Early Experiences with E-Portfolios: The View from Geography Steve Graves Department of Geography California State University, Northridge

Assessment? We needed a way to find out if our students were getting what we hoped from their time with us. No standardized means to measure Complexity of the geography ‘learning objectives’ Humanities, hard science, social science Had relied upon senior capstone paper

E portfolio Portfolios are common in some disciplines and have some history among the cartographers within geography. Unofficially developed by some motivated students, who found them good job-hunting tools. Provide a medium for a more fully considered analysis of student accomplishment than the capstone paper alone.

Nuts and Bolts We chose livetext.com because of recommendations by others on campus. Apparently WASC favors livetext.com as well Students can buy a subscription to this web service on- line or through the campus bookstore. The subscription is for the life of their enrollment, plus a year after graduation. About the cost of a textbook and can be used in multiple courses. Faculty subscriptions are free.

Things you can do with livetext Standards Portfolios Data Collection Accreditation Courses (syllabi, etc). Course management (coming soon?)

Standards If you have extra-departmental standards or your own SLO, you can measure and report student achievement by course or by program..

Portfolios Make a template and students can populate the template with artifact or evidence of their progress. Using rubrics you’ve created you can measure how well students are meeting the criteria for success. Students can provide visitors passes to anyone who would like to see their portfolio, including assessment teams and prospective employers. Portfolios can be archived by the department.

Data Collection Can create forms, that allow you to do assessment testing, surveys and course evaluations. The data can be stored and managed and reported to WASC.

Coursework Courses can be set up on live-text. Its not as feature-rich as WebCT, etc., but it does have some of the same functionality, such as a quiz maker, discussion boards, etc. It does have video functionality and ‘unlimited’ memory, so maybe creativity is the limiting factor.

Assessments In addition to the portfolio, if you have other assessment tools, they may well fit into livetext as well. You can report and share data about student performance on a number of indicators.

What we’ve done so far… The main project undertaken last semester was the construction of the portfolio template. Using our departmental goals, we created a series of learning outcomes over which we think students ought to be able to demonstrate mastery (competence?) The portfolio template has examples of ‘exemplary’ artifacts that demonstrate such mastery.

Link…if possible

Portfolio Sample Front

Sample Student Personal Page

Sample Student Resume

Sample Artifact Page

Sample Rubric

Sample Assessment Report Page

What I’ve learned so far…. Assessment is not an easy process Electronic portfolios are difficult to set up…but its not the technology, but the conceptual design that is challenging. The amount of work generated by assessment is not always evident in the early planning stages It’s OK to constantly update, upgrade, replace, edit or trash assessment instruments in favor of new ones.