EPortfolio As Curriculum: Models and Practices for Developing Students' EPortfolio Literacy [1 ed.] 9781620367612

Citation preview

“Kathleen Blake Yancey’s book is the latest, and in several ways the most profound, addition to the research and practice of ePortfolio. It beautifully identifies and presents achievement of the following essential goals in the curriculum: (a) supporting student learners in creating ePortfolios in this encompassing understanding of curriculum, (b) fostering ePortfolio literacy (i.e., knowledge and processes), and (c) helping students become ePortfolio makers.”—TERREL L. RHODES; Vice President; Office of Quality, Curriculum and Assessment; Association of American Colleges & Universities

“Master teacher/learner Kathleen Blake Yancey curates a richly fine-grained collection, zooming in on the exciting ways that today’s faculty—and students—use one of higher education’s most transformative practices. Provocative and satisfying. First rate!” —BRET EYNON, Associate Provost, LaGuardia Community College (CUNY)

“This very timely volume  .  .  .   offers rich and detailed insights into pedagogic practice and cogent rationales for practice  .  .  .   that empower  .  .  .   students as they construct, integrate, and make accessible their ePortfolios—and themselves learn from their learning over time.”—ROB WARD, Director Emeritus, The Centre for Recording Achievement, United Kingdom “I highly recommend this informative and inspiring book.”—BARBARA L. CAMBRIDGE, Professor Emerita of English at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis

T

his book provides faculty, staff, and administrators with a set of frameworks and models useful for guiding students in designing and creating ePortfolios that clearly communicate their purpose and effectively use the affordances of the medium. The curricular models provided include both those integrated within existing disciplinary courses and those offered through credit-bearing stand-alone courses.

KATHLEEN BLAKE YANCEY is Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University.

Cover designed by Kathleen Dyson Cover photo: © Jacob Ammentorp Lund/istockphoto.com

22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166-2019 www.Styluspub.com

HIGHER EDUCATION | ASSESSMENT

ePORTFOLIO AS CURRICULUM

Yancey.indb 1

21-03-2019 12:25:32

Yancey.indb 2

21-03-2019 12:25:33

ePORTFOLIO AS CURRICULUM Models and Practices for Developing Students’ ePortfolio Literacy

Edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey Foreword by Terrel L. Rhodes

STERLING, VIRGINIA

Yancey.indb 3

21-03-2019 12:25:33

COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY STYLUS PUBLISHING, LLC. Published by Stylus Publishing, LLC. 22883 Quicksilver Drive Sterling, Virginia 20166-2019 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, and information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Yancey, Kathleen Blake, 1950- editor. Title: ePortfolio as curriculum : models and practices for developing students' ePortfolio literacy / edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey ; foreword by Terrel Rhodes. Description: First edition. | Sterling, Virginia : Stylus Publishing, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018033993 (print) | LCCN 2018043326 (ebook) | ISBN 9781620367612 (Library networkable e-edition) | ISBN 9781620367629 (Consumer e-edition) | ISBN 9781620367599 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781620367605 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Electronic portfolios in education. | Curriculum planning. Classification: LCC LB1029.P67 (ebook) | LCC LB1029.P67 E687 2019 (print) | DDC 371.39--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033993 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-62036-759-9 (cloth) 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-62036-760-5 (paperback) 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-62036-761-2 (library networkable e-edition) 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-62036-762-9 (consumer e-edition) Printed in the United States of America All first editions printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard. Bulk Purchases Quantity discounts are available for use in workshops and for staff development. Call 1-800-232-0223 First Edition, 2019

Yancey.indb 4

21-03-2019 12:25:33

To our students: from whom, and with whom, we are learning so much

Yancey.indb 5

21-03-2019 12:25:33

Yancey.indb 6

21-03-2019 12:25:33

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ix

Terrel L. Rhodes ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xi

INTRODUCTION ePortfolio as Curriculum: Models and Practices

1

Kathleen Blake Yancey 1 ePORTFOLIO AS CURRICULUM Revisualizing the Composition Process

13

Amy Cicchino, Rachel Efstathion, and Christina Giarrusso 2 COLLATERAL LEARNING AS AN ePORTFOLIO CURRICULUM

33

Sharon Burns and Jo Ann Thompson 3 ePORTFOLIOS IN A WORLD LANGUAGE LEARNING CURRICULUM

47

Karen Simroth James, Emily E. Scida, and Yitna Firdyiwek 4 HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE ePORTFOLIOS71 A Curriculum on Reflection to Support Individualized Educational Pathways

Laura Wenk 5 IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT AS CURRICULUM A Metacognitive Approach

89

Susan Kahn 6 UNTANGLING THE PAST AND PRESENT WHILE WEAVING A FUTURE ePortfolios as a Space for Professional Discernment and Growth

107

Gail Matthews-DeNatale 7 LIMITING ePORTFOLIO REQUIREMENTS, RAISING STUDENT ENERGY Establishing a Culture of Student Advocacy for ePortfolio Programs

123

Sue Denning

vii

Yancey.indb 7

21-03-2019 12:25:33

viii  

contents

8 CREATING AN ePORTFOLIO STUDIO EXPERIENCE The Role of Curation, Design, and Peer Review in Shaping ePortfolios

135

Kathleen Blake Yancey 9 MACAULAY SPRINGBOARDS The Capstone as an Open Learning ePortfolio

149

Joseph Ugoretz 10 METACOGNITION ACROSS THE CURRICULUM Building Capstone ePortfolios in Stanford University’s Notation in Science Communication

169

Jennifer Stonaker, Jenae Druckman Cohn, Russ Carpenter, and Helen L. Chen 11 THE INVITED ePORTFOLIO CURRICULUM

191

Katherine Bridgman 12 INTEGRATIVE LEARNING AND ePORTFOLIO NETWORKS

203

Cheryl Emerson and Alex Reid 13 CONCLUDING FORWARD

235

Kathleen Blake Yancey

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

INDEX

Yancey.indb 8

251 259

21-03-2019 12:25:33

FOREWORD

A

s someone who has been engaged with ePortfolios and the ePortfolio community for many years, I am always discovering something new to stimulate my thinking in advancing student learning and success. Kathleen Blake Yancey’s ePortfolio as Curriculum: Models and Practices for Developing Students’ ePortfolio Literacy is the latest, and in several ways the most profound, addition to the research and practice of ePortfolio—not a statement I make lightly given the panoply of scholars in the field. For those of you who are new to ePortfolio, this book is a wonderful place to begin the journey. If you are a veteran of ePortfolio, this volume is an encapsulation, a framing of ePortfolio practice and thinking that brings research and application to learning and creates the results that inspired us to begin ePortfolios. The book’s design is deceptively simple. It discusses ePortfolio and the curriculum as ePortfolio operating in a single course, ePortfolio operating programmatically, and ePortfolio developing through a specific course, thus showcasing the meta high-impact practice that ePortfolio embodies and exemplifies. By focusing on the curriculum, we confront curriculum’s current incarnation that emphasizes knowledge as the substance of learning. For many of us, this is the passion that brought us to higher education in the first place, the heart of how we often define ourselves. Yet, curriculum historically and more generally also encompasses the entire student experience, the interstices, the synapses, and the sinews that connect substance, experience, and reflection. Curriculum, as it is tested and refined through practice and application, sustains sensemaking and meaning. Now curriculum is an intentional, formative, and developmental design that prepares individuals as adult learners through iterative personal and social practice within a formal educational framework or construct. ePortfolio as Curriculum beautifully identifies and presents achievement of the following essential goals in the curriculum: (a) supporting student learners in creating ePortfolios in this encompassing understanding of curriculum, (b) fostering ePortfolio literacy (i.e., knowledge and processes), and (c) helping students become ePortfolio makers. In essence, the interactive and collaborative processes of ePortfolio are helping students have the space and validation to create and develop their own voice and identity. In Yancey’s ix

Yancey.indb 9

21-03-2019 12:25:33

x  

foreword

term, this is ePortfolio makingness. These three goals are or should be the goals for all learning throughout the curricula. The case studies address these goals to illustrate ways in which ePortfolio can and does facilitate accomplishment of the goals. Common to most of the case studies are themes and practices that bring faculty and educators together with student learners not only doing tasks that require metacognition but also explicitly recognizing that metacognition is what they are doing. Meta is defined in multiple ways including terms such as change and transformation, more comprehensive, transcending, and situated behind and beyond. In this context, ePortfolio enables and encompasses the heart; the muscle; the connective tissue; the neurons for action and integration; and the curation and expression of iterative learning in its enduring, evolving, and dynamic fullness. ePortfolio in its “meta” conception is a substance, a thing, a medium, a reflective practice, a way of acting and collaborating, and a way of thinking. Amply demonstrated in this collection, ePortfolio encompasses the entire curriculum and is its own curriculum at the same time. The e in ePortfolio also encourages focusing on the dynamic quality of learning rather than settling for the static picture of a single paper, grade, or transcript. As expressed in one case, it is comparable to looking at a streaming video rather than a set of photos. The articulation of ePortfolio as a curriculum allows broader access and understanding for more educators because the conversation relates directly to the day-to-day work of educators. At the same time, the curricular focus challenges educators to reclaim the curriculum beyond the narrowest sense of the term—courses that contain and convey necessary knowledge—back to the more intentional and practiced sense of using necessary knowledge that results in self-awareness and knowing when, how, and why one’s knowledge is useful in practice to solve problems, pose critical questions, and enhance existence. As educators, we understand designing knowledge acquisition, scaffolding knowledge, and organizing opportunities to access and take in knowledge in multiple times and ways. What educators struggle with is how to better incorporate or integrate essential learning outside our own area of expertise. This volume provides multiple applications of how all educators can begin to see ourselves contributing to a foundational curriculum that could truly result in all students having a better chance to achieve the learning we espouse for higher education graduates. Terrel L. Rhodes Vice President Association of American Colleges & Universities

Yancey.indb 10

21-03-2019 12:25:33

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

here are many to thank. First, of course, my thanks to the contributors, who have collectively mapped an ePortfolio curriculum supporting students’ ePortfolio literacy and helping us begin to understand what constitutes this literacy. Likewise, thanks to John von Knorring, McKenzie Baker, and Stylus Publishing for their help in developing and publishing this project. Second, thanks to the numerous institutions that have welcomed hearing about an ePortfolio curriculum, including University of Alabama, Pacific Lutheran University, Texas A&M University-Texarkana, Salt Lake Community College, University of California at Santa Barbara, Miami Dade College, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, Governor’s State University, Hampshire College, National University of Singapore, Appalachian State University, University of Minnesota, University of Denver, University of Arkansas, DePaul University, and Oxford College. Thanks also to the WASC Assessment Leadership Academy. Third, thanks to all our participants in the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research. In 2003, Barbara Cambridge and I founded the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, later named the Inter/National Coalition, with Darren Cambridge joining the leadership team. We hosted seven institutional cohorts; cohorts 6 and 7 were particularly helping in thinking about various dimensions of ePortfolios related to an ePortfolio curriculum. Thanks to their members: Sharon Burns, Sonja Andrus, Teddi Fishman, Gail Ring, Bob Brackett, Barbara Ramirez, Kathryn Coleman, Sophie McKenzie, Cai Wilkinson, Julie Bokser, Sarah Brown, Caryn Chaden, Michael Moore, Michelle Navarre Cleary, Susan Reed, Eileen Seifert, Kathryn Wozniak, Liliana Barro Zecker, Naomi Silver, Anne Gere, Beverly Oliver, Susan Scott, Kay Abernathy, Laurie Poklop, Chris Gallagher, Rowanna Carpenter, Yves Labissiere, Bob Cummings, Mary Ann Dellinger, Lisé Bake, Patrick Green, Michelle Kusel, Shannon Milligan, Carol Scheidenhelm, Christine Bachen, Andrea Brewster, Susan Parker, Ruth Benander, Brenda Refaei, Jo Ann Thompson, Catherine A. Buyarski, Karen R. Johnson, Cynthia M. Landis, Kristin E. Norris, Debra D. ­Runshe, Susan B. Scott, Katherine V. Wills, Kathryn Wilson, Elizabeth xi

Yancey.indb 11

21-03-2019 12:25:33

xii  

acknowledgments

Davis, Christy Desmet, Deborah Miller, Karen Forgette, Wendy Goldberg, Guy Krueger, Alice Myatt, Kenneth E. Koons, and Christina R. McDonald. Fourth, thanks to my colleagues at the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-based Learning (AAEEBL), including Trent Baton (now retired), Tracy Penny Light, Terry Rhodes, Rob Ward, Susan Kahn, Helen Chen, Gail Matthews-DeNatale, Eddie Watkins, David Hubert, Kevin Kelly, Kate Coleman, and Bret Eynon. Fifth, thanks to my faculty colleagues in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Florida State University, a collaborative group par excellence: Kristie Fleckenstein, Michael Neal, Rhea Lathan, Tarez Graban, Stephen McElroy, Deborah Coxwell-Teague, and Jacki Fiscus. Thanks as well to the many students who have learned with me about ePortfolios and about how to make them, including Meghan Dykema, Anna Worm, Ashley Rea, Amanda May, Amanda Brooks, Amy Cicchino, Julianna Edmonds, Brad Anderson, Christina Giarusso,, Aimee Jones, Jeanette Lehn, Kendra Mitchell, Kyllikki Rytov, Ashley Holmes, Jeff Naftzinger, Joe Cirio, Erin Workman, Jenn Enoch, Travis Maynard, Megan Keaton, Bret Zawilski, Andrew Burgess, Bruce Bowles, Jason Custer, Heather Lang, Katie Bridgman, Christine Martorana, and Stephen McElroy. And, as always, thanks to my family: my husband David; my daughter Genevieve and her family, Sui Wong, Calder Yancey-Wong, and Amelie Yancey-Wong; and my son Matthew and his family, Kelly Yancey and Clara Yancey.

Yancey.indb 12

21-03-2019 12:25:33

INTRODUCTION ePortfolio as Curriculum: Models and Practices Kathleen Blake Yancey

E

lectronic portfolios, or ePortfolios, identified now as the eleventh high-impact practice influencing postsecondary student success, have been used in higher education for more than 20 years. For example, a special issue of Computers and Composition dedicated to electronic portfolios was published in 1996. Beginning in the late 1990s groups of faculty sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching began exploring the value of ePortfolios. In 2001 Electronic Portfolios: Emerging Practices in Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning (B. Cambridge), the first published volume specifically focused on ePortfolios, addressed how they were being used by students, faculty, and institutions. In that edited volume, multiple contributors described various efforts to use ePortfolios to motivate change in the academy, to change how students were collecting and reflecting on their classroom assignments, to change how faculty understood their own teaching, and to change how institutions engaged in self-study and assessment activities. Since the publication of Cambridge (2001), other volumes have provided complementary if somewhat different views. For example, Reynolds and Patton’s (2014) Leveraging the ePortfolio for Integrative Learning: A Faculty Guide to Classroom Practices for Transforming Student Learning highlighted ePortfolios as a site for hosting integrative learning, and Penny Light, Chen, and Ittelson’s (2011) Documenting Learning With ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors provided guidance for faculty, staff, and administrators seeking to establish ePortfolio programs. Compiling research on multiple campus ePortfolio efforts, D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, and K. Yancey’s (2009) Electronic Portfolios 2.0 reported on different kinds of ePortfolio models, practices, and assessments and, importantly, provided the first evidence that ePortfolios could be efficacious for learners: Students 1

Yancey.indb 1

21-03-2019 12:25:33

2  

introduction

who composed them were more likely to be successful in school than their peers who did not. Scholarly journals also contributed to knowledge in higher education about ePortfolios, and in 2011 the first issue of an ePortfolio-specific journal, the International Journal of ePortfolio, was published. More recently, combining research on ePortfolios with a new model, Eynon and Gambino’s (2017) High-Impact ePortfolio Practice: A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning shared results of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) Catalyst Project, which treats campus portfolio activity through five “interlocking sectors” (p. 29): pedagogy, professional development, outcomes assessment, technology, and scaling up. Collectively, these volumes paint a robust portrait of ePortfolio practices and of a steadily increasing body of knowledge about ePortfolios themselves as a vehicle to support student learning, as a unique site for hosting integrative learning, and as a powerful genre for assessment. One area related to ePortfolios, however, that has not been explicitly discussed is an ePortfolio curriculum, including what it would look like and how it would function. As Gail Matthews-DeNatale explains more fully in chapter 6 in this volume, a curriculum includes two components: “the combined impact of the . . . (process of learning) and the . . . (substance of content)” (p. 110). In other words, a curriculum includes knowledge and process. In the case of ePortfolios, as this volume documents, such a curriculum can be either woven throughout another course or offered as its own course. In each case, the purpose of this curriculum, which varies from campus to campus, is threefold: (a) to help students create ePortfolios, and (b) to support them in developing what we might call ePortfolio literacy as they (c) become ePortfolio makers. Which, of course, begs the question: What is it that students need to know and do to become ePortfolio makers? What do our answers to this question tell us about what an ePortfolio curriculum might look like? It’s worth noting that whatever ePortfolio curricular knowledge and practice may be, and this volume surveys a good deal of both, not all ePortfolio composers engage in such practices or develop ePortfolio literacy. Some ePortfolio models require that students only upload artifacts, not that they engage in ePortfolio composing. At my institution, for example, students in one college have been required to create an ePortfolio of samples showing their development of critical thinking over several semesters. Nothing more was asked, or allowed, of students, other than uploading the relevant documents to a formatted site. That may be a very narrow kind of ePortfolio, but it’s not unique, and it’s the kind of ePortfolio that is labeled in Figure I.1 as an ePortfolio as wrapper. In this model, although the ePortfolio hosts learning, it exerts no effect on learning. There is evidence of learning in the

Yancey.indb 2

21-03-2019 12:25:33

introduction  

3

Figure I.1.  A continuum of approaches to ePortfolios. ePortfolio as Wrapper-------------------------ePortfolio as Curriculum Learning happens inside and is represented in the ePortfolio.

