the cheap. Before we buy into a product, particularly one that students have to purchase that are of no use outside the classroom, I think we need to explore using cell phone text messaging or SMS.

Even a top company like Turning Technologies has been moving fast in the direction away from the independent clicker. First they created the anytime, anywhere Response Card Anywhere that you could use on a field trip, and now they have software for your phone–Responseware.

That’s cool, but why payware in a world of freeware?

Then there’s the Open Source Poll Everywhere software that is free for classes of 30 or less. That’s a pretty tight limitation that would only work for a select few classes. I will be trying it out and reporting in a formal document to distribute to faculty.

Here’s a sample poll from Poll Everywhere. The Keyword is the phrase that begins with “cast”:

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

I’m sure that if there’s not one already, that the Apple iTunes App Store will have one soon for free, but then there’s the cost of an iPod Touch or iPhone to deal with, and that’s an even bigger cost.

I’m probably going to suggest a wait and see how it all turns out before we commit to a campus-wide contract.

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In response to the comment, below, I tried a Google form poll (although not with any respondents, yet). They are really easy to make, and you’ll notice in my second question that you could choose other, and that would become part of the class discussion. Alternatively, I could have let the audience type in their “other” response.

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As noted in Chris’ blog description, students would need to be in a computer lab or have individual access (mobile or laptop). In such a situation, I think the Google option is good. I especially like that it is not connected to PowerPoint. I certainly don’t want to promote PPT unless necessary and done very well. Breaking up a presentation/discussion by going to the Google form, seems a good way to keep a variety of actions in a class.

Filed under: Web 2.0, grading, pedagogy, student-centered learning

you must write a blog in this course: here’s why

Yesterday’s Campus Technology article, “Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students,” is a terrific reminder that we cannot just throw technology at students and expect them to accept it blindly or use it intelligently or learn from its use.

Here are Ruth Reynard’s list of mistakes in brief:

1. ineffective contextualization
2. unclear learning outcomes
3. misuse of the environment
4. illusive grading practices
5. inadequate time allocation

I have used both group and individual blog assignments with undergraduate and graduate students. For my purposes, I found the group blogs more effective, but in either case, I made certain to tie the assignment to my course learning outcomes, and I explained in writing how to develop a blog, what I would be looking for, and how the blog would be graded, for example:

Course outcomes that could be achieved through a blog assignment: In a graduate course on information technology for leaders, a few things I wanted students to be able to do by the end of the course were (1) Develop a personal perspective on innovation and the future of information technology, (2) Work collaboratively on a topic related to information technology, and (3) Think critically about and report on issues in scholarly articles related to information technology. As you might see in these desired outcomes, students need to develop a voice on the course general topic, and a published blog is a great place to develop your voice.

Stating clearly what you want from the students and from the assignment: I informed students that  the blogs should “peak readers’ interest in a way that would make them want to comment.” I told them that I wanted “interesting and serious posts on their topic.” Finally, I told them that the “blogs should show that they are becoming well read in the area of their topic.”

Teaching how to blog: Don’t assume that students who have read or created blogs have thought much about the blog as a genre of writing or that their experience has been productive. Teach students how to blog and their learning will be better accomplished.

• I offered examples of group blogs so that students could see how team members might complement each other or how they might write opposing views on a topic without becoming a public fight.
• I suggested that “contributors on group blogs develop their own identity or personality, and that readers might look forward to hearing from one particular member of a group blog if they exhibit diverse opinions.”
• I suggested places where they might look for resources to write about, particularly news items or professional articles related to their topics, and how they could integrate their own voice and opinion into posts that cite resources.

Be clear about how the project will be graded: In addition to a required number of posts, usually 3 per week from the group, however they divided that among members, I would grade the blogs on the following elements:

• Quality and interest of posts.
• Interest to educated general readers.
• Interest of linked articles.

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Reynard makes a point in her articles that I second strongly–blogs are not discussion boards. In a workshop once, a faculty member wondered why I didn’t comment on every post and expect students to do the same with each other’s blogs, because he saw them as a public discussion board. As Reynard notes, one’s blog post is a published statement, and whether or not readers write comments is not really a concern of the blogger. Readers may carry on their own conversations, as desired, but I wouldn’t suggest that the blogger get involved, unless desired. Comments can certainly tell you if your ideas are conveyed as you meant, and you may get good ideas from readers, but the purpose of the blog, as I see it, is to polish your voice and learn to articulate your subject.

Filed under: Web 2.0, blogging, collaboration, communication, digital literacy, grading, learning, teaching, technology

my blog’s been moved

WooHoo! My blog has been moved to the new blogger! What a relief–now I can invite my GAs to post again, just when they’re about to graduate;(

Oh, well, it bodes well for next year.

I should be posting something about instructional technology, but I’ve been grading some backed up papers for the last few days. Technology gets the papers delivered (drop box, email, flash drive, whatever), and technology allows me to type in comments or print out hard copies to mark by hand, and technology allows me to return papers electronically–but I’m still reading them, thinking about what they say, and trying to critically analyze where they fit into a grading standard. That hasn’t changed.

Oh, wow. I can add labels (tags), now, too!

Filed under: document delivery, grading, procrastination