Early Experiences with EPortfolios: The View from Geography

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Early Experiences with E-Portfolios The View
from Geography

• Steve Graves
• Department of Geography
• California State University, Northridge

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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

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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.

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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.

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Things you can do with livetext

• Standards
• Portfolios
• Data Collection
• Accreditation
• Courses (syllabi, etc).
• Course management (coming soon?)

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Standards

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

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Portfolios

• Make a template and students can populate the
  template with artifact or evidence of their
  progress.
• Using rubrics youve 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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What weve 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.

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Linkif possible

• http//college.livetext.com/college/

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Portfolio Sample Front
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Sample Student Personal Page
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Sample Student Resume
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Sample Artifact Page
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Sample Rubric
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Sample Assessment Report Page
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What Ive learned so far.

• Assessment is not an easy process
• Electronic portfolios are difficult to set upbut
  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
• Its OK to constantly update, upgrade, replace,
  edit or trash assessment instruments in favor of
  new ones.