Learning happens inside and through the practice, including creating the ePortfolio. Thinking like an ePortfolio maker.

ePortfolio, but the learning itself has occurred in the creation of the artifacts the ePortfolio hosts, not in the creation—selecting, designing, composing, and assembling—of the ePortfolio itself. Other ePortfolios, which are the focus of this volume, engage students as ePortfolio makers and in the process support them in developing ePortfolio literacy, that is, knowledge about ePortfolios; about reflective practices represented in them; and about ePortfolio makingness, defined as ways to create ePortfolios. These ePortfolio curricular models, represented on the other end of the continuum, not only host learning but also construe ePortfolio creating as an integral part of that learning. Creating the ePortfolio can involve multiple activities, among them collecting potential artifacts; engaging in processes of selecting appropriate artifacts for a given purpose and audience; contextualizing and curating artifacts; using design as an intentional feature of ePortfolio curation, navigation, and aesthetics; revising a full ePortfolio or parts of it; remixing parts of an ePortfolio for a new ePortfolio; reflecting on artifacts and experiences; and sharing the ePortfolio locally and globally, in person and online, with various audiences. For example, in the University of Buffalo general education model, described in chapter 12, students intentionally develop the multimedia aspects of their ePortfolios as part of demonstrating their digital citizenship, whereas students in Macaulay Honors College, as explained in chapter 9, create an ePortfolio capstone that hosts and is fully integrated with their culminating research project. In cases like these, creating an ePortfolio is a critical part of students’ learning, and it provides a site, as Laura Wenk of Hampshire College observes in chapter 4, where students can document their pivotal learning moments. One consideration, then, is where students learn to engage in such practices: Where do they learn how to archive potential artifacts, and, perhaps more important, where do they learn to make insightful and appropriate selections of artifacts, and where do they learn ways of contextualizing and curating them? Where do they learn about different kinds of reflections? Where and how do students learn about ePortfolios—through readings, review of other ePortfolios, or other strategies? Are there ePortfolio-specific prompts and assignments? What role if any does the audience—on campus and around the

Yancey.indb 3

21-03-2019 12:25:33

4  

introduction

world—play in such a curriculum? In sum, what are the ePortfolio-specific curricular elements that faculty, staff, and administrators might consider in designing their own ePortfolio curriculum? Taking up such questions, ePortfolio as Curriculum: Models and Practices for Developing Students’ ePortfolio Literacy explores various models of an ePortfolio curriculum and various ways it is being offered.

Lessons From the University of Virginia and St. Olaf College My own thinking about an ePortfolio curriculum began several years ago and in three ways: by creating a one-credit ePortfolio course; by learning about other ePortfolio courses, especially one at the University of Virginia; and by reviewing ePortfolio-specific outcomes that have developed over time, especially at St. Olaf College. I have used portfolios in my teaching since 1979, beginning with print portfolios. In the late 1990s I piloted one ePortfolio project and migrated completely from a print to an electronic format in 2000. In 2013, as I discuss more fully in chapter 8, I created a one-credit ePortfolio course for graduate students in the rhetoric and composition program at Florida State University. I designed this portfolio course as a studio course where students created different kinds of portfolios depending on their needs; some were MA students creating a portfolio as their culminating project; others were MA and PhD students looking for different kinds of jobs, some in technical writing or as faculty in the academy; and others were graduate students who wanted to create ePortfolios to apply for teaching and fellowship awards. The purpose of this ePortfolio studio course was, and is, to provide a space for such work. We define ePortfolios, explain ePortfolio models and practices, and develop drafts of ePortfolios informed by multiple peer-review processes. About two years later, I discovered another one-credit ePortfolio course, this one at the University of Virginia, offered to undergraduates. Also an elective, this course helps students become ePortfolio makers by engaging them in the creation of three separate ePortfolios: “a learning eportfolio (created for personal educational and reflective purposes), a presentational e-portfolio (targeting audiences such as prospective employers, instructors, peers, or others), and an exploratory e-portfolio (based on any creative topic of interest to you)” (Firdyiwek, 2016, p. 1). In selecting potential artifacts, students are advised to draw from multiple contexts; they are also advised to explore the meaning of artifacts by juxtaposition—putting one artifact in dialogue with one or more—to generate insights across them and to help think about possible ways of arranging them in the ePortfolio. Students also collaborate to develop criteria for assessing portfolios, and they present their ePortfolios

Yancey.indb 4

21-03-2019 12:25:33

introduction  

5

to a face-to-face (f2f ) audience. This model of ePortfolio demonstrates other aspects of ePortfolio makingness, ones somewhat different from those emphasized in my course; it also suggests that perhaps ePortfolio makingness was (a) an activity that we should define further and (b) an implied goal of an ePortfolio curriculum. What ePortfolio makingness, and thus a curriculum in ePortfolios, is has also been suggested by the outcomes we employ when reading and responding to ePortfolios. In this regard, the development of the ePortfolio outcomes at St. Olaf College’s Center for Integrative Studies (CIS) provides an object lesson in how our understanding of ePortfolios has changed and in the kinds of curricular components a successful ePortfolio includes. Established in 1999, St. Olaf’s CIS provides a curricular site for students to design their own unique interdisciplinary majors; interdisciplinary studies are defined as “the intentional combination of diverse methodologies, experiences, subject matters, learning styles, and resources. Individual students may use integrative studies to develop an individual major that satisfies their educational goals” (Center for Integrative Studies, 2018). The ePortfolio that students created at that time was keyed to four outcomes, focusing on different kinds of thinking linked to St. Olaf ’s institutional mission: thinking in community, thinking in context, integrative thinking, and reflective thinking. These outcomes, I thought, were very smart, emphasizing different kinds of thinking inside a single portfolio that signaled development as well as accomplishment. After several years of experience with this model, however, St. Olaf ’s CIS decided that to assess the ePortfolio, three additional outcomes were needed: focus, navigation, and use of the visual. These too I thought were smart. One area that students often experience difficulty with is focus, especially when they are designing their own ePortfolios. As a genre, ePortfolios seem to be sufficiently capacious that multiple topics and paths can be included; at the same time, an ePortfolio isn’t a random compilation of loosely related artifacts but rather a focused genre (Yancey, 2004) telling a coherent story enriched by multiple artifacts all contributing to that narrative. Accordingly, the artifacts have to be linked, focused in some way for readers and reviewers to access and make sense of them. Likewise, the way to navigate the ePortfolio matters: A reader can’t reward learning whose representation as project, video file, or audio podcast can’t be found or is misplaced or miscontextualized. And because ePortfolios are hosted and displayed on the visual screen of the Internet, the role the visual plays in communicating also matters: We see very differently on the screen than we do on the page. Collectively, these seven outcomes, which include four kinds of thinking and three ePortfoliospecific features, bring together multiple kinds of thinking valued by the institution with ePortfolio-specific outcomes (focus, navigation, and the

Yancey.indb 5

21-03-2019 12:25:34

6  

introduction

visual) organizing and demonstrating them. And, of course, these outcomes raise questions about what successful ePortfolio makers need to be able to do, in this case, focus multiple texts into a coherent narrative using the visual in a navigational scheme helpful to others, as well as about where they will learn to create such ePortfolios. The St. Olaf CIS ePortfolio model is now in its third iteration, and like the earlier two models, it places value on connections and relationships. More specifically, the current model requires the following item types: (a) the original proposal for the individual major, (b) a selection of work from courses showing breadth and depth in the self-designed major, (c) an annotated bibliography, (d) internal links showing the “integrative web woven in [the] individual major” including links between “coursework and your proposal” such that the ePortfolio is “richly linky” (Center for Integrative Studies, 2018), and (e) the senior project. The St. Olaf model of ePortfolio thus emphasizes depth and breadth and connective links enacting both. In terms of outcomes, the current St. Olaf ePortfolio divides into three fields of activity. The first field of outcomes, regarding the major, is students’ “grasp of the central subject of their studies” (Center for Integrative Studies, 2018), which is what we might expect of a student in any major. The second field of outcomes, much as in the earlier iterations, focuses on different kinds of related thinking that are here also identified as “four goals of liberal learning”: “recognizing connections”; “being reflective about intellectual and personal growth”; “building intellectual community”; and “building bridges to communities outside the academy” (Center for Integrative Studies, 2018). Interestingly, the word building, used in the last two outcomes as students build intellectual community and build bridges to communities outside of the academy, highlights the activity and the agency of students. The third field of outcomes, “excellent web portfolios” (Center for Integrative Studies, 2018), includes the following eight attributes: 1. Meaningful coherence of the whole 2. Quality of the individual pages 3. Clarity and logic of the overall design 4. Creativity and thoroughness of the links 5. Degree to which the rationale for particular links is explicit and sensible 6. Critical judgment apparent in the selection of external sites 7. Extent of the portfolio 8. Portfolio’s overall aesthetic quality

In these outcomes, each of the components of the ePortfolio—the individual pages, for example, and the rationale for particular links—is important.

Yancey.indb 6

21-03-2019 12:25:34

introduction  

7

Equally important is the whole, its coherence, design, extent, and aesthetics. In some ways, the links, which account for three of the eight outcomes in this field, are the key factor; links, which make the ePortfolio “richly linky” (Center for Integrative Studies, 2018), express relationships by demonstrating selection, creativity, thoroughness, coherence, and explanation. How to create a richly linky ePortfolio is also what an ePortfolio curriculum includes.

Overview of the Chapters Currently, there is no single or uniform model of an ePortfolio curriculum, although as the chapters here illustrate, the ePortfolio curricula discussed in this volume share distinctive features, such as an archival collection, an explicit focus on reflection, and twofold attention to the actual making of the ePortfolio and to ePortfolio literacy. Each campus’s ePortfolio curriculum is also keyed to institutionally specific goals. This volume describing these curricula takes them up in three sections keyed to the site of activity, with the first section highlighting ePortfolio curricula inside content courses, the second detailing ePortfolio curricula operating programmatically, and the third focusing on ePortfolio-specific courses.

An ePortfolio Curriculum Inside a Course Some ePortfolio curricula live inside another course; such is the case for the ePortfolio models described in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 1, “ePortfolio as Curriculum: Revisualizing the Composition Process,” Amy Cicchino, Rachel Efstathion, and Christina Giarusso begin our consideration of how students are ePortfolio makers by focusing on four ongoing and recursive ePortfoliomaking processes that take place inside a sophomore-level general education writing class: creating artifacts, curating artifacts, revising artifacts and the ePortfolio itself, and circulating texts within and through the ePortfolio. In this ePortfolio model, students also learn about topics related to digital literacy, including copyright and fair use. In chapter 2, “Collateral Learning as an ePortfolio Curriculum,” Sharon Burns and Jo Ann Thompson explain the ePortfolio curriculum at Clermont College, a two-year school linked to the University of Cincinnati. Burns and Thompson identify collateral learning—that is, prior knowledge—as potentially hindrance and asset to students, a kind of learning to be set aside initially but drawn on later as learning progresses. Burns and Thompson also talk about the role an ePortfolio curriculum plays in fostering identity, in this case the identity of a college student able to contextualize learning personally and in reference to the past.

Yancey.indb 7

21-03-2019 12:25:34

8  

introduction

An ePortfolio Curriculum Inside a Program Other ePortfolio curricula are programmatic. Chapter 3, “ePortfolios in a World Language Learning Curriculum,” for example, documents the transformation of a language program through the creation of an ePortfolio curriculum supporting students as they develop facility in one of several languages such as Spanish, French, and Chinese. As Karen Simroth James, Emily E. Scida, and Yitna Firdyiwek explain, given the important role that multimodality plays in both language learning and ePortfolios, the ePortfolio was in some ways a natural vehicle to support learning in this program. As the development of their ePortfolio curriculum continued, the ePortfolio increasingly became the centerpiece site supporting an enhanced version of the program, which now includes the trifecta of students’ language development, the development of their global literacy, and their language-informed interdisciplinary learning across space and time. In chapter 4, another program is profiled, this one a distinctive self-designed major at Hampshire College. In “Hampshire College ePortfolios: A Curriculum on Reflection to Support Individualized Educational Pathways,” Laura Wenk explains how the Hampshire ePortfolio curriculum’s development entailed three major shifts. First, there was a shift from the paper portfolios that Hampshire students have created for decades to ePortfolios hosted on a single platform. Accompanying this first shift was a second, as reflection received more emphasis and the faculty began designing prompts for reflection that would guide students while still preserving individual self-designed pathways. A third shift involved a review of ePortfolios that demonstrated differences in ePortfolio structures between more and less impressive ePortfolios. More specifically, the Hampshire faculty found that chronology may provide a convenient structure, but a design oriented to “pivotal learning moments” (p. 3, this volume) seems a more compelling and authentic account of learning. In chapter 5, “Identity Development as Curriculum: A Metacognitive Approach,” Susan Kahn describes an ePortfolio curriculum in a programmatic capstone at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) intended to help students consider where they have been and where they might be going. This ePortfolio curriculum, which is focused quite specifically on metacognitive identity development, asks students to engage in a life-stories reflection exercise allowing them to articulate and interpret their selves past, present, and future. Students not only participate in this reflective activity but also understand that they are so engaging. In chapter 6, “Untangling the Past and Present While Weaving a Future: ePortfolios as a Space for Professional Discernment and Growth,” Gail Matthews-DeNatale details an ePortfolio curriculum occurring in a fully online master’s program’s

Yancey.indb 8

21-03-2019 12:25:34

introduction  

9

capstone at Northeastern University. In this model, student identity is professionally oriented; part of what students need to do is draw from and transform their earlier “learning ePortfolios” into professional ePortfolios showing accomplishment and career readiness. Key to this transition, MatthewsDeNatale argues, are four critical moves: remembering, analyzing, envisioning, and synthesizing.

