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 Subject : Re:Re:ePortfolios for general students' experiential outcomes.. 02/22/2024 04:59:29 PM 
Rosario Davis
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Thank you to all who replied (including those who messaged me directly) - all responses have been extremely helpful. Our institution does not mandate experiential participation, but we are contemplating using ePortfolios as part of our series of resources. Your examples and insights are beneficial to our consideration. Have a great week.
Rosario
 Subject : Re:ePortfolios for general students' experiential outcomes.. 02/22/2024 02:04:25 PM 
Richard Robles
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For a number of years, I had students develop an eportfolio as a vehicle to provide summative and formative reflection of their professional development as engineering students. I stopped because no one else was doing it and the academic college didn't see the value of continuing it. It began as a manner to collect evidence of how students are meeting accreditation (ABET) learning objectives. But the college no longer needed the "qualitative" collection of evidence.

I studied eportfolio development and its implementation at the student and programmatic level between 2007 and 2018, and published a couple of articles. Here are some things to consider:

1) What are you going to do with the GB's of data? You need some way to track the student portfolios. If you have the portfolios stored on servers, you will need access, server space, and designated physical space that won't get appropriated by another office.

2) What financial, technical, and people power support do you have? Much of what I did was on my own time and dime, and on top of other responsibilities. While I had a small grant (roughly $5k), it wasn't sustainable. If you use some of the out-of-the-box systems (iWebfolio, Anthology, Wix, Canvas, Sakai, etc.), the money has to be there for continuous maintenance and support. Unless it is designed for the entire institution, your program will not be able to sustain such efforts.

3) How can the students benefit from this process? Is the eportfolio portable enough and versatile enough for them to take it anywhere? The freemium platforms allow for that, but the paid versions institutions subscribe to (see the list above) are limited in allowing students the opportunity to freely edit their portfolios after their time in school.

4) To what end are you having students reflect? For me, it started with how students build a professional identity within a digital construct. While that is still the case and I still have the portfolios, I can tell you there wasn't much support for me to pursue the outcomes I originally sold the program to be.

At the risk of sounding like a contrarian, eportfolios and co-curricular transcripts seem to be a recurring theme.... Why are we fixated on this when we've seen and heard the institutional challenges? Maybe I was ahead of my time.... but the technology has improved and would be happy to revisit these topics and my research.
 Subject : Re:Re:ePortfolios for general students' experiential outcomes.. 02/22/2024 12:05:54 PM 
Alli Sanchez-Perry
Posts: 0
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Hi Rosario,
Loyola University Chicago utilizes ePortfolios in diverse ways. Various programs ask students to build one single ePortfolio throughout their time in the program, while other faculty use ePortfolios at the course level. In both cases, students use ePortfolios to submit assignments, connect course concepts, reflect on their learning, receive peer/instructor feedback, and integrate academic and co-curricular experiences (this works particularly well in capstone courses!). In addition to academic portfolios, we assist students in creating professional/showcase ePortfolios to support them as they transition to life after graduation.

Overall, ePortfolios continue to demonstrate successful outcomes at LUC. You can learn more about our ePortfolio program at https://www.luc.edu/celts/programs/learningportfolio/. I'd be happy to answer other questions you may have- [email protected]
 Subject : Re:ePortfolios for general students' experiential outcomes.. 02/22/2024 11:37:51 AM 
Lisa Littlefield
Posts: 1
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Hello Rosario, We have an ePortfolio feature built into our Institutional Research platform Anthology (used to be called Chalk & Wire). When students submit major assignments associated with course learning outcomes, the work is automatically captured in this system that can be tailored and themed by the student while they are at the college. The system will generate a URL that the student can share with employers. After graduation, the content can be commuted to an alternative platform (WordPress, WIX, etc.). I think ePortfolios are still valued by many majors and career fields particularly for early graduates. There seems to be some growth in students using LinkedIn as a good vehicle to promoting their ePortfolios and LinkedIn itself has expanded user ability to upload multi-media directly to their site too. We're still promoting the use of ePortfolios since they are one of the AAC&U's HIPs. I'd love to hear how other people are using them or promoting their use to students. Best, Lisa
 Subject : ePortfolios for general students' experiential outcomes.. 02/22/2024 11:01:37 AM 
Rosario Davis
Posts: 5
Location
Greetings all,
For those who are using ePortfolios to enhance general student population opportunities to achieve milestones in experiential learning (beyond those seeking licensure such as teachers and clinicians), what is the status and level of success you find? Are ePortfolios continuing to demonstrate successful outcomes for your institution? Will you continue to use ePortfolios? Are the challenges outdoing the benefits?


I'm at [email protected]


Thank you!!
Rosario Davis
Assistant Director
Experiential, Career, & Community-Engaged Learning (EXC2EL) Center
Texas State University
 
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