University of Michigan ePortfolio Community & IT Partnership Rodney Williams January 26, 2004

Campus-Wide SIG: ePortfolio Community School of Education School of Social Work Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning School of Art & Design School of Nursing School of Music Language Resource Center Center for Research on Learning & Teaching Sweetland Writing Center Media Union Information Technology Central Services

IT Partnership Proposal  … ePortfolio community members share common goals, including a focus on students' intellectual development, integrating interdisciplinary perspectives, and developing students' capacity to reflect on what they are learning and to relate that learning to their professional interests. A web-based solution allows students to demonstrate their learning and make this process public.  IT Partnership Proposal Funded Spring 2003

ePortfolio Working Definition  a purposeful collection of work, captured by electronic means that serves as an exhibit of individual efforts, progress and achievements in one or more areas

IT Partnership Pilot Programs School of Education  Develop and study prototype of performance and competency-based ePortfolio in small teacher education program. Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning  Develop prototype of archive for student work using existing UM tools (Sitemaker).

Research in Teacher Education Lack of empirical evidence to support claims that portfolios  Improve learning  Improve performance  Improve program evaluation  Facilitate job search/improve employment prospects (Zeichner & Wray, 2001)

 Some anecdotal evidence suggests positive outcomes from paper based portfolio in UM teacher education program.  Coordinator reports program has improved as a result of feedback available from portfolio artifacts collected during the year as well as year-end products.  Attributes results to use of performance indicators (Danielson) which are based on INTASC standards. However….

Paper to electronic version: education goals  Improve process of portfolio creation so that students can better reflect on practice and continue reflection as they enter profession  Provide evidence of program effectiveness to be used for accreditation purposes

Focus group sessions  Education, Social Work, Art & Design, Architecture & Urban Planning, & Literature, Science and the Arts.  Facilitated by members of ePortfolio Community  Participants included faculty, students, and IT professionals

Findings from focus group sessions  Diverse opinions across the university regarding the desirability, feasibility, sustainability and design of ePortfolio systems.  Quite a bit of enthusiasm and interest  But, also a fair amount of skepticism

Findings from focus group sessions  Common need: storing, sharing, searching, peer review  Most immediate need seems to be in professional schools  Although goals suggest some commonality, need the ability to customize

Findings from focus group sessions  Only one unit (Art & Design) uses portfolios extensively and integrates them into curriculum  No strong interest in campus-wide system  Schools don’t want to be sold something they don’t need  Need to know what portfolios make possible that’s not possible now  Transcripts, resumes, recommendations are most important to grad students and employers  Neither students nor faculty want to learn new interface  Requires enormous additional amounts of time from students and faculty

Findings from focus group sessions: comments  “Not interested if it doesn’t serve larger curricular ends or if it doesn’t serve students.”  “Administrative costs are going to be enormous.”  “If students can’t express their creativity, what’s the point”?  “What is this going to provide us given the amount of money it’s going to cost and the resistance to using something they don’t really care about”?  “Bothered by a product that’s trying to be sold…Doesn’t strike me that it leads to education.”

Findings from focus group sessions: comments  “level of demand from employers isn’t known, but students are beginning to ask about electronic versions of curriculum materials.”  “rethinking its curriculum to become more competency based; students would customize their learning experience based on competencies rather than through majors.”  “I’m not clear faculty would actually look at my work.”  “the idea is to give students opportunities for feedback.”  “very difficult to find support.”

Next steps  Gather more data from campus-wide survey  Systematic inquiry and report on School of Education prototype  Examine costs, support, sustainability issues more closely