Credit-Bearing, Stand-Alone ePortfolio Courses Other ePortfolio curricula are offered in stand-alone, credit-bearing courses. In chapter 7, “Limiting ePortfolio Requirements, Raising Student Energy: Establishing a Culture of Student Advocacy for ePortfolio Programs,” Sue Denning describes a one-quarter-credit optional ePortfolio course hosting an ePortfolio curriculum very keenly committed to digital affordances contributing to ePortfolios. The course relies on a highly scaffolded curricular approach, which supports undergraduate students creating ePortfolios for varying purposes and provides multiple opportunities for reimagining and revision. Two features of this curriculum are especially noteworthy. First, the curriculum supports an ePortfolio showcasing each student’s own story; toward that end, students are encouraged to explore and take risks. Second, students learn to use digital tools like tagging as they construct an ePortfolio representing their own identities. In chapter 8, “Creating an ePortfolio Studio Experience: The Role of Curation, Design, and Peer Review in Shaping ePortfolios,” Kathleen Blake Yancey begins her account of an ePortfolio studio course by describing an independent study with an undergraduate. The independent study provided a model for her one-credit ePortfolio course at Florida State University for graduate students whose ePortfolio purposes range from submitting them for a teaching award to applying for tenure-track faculty positions. Central to this studio ePortfolio curriculum, as chapter 8 details, are multiple practices—including inventorying, curating, and designing—as well as several community-building activities. Yancey identifies three metrics providing evidence of efficacy: student postcourse evaluations; students’ success in achieving goals facilitated by their ePortfolios, including securing employment; and student reflections. Joseph Ugoretz, in chapter 9, “Macaulay Springboards: The Capstone as an Open Learning ePortfolio,” also provides a brief chronology. Chapter 9 describes Macaulay Honors College’s two-semester capstone ePortfolio course, which is titled Springboard to indicate its forward-looking orientation. Focused on open learning, as the chapter title suggests, this ePortfolio curriculum includes learning in time past, as represented in digital time lines extending back to students’ elementary school experiences, as well as time present and future. Much like students at St. Olaf, students in Macaulay

Yancey.indb 9

21-03-2019 12:25:34

10  

introduction

Honors College create projects operating at the intersection of multiple disciplines; students also use digital tools as an integral part of the ePortfolio curriculum, and they often invite ePortfolio readers to participate in individual students’ ePortfolios, thus raising questions about ePortfolio authorship. In chapter 10, several colleagues—Jennifer Stonaker, Jenae Druckman Cohn, Russ Carpenter, and Helen L. Chen—describe Stanford University’s Notation in Science Communication Program. In “Metacognition Across the Curriculum: Building Capstone ePortfolios in Stanford University’s Notation in Science Communication,” they explain how two ePortfolio courses bookend the program: Students begin by creating an ePortfolio and complete the program by creating a culminating ePortfolio. The Stanford ePortfolio curriculum includes several ePortfolio-specific activities, including reviews of ePortfolios and concept mapping of artifacts; the culminating ePortfolio includes artifacts from academic and cocurricular experiences, reflections on those artifacts, and a cover letter demonstrating the ePortfolio creator’s understanding of science communication and ability in practicing it. In chapter 11, “The Invited ePortfolio Curriculum,” Katherine Bridgman describes an ePortfolio curriculum keyed to a new vertical general education program. Designed to support a downward expansion at Texas A&M University–San Antonio, this curriculum includes four single-credit courses, one offered each year, each linked to the school’s institutional mission. Students learn in the first year about the college experience; in the second year, about the world, including the community world contextualizing campus; in the third year, about the major; and in the fourth year, about the profession. In this ePortfolio curriculum, the ePortfolio accompanies and supports students throughout their academic journey. In chapter 12, “Integrative Learning and ePortfolio Networks,” Cheryl Emerson and Alex Reid perform three tasks. They first describe a new, highly structured general education program at the University of Buffalo that begins with an ePortfolio in the first year and culminates in a general education capstone course where students complete their ePortfolios. Second, Emerson and Reid define the ePortfolio curriculum, which includes thematic pathways and newer ePortfolio genres like a Learning Philosophy Statement. Third, reflecting on the tension between a genuine commitment to student learning and a systematic effort to collect assessment data, they close their chapter by issuing a cautionary note. Last but not least is chapter 13, “Concluding Forward.” In addition to synthesizing insights from the previous chapters, Kathleen Blake Yancey identifies six consistent features of an ePortfolio curriculum and seven dimensions the curriculum often includes. In addition, “Concluding Forward” describes new genres developing inside ePortfolio curricula and new metaphors used

Yancey.indb 10

21-03-2019 12:25:34

introduction  

11

to characterize these models. Finally, the concluding chapter points to new issues this ePortfolio curriculum raises.

References Cambridge, B. (Ed.). (2001). Electronic portfolios: Emerging practices in student, faculty, and institutional learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Cambridge, D., Cambridge, B., & Yancey, K. (Eds.). (2009). Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Center for Integrative Studies. (2018). About the Center for Integrative Studies. Retrieved from https://wp.stolaf.edu/cis/ Eynon, B., & Gambino, L. M. (2017). High-impact ePortfolio practice: A catalyst for student, faculty, and institutional learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Firdyiwek, Y. (2016). ELA 1559: Collection, selection, reflection. Retrieved from http://college.as.virginia.edu/LASE_ELA Penny Light, T., Chen, H., & Ittelson, J. (2011). Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Reynolds, C., & Patton, J. (2014). Leveraging the ePortfolio for integrative learning: A faculty guide to classroom practices for transforming student learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Yancey, K. B. (2004). Postmodernism, palimpsest, and portfolios: Theoretical issues in the representation of student work. College Composition and Communication, 55, 738–762.

Yancey.indb 11

21-03-2019 12:25:34

Yancey.indb 12

21-03-2019 12:25:34

1 e P O RT F O L I O A S CURRICULUM Revisualizing the Composition Process Amy Cicchino, Rachel Efstathion, and Christina Giarrusso

T

he ePortfolio curriculum described in this chapter is for a required, sophomore-level composition course at Florida State University, a large flagship university without a university, departmental, or program-wide portfolio requirement. Focusing on genre, context, and research, our version of this writing course includes an ePortfolio that students compose throughout the semester. The specific requirements for the final ePortfolio are shown in Figure 1.1. In these contexts, our ePortfolio as curriculum helps students in the following ways: making rhetorical choices about how to select, curate, and possibly remediate print genres for a digital life in the ePortfolio; navigating decisions

Figure 1.1.  ePortfolio checklist.

The final ePortfolio includes • an introduction to the ePortfolio, • two of the three major projects composed in the course (and the drafts for those projects), • two texts representing the student’s understanding of composition composed outside the classroom, • each student’s theory of composing, and • reflections for each of the five artifacts. The ePortfolio counts for 70% of the student’s overall grade. 13

Yancey.indb 13

21-03-2019 12:25:34

14   eportfolio as curriculum about how to rhetorically compose in a new digital context for different purposes and different audiences; and learning about fair use and digital literacy. Considerable scholarship suggests ePortfolios allow students to apply the knowledge they learn in a course as they compose their portfolios (Rice & Wills, 2013), especially when students are allowed to take ownership of and reflect on their learning processes (Cambridge, Cambridge, & Yancey, 2009). Likewise, Eynon, Gambino, and Török (2014) argued that ePortfolios let students take a “greater role” in discussions about learning as they “document, reflect on, and analyze what occurs during their own learning processes” (p. 108). Further, Yancey (2001) theorized that ePortfolios bring together a student’s past, present, and future in a unique site: Portfolios make students responsible for explaining what they did and did not learn, for assessing their own strengths and weaknesses as learners, for evaluating their products and performances, for showing how that learning connects with other kinds of learning (in the classroom and without), and for using the review of the past to think about paths for future learning. (p. 19)

As Matthews-DeNatale writes in chapter 6, an ePortfolio curriculum “done well” can put into conversation “curriculum substance” (p. 110, this volume) and “curriculum process” (p. 111, this volume). This duality of curriculum as substance and process animates our ePortfolio curriculum and, as this chapter explains, is key to our ePortfolio model. At the center of this model is ePortfolio makingness, which is linked to the idea that composing in a different space and using different materials might help students understand composing differently and perhaps more meaningfully. Trimbur (2004) made a similar argument, claiming that typography “helps to name the available tools of representation that composers draw on to make their own means of production” (p. 263). We believe ePortfolio curricula can do similar work. Because ePortfolios require a different set of materials from traditional print texts, they invite students to acknowledge a shift in materiality and to adopt and adapt a new set of tools. Further, as our ePortfolio curriculum emphasizes ePortfolio making, students use specific composing practices and rhetorical decision-making for this still somewhat unfamiliar genre, making them more aware of their composing processes across contexts and genres. Specifically, a focus on ePortfolio making can recontextualize terms like creation, revision, curation, and circulation that are commonly used in ePortfolio scholarship to help students develop a new understanding of composing and a capacious understanding of ePortfolios. We show the recursive interrelationship of these four terms in Figure 1.2. For our course, we define these terms quite specifically:

Yancey.indb 14

21-03-2019 12:25:34

eportfolio as curriculum   15

• Creation is the process of creating a text and contextualizing it in a larger rhetorical situation. As students compose their ePortfolios, they create on the following levels: (a) creating each artifact text in its individual and separate context and (b) recreating it to exist in the new context of the ePortfolio. • Revision occurs after the initial creation of artifact texts as students recreate those texts to be usable, functional, and rhetorically effective in the new space, the ePortfolio. Thus, revision is potentially present in the processes of portfolio making as students must make rhetorical choices in editing, uploading, formatting, and arranging. • Curation is a two-step process: the selection of a particular artifact text and the act of forging connections between and among the artifacts in the ePortfolio. Successful curation transforms the individual, selected, and assembled parts into a cohesive whole, with students noting not only how artifacts function individually but also how they contribute to the overall message of the ePortfolio. • Circulation, or the process of moving texts into new spaces, occurs in two ways in our ePortfolio process. First, existing texts are circulated into the ePortfolio as artifacts. Second, the ePortfolio itself may circulate. Figure 1.2.  ePortfolio composing processes.

Yancey.indb 15

21-03-2019 12:25:34

16   eportfolio as curriculum In the following sections, we explain how ePortfolio as curriculum prompts students to create, revise, curate, and circulate their ePortfolios. The composing practices realized through making the ePortfolio help make explicit the connections between the work students are already doing and the key rhetorical decisions they learn to make in the composing classroom. We also explain specific activities, checkpoints, and workshops that constitute the ePortfolio curriculum, as well as provide student examples created in the ePortfolio curriculum.

Creating the ePortfolio The creation of the ePortfolio is a vital first step. Before students can prepare to create their own ePortfolios, we take students through an activity that introduces them to examples and helps them articulate the ePortfolio genre. The creation process begins by asking students to look across four ePortfolios and begin identifying conventions that guide the genre, such as a home page with clear navigation frameworks, context about the author and the purpose of the ePortfolio, multiple pages or sections on the components that make up the ePortfolio, and a cohesive aesthetic, among others. More than just creating the ePortfolio and its artifacts, students must make choices about how to achieve ease of access to artifacts, a clear process for navigation, and an ability to read and use the features of the ePortfolio.

Activity 1: ePortfolio Rhetorical Viewing and Analysis Task When we view portfolios, we initially look specifically at an ePortfolio’s home page. Our discussion includes the following questions: • Who is this author according to the details of the ePortfolio? How is an identity created or represented? • What does the author value? How do we know this? • What stands out to us as readers, and how is that emphasis created? Next we explore the full ePortfolio, completing a heuristic to record features like design consistency, navigation, functionality, and readability specifically. The heuristic serves as a text representing our class consensus and creates a guide we can refer to throughout the semester as a self-assessment tool. As students view these ePortfolios, which remain accessible with other course documents during the semester, they also begin to develop preferences and think about what kind of ePortfolio might be most helpful in representing their identities as composers. We end our class activity with a

Yancey.indb 16

21-03-2019 12:25:34

eportfolio as curriculum   17

short reflection, asking students to think about their ePortfolio’s future. We ask them the following: • Of the four ePortfolios we viewed in class, which one did you like most? Why? • What do you notice about the design of this ePortfolio? • What do you want your viewers to conclude about you when they see your ePortfolio at the end of the semester? • At this point, what kinds of texts would you like to include and why? • How would you define composing? • How do you think your choices in design and artifact selection connect to your definition of composing? This discussion might take place on a platform like Google Docs, where students can navigate and comment collectively, as shown in Figure 1.3. Afterward, students choose a platform and create ePortfolio shells. After this initial creation, the recursive cycle of ePortfolio revision begins. To help students learn the ePortfolio technology gradually instead of all at once, in the final weeks of the semester we ask our students to log in often, build their five artifacts over time, and review the interface of the ePortfolio platform.

Revising the ePortfolio: Checkpoints and Reflection Over Time Designing an ePortfolio curriculum to stretch across the semester encourages revision and ensures students have the time to make meaning incrementally instead of all at once. Over the course of the semester, five low-stakes checkpoint activities prompt students to revisit their ePortfolios and revise them, as the activity in the following section details.

Activity 2: Artifact Attachment Checkpoint Each of the 5 checkpoints consists of a short activity of about 15 minutes that guides students through 1 element of what Yancey (2017) calls “ePortfolio makingness” (p. 4). The following is an example of the Week 3 checkpoint activity that asks students to think about how they attach their artifacts to the ePortfolio’s shell. Students who wish to highlight print or 3D artifacts in their ePortfolios, as Davis and Yancey (2014) observe, can be faced with a challenge: They need to consider how the affordances of the digital platform can offer strategies to display such texts effectively. This might mean including videos or a gallery showing a visual piece from multiple angles or adding a textual

Yancey.indb 17

21-03-2019 12:25:34

18   eportfolio as curriculum Figure 1.3.  ePortfolio rhetorical viewing and analysis task.

Part I I’d like for each of you to view these ePortfolios and respond to the following questions. Just so that we can keep everyone’s comments straight for class discussion, be sure to add your name before the comment (e.g., Rachel: This is what I have to say about X.). You should write enough to get your point across (at least two to three sentences). Keep in mind, we’ll be using what you write as the foundation for our class discussion. In Response to Sample Student ePortfolio 1. What do you notice about the design of this ePortfolio? Your response should address use of alphabetic text, images, video, audio, layout, color scheme, font choice, [and so on]. • Student 1: It’s simple and it looks nice. The graphics and text all stay within the black and white color scheme, which looks good. • Student 2: The website consists of a simplistic design. The colors included are black and white. There is one large image on the home page. • Student 3: The color scheme for this is black and white. • Student 4: The simplicity of her color scheme and text display. • Student 5: The design is very simple, she uses only one image, which makes it clean and not at all cluttered, the only colors she uses are black and white, and the font is simple and easy to read. The layout is also very simple and easy to follow. • Student 6: I like that it is simple in color and theme, the picture I felt was kind of random but nonetheless it showed about the person and gave you a sense of who they are. • Student 7: This sample ePortfolio makes use of a simple black and white color scheme and a simple font that is clean and easy to read. The layout allows for easy accessibility and tries not to distract from her purpose.

description articulating effaced details. Even when students choose to move digital texts to this new digital space, however, they must still consider the delivery of the artifact: Downloading a Word document is a very different exercise from viewing an embedded PDF or seeing the words directly

Yancey.indb 18

21-03-2019 12:25:34

eportfolio as curriculum   19

placed on the ePortfolio’s page. Considering how to reproduce and design texts in the space of the ePortfolio is rhetorical work. To start this activity, students are given sample ePortfolios; the examples feature different kinds of artifacts and illustrate different strategies for attachment (e.g., copying and pasting texts and images so they become part of the screen, using buttons to create downloadable file attachments, and embedding file viewers so artifacts are displayed on the screen). After viewing the different ePortfolios, students in groups consider the questions in Figure 1.4. After students discuss these questions in small groups, a class discussion ensues. In past iterations of this activity, students have generally preferred artifacts that were directly visible on the screen. As viewers, they did not like the idea of having to download texts, yet as composers at this point in the process, many were attaching their artifacts in this way. Because this checkpoint asks them to view ePortfolios as readers, students reconsider artifact attachment, reseeing it as a rhetorical choice that affects their audience’s viewing experience. As Figure 1.4 demonstrates, each checkpoint is differently focused on a specific question to help students refine their ePortfolios over time and understand a different aspect of composing on the screen.

ePortfolio Curation and Artifact Selection An important part of ePortfolio makingness is the creation, revision, curation, and circulation of artifacts in the ePortfolio. We ask students to add artifacts over time as part of the checkpoint process. Each checkpoint is accompanied by a homework assignment asking students to add one artifact to their ePortfolio and reflect in four ways: Identify what their artifact is, what it is made Figure 1.4.  Checkpoint 1.

How Do ePortfolio Composers Make Artifacts Accessible to Readers and Why Does This Matter? Review the link and discuss the following questions in your groups: • In what ways do composers make their artifacts accessible to viewers? • What descriptions support these artifacts? What do the supporting elements show you as a viewer? • What strategies did you find to be most effective and why? • What strategies did you find to be least effective and why? • How are you currently placing and framing your artifacts within your ePortfolio? Will you continue to use that strategy? Why or why not?

