WPA Assessment Institute Electronic Portfolios, Writing Classrooms, and College Programs: Emerging Practices and Theories, New Issues and Challenges

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WPA Assessment InstituteElectronic Portfolios,
Writing Classrooms, and College Programs
Emerging Practices and Theories, New Issues and
Challenges

• Margaret Price, Darren Cambridge, Michael Neal
• July 12, 2007

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Definitions, Core Concepts, and Key Contexts
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What are some foundational features or
characteristics of portfolios?

• While portfolios are more, they should at least
  include
• Collection
• Selection
• Reflection

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What do we often associate with Collection?

• Rationale written competencies are complex
  enough that rarely can a single piece of writing
  demonstrate the necessary range
• Challenges students need to keep and organize
  relevant writing samples from first year courses
  some writing samples must be completed outside of
  classes
• Rewards if done well, students will have initial
  longitudinal evidence of their learning and
  development for their own benefit and for others

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What do we often associate with Selection?

• Rationale students consciously choose texts (or
  other artifacts) from a larger body of work to
  demonstrate competence
• Challenges many students dont have the larger
  picture of educational goals or understand how to
  appropriately represent themselves to the reader
• Rewards students who learn to select their best
  samples and an appropriate range of material know
  the outcomes or goals

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What do we often associate with Reflection?

• Rationale students who reflect on their work and
  processes have greater opportunities for self
  assessment, goal setting, and other valuable
  objectives
• Challenges many portfolio models dont include
  reflection students must be guided to effective
  reflection reflection genres vary
• Rewards students who learn effective reflection
  techniques ideally internalize them and become
  life-long learners assessors can use reflection
  to gain insights on student work

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Principles of Reflection

• Tacit knowledge (Dewey)
• Reflection-on-action, reflection-in-action
  (Schön)
• Reflective practitioner (Hillocks)
• Reflection-in-action, constructive reflection,
  reflection-in-presentation (Yancey)
• Stages of reflection description, analysis,
  judgment, planning (Kolb)

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Challenges in Reflection

• It can serve many different functions from goal
  setting to self assessment to surveillance
• It can appeal in portfolios in a number of places
  and genre cover letter, reflective essay,
  reflective annotations, end notes, etc.
• Students need to be taught and guided through the
  processes
• Difficult to know how to include in the assessment

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Potential Shift in Core Contexts for Writing
Specialists

• Early portfolios (80s-90 portfolio heyday)
  seemed to emphasize process and the ability to
  comment on works in process (e.g., Eva)
• Reemergence of ePortfolios seem to emphasize
  advantages of the range of digital texts included
  in portfolios such as visual rhetoric,
  multi-media composition, multiple genres, and
  diversity in artifacts (e.g., Clarissa)

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Key Concepts

• Multiple and connected
• Integrity
• Emergent outcomes
• Audience
• Subject Position
• Multimodality

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Tensions in Portfolio Use
Purpose Accountability Improvement
Epistemology Objectivist Intuitionist
Locus of Control Institutional Individual
Metaphor Test Story
Framework Outcomes Abilities
Rubric Criteria Heuristics
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One Size Doesnt Fit All

• Using portfolios designed to promote learning for
  high stakes assessment poses numerous legal and
  psychometric problems (Wilkerson Lang 2003)
• Portfolio formats and workflows designed for
  large scale assessment rarely promote learning
  directly
• Learning and motivation tied to individual
  ownership and audience

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Core Concept Multiple

• Working portfolio - all the material collected or
  made available for use in portfolios and all the
  associations made within that collection the
  larger archive from which portfolio elements are
  selected
• Presentation portfolio - designed for and shared
  with particular audiences or collection of
  audiences for a particular rhetorical purpose
• Remixing - Power of time, energy, and information
  invested can be multiplied

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Core Concept Connected

• Discourse around shared ePortfolios can build
  community
• Portfolios can integrate multiple sources of
  evidence, including other portfolios
• Multiple technologies can be integrated to
  support ePortfolio development and use

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Multiple and (Somewhat) Connected at New
Century College

• First-year portfolio
• Course portfolio
• Leadership portfolio
• Internship portfolio
• Graduation portfolio

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Core Concept Integrity

• Integration of the personal, professional, and
  academic
• Portfolio as a site for investigating conflict
  and achieving synthesis
• Professionally tuned personal
• most accurately and positively reflect your
  human being

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Importance of Integrity

• An elements of integrative learning (more later)
• eFolio Minnesota research indicates a central
  factor in degree of impact and motivation
• Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio
  Research results show impact on motivation,
  retention, student engagement
• LaGuardia Kapiolani Community Colleges

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Tracy Wright on Integrity

• I think it'd be difficult to separate
  completely, you know, who I am and what my
  immediate family loves are versus just me as a
  professional educator and nurse. So I think that
  that was important for me to be able to display
  that I am a real person I have a family, I
  have kids and I think that that brings me closer
  to what maybe students are experiencing. I am not
  someone who's isolated to the world of
  professional nursing education. I also have
  conflicting, or competing maybe, obligations
  within my life that I need to balance, just as
  students do and other professionals do, and I
  think that that's a good thing, to show students
  and people that are reading my sites, I have
  other obligations in my life, and I manage to
  hopefully balance them all and be able to perform
  to the best of my ability in all those domains.

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Examples of Integrity

• Tracy Wright
• Manju Poudel
• Sean Moore

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Core Concept Emergent Outcomes

• Important to measure intended learning outcomes,
  but
• Learning in complex and people are diverse
• Some of the most important learning may be that
  we couldnt predict was going to happen
• Yancey the experienced curriculum vs. the
  delivered curriculum
• Portfolios as a genre solicit evidence of
  emergent outcomes

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Academics as Test of Self in Leadership Portfolios

• We intended for curricular content to be an
  central source of evidence and ideas and
  strategies, but it didnt show up this way
• Class work functioned as
• A demonstration of character virtues
• An experience
• A goal putting aspiration towards those virtues
  in action

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Steadfastness

• Consistency of commitment over time seen as a
  central leadership virtue
• Tenacity, perseverance, patience, follow through
• Standing up to opposition and peer pressure
• Essential to ability to create change
• Much more prominent than persuasiveness
• Spirituality and family key arenas for
  demonstrating steadfastness

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Core concept Audience

• Explicitly define audience for portfolio authors,
  and/or clarify to what extent they should
  self-define their audiences.
• Audience of faculty portfolio jury Sarat
  Muhammed.
• Audience of first-year biology students Bethany
  Strong.

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Core concept Subject position

• The chosen tool / platform will have a
  significant impact on how portfolio authors
  position themselves.
• The politics of the interface are relevant here,
  as is Lisa Nakamuras research on the ways that
  interfaces tend to police authors abilities to
  position themselves.
• Example Alice Woods.

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Core concept Multimodality

• To what ends do we want to encourage
  multimodality?
• How do multimodality and access overlap? To what
  extent are the conversations within disability
  studies and studies of usability talking to
  each other?
• What does meaningful multimodality look like?
• Example Roxanne Samuels.
• Example Quellencia Hall.
• Example Latrice Darnell.

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Key Contexts

• Student affairs - academic affairs partnerships
• First-year experience

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Key Context Student Affairs and Academic Affairs
Partnerships

• Focus of third cohort of the Inter/National
  Coaltion for Electronic Portfolio Research
• Shifts focus to the whole of students learning
  during their learning careers and the full range
  of ways colleges and universities support that
  learning

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Key context First-year experience

• Opportunity to integrate
• Across disciplines
• Between home and campus cultures
• Context for academic and personal planning
• Conversation piece for building relationships
  with faculty