ENGINEERING NOTEBOOKS, PORTFOLIOS AND EPORTFOLIOS By Janet Lopez

OUR JOURNEY Engineering notebooks  Use, construction, no-no’s, grading, best practices Portfolios  Definition, hard copy vs e-portfolios, Items to include, grading, best practices

ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK Engineering Notebooks exist for one reason:  Documentation of all work to substantiate originality of design, idea or process. In my classroom, the engineering notebook also serves as a notebook to record class notes and vocabulary in addition to design documentation.

ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK CONSTRUCTION Content:  Title page  Table of contents  Chronological entries  Includes sketches, notes, calculations, brainstorming, designs (initial, changes, final), team information, pictures, etc.  Expert contacts These are a Must:  Every page numbered sequentially  Two dated signatures on each page - authors and witness  Include the words Proprietary Information on each page

ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK NO-NO’S  No empty pages  No white spaces (general rule – no more than 4 lines of unused paper)  No pages unnumbered  No missing pages  No added pages  No pictures loosely attached (all pictures must be securely attached and signed)  No pencil (I break this rule!)

GENERAL SET UP Title Page Table of Contents 1 st column Date Page Content Page Number Include Name of course, student name, year and school.

GENERAL SET UP GUIDELINES Content Pages Page Title Content Student Signature Picture Glued in Signature that goes across the picture onto the page Witness Signature Proprietary Information X’d out white space

GRADING ENGINEERING NOTEBOOKS What I have done in the past  Having Friday as a EN grade day  Not recommended!!!!  Grading every notebook once a week on a certain day. IED was on one day, POE another, etc  Having myself be the witness signature My plans for this year:  For IED - I will be witness signature  Other classes – classmates will be witness signature  Will still try to grade once a week BEST PRACTICES????

PORTFOLIOS A portfolio is a sampling of the breadth and depth of a person's work conveying the range of abilities, attitudes, experiences, and achievements.

What is a Portfolio? A portfolio is usually described as a collection of students’ work and achievements during their academic career. (Challis, 1999; Chen, Yu & Chang, 2007,

PORTFOLIO: HARD COPY VS ELECTRONIC Hard Copy  Hard copy portfolios present well  Can use a range of media including 3D material  Many people prefer to have a hard copy to view  Printing pages and pages of documents is expensive  Bulky  Cannot send easily Electronic  No need to carry bulky items around  Can easily be seen via link by numerous clients  Flexible formats  Currency of information – easily updated  Quality of information is greater  Technical issues can cause problems  Viewer may not be able to view your portfolio  May not always be readily available Encourage students to do both

ITEMS TO INCLUDE IN THE PORTFOLIO Title page – for hard copies this must be on the outside of the 3 ring binder Information page – succinct Table of Contents – Usually done by units/topics Title page for each unit  A representative example of your work from each activity or unit Reflection page Use a rubric to grade the portfolio

E-Portfolios are fairly easy to make and there are a plethora of websites available to aid in the construction of the e-portfolio. The easiest I have found (may not necessarily be the easiest for all) is on Google sites. Best Practices on Grading or Construction?

As with everything, adapt to fit your class and your students. The important thing is to encourage documentation. Donald Clark blogged the following to keep all of this in perspective: E-portfolios have taken up more conference time and wasted effort than almost any other learning technology topic I can recall. The idea’s been around since the nineties but isn’t it odd that no one seems to have one? And if they do it's forced upon them by an institution or LMS. Never has so much time been devoted to something with so little real impact. want.html

REFERENCES – WEBSITES USED IN THIS PRESENTATION Dr. Helen Barretthttp://