Yancey.indb 19

21-03-2019 12:25:34

20   eportfolio as curriculum of, and what it does; explain how that addition illustrates their composing process; explain how that artifact affects their understanding of what composing is; and connect that artifact to their identity as a composer. Reflecting in these four ways encourages students to connect the specific act of adding artifacts to their theorizing of composition more generally. When students choose to add major assignments from the course to their portfolios, they are asked to add the final project and their drafts alongside the reflection. Although some of these artifacts will be revised, or even deleted later on, students begin to archive and curate their work. A greater attention to making, constructing, and assembling the ePortfolio helps students make conceptual gains. They learn more about themselves as writers through this process, but they are also able to see the ways writing and composing operate as they compose in a digital, networked space. Curating, selecting, reflecting, and archiving texts and the connections fostered through the arrangement of the texts occurs through rhetorical design when the composers consider how they are directing audience attention through elements like arrangement, reading path construction, choices in color and typography, and hyperlinking. Asking students to analyze design as curation and defend their design choices helps them see that design choices can make meaning. In one such instance, a student wrote that when designing the ePortfolio, I stuck with a theme with flowing fonts, organized boxes, and a calm blue color. . . . That design is consistent throughout the pages, making it seem like one unified composition. My design is carefully thought out and uncluttered, and I hope that carries over as being associated with my personality. I do have a heading at the top, but throughout the site there are buttons to lead viewers along a logical path and make sure they receive all the information. I have two separate pages for my artifacts, one for writing and one for art. At the bottom of each page, there is a button that directs to the other page. Through my design and artifacts, I hope that I can appeal to a larger art community, and build a web of connection with other artists and commissioners.1

We see how this student made deliberate, rhetorical choices regarding design and presentation to foster a particular outcome when circulating the ePortfolio. The student’s choices are intended to appeal to the student’s audience, the art community, and this appeal, from the student’s perspective, comes from simple, clean, and straightforward design decisions and a deliberate labeling of artifacts as either art or writing. Although the student may have made these choices without the ePortfolio curriculum’s prompting, the curriculum frames her design choices in a

Yancey.indb 20

21-03-2019 12:25:34

eportfolio as curriculum   21

larger rhetorical space, encouraging her to connect her design to her audience and purpose.

Activity 3: Outside Artifact Successful curation relies on students’ abilities to make connections across different kinds of texts and articulate those connections to their audience. To scaffold curation in our course, we ask students to include one artifact that was created outside class and write the same reflection for this artifact as for the in-class artifacts. In doing this, students are encouraged to connect the concepts in the class to the outside text. As Yancey (2009) argues, placing academic and nonacademic texts together in the ePortfolio “invites the student to create a whole composition of learning in and through the portfolio” (p. 9). To illustrate this example, we highlight work by Taylor, a student who made these connections well. Taylor’s ePortfolio page, featuring her outside artifact, is accessible through the QR code in Figure 1.5. For Taylor’s outside artifact, she included a video she created in high school linking ePortfolio viewers to her YouTube channel. In the following, Taylor reflects on the connection she sees between her videography and writing: Filming and editing videos has always been my passion. Instead of journaling about my travels or just taking pictures, I take videos everywhere I go . . . . Just like writing, I alter the music of my videos to fit my audience. Without background music, the film would be boring and with the inappropriate type of music, the videos wouldn’t be enjoyed by my intended audience. I can relate my film editing to my writing in the sense that I alter the pace, footage, and music based on the place or travels I am documenting and the audience I expect to watch the finished product. (Williams, 2016) Figure 1.5.  Taylor’s ePortfolio.

Note. Retrieved from http://trae888.wixsite.com/traewilliams/outside-work. Accessed with permission. Because Taylor’s ePortfolio example features a video, we chose to use a quick response (QR) code with the additional note of a link for accessible viewing. Readers can choose to access Taylor’s project by using their smartphone’s camera application or by visiting the url address here.

Yancey.indb 21

21-03-2019 12:25:34

22   eportfolio as curriculum Taylor places videography and writing under the larger umbrella of composing, seeing them as rhetorically designed to suit their audiences. The connections forged between two different types of texts—the writing Taylor completed in class and the videos she made outside class—prompted what Chen (2009) characterized as “folio thinking” (p. 31). Folio thinking supports a student’s ability to see how composing work is shaped by an understanding of course concepts as well as the connections between academic and nonacademic experiences. As this activity demonstrates, when students can connect the composing they do inside the classroom with the composing they do outside the classroom, their understanding of composition becomes more capacious. Thus, the kinds of texts we ask students to include in their portfolios matter. By asking students to include texts composed outside the classroom and put them into conversation with the kinds of texts they compose in the classroom, our curriculum allows students to articulate a more extensive understanding of composing and provides more opportunities for insight.

Circulating the ePortfolio Another important dimension of our ePortfolio curriculum is circulation, the process of moving texts into new spaces. Although students circulate their artifact texts in the ePortfolio, the ePortfolio itself is also circulated in the class and on the Internet in a second kind of circulation. Students first circulate their ePortfolios through several ePortfolio as curriculum workshops before the ePortfolio is due, some of which we have detailed in this chapter. Through participating in the ePortfolio curriculum, in this case the workshop activities, students develop a critical vocabulary and discuss what makes an ePortfolio successful and unsuccessful.

Activity 4: ePortfolio Design Workshop One of our workshop activities keyed to circulation focuses on design concepts. Groups of students review concepts such as hierarchy, color and contrast, negative space, proximity, continuity, similar or repetition, figure or ground, and grid, which they encounter in our class readings (Williams, 2004; Wysocki, 2014). Students are asked to complete a table for each member of their group. Table 1.1 shows a version of a completed table with sample responses. The curriculum’s focus on student application of knowledge in this instance helps students guide one another in revising their ePortfolio designs and offers them an opportunity to apply their knowledge of these design concepts. For example, in Table 1.1 the student who advises the peer

Yancey.indb 22

21-03-2019 12:25:34

eportfolio as curriculum   23 TABLE 1.1 

Sample Student Feedback Directions: Share your current ePortfolio with your group. Everyone in your group should be looking at the same ePortfolio at the same time. Go through each element of design. First, talk about what the term you are focusing on means; second, go through the site looking for that element of design; and third, justify why that element was implemented effectively or ineffectively by the composer. If this isn’t your ePortfolio, fill in feedback so your peers can clearly see which design concepts they can improve on before the ePortfolio is due.

Yancey.indb 23

Design Structure

Peer Feedback (Sample Student Response)

Hierarchy

“Tabs are organized and ordered. (Just a little thing: When I click on the interview it brings me to the ‘contact me’ section.)”

Color and contrast

“The only one that’s a little hard to read is the second artifact’s page, mostly because the background is lighter. Maybe try to make the text a little bit darker so that it stands out more.”

Negative space

“Since you are mentioning cross fit [sic] a lot on your third [page] it would be nice to see pictures that are related to that or maybe a short clip or something just to make it a little bit more exciting and fill empty spaces.”

Proximity

“There is a lot of information presented at once—with large images and text and photos that make it difficult to find where I should be looking, what I should be reading, etc.”

Continuity

“Yes, all [pages] are formatted the same way/have the same fonts/colors.”

Similarity and repetition

“There are a lot of boxes because that is how you separated your text. I can see where someone might think it looks redundant, especially on the facts page, but I think that since it is continual, it works for the website.”

Figure and ground

“Like I said before, the facts page is a lot of information and its [sic] in a grid type layout, so im [sic] not sure what to read first, but it doesn’t matter in that case. The rest of the information is easy to navigate. You just read down the page, switching from right to left, or left to right, wherever the textbox is highest on the page.”

Grid

“The visuals always relate to the topic in the blog and do not distract from the text, creating a nice balance . . . especially alignment.”

21-03-2019 12:25:34

24   eportfolio as curriculum focusing on CrossFit to integrate more visual media, “something just to make it a little bit more exciting and fill empty spaces,” has connected a balance between used and unused space to a rhetorical effect: excitement or audience engagement. In circulating their ePortfolios among their peers, students begin to see how audiences interpret their ePortfolios and whether the viewer is seeing the ePortfolio as they intended. Although students may not circulate their ePortfolios beyond our class, the circulation that occurs in class generates self-, peer, and student assessment as well as rhetorical awareness of design.

Activity 5: ePortfolio Final Peer Review Workshop In a final workshop, students present their (nearly complete) ePortfolios to the class. As they present them, students are expected to discuss the rhetorical choices they made as they created their ePortfolios. Students also have the time to ask their classmates for specific feedback on their choices. As the students watch these presentations, they respond to the following questions (specific directions can be found in Appendix 1A): 1. What did you like about this person’s ePortfolio and why? 2. If this were your ePortfolio, what would you change and why? 3. What is one question that you have about this person’s ePortfolio?

After the presentation, each student receives about 25 different perspectives on their work from peers. With ample feedback, students have the opportunity to choose what they do and do not want to listen to; the agency to choose resides with the owner of the ePortfolio. In some cases it might be impossible for students to take into account every piece of feedback they receive. One student might like the way the ePortfolio is organized, whereas another might suggest using a different strategy. During Kayshala’s ePortfolio presentation (see Figure 1.6), her classmates posted feedback for her on a class discussion board. Many students liked the bold image of her on her home page; in personal feedback to the composer, one student said, “It looks powerful and gives me as [sic] sense of who you are.” Another classmate commented on the aesthetic she chose, saying, “I love how you kept it cohesive with black and white photographs,” which Kayshala included throughout the portfolio. Other classmates mentioned the difficulty in reading Kayshala’s headings. One student said, “If I could change anything, I would make sure that all of the text is clear and easy to read, especially important titles.” After this workshop, Kayshala had to find a balance between following peer suggestions

Yancey.indb 24

21-03-2019 12:25:34

Yancey.indb 25

21-03-2019 12:25:34

Note. Reprinted with permission.

Figure 1.6.  Kayshala’s ePortfolio: Kayshala’s Korner.

26   eportfolio as curriculum

and retaining her own style. In the end, she chose not to change the font of her navigation titles, but she made sure page titles were easier to read. This presentation naturally complicates issues of design, navigation, reflection, process, organization, and creativity and requires students to articulate, in a more formative way, their learning and share it with their peers.

The Ethics of Digital Circulation Our ePortfolio curriculum also brings to light the ethical factors of composing in networked spaces and helps students develop an important aspect of digital literacy, that is, an understanding of how they participate in the circulation of media when they reuse existing elements created by someone else. By reading texts on fair use, which allows reproducing some copyrighted materials and not needing permission to do so, students leave the classroom with at least a nascent understanding of how to use and attribute media sources ethically, which is congruent with the research, genre, and context dimensions of the course itself. Students are reminded that when they select an image or a template, they are participating in circulation and reuse and must do so being cognizant of the ethical and political systems in which they are operating. In addition, once the semester is over, students should also understand how leaving their ePortfolio in a network can potentially have an impact on their privacy and identity later on. Often our students will include personalizing features like photos, “About Me” sections, contact information, and résumés. At the end of the semester, they are asked how they would feel if a future employer, personal acquaintance, or stranger came across their ePortfolio from the class. For some students, this means deleting the ePortfolio after the course is over; for others, it means adjusting privacy settings so their ePortfolio is not searchable, allowing them to retain and distribute the link intentionally.

Activity 6: Supporting Knowledge of Fair Use Our ePortfolio curriculum provides students with a unique opportunity to develop knowledge of the fair use doctrine. Students begin by reading a series of texts for homework, including Purdue Online Writing Lab’s (2013) definition of fair use, Creative Commons’ (2008) A Shared Culture, and the Association of Research Libraries’ (2015) Fair Use Week infographic and watching Crash Course’s (2015) video on intellectual property. In class we explicitly discuss the four-factor test of fair use: the purpose of reuse, the nature of the work being reused, the amount reused, and the effect of that reuse on the original

Yancey.indb 26

21-03-2019 12:25:34

eportfolio as curriculum   27

text’s marketability. After reading these texts, students participate in a group activity in which they review two different fair use defense statements, one from a professional organization and another written by a student. Then they synthesize a fair use defense statement for their first major project, which has already been turned in and graded. The following is a sample statement written by one of the students: While I did use the works of other writers for this text, the remediation [transforming from one medium to another, e.g., a print project remediated into a video essay] should fall under the categories of fair use. The remediation was created for an educational purpose and I am not financially profiting from it.

This student confirmed he was using existing texts, connected his composing process to a key term (remediation), and said why the purpose of his text precludes it from violating copyright laws. Another student said that “use of music from the film The Little Mermaid and of the image ‘The Mermaid’s Homesickness’ falls under Fair Use because the recreated poem was used to create a transformation and analysis in a classroom setting.” This part of our ePortfolio curriculum is designed for students to properly apply their knowledge of the four factors of educational setting, degree of transformation from the original text, amount used in their new text, and absence of financial gains as arguments that their text should be protected under fair use. After the activity, we review each group’s statement and discuss what makes a strong statement, how to attribute texts, and why it is important to consider author intent when we choose to reuse texts and media (favoring open-share resources like Creative Commons). Later, students complete a justification of fair use for each of their major projects, including projects previously completed in the course. All these steps ensure that before the ePortfolio is due, students understand how fair use operates and have the agency to choose how they attribute media they wish to reuse.

Conclusion Our ePortfolio curriculum seeks to help students understand ePortfolio making as the result of ongoing, recursive processes of creating, curating, revising, and circulating texts. We ask students to choose platforms they are unfamiliar with, to make decisions about textual selection and arrangement, to consider a real and explicit audience, and to justify their choices through

Yancey.indb 27

21-03-2019 12:25:34

28   eportfolio as curriculum multiple iterations of reflection. Through emphasizing ePortfolio makingness as a particular rhetorical process and awareness, students can develop a successful portfolio yet also learn enough about portfolios conceptually to design new ones in the future. Approaching ePortfolios in this way transforms the role of the academic ePortfolio from an end-of-term space for reflection and connection to a scaffolded and continuous process in which students reproduce their understanding of composing through their creation of the ePortfolio, selection of texts and constant forms of revision, curation through rhetorical design of the networked screen, and circulation to different audiences.

Note 1. This student gave permission for her work to be shared with the understanding that it would be presented anonymously.

References Association of Research Libraries. (2015). Fair use fundamentals (infographic). Retrieved from http://www.arl.org/publications-resources/3537-fair-usefundamentals-infographic#.WlaXVKinHIU Cambridge, D., Cambridge, B., & Yancey, K. B. (2009). Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Chen, H. L. (2009). Using ePortfolios to support lifelong and lifewide learning. In D. Cambridge, B. L. Cambridge, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact (pp. 29–36). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Crash Course. (2015, May 7). Copyright, exceptions, and fair use: Crash Course intellectual property #3. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Q_9O8J9skL0 Creative Commons. (2008). A shared culture [Video file]. Retrieved from https:// creativecommons.org/about/videos/a-shared-culture/ Davis, M., & Yancey, K. B. (2014). Notes toward the role of materiality in composing, reviewing, and assessing multimodal texts. Computers and Composition, 31, 13–28. Eynon, B., Gambino, L., & Török, J. (2014). What difference can ePortfolio make? A field report from the Connect to Learning Project. International Journal of ePortfolio, 4(1), 95–114. Retrieved from http://www.theijep.com/pdf/IJEP127 .pdf Purdue Online Writing Lab. (2013, October). Strategies for fair use. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/731/1/

Yancey.indb 28

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolio as curriculum   29 Rice, R., & Wills, K. (Eds.). (2013). ePortfolio performance support systems: Constructing, presenting, and assessing portfolios. Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/ books/eportfolios/ Silva, M. L., Delaney, S. A., Cochran, J., Jackson, R., & Olivares, C. (2015). Institutional assessment and the integrative core curriculum: Involving students in the development of an ePortfolio system. International Journal of ePortfolio,  5, 155–167. Trimbur, J. (2004). Delivering the message: Typography and the materiality of writing. In Carolyn Handa (Ed.), Visual rhetoric in a digital world: A critical sourcebook (pp. 260–271). Los Angeles, CA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Williams, R. (2004). The non-designer’s design book: Design and typographic principles for the visual novice. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. Wysocki, A. (2014). The multiple media of texts: How onscreen and paper texts incorporate words, images, and other media. In Charles Bazerman & Paul Prior (Eds.), What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices (pp. 123–163). Mahwah, NJ: Routledge. Yancey, K. B. (2001). Digitized student portfolios. In B. L., Cambridge, S., Kahn, D. P., Tompkins, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios: Emerging practices in student, faculty, and institutional learning (pp. 15–30). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Yancey, K. B. (2009). Reflection and electronic portfolios: Inventing the self and reinventing the university. In D., Cambridge, B. L., Cambridge, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact (pp. 5–16). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Yancey, K. B., & McElroy, S. J. (2017). Assembling composition: An introduction. In K. B., Yancey & S. J. McElroy (Eds.), Assembling composition (pp. 3–25). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Student Examples Pendleton, K. (2016). You have entered Kayshala’s Korner. Retrieved from https:// kayshalalove.wixsite.com/kayshalaskorner Silver, Z. (2016). Zac Silver’s portfolio. Retrieved from http://zs14d1.wixsite.com/ portfolio1 Williams, T. (2016). Outside work. Retrieved from http://trae888.wixsite .com/traewilliams

Yancey.indb 29

21-03-2019 12:25:35

APPENDIX 1A

ePortfolio Assignment Sheet and Time Line

P

urpose: The ePortfolio assignment is meant to (a) showcase your work; (b) develop your ability to reflect on your experiences this semester; (c) connect individual compositions to your feelings about what composing is and how it works; and (d) teach you about composing in digital, networked spaces. Like all compositions, we are working within a specific genre and that means when we say we are composing ePortfolios, our audience develops expectations that we must fulfill. For this assignment, your audience is me, your teacher, although you might choose to continue to develop this into a professional ePortfolio once you leave the class. Evaluation: Because we are learning throughout the course, a majority of your overall grade (70%) will be determined by this ePortfolio. This gives you the opportunity to continue to revise your major projects after you have drafted them, workshopped them, revised them, and received “as is” grades from me. I choose to grade you this way because I do not believe composing is a clean and easy process; it is messy and takes time, so this ePortfolio gives you more time. Process: We will begin this assignment the first week and continue it until the finals week; it frames our course. You will start by creating an ePortfolio shell on a website platform like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, WordPress, and so on. At various points in the semester, you will be asked to develop that space by adding an artifact, reflecting, and considering one aspect of ePortfolio composing through checkpoint activities. These “checkpoints” are meant to help you develop this project over the semester-long span of time. Artifacts to include: • One outside text that you complete as part of your “Collectables Presentation” • One example of composing you have done outside of this class

30

Yancey.indb 30

21-03-2019 12:25:35

appendix

1a   31

• Two of the three major projects that you have revised based on the feedback you received from our classroom community that you feel represents your knowledge of composing • Your final theory of composing (one page) Other elements to include: • An introductory element that welcomes readers to the ePortfolio (this can be an “About Me” section or a general introduction) • Drafts for the two projects you choose to include (including your “shitty first draft,” “as is” draft, and final draft) Reflections: For each of the artifacts, you will create a 200 to 300 word reflection. Although you are not restricted to only answering these 4 questions, I would like each of your reflections to include answers to the following: 1. What is the artifact, what is it made of, what does it do? 2. How does this artifact influence what your composition process looks like? 3. How does this artifact influence your idea of what composition is? 4. How does this artifact reflect your identity as a composer?

Time Line (Taught in a 16-Week Semester) Week 1: Introduction to the genre During this time, we complete the first activity included in this chapter. Students view sample ePortfolios, analyze them, and we articulate as a class community the conventions of this genre. Students create their ePortfolio shell. Week 3: Checkpoint 1 Discussion: How do we attach and curate artifacts within the ePortfolio? Students add first artifact and reflection. Week 6: Checkpoint 2 Workshop: ePortfolio navigation and organization. Students add second artifact and reflection. Week 9: Checkpoint 3 Workshop: Rhetorical design concepts and choices. Students add third artifact and reflection.

Yancey.indb 31

21-03-2019 12:25:35

32  

appendix

1a

Week 10: Workshop: Generating fair use statements Students add fair use statements to existing artifacts Week 12: Checkpoint 4 Discussion: How is identity/ethos created and shaped across the pages of the ePortfolio? Students add fourth artifact and reflection. Week 15: Checkpoint 5 Workshop: Students complete a peer review of ePortfolios, testing  ePortfolios for usability and polish. Students add fifth artifact and reflection. Week 16: Class presentation and feedback Finals Week: ePortfolio due to teacher for grading

Yancey.indb 32

21-03-2019 12:25:35

2 C O L L AT E R A L L E A R N I N G A S A N e P O RT F O L I O CURRICULUM Sharon Burns and Jo Ann Thompson

C

lermont College is a regional college of the University of Cincinnati (UC), an urban Research 1 university in the heart of the city. Clermont College is located about 30 miles away from the main campus. As a predominantly 2-year, open-access institution, we draw students from a wide range of educational preparations, abilities, and ages. Some 80% of them are first-generation college students; the majority are of Appalachian heritage; more than 50% require a developmental reading, writing, or math course when they enter; some are returning—and retooling—adults who have not been in a classroom for years; and others are high school students who represent the best and the brightest of their rural high schools. You can imagine the first day of class. The students are from wildly divergent backgrounds, ranging in age from 15 to 50. Some have completed developmental writing or math courses, and others are still taking classes in high school. On our campus, this amalgam of dissimilar backgrounds and ages is often referred to as the 7–10 split, a bowling metaphor referring to the space between the last 2 pins left standing after the first roll of the ball: the 7 pin and the 10 pin. The space is the width of the alley, and only a highly skilled bowler can manage to knock down both pins with one ball. You’re up, you hold the ball. What will you do?

Context and Background UC Clermont College shares two distinct characteristics with other regional institutions: First, regional campuses linked to a host institution by definition 33

Yancey.indb 33

21-03-2019 12:25:35

34   eportfolio as curriculum must function as a surrogate of their mother institution and fundamentally share its mission and goals. Second, credit from our courses must seamlessly transfer to programs in the university. In our case university-wide required courses such as English composition designed for very different student populations are “owned” by departments on the main campus. In addition, although UC Clermont College embraces the larger university’s mission of excellence and diversity, the dissimilarity between the core values of urban and rural communities necessitates different approaches to policy, programs, and curricula on the two campuses. The differences between our student population and the student population on the main campus in terms of age, socioeconomic and educational background, and life experience, and differences between the cultures of the campuses demand consideration of these characteristics as we create and plan curricular options for our students.

The Collateral Learning Model as a Defining Feature of the ePortfolio Experience The ePortfolio experience at UC Clermont College we describe here occurs in writing classrooms. This experience represents a student’s sustained participation in diverse learning situations over a period of time in a series of interconnected learning events. These are captured and documented in a digital repository that goes beyond simply creating a container. It is a gathering of internal, external, peripheral, and core activities collectively influencing what students learn, how they learn, and how they are able to apply that learning in multiple and diverse contexts. Our design criteria stipulate that the ePortfolio experience for our students is intentional, purposeful, and individualized. For example, although we create a specific ePortfolio assignment prompt, that assignment also promises individuality (“You will create a virtual site that serves as your ePortfolio and send me a link by Week 2 that can be shared with your peers.”) and options (“You have complete control over your site and can choose themes, create buttons, form categories, and so on to make it look and ‘feel’ like you want.”). These initial guidelines emphasize students’ ownership of the entire experience, starting with its original design. Thus, from the very beginning, the ePortfolio experience serves as a powerful vehicle for promoting student awareness of, and active participation in, their own learning and helps students move beyond any self-imposed limitations. Our use of the term collateral signifies that we view prior learning as a security deposit that is quickly acknowledged and held in store at the beginning of the semester. Collateral learning assumes that students will be open to new learning experiences in the context of their prior knowledge, which

Yancey.indb 34

21-03-2019 12:25:35

collateral learning as an eportfolio curriculum  

35

may be replaced or recontextualized when new knowledge supersedes or enhances it. We thus invite our students into our courses and ask them to surrender any assumptions or prejudices about writing when they enter our classrooms—they check their baggage at the door. We suggest students suspend their prior knowledge—their collateral—and hold it in reserve against new knowledge and experiences. The real value of the collateral learning model is that it offers security to students as they take up new tasks, and it often provides a source of passion for them. In one assignment, for instance, a student from rural Bethel, Ohio, included an essay in his ePortfolio chastising local officials for not directing more funding to eradicate the emerald ash borer, a tree-killing insect destroying the county’s ash trees. His passion for the topic was palpable but definitely local. The student’s newly expanded research skills, however, exposed the enormity of the problem beyond his personal experience. His ePortfolio experience extended his voice as a socially responsible citizen to influence public opinion beyond the academy. The collateral learning model gave him agency to connect his lived experience to possible future action by presenting artifacts as evidence of his learning. Applying this integrated approach allows students to disrupt, but not discount, their prior knowledge and expectations until they begin to recognize ways to incorporate their knowledge and expectations into the overall ePortfolio learning experience. From the moment students initiate their ePortfolios, our collateral learning model is evident. Rather than generating a checklist of rights and wrongs, we ask students to reflect on their understanding of and beliefs about writing and learning to write. This initial reflection becomes a part of their learning currency, or collateral, against their continued learning throughout the ePortfolio experience. Such collateral learning is not always accurate learning, but by allowing students to identify their own misconceptions about writing throughout the semester and address them, we do not dismiss their prior knowledge as unimportant or insignificant; rather, we incorporate it into the learning experience. A good example of this strategy occurs with students’ experiences with the so-called five-paragraph essay so common in testing environments. This genre informed the way many students learned to write in high school. It is not, however, a standard genre in college, where students write in formats ranging from case studies and analytical essays to lab reports and posters. Shifting the focus from structure to content with our ePortfolio collateral learning model, students draw on the five-paragraph format as a foundation rather than seeing it as an end goal. In other words, students’ prior knowledge becomes the collateral, allowing them to engage with the ePortfolio experience while they accumulate evidence to reinforce or disrupt their preconceived ideas about writing.

Yancey.indb 35

21-03-2019 12:25:35

36   eportfolio as curriculum

Suspension of Rule-Bound Strictures The process of schooling often integrates more and more structure and conformity as students move from one level to the next. The earlier students are asked to suspend previous rule-bound strictures, the sooner they become more open to exploring new ways of learning. Ultimately, students challenged to take responsibility for their own learning early in their academic careers are more receptive to integrating prior knowledge with new knowledge acquired through this experience. Giving students choices about how they approach the content of the course is a pedagogically sound decision, not a compassionate one. Employing a collateral learning model with an ePortfolio experience scaffolds freedom and accountability and follows Ayres’s (2011) observation that “an electronic portfolio is a collection of discrete items that represent the diversity of a curriculum . . . an opportunity for a student to express, reflect upon, and perhaps even construct herself as an integrated and responsible learner” (p. 81), especially, we would add, for one or more audiences. Most of our students come with little experience composing for an audience, much less a public audience beyond social media, but in addition to their other attributes, ePortfolios become a medium for sharing students’ work with others, especially public audiences. Returning to the student’s case of the emerald ash borer as an example, it not only promoted engagement but also reinforced the student’s metacognitive awareness by challenging him to think critically about how he wanted to convey information to a variety of audiences. This awareness of the public as an audience is often new to our students, who are astounded as they slowly begin to realize the power they wield when using ePortfolio as the medium to convey a message.

The Composing Curriculum as Collateral Curriculum Our composition curriculum hinges on four curricular goals at each level. In first-year composition, these goals include a mix of assignment type, rhetorical strategy, and critical thinking: narrative writing, critical analysis, rhetorical argument, and research writing. Building on these, our intermediate-level curricular goals are genre awareness, discourse community analysis, the rhetorical situation, and research writing in the discourse community. For each goal, students are given guidelines with corresponding expectations and outcomes. Two or three assignment options, each with detailed instructions, are offered for meeting a goal; students choose which assignment they think will best support their individual interests and contribute to their success in the course. The assignment prompts also explain why students are asked

Yancey.indb 36

21-03-2019 12:25:35

collateral learning as an eportfolio curriculum  

37

to write in certain ways while challenging students to think critically about what they are being asked to do. For example, rather than specifically telling students they must incorporate outside sources for their research argument, the assignment prompt states, “This is not a rant; anyone can have an opinion (we all do), but the way to convince others is to provide credible evidence and support.” The assignments in first-year composition might result in an interpretive family history, a biographical collection, or a critically analyzed comingof-age narrative. Sophomore (intermediate) research writing in a discourse community might evolve as a graphic essay; documentary; multimodal feature film; or, in the case of one student, a longitudinal online blog. In this blog, Cassie (we are using pseudonyms for all students) addressed the topic of high-risk human egg donation by documenting her decision to donate her eggs to help pay her way through college. Cassie’s willingness to move beyond personal experience led her to join an online support group as part of her research, which turned into an ongoing blog about the dangers of excessive egg donation. Eventually Cassie created virtual ads targeting women on college campuses to inform potential donors about the possibility of permanent medical complications from the procedure. Through her ePortfolio, these multimodal artifacts became living documentation of the connections she made between her prior knowledge and her academic goals. Whatever the topic—from emerald ash borers to human ova—the crossfunctional affiliation of the assignments allows students to draw on their creativity, their personal experiences, and their prior knowledge to meet each curricular goal. The collateral learning so critical to the UC Clermont College ePortfolio experience encourages liberal integration of the “lived curriculum” (Yancey, 2015, p. 302) into our delivered curriculum, with the connections between the two often articulated in students’ reflections. As demonstrated by the content of these reflections, students are engaged. They own the experience, set personal goals for how it will be incorporated into their overall academic goals, and use it as an opportunity to connect their learning across disciplines. For example, one student used her ePortfolio to introduce the audience to her future self as a scientific researcher by hosting a discussion on female archetypes in a popular fiction course. In the process she connected her work in three courses—composition, literature, and biology—inside her ePortfolio. In another case, the student thought his ePortfolio needed to reflect his real life more closely, so he used a sidebar on his ePortfolio to update his audience on the Edmonton Oilers, his childhood hockey dream team. In his reflections, he noted using what he had learned in his writing class about pathos to gain sympathy for his beloved team’s ultimate descent

Yancey.indb 37

21-03-2019 12:25:35

38   eportfolio as curriculum into obscurity. In multiple ways, students use their collateral learning to make connections while owning their own individual ePortfolio experience.

The Role of Reflection The ePortfolio experience at our college is a reflection-intensive practice. From the introduction on, students are asked to think critically about three questions as a part of each reflection: 1. What are you doing (or being asked to do)? 2. What results do you expect? 3. How can you improve it?

By embedding guided reflection at different stages throughout the ePortfolio experience, we help students recognize reflection as an essential part of learning (Ene & Riddlebarger, 2015). However, without sufficient guidance to make it meaningful, reflection becomes additional busywork that often leads to frustration for students and faculty alike. The initial assignment in our ePortfolio experience, which asks students to reflect on their understanding of and beliefs about writing and learning to write, underpins its structure. Unlike the popular notions of reflection as a past-tense event, we ask students to reflect forward (i.e., expectations, suppositions, fears) and to reflect backward (i.e., lessons learned, impressions, connections). Done properly, reflections lead students through the critical inquiry and analysis they need to successfully curate an ePortfolio by gathering, manipulating, and presenting intentionally chosen artifacts. Topical, guided readings and situationally designed reflective assignments create these types of opportunities for students. For example, Kennedy’s (2010) video Visual Literacy: Why We Need It engages students in discussions about the meaning behind the choices they make during the curation process. The construction of the ePortfolio itself also plays a significant role in our composition courses. By the second week of a 15-week semester, students are required to provide a technologically appropriate, individually chosen ePortfolio home using a link or a URL and to begin building an ­academic identity reflective of their personal educational goals and ambitions. Because the majority of our students work, have dependents, or are resuming education after a significant time lapse, this initial reflection is designed to help students situate themselves within the academic framework, conceptualizing what it means to act, look, and sound like a scholar. By gradually integrating academic lexis into this experience, students use

Yancey.indb 38

21-03-2019 12:25:35

collateral learning as an eportfolio curriculum  

39

the ePortfolio to blend the past self with the self they aspire to become, as demonstrated in one student’s ePortfolio title, Many Shades of Gray, epitomizing the connections she made among self (Gray is her surname), the artifacts she chose to include, and her newly acquired affinity for popular fiction. From this initial point forward, students are guided to reflect at intervals. Much like Taczak and Robertson (2016) using a four-part schema to engage students in reflective practice, we intentionally situate reflection at key junctures in the curriculum as a guide for students. By using (a) preliminary reflection during the ePortfolio experience initiation, (b) reflection for planning purposes before each major essay assignment, (c) reflection after each essay assignment, and (d) a culminating final reflection on their progress as learners, we hope to stimulate students’ critical awareness of their learning in real time. The use of ePortfolios to enhance authentic and reflective engagement as a part of the self-regulated learning process has been well documented (Madden, 2015; Penny Light, Chen, & Ittelson, 2012; Romance, Whitesell, Smith, & Louden, 2006; Yancey, 2009; Yang, Ngai, & Hung, 2015). Surface-level reflection is usually instinctual for students and often results in superficial, shallow responses, especially when focused on instructor feedback or approval (Rickards & Guilbault, 2006). Asking students to reflect on why they want to learn to write could yield something like, “I’m a single mom with two kids, and I want to be a role model for my kids.” Yet, challenging students to delve beyond the superficial requires structure. In fact, many students view reflection as repetitious when the expectations are unclear or ambiguous (Yang et al., 2015). Clear prompts that outline specific expectations pave the way for successful reflection, turning “I want to be a role model” into “Learning to write well will ultimately help me build the confidence I need to ask for a promotion.” As indicated previously, the ePortfolio experience capitalizes on what students already know and then challenges them to apply that knowledge to future assignments as they draw on their collateral learning. As explained previously, the experience is constructed around our four curricular goals. For each one, the reflective component asks students to draw on their experience completing the former assignment. Thus, when choosing each assignment, students explain how it best meets the goal they previously identified through reflection and also meets the overall course outcomes. These choices necessitate students’ involvement with the curriculum and reinforce our intentions that students should be in control of their learning. In sum, each major assignment requires students to read, absorb, reflect, and understand what they are being asked to do and then make choices about which assignment option suits their purpose. Once that process is completed, they are

Yancey.indb 39

21-03-2019 12:25:35

40   eportfolio as curriculum asked to reflect, apply what they have learned based on their experiences with the assignment, and then repeat the sequence as they move to the next assignment. This recursive approach is rooted in the premise that it takes an engaged student to create a successful ePortfolio, and successful ePortfolios “work to increase student engagement” (Yancey, 2009, p. 28). In our model, students’ engagement is key to their success.

Student Successes Sometimes the details of our students’ ePortfolios demonstrate their priorities for the task, and sometimes they reveal a lack of understanding about students’ expectations for the experience. For example, opening Lynette’s home page we find category titles suggesting that her ePortfolio hosts materials created for two English courses, as well as a eulogistic introduction for the group she perceived would be her audience (i.e., classmates, instructor). The About Me page is simple: “This site is dedicated to my sister . . . who lost her battle with cancer on [date]. She provided unconditional love, encouragement, and moral support, when I decided to return to college at the age of 51.” Perhaps most telling about her priorities for the ePortfolio, however, is the artifact Lynette chose to include on this page: a photograph of her smiling self standing in front of an extensive mountain range. Behind her in the distance is a rainbow slightly obscured by clouds. At first glance, the two texts seem at odds with one another. However, Lynette’s immediate audience instantly understood the connection, and reading the ePortfolio, her more distant audience did as well through the reflection that brings these two decontextualized artifacts together for the larger audience: “To reflect back on this last semester . . . is going to be a journey that I have to make but do not necessarily want to make. The life events that occurred during the course of the spring semester altered my world.” Just as we begin to think the reflection will be entirely focused on the personal, Lynette opens to bigger, broader insights: I have had the privilege of working with many people in many different settings. The language used in each of those was different based upon the individuals, settings, circumstances and the need for the communication. I learned by observing peers, supervisors and bosses which language to use in which set of circumstances. Little did I know that this class would teach me that this “changing of language” based upon the individuals being addressed had a name. I am thinking this may be why I struggled so much with this class—I was trying to learn something I already knew [but] I just did not know that I knew it.

Yancey.indb 40

21-03-2019 12:25:35

collateral learning as an eportfolio curriculum  

41

Metaphorically, Lynette’s chosen photograph tells us the same story, that life is bigger than a single event. Her closing summarizes the intersections between her personal and public self: “It is perfectly fine to start, restart and then start again to obtain the exact piece of writing that you set out to achieve. No one judges what they never see.” Lynette’s priorities are evident through the curation of her artifacts: Her sister came first and will continue to live on through this public work. Recognizing the potential of her ePortfolio to reach a broader public audience, Lynette saw the chance to commemorate her sister by using her writing to serve a greater purpose than to simply fulfill the requirements of a sophomore-level college course. Less experienced writers typically struggle with audience awareness, and reflection drives them to think more deeply about audience and intentionality. Early in the semester, a student’s reflection written in a first-year composition course documents her lack of audience awareness through her recounting of a conversation with her young son: My son and I were eating at Mcdonalds [sic] that afternoon and he was talking about the happy meals [sic]. And I begin to tell him about the Mcdonalds [sic] I know as a child. He asked did we have happy mea [sic] toys and I told him yes and that we had cartoons on the side of the box like the hambuglar [sic] which was popular when I was his age. I decided that my audience would [be] people that grew [up] in my era and would reminise [sic] about what was on the side of the box or what we had as toys in that box.

It is evident that the student has little or no understanding that her ePortfolio is written for a public audience. Although it is easy to get caught up in the grammatical errors permeating this reflection, hearing the student struggle to understand her audience led the instructor to recognize the student’s simplistic approach to problem-solving. Further, her rhetorical choices—a cryptic title, crude design, and selection of random artifacts—suggested that more meaningful feedback was needed in the beginning to guide her to reflect more deeply on how and why she made those choices. Although it is evident that guided reflections, early and often, promote students’ greater awareness of the reasons behind successful rhetorical choices, it is equally important for instructors to offer frequent feedback to support students’ growing understanding. These examples of reflective practice, although clearly executed at different stages over the ePortfolio experience, are symptomatic of our students’ instincts to focus on the personal instead of the public self. The collateral learning curriculum asks students to suspend this mind-set, if only

Yancey.indb 41

21-03-2019 12:25:35

42   eportfolio as curriculum temporarily, to explore a broader approach to developing their thoughts. To help students reach this suspension of their focus on the personal, we provide purposeful prompts to help them develop their ePortfolios. For instance, we give them ideas when we say, “This is a place where you can demonstrate your development as an academic and a scholar,” thus nudging them into a different, perhaps more scholarly role. Many of our students have never thought about who they are in terms of academics, and they have certainly never entertained the idea that they might be scholars. Broader ePortfolio concepts are expressed in directions like, “Think about the types of audiences that might see this site, and plan ahead for what they will see.” Using this approach, common misconceptions become collateral against new ways of thinking and challenge students to imagine an audience beyond their instructor or their peers. Reflection prompts are also designed to promote students’ understanding of their individual (i.e., personal) learning process and then apply that knowledge to the learning that happens in and beyond the writing classroom. Lynette’s reflection is a good example of this: To say that everything I have learned will be of value to me as I move on through my college life and then career, would be very dishonest; after all, I am not an 18-year-old college freshman. . . . But, from this point, I will place extra care in choosing the appropriate style and format based upon the group of people I am addressing.

Equally important, students are held accountable by public and private audiences through these reflections, a process validating collateral learning as a legitimate part of their progress. The ability to use prior knowledge as a catalyst for future learning events is a unique benefit supported by the ePortfolio. From the inception of the ePortfolio experience, students own it as a personal achievement.

The Challenge: Involving Faculty Some instructors hesitate to teach students to create an ePortfolio, wary of its perceived proximity to nonacademic social media sites like Facebook or Instagram, when in fact students’ social media activities support them in interacting with others through self-constructed spaces that reflect their individuality. Consequently, we face a challenging task of creating support structures for faculty who are less comfortable with and sometimes even openly resistant to introducing the ePortfolio experience in their classrooms.

Yancey.indb 42

21-03-2019 12:25:35

collateral learning as an eportfolio curriculum  

43

Our solution has been to engage early adopters and build on their work by creating opportunities for them to share their successes. Our first attempt was establishing a Composition Roundtable that meets once a semester. In this group, instructors come together to learn from one another about pedagogical and scholarly topics, including teaching techniques and innovative technologies. At one Composition Roundtable, an adjunct presented his assignments for embedding audiovisual components into ePortfolios. One of the goals he listed was to foster students’ independence by challenging them to take responsibility for making their own meaning. The resulting ­questions and open discussion among participants provided a forum to introduce faculty to ePortfolio concepts. In addition, over the past five years we have conducted writing workshops and summer writing institutes showcasing students’ ePortfolios as a part of the agenda; these multiple sessions expose participants (inside and outside the college) to our ePortfolio curriculum. Recently we hosted one of the first regional conferences for the Conference on College Composition and Communication, where we provided a dedicated space for displaying student ePortfolios. We have also encouraged cross-disciplinary approaches that invite student writing from multiple academic areas, and we promote the ePortfolio experience as a tool to enhance an integration of knowledge extending beyond the classroom. The fact remains that on campuses like ours where faculty value the autonomy of their individual curricular choices, there is resistance. Likewise, others might argue that implementing the ePortfolio on a two-year campus forfeits too much of a curricular footprint. Still others question their value at our institution because a percentage of our students do not continue their education after two years. Our answers to those objections are at the forefront of the collateral learning model of our ePortfolio experience. First, as an open-access institution whose mission is to “foster diversity as well as intellectual, cultural, and social development in our community” (UC Clermont College, 2018, para. 1), we are ethically bound to discover and implement dynamic learning environments designed to promote student success for whatever time students choose to invest with us. Second, our students’ adaptive responses to challenging technologies increase their exposure to a global network of learning.

Conclusion It is exciting to imagine the transformative iterations ePortfolios will undergo in the future. Rapidly changing technologies assure us that what we see today will likely not be the face of ePortfolios tomorrow. On the twoyear campus, the links between student demographics and their ePortfolios,

Yancey.indb 43

21-03-2019 12:25:35

44   eportfolio as curriculum the continued challenges of technology and platform, and the perceived strengths of ePortfolios to capture and promote learning are still limited to a relatively small segment of time. At our institution, this observation is particularly relevant, since we can follow students’ future progress for only a brief period of time. We have anecdotal evidence to suggest students use their ePortfolios during job interviews and for scholarship applications; however, we understand there would be great value in gathering data, as we hope to do, to trace the long-term benefits students receive from the act of creating, designing, curating, and publishing an ePortfolio. In the meantime, we will continue to approach the evolution of our ePortfolio program through cautious negotiations and continued anticipation as Eynon (2006) recommended, “Aim high in [your] vision of what is possible for eportfolios. . . . Be intentional about integration” (p. 66). By keeping the ePortfolio experience visible and pursuing a bottom-up approach, we are gaining ground and creating a learning culture supported by and hosted in our ePortfolio. Learning from the vast body of research about the connection between student engagement and success and committed to the benefits the collateral learning model offers, we believe that student success stemming from the modest ePortfolio experience on our two-year rural, regional campus is cause for celebration and the foundation for further development.

References Ayres, J. R. (2011). Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact—Edited by Darren Cambridge, Barbara Cambridge, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. Teaching Theology & Religion, 14(1), 81–82. doi:10.1111/j.14679647.2010.00679.x Ene, E., & Riddlebarger, C. (2015). Intensive reflection in teacher training: What is it good for? Journal of Academic Writing, 5(1), 157–168. Retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v5i1.160 Eynon, B. (2006). Making connections: The La Guardia ePortfolio. In D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0 (pp. 59–68). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Kennedy, B. (2010, May 26). Visual literacy: Why we need it [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91fk6D0nwM Madden, T. M. (2015). Reimagining boundaries: How ePortfolios enhance learning for adult students. International Journal of ePortfolio, 5(1), 93–101. Retrieved from http://www.theijep.com/pdf/IJEP151.pdf Penny Light, T. P., Chen, H. L., & Ittelson, J. C. (2012). Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Yancey.indb 44

21-03-2019 12:25:35

collateral learning as an eportfolio curriculum  

45

Rickards, W. H., & Guilbault, L. (2006). Studying student reflection in an electronic portfolio environment. In D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0 (pp. 17–28). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Romance, N., Whitesell, M., Smith, C., & Louden, A. (2006). Career ePortfolios in the IT associates program at DePauw University. In A. Jafari & C. Kaufman (Eds.), A handbook of research on ePortfolios (pp. 532–538). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference. Taczak, K., & Robertson, L. (2016). Reiterative reflection in the twenty-first-century writing classroom: An integrated approach to teaching transfer. In K. B. Yancey (Ed.), A rhetoric of reflection (pp. 42–63). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. UC Clermont College. (2018). Our mission, vision, & core values. Retrieved from www.ucclermont.edu/about/mission.html Yancey, K. B. (2009). Electronic portfolios a decade into the twenty-first century: What we know, what we need to know. Peer Review, 11(1), 28–32. Retrieved from https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/electronic-portfolios -decade-twenty-first-century-what-we-know Yancey. K. B. (2015). Grading ePortfolios: Tracing two approaches, their advantages, and their disadvantages. Theory Into Practice, 54, 301–308. doi:10.1080/00405 841.2015.1076693 Yang, D., Ngai, A. C., & Hung, H. K. (2015). Students’ perception of using eportfolios for learning in higher education. In W. Ma, A. Yuen, J. Park, W. Lau, & L. Deng (Eds.), New media, knowledge practices and aultiliteracies (pp. 225–233). Singapore: Springer Media.

Yancey.indb 45

21-03-2019 12:25:35

Yancey.indb 46

21-03-2019 12:25:35

3 e P O RT F O L I O S I N A WORLD L ANGUAGE LEARNING CURRICULUM Karen Simroth James, Emily E. Scida, and Yitna Firdyiwek

T

he primary objective of world language study, and goal of the World Languages Literacy requirement in our College of Arts and Sciences, is to prepare students to participate successfully as global citizens in multilingual and multicultural communities locally, nationally, and internationally. The language learning curriculum promotes mastery of the language system; ongoing skill building in speaking, listening, reading, and writing; and a keen understanding of and respect for the cultural products (art, literature, architecture, food, dress, laws, etc.), perspectives (meanings, attitudes, values, beliefs, ideas), and practices (social interactions, behaviors) associated with the language. Thus, for successful development of linguistic, communicative, and cultural competence, language learners need significant exposure to input (listening to and reading the language) and ongoing opportunities for production (speaking and writing) in meaningful and authentic communication, as well as the ability to reflect critically on cultural difference through the study of cultural products, perspectives, and practices. A problem with traditional academic language programs is that students engage in discrete learning activities and assessments like exams and compositions for a semester or multiple semesters without a view of the whole trajectory of their progress and development over time. Because engagement with the language is largely limited to time spent in class, students lack ­sufficient exposure to input or opportunities for sustained practice and production. In addition, because courses often focus primarily on the development of linguistic knowledge and communication, other important components such as cultural learning, which tend to receive insufficient attention in the 47

Yancey.indb 47

21-03-2019 12:25:35

48   eportfolio as curriculum curriculum, are perceived as less important. Admittedly, second language acquisition is a slow and challenging process, requiring years to reach a high level of proficiency; even so, many students go through years of language study without developing awareness of their learning strategies, their strengths and weaknesses, their goals, or the relevance of language study to their own academic interests or personal lives that can animate learning and give it purpose. In this chapter, we present our exploration of ePortfolios to enhance language learning and address these challenges in two language programs, beginning and intermediate French and Spanish. This curricular redesign is the result of a three-year (2014–2017) grant project for ePortfolio integration in language courses funded by an internal Learning Technologies Incubator College grant. ePortfolio served as a catalyst for curricular transformation as we moved through the different phases of integration. The first phase was to more fully support the multimodality of language learning and to facilitate holistic assessment, the second phase was to explore fuller integration of taskbased linguistic and cultural learning, and the third phase involved moving toward making ePortfolio the centerpiece of our language program curricula with a more engaged role for students.

Background From the perspective of language teaching and learning, we were intrigued by the potential of ePortfolios to help us achieve four programmatic goals: demonstrate and integrate development of multiple linguistic skills and literacies through multimodal communication, promote holistic assessment incorporating multiple skills and modes of production and interpretation, support reflection and awareness of learning strategies, and foster learner autonomy. We also expected the ePortfolios would support development of other dimensions of language learning, such as cultural literacy. In exploring how ePortfolios might benefit our programs, we noted the conflicting aims of ePortfolios mentioned in the literature (Barrett, 2011; Cambridge, 2009). But we also took heart from observations by Matthews-DeNatale (2014) about the varied and overlapping aims of the ePortfolio: One might ask if ePortfolios are a technology, a pedagogical method for connected and integrated learning, or a strategy for evidence-based formative and summative assessment of learning outcomes. The answer is yes. Many portfolio programs are designed to advance several of these goals simultaneously. (p. 42)

Yancey.indb 48

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   49

Although this initiative grew out of instructional needs and goals in our language programs, our questions and the potential solutions through ePortfolio adoption coincided with and were enriched by a larger conversation about meaningful, high-impact teaching and learning practices encompassing ePortfolio and occurring at the same time across our College of Arts and Sciences and in higher education more generally.

Second Language Pedagogy Second language pedagogy in the United States is grounded in the notion of communicative competence (Canale, 1983; Canale & Swain, 1980; Hymes, 1972; Savignon, 1972, 2002), currently understood in the discipline as the ability “to communicate effectively and interact with cultural competence to participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world” (National Standard Collaborative Board, 2015). The communicative language teaching approach associated with this theory focuses on appropriate communication of meaning in authentic contexts rather than rote learning of linguistic forms (Byrnes, 2006; Celce-Murcia, 2007; Jacobs & Farrell, 2003; Littlewood, 2011; Richards, 2006). The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines provide a framework for curricula and assessment of language development. These guidelines indicate what an individual can accomplish with the language, in what contexts, and with what degree of accuracy (Swender, Conrad, & Vicars, 2012). The novice level of proficiency, for example, revolves around the simplest of communicative functions for daily needs in familiar, personal contexts, using limited vocabulary and grammatical structures. The proficiency scale extends to the superior level, which involves the ability to carry out the most sophisticated functions in a variety of professional contexts with exemplary command of grammar and specialized lexicon. Language pedagogy, particularly in higher education, is also informed by the concept of multiliteracies, with a greater focus on multimodality and an expanded view of literacy in language learning, highlighting the various forms of discourse and modes of communication from speech and print to images and video that expert communicators employ (Kern, 2000, 2003; Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016; Swaffar & Arens, 2005). Acquiring another language “involves the ability to produce and interpret texts [and] a critical awareness of the relationships between texts, discourse conventions, and social and cultural contests” (Kern, 2000, p. 6). Awareness of the integrated nature of text and context and the multimodality of language use has driven our desire to find better ways for our students to understand how the various components of language

Yancey.indb 49

21-03-2019 12:25:35

50   eportfolio as curriculum study—pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral proficiency, reading skills, writing skills, and cultural competence—are linked and to help them discover for themselves the connections between their developing linguistic skills and their other emerging forms of literacy, including cultural literacy. To that end, we sought to improve our design of tasks and activities for learning and assessment of authentic and integrated uses of language and culture.

ePortfolio in Second Language Pedagogy Although the concept of portfolios for language learning is not new (Moeller, 1994; Padilla, Aninao, & Sung, 1996), there is growing interest in electronic portfolios, or ePortfolios, for meaningful assessment at all levels of instruction. In particular, language educators in secondary schools have pioneered ePortfolios with LinguaFolio online, a system built around carefully sequenced can-do statements directly linked to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and available through the University of Oregon’s Center for Applied Second Language Studies (Cummins, 2007). The National Capital Language Resource Center piloted portfolio assessment in elementary through postsecondary world language classrooms from 1996 to 1999 (Barnhardt, Kevorkian, & Delett, 1998), and the European Language Portfolio is linked to the levels of proficiency described in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Kühn & Cavana, 2012; Little, 2005, 2012; López-Fernández, 2014). These models focus on skill assessment, reflection, and setting goals. Language educators around the globe have also explored the role of ­ePortfolios in fostering cultural as well as linguistic learning (Allen, 2004; Burner, 2014; Delett, Barnhardt, & Kevorkian, 2001; Toulouse & GeoffrionVinci, 2017). Chui and Dias (2017) reiterate that learning culture is much more than memorizing facts and is instead a matter of helping the learner understand culture as “a perpetual social construction” (p. 56). Thus, by collecting, evaluating, and reflecting on diverse sources pertaining to the target culture in the ePortfolio, the learner will become aware that culture is not static and that it varies according to social context. For Allen (2004), such cultural learning must include opportunities for students “to explore aspects of the culture, reflect on the fruit of their own explorations” (p. 232) and construct meaning from their experiences. In this model of learning, students engage in “a process of discovery, social construction and meaning negotiation” (Su, 2011, p. 231) to begin to understand and appreciate the complexity of the foreign cultures as well as of their own.

Yancey.indb 50

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   51

Phase 1: Focus on Multimodality The first year of our project (2014–2015) involved a small pilot in our intensive 8-week Summer Language Institute in French and in 7 sections of French and Spanish (5 sections of intermediate French and 2 advanced French and Spanish language classes), reaching 130 students. The initial grant team included the language program directors in Spanish and French, 2 full-time faculty colleagues (1 in Spanish and 1 in French), 3 graduate teaching assistants, and an instructional designer from the college’s Learning Design and Technology team. Our focus in this phase was to explore multimodality in ePortfolios based on multiple, interconnected modes of communication and frequent interaction with authentic digital media, including news clips, podcasts, images, and film clips, to complement and enhance the existing curriculum. Another important goal was to promote reflection and metacognitive awareness of the writing process in the second language, whether in formal or informal contexts. Learning activities in the ePortfolio included formal writing assignments and informal written journal entries linked to authentic media sources selected by the instructor or the student in relation to course themes. Students reflected in the ePortfolio on their writing process and on cultural perspectives and practices they observed in a newscast clip or other online media posted on their course site. In some classes, students responded orally, through posted video clips, to instructor video prompts created to demonstrate speaking skills in relation to the lesson topic. Students also engaged in peer commenting, reading and viewing each other’s work, posting questions, or responding to content. In this phase, ePortfolio supported sharing multimedia work such as images, storyboards, memes, and audio and video clips produced by students. Reflection on their work allowed students to see challenges and progress and to understand the connections among different modes of linguistic communication. In any particular communicative act, multiple modes are at play. For example, typical conversations involve listening and speaking. The concept of multimodal literacy underscores “the complementary and overlapping nature of language modalities” (Paesani et al., 2016, p. 14). Interaction with digital media, for example, may include listening, reading, and viewing, and, if responding to the media, writing or speaking as well. In one of our first pilot classes in Phase 1, a student described the freedom of expression made possible by the multimodal nature of the ePortfolio: Technology is something that also interests me, and while I’m not some crazy programmer, I love the freedom of expression found in e-portfolios.

Yancey.indb 51

21-03-2019 12:25:35

52   eportfolio as curriculum My website felt like me, my words and pictures expressed how I felt about the assignment and the topic. I was able to find a video and pair it with the assignment. I am fairly ADD when it comes to essays, but the freedom of the e-portfolio allowed me to carelessly and easily switch between a link to my favorite song and my explanation of it in French.

Along with this focus on multimodality, we sought to support a more holistic, integrated assessment of students’ developing multiple literacies through ePortfolio. In particular, ePortfolio facilitates the alignment of learning and assessment activities with the essentially multimodal character of language learning, making it a very attractive framework for our purposes. Our assessment data included online surveys and focus group meetings with instructors and students as well as students’ ePortfolios. All instructors in the pilot classes reported higher and more thoughtful levels of student engagement with the writing process and with authentic media sources; students produced higher quality work in part, we think, because of the online public audience, and they demonstrated thoughtful reflection and an emerging metacognitive awareness of the writing process. Students also reported positive participation in the peer commenting process. At the same time, instructors and students responded positively to the ePortfolio framework while recommending more consistent and regular integration of it into the course.

Phase 2: Integrating Reflection, Culture, and Multimodal Tasks As our experience with ePortfolios deepened, the group expanded to include more classes and added 5 language programs—Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian—to the original Spanish and French. In 2015–2016, each semester about 1,700 students with 14 additional instructors used ePortfolios in 95 classes and in 7 languages. In Phase 2 we explored fuller integration of ePortfolio in our courses. In a workshop at the 2015 Association for Authentic, Experiential, and EvidenceBased Learning annual conference, we decided to focus on cultural competence as the initial area for developing language learning activities specific to ePortfolio because designing and assessing activities to support deep cultural learning is an ongoing challenge in language courses. Insights from the workshop resulted in the creation of culture-focused ePortfolios in Spanish and French intermediate courses where students participated individually and collaboratively in nuanced and in-depth research in multiple stages over the semester, including multimodal presentations of cultural topics chosen by the students themselves. Thus, students in our intermediate courses created ePortfolios focused on culture, while a selection of beginning-level courses

Yancey.indb 52

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   53

incorporated more fully integrated, holistic ePortfolios to document student learning and help build a new culture of “folio thinking” (Penny Light, Chen, & Ittleson, 2012, p. 8) from the ground up. In Phase 2 the project team developed new ePortfolio guidelines and rubrics for developing and assessing cultural learning in the ePortfolios at the intermediate level, as well as fundamental linguistic skills and competencies needed at the beginning level, and new video tutorials accessible online and in-person training sessions for students and instructors. To offer ongoing one-on-one technical support, we established our first cohort of student ePortfolio peer consultants with office hours in our building. This team of five students was selected for their high-level technical skills and excellent ePortfolios in prior language courses. A graduate student already part of the project was hired to help with project management and logistics. The common elements in our 2015–2016 language learning ePortfolios included • evidence of oral and written work (conversational and presentational speech, formal and informal writing), • evidence of cultural learning and of developing cross-cultural awareness, • student self-assessments of progress and reflections on the learning process, 
 • peer collaboration and commenting, and • multimodal presentation of learning. In Phase 2, student work yielded positive results which, although not universal, pointed to valuable experiences in the areas of reflection, culture, and collaboration. We aim to replicate these results throughout the language programs.

Reflection Reflection in our courses involves planning goals for learning, monitoring progress toward goals, and evaluating progress and work. Most students come to us unfamiliar with the process and purpose of reflection, so this is a skill that needs to be taught and developed in our programs. Sufficiently encouraging results across most classes, however, show us that students are not resistant to developing metacognitive skills, especially when they can see changes in their language learning. Our experiences with student reflection in Phase 2 confirmed Yancey’s (2004) distinctions between the delivered and the constructed or experienced curriculum and the important role of reflection

Yancey.indb 53

21-03-2019 12:25:35

54   eportfolio as curriculum for engaging students and facilitating their autonomy as learners and the construction of their own knowledge. Beginning in Phase 2, the project team worked to expand the benefits of ePortfolio for learner engagement by designing more focused prompts and activities for student reflection in various media (see Appendix 3A). For example, after viewing video or audio clips they created at the beginning and end of the semester, students reflect on their progress in speaking and pronunciation and identify specific goals for further improvement in the next course. In written work, students keep a log of the types of grammatical, syntactical, and lexical errors they make most frequently and identify a strategy to track and improve their uses of those structures in writing. This log is linked to documentation of and periodic reflection on their rewriting process. Students are quite specific about how these practices have helped them learn. One student, for instance, noted the significance of pre- and postreflection working together: The reflecting I think was what really helped the most because on every single assignment that I had of written work I was supposed to go back, read it and make a reflection, especially if there was something that had an earlier version of that work and then a later version after I did updates, and to reflect on my improvements or my areas, my weaknesses, so I think the reflection was the strongest for me.

Another student described the value of cultural connections made through reflection: Reflecting [was helpful] because I chose the history topic just reflecting upon . . . how this relates to today . . . how it relates to the history part of my culture . . . and so just reflecting upon that I think had a big impact in my learning about the Spanish culture.

Culture We saw positive results in regard to ePortfolio activities for cultural learning, particularly at the intermediate level. This improvement in the quality and extent of cultural learning was evident in the more nuanced opinions and greater depth of understanding displayed in the culture-focused ePortfolio activities of the intermediate-level students compared to their in-class culture presentations prior to the integration of cultural learning tasks into the ePortfolio, a shift noted by instructors at all levels. Collaboration with classmates over the semester and publication of their work in the culture-focused ePortfolio for an audience of their peers appear to have been important factors contributing to the improved results, both of which were unexpected

Yancey.indb 54

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   55

positive outcomes. As one student observed, ePortfolio highlights the “serendipity” of learning and provides a place to document it: As an Economics and Government double major I find the role of Governments and Economies fascinating, and what this e-portfolio allowed me to do was explore those topics scattered throughout our textbook and collect them here on a single site. I learned about French, new cultures, and about new economies in a way that I found far more interesting than previous class assignments. To give a specific example, I found the study of the program AFMIN [African Microfinance Network] very interesting since as we read about its micro-financing goals I was also in my Economics class studying reasons why some countries have such a lack of capital. And if this weren’t coincidence enough I also started studying global development in Comparative Politics. For a period of about a week or two I had 3 classes essentially discussing different perspectives of the same thing. I think moments like these for any student at a university are both rare and exciting, and in particular I found them very intellectually inspiring.

Another student spoke about mutual cultural influences that became apparent and the kinds of cooperation such influences can engender: By researching and learning much more about those topics than I ever expected to know (especially basketball!), I came to realize the degree of fluidity that exists between French and American culture. French and American culture have reciprocal influences on one another in a number of areas such as fashion trends, holiday traditions, media, and leisure activities like playing and watching sports. When I watched other groups’ culture projects, it quickly became clear that this isn’t just a coincidence and it isn’t just among Americans and the French. Almost every single project discussed how their topic influences or was influenced by another society or group. Growing up in a world that often seems so competitive and sometimes even hostile, it was a refreshing experience to see the many positive influences that one group of people can and do have on other groups and cultures.

Student reflections such as these indicate to us that ePortfolio can foster appreciation of the importance of cultural competence and deeper understanding of connections with other perspectives and groups and their reciprocal cultural influences.

Collaboration In Phase 2 we saw that ePortfolios support the collaboration and reflection that are fundamental to deeper cultural learning and cross-cultural awareness.

Yancey.indb 55

21-03-2019 12:25:35

56   eportfolio as curriculum When used regularly, the informal, meaningful exchange of ideas and opinions outside class—sharing student journals, culture-focused activities, and commenting by peers and instructors in the ePortfolio—contributes to building a supportive community of learners in a class, lowering student anxiety about foreign language use, and offering valuable additional opportunities for meaningful communication in the target language. This collaboration and sharing also increases input, production, and frequent exposure to cultural topics in ways that weren’t possible without ePortfolios. In some cases, the learning was about collaboration almost independent of the content, as this student observed: I think the greatest lesson I learned from collaborating with my peers was that you can never go wrong getting a second opinion on your work, it will only improve it. Additionally, I learned how to effectively give and take criticism without offense, judgment, or bias.

Other students spoke eloquently about how collaboration enhanced language learning specifically. As one student put it, The cultural projects of other students were also largely informative and gave me a well-rounded sense [of ] various aspects and issues in Francophone countries. In addition to learning about other realms of the French culture from other students, I found that reading and commenting on my peers’ work throughout the semester gave me the chance to view topics from a different perspective. Furthermore, having the chance to respond to another person’s perspective allowed for more practice of conversational French.

In these comments, students show they are beginning to think about how learning happens and to recognize the value of peer learning, exchange of viewpoints, peer editing, and increased language practice, which are important areas of language learning we found difficult to foster without ePortfolio. At the end of Phase 2 an external evaluator’s assessment revealed the four areas we focused on next: 1. Continue and expand use of peer commenting and interactive, collaborative components. 2. Continue and expand use of multimedia capacity of the ePortfolio to represent as many aspects of language and cultural learning as possible, in alignment with the course goals and outcomes.

Yancey.indb 56

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   57 3. Revise rubrics to refine ongoing, midterm, and final assessment of student work in the ePortfolio and seek additional ways to further integrate the ePortfolio in the course. 4. Pursue refinement of program assessment through ePortfolios.

Examples of the resulting materials are available at https://collab.its.virginia .edu/x/5I2SOw, our student resources website.

Phase 3: A New Role for Students Phase 3 of our project explored making ePortfolio the centerpiece of the language courses, leading to a new role for students and fuller integration of ePortfolio for learning and assessment. We worked toward systemic adoption throughout the beginning and intermediate courses of the Spanish and French language programs and authentic assessment in the ePortfolio mapped closely onto program learning outcomes. In moving to an ePortfolio-centered curriculum, we focused on how we could make ePortfolio the focal point of learning as process and product. We wanted students to develop communicative and cultural competence through individual and collaborative activities in the ePortfolio as well as showcase their final work and achievement of course goals in their final ePortfolio and take on greater responsibility for and autonomy in their learning experience. Two events shaped our work in Phase 3. In a multidepartment program-level outcomes assessment session, instructors of Chinese, French, and Spanish worked to evaluate the attainment of learning outcomes in a sample of final ePortfolios from the fourth (and final) course in the language sequence focusing on writing competence and cultural competence. This assessment session brought to light areas where ePortfolio successfully supported learning outcomes—namely, development of writing—and areas where outcomes were not being met—primarily reflection on cultural learning. During Phase 3, we worked to enhance student reflection with better scaffolding by offering clearer guidelines, models, and expanded prompts (available on the student resources website, https://collab.its.virginia.edu/ x/5I2SOw). This program assessment session initiated an important dialogue on articulating learning outcomes by level of language study (beginning, intermediate, and advanced), which was the topic of a four-day summer ePortfolio workshop with Chinese, French, and Spanish language instructors. In this workshop, we thought carefully about how to design meaningful

Yancey.indb 57

21-03-2019 12:25:35

58   eportfolio as curriculum ePortfolio activities that align with level-specific learning outcomes as well as support other goals important to us that are most effectively achieved through ePortfolio such as multiple literacies, metacognition, autonomy, and collaboration. In this phase, the ePortfolio became the centerpiece of the course, the site for peer collaboration, ongoing reflection, holistic feedback from instructors, and completion and documentation of most student work. Across the courses, student ePortfolios contained selected components from the following list: • Student reflection (journal entries and reflective essays) • Written work • Journals • Research projects • Compositions, including drafts • Reflections on the writing and revising process • Speaking • Video or audio projects • Pronunciation practice • Podcasts • Spoken journal entries • Cultural projects • Video project • Poster • Research project • Peer comments (written or oral) • Metacognitive skill development • Concept map • Personal dictionary • Identification of learning strategies and goals In addition, students presented their final ePortfolios during class time to their classmates at the end of the semester, showing and describing their most significant learning moments from working on the ePortfolio. Likewise, a college-wide FolioFest at the end of the fall and spring semesters allowed students from world languages and other fields to showcase their best work to a public audience of peers, faculty, and administrators. At the end of Phase 3, language instructors participated in the Institute of World Languages Faculty Retreat to review and revise student learning outcomes and program-level outcomes in collaboration with colleagues from across all eight language programs. Teachers worked to reach a common

Yancey.indb 58

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   59

understanding of those learning goals that are most important at our institution and in our departments and of levels of competence a student should reach at the end of each level of study and in each language. This in turn allowed each program team to improve design and alignment of ePortfolio activities with clearer learning outcomes. An important step in Phase 3 was designing enhanced training for new graduate teaching assistants during their orientation and pedagogy coursework in their first year of teaching. As noted earlier, we found that public showcases help students see what they have learned while also empowering them as ambassadors of and spokespersons for ePortfolio for learning, teaching, and assessment in many educational contexts. More generally, data from Phase 3, including student and instructor online surveys, instructor focus groups, and student ePortfolio work, reveal positive and negative perceptions of ePortfolio in our programs. For students, ePortfolio exerts a positive effect on their progress and confidence in writing, speaking, reading, cultural awareness, and digital literacy, whereas reflection was perceived positively by students and instructors alike. Still, not all instructors fully understand ePortfolio pedagogy or its role as the center of the curriculum. We believe that students and teachers have to experience ePortfolio to understand it well, and so this transition to ePortfolio as the focal point of learning and assessment in the curriculum has generated some initial uneasiness, something that we expect will continue to fade as ePortfolio is adopted more broadly throughout our programs and our institution. Educating instructors on the ePortfolio as curriculum and disseminating resources will facilitate this transition to a new culture of learning and assessment built around our program goals.

Meaning-Making and ePortfolio as Curriculum As we have noted, the multimodal nature of language learning and the multiple, interconnected literacies at the heart of language learning led to our exploration of ePortfolios to better meet our goals. Recognizing that a critical awareness of the relationships between texts, contexts, and discourse conventions is fundamental to world language education, Kern (2000) advocates an expanded understanding of literacy as a “dynamic set of linguistic, social, and cognitive processes that are culturally-motivated,” a view of literacy that includes “an additional component of active reflection on how meanings are constructed and negotiated in particular acts of communication” (p. 39). From our experience, we observe meaning-making in the following ways in our students’ language learning ePortfolios:

Yancey.indb 59

21-03-2019 12:25:35

60   eportfolio as curriculum • Individual multimodal artifacts of learning are explicitly and implicitly linked in the ePortfolio, creating an implicit dialogue between artifacts for the student and for the readers of the ePortfolio. This dialogue may at times be made explicit in and through the student’s reflective process. • The development of metacognitive awareness of learning needs and strategies (in stages) allows the student to make meaning of his or her study of language beyond the immediate goals of a given lesson or assignment. • Meaning is also created through collaboration and exchange, through the accomplishment, sharing, commenting on, and presentation of individual work and group projects in the ePortfolio. Reflection also plays an implicit role in this collaborative process, representing what Silver (2016) calls the “ubiquitous digital reflection” (p. 174) that occurs in ePortfolios when reflection is an ongoing part of learning and not separate from it. • Meaning emerges beyond class as the student explores the links between language study and personal and professional interests and goals. Our approach to learning and teaching world languages assumes a constant focus on making meaning: conveying information and one’s own opinions, orally and in writing; understanding and interpreting spoken and written texts; and incorporating cultural knowledge with linguistic knowledge and skills for effective creation, communication, and interpretation of meaning. We continue to explore whether meaning-making through ePortfolios improves students’ acquisition of linguistic proficiency and cultural competence and to what degree it increases metacognitive awareness and learner autonomy. Answers will emerge in time, but it is our initial finding that the ePortfolio itself directly supports and helps achieve the core objectives of linguistic and cultural learning and the development of multiple literacies in our language programs.

References Allen, L. Q. (2004). Implementing a culture portfolio project within a constructivist paradigm. Foreign Language Annals, 37, 232–239. Barnhardt, S., Kevorkian, J., & Delett, J. (1998). Portfolio assessment in the foreign language classroom. Washington, DC: National Capital Language Resource Center. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED448602.pdf Barrett, H. C. (2011). Balancing the two faces of e-portfolios. Retrieved from http:// electronicportfolios.org/balance/balancingarticle2.pdf

Yancey.indb 60

21-03-2019 12:25:35

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   61 Burner, T. (2014). The potential formative benefits of portfolio assessment in second and foreign language writing contexts: A review of the literature. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 43, 139–149. Byrnes, H. (Ed.). (2006). Perspectives. Modern Language Journal, 90, 244–266. Cambridge, D., Cambridge, B., & Yancey, K. B. (Eds.). (2009). Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 2–27). London, UK: Longman. Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to foreign language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, 1–47. Celce-Murcia, M. (2007). Rethinking the role of communicative competence in language teaching. In E. Alcón Soler & M. P. Safont Jordà (Eds.), Intercultural language use and language learning (pp. 41–57). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Chui, C. S., & Dias, C. (2017). The integration of e-portfolios in the foreign language classroom: Towards intercultural and reflective competences. In T. Chaudhuri & B. Cabau (Eds.), E-portfolios in higher education: A multidisciplinary approach (pp. 53–74). Singapore: Springer. Cummins, P. (2007). LinguaFolio and electronic portfolios in teacher training. In M. A. Kassen, R. Z. Levine, K. Murphy-Judy, & M. Peter (Eds.), Preparing and developing technology-proficient L2 teachers. CALICO Monograph Series 6 (pp. 321–344). San Marcos, TX: Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. Delett, J. S., Barnhardt, S., & Kevorkian, J. A. (2001). A framework for portfolio assessment in the foreign language classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 34, 559–568. Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. P. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269–293). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Jacobs, G. M., & Farrell, T. S. (2003). Understanding and implementing the CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) paradigm. RELC Journal, 34(1), 5–30. Kern, R. (2000). Literacy and language teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kern, R. (2003). Literacy as a new organizing principle for foreign language education. In P. Patrikis (Ed.), Reading between the lines: Perspectives on foreign language literacy (pp. 40–59). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kühn, B., & Cavana, M. L. P. (2012). Perspectives from the European language portfolio: Learner autonomy and self-assessment. London, UK: Routledge. Little, D. (2005). The Common European Framework and the European Language Portfolio: Involving learners and their judgements in the assessment process. Language Testing, 22, 321–336. Little, D. (2012). The Common European Framework and the European Language Portfolio: Some history, a view of language learner autonomy, and some implications for higher education. Language Learning in Higher Education, 2(1), 1–16.

Yancey.indb 61

21-03-2019 12:25:35

62   eportfolio as curriculum Littlewood, W. (2011). Communicative language teaching: An expanding concept for a changing world. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. 2, pp. 541–557). New York, NY: Routledge. López-Fernández, O. (2014). Experiencia docente universitaria con el Portfolio Europeo de Lenguas electrónico: una innovación para la promoción del ­plurilingüismo y la interculturalidad [University teaching experience with the electronic European Language Portfolio: An innovation for the promotion of plurilingualism and interculturality]. Cultura y Educación, 26(1), 211–225. Matthews-DeNatale, G. (2014). Are we who we think we are? ePortfolios as a tool for curriculum redesign. Online Learning, 17(4), 41–56. Moeller, A. K. (1994). Portfolio assessment: A showcase for growth and learning in the foreign language classroom. In G. Crouse (Ed.), Meeting new challenges in the foreign language classroom: Selected papers from the 1994 Central States Conference (pp. 103–114). Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook. National Standards Collaborative Board. (2015). World-readiness standards for learning languages (4th ed.). Alexandria, VA: American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Padilla, A. M., Aninao, J. C., & Sung, H. (1996). Development and implementation of student portfolios in foreign language programs. Foreign Language Annals, 29, 429–438. Paesani, K. W., Allen, H. W., & Dupuy, B. (2016). A multiliteracies framework for collegiate foreign language teaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Penny Light, T., Chen, H., & Ittelson, J. C. (2012). Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Richards, J. C. (2006). Communicative language teaching today. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Savignon, S. J. (1972). Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign-language teaching. Philadelphia, PA: Center for Curricular Development. Savignon, S. J. (2002). Communicative language teaching: Linguistic theory and classroom practice. In S. Savignon (Ed.), Interpreting communicative language teaching: Concepts and concerns in teacher education (pp. 1–27). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Silver, N. (2016). Reflection in digital spaces: Publication, conversation, collaboration. In K. Yancey (Ed.), A rhetoric of reflection (pp. 166–200). Logan: Utah State University Press. Su, Y.-C. (2011). The effects of the cultural portfolio project on cultural and EFL learning in Taiwan’s EFL college classes. Language Teaching Research, 15, 230–252. Swaffar, J., & Arens, K. (2005). Remapping the foreign language curriculum: A multiliteracies approach. New York, NY: Modern Language Association. Swender, E., Conrad, D., & Vicars, R. (2012). ACTFL proficiency guidelines 2012. Alexandria, VA: American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Retrieved from https://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals

Yancey.indb 62

21-03-2019 12:25:36

eportfolios in a world language learning curriculum   63 Toulouse, M., & Geoffrion-Vinci, M. (2017). Electronic portfolios in foreign language learning. In N. Van Deusen-Scholl & S. May (Eds.), Second and foreign language education (3rd ed., pp. 151–166). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Yancey, K. B. (2004). Teaching literature as reflective practice. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Yancey, K. B. (Ed.). (2016). A rhetoric of reflection. Logan: Utah State University Press.

Yancey.indb 63

21-03-2019 12:25:36

APPENDIX 3A

Prompts for Student Reflection

R

eflective prompts fall into three categories, as illustrated by the ­following examples. Through our collaborative, multidepartmental initiative, a core of reflective prompts like these have been adapted for each level and language. Many are written activities, but students also have opportunities to record and post their reflections as audio or video files. (In the elementary-level courses most of these essays or activities are completed in English. In the second-year courses, some guided reflections are carried out in the target language, but many are intended to be done in English because effective metacognitive communication requires a higher level of linguistic proficiency.) 1. Initial planning and goal setting for the semester FREN 1010–1020 (Elementary French I & II) ePortfolio Reflection #1 Réflexion initiale • Your vision for the course: Visualize yourself at the end of the semester. In a brief paragraph, describe what you see, hear, and feel in your ideal situation. Some possible questions to consider are: What were my greatest accomplishments in this course? In what ways did I change or impact myself or others? What was I most enthusiastic and passionate about? What character traits and values did I consistently demonstrate? In what ways am I using the knowledge and skills that I learned in this course? You can start your paragraph with: December 10, 2017— • Your motivation: Of all the 22 languages offered at the University of Virginia, why did you choose to learn French? What interests you about French? What do you find fascinating? What do you look forward to learning about?

64

Yancey.indb 64

21-03-2019 12:25:36

appendix

3a   65

• How can you contribute to and benefit from this course? {{ Think about your knowledge of other fields or interest in other areas or other languages. How can your strengths in other areas contribute to the learning of the class? What are your personal and academic interests? What links do you see between these and foreign language learning? {{ Are you a good language learner? Think about your processes of learning and your learning style. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a language learner (speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary, culture, etc.)? How might you address your weaknesses this semester? What can I do to support your learning? {{ Think about your skills and abilities and strengths. For example, do you contribute well to group discussion? Do you listen well to others’ remarks and respond to their ideas? Are you analytical? Creative? Do you like to help others in their learning? Do you work well in groups? Are you a team player? Are you organized? Do you like to learn to use new technologies? What other online tools do you use? • What concerns do you have about this course? • Goals: Goals bring the vision into focus with specific parameters and concrete steps. What goals can you set now to help you realize your vision? {{ Write two to three goals that are: „„ Specific (What exactly is the first step of the goal you have identified?) „„ Measureable (Qualify or quantify the measure of success for what you’ve listed as your specific goal.) „„ Achievable (Are the initial steps possible to achieve? Yes or no?) „„ Reasonable (Given all the circumstances of your life, how reasonable is it for you to begin working toward this goal immediately?) „„ Time oriented (By when, exactly, will you complete the first step, not the entirety of the goal?) {{ Identify any roadblocks or obstacles to the attainment of your goals. What strategies will you use to overcome any challenges? French 2010–2020 (Intermediate French I & II) ePortfolio Reflection #1 Réflexion initiale Please use the following questions as suggested prompts for a brief initial reflection (in English) about your language learning goals and interests, both short and long-term, and to identify specific strategies to address

Yancey.indb 65

21-03-2019 12:25:36

66  

•

•

• •

•

appendix

3a

your goals. There is no required length for this assignment—the goal is to write in a way that allows you to think through these questions in a meaningful way. Why were you drawn to French? What is something French/ Francophone that you’ve always wanted to learn more about? What aspect of the language do you find the most interesting/beautiful/ perplexing/challenging? What are your long-term goals with regard to learning French? What are your short-term goals (in this course as well as in the first few weeks of the semester)? What do you most want to learn/do in French this semester? What techniques/strategies/practices will you use to address your shortand long-term goals? In what areas do you feel most confident of your ability to meet or surpass your goals? In past language classes, what techniques and strategies have you found to be the most helpful to you in the learning process? What would you recommend to other students? What areas of language study do you perceive to be the most challenging for you? What type of support will you seek to improve in those areas? 2. Focused reflection on particular elements of language learning during the term a. Shared reflection, on content or on learning strategies, to foster a supportive community of learners

SPAN 1060 (Accelerated Elementary Spanish) ePortfolio Reflection on (Initial) Speaking Video Clip ¡Nos presentamos reflexión! Now that you have recorded and posted your video, it is time to watch three videos from classmates as well as your own and reflect on your video and potential for progress this semester. Step 1: Select and watch two of your classmates’ videos. Comment on two of your classmates’ videos. Remember, you are not criticizing the pronunciation, grammar, or syntax of your fellow students. Instead, comment, in English (two to three sentences) about their videos. What stood out in their videos? Then, return to your ePortfolio page and watch your own video a couple of times.

Yancey.indb 66

21-03-2019 12:25:36

appendix

3a   67

Step 2: On the same page of your video for the ¡Nos presentamos! activity, write a reflection about your initial recording paying attention to your pronunciation, proficiency, ways to improve, and so on. What did you notice about your video that surprised you about your ability to speak Spanish? What are some ways you can improve this semester? What should you focus on in order to achieve success this semester in regard to Spanish proficiency? How do you plan to go about this? This reflection should be no more than one paragraph. Keep in mind that you are beginners, and errors are common. The good news is, you will see drastic improvements during the semester. b. Reflection during the semester on specific skills, strategies, and results; adjustments of goals and strategies based on specific experiences and activities FREN 2010–2020 (Intermediate French I & II) Reflecting on the Writing Process With COMPOSITION 1, please briefly answer the following reflective questions in English and post your answers following the revised text of your composition in your ePortfolio: • Which grammatical structure was the most difficult for you to use correctly and effectively in this composition? What process did you follow to correct errors with this grammar in your final version of the essay? • What aspect of the writing process do you hope to focus on for improvement in the next composition? • Identify two or three new words/expressions that you learned in writing this composition. Please post these on your “mon dictionnaire” page (using the attached instructions). FREN 2010 (Intermediate French I) Réflexion de mi-semestre: Connaissance de la culture Choose one journal entry that you have done this semester that you feel has given you some new insight on French or Francophone culture or a better understanding of one aspect of French or Francophone culture. Explain what you learned from reading or preparing the journal entry, why you chose this journal entry, and make a comparison both to something that you have studied in your French class (or that you know of French/ Francophone culture) and to something in your own culture.

Yancey.indb 67

21-03-2019 12:25:36

68  

appendix

3a

Write a paragraph (minimum 10 sentences) in French or in English. Post your second reflection to the “Réflexions” page in your e-portfolio. 3. Final self-assessment at the end of the semester and goal-setting for subsequent study FREN 2010–2020 (Intermediate French I & II) Final Reflections on Writing and Revising (end of semester): Please answer the following reflective questions in English and post your reflections on your writing process with the texts of your compositions (drafts and final versions) in your portfolio: 1. Did you try any new writing or editorial practices in preparing and revising your second and third compositions? Explain briefly. What writing or editing practices would you recommend to other students? What practices would you tell them to avoid? 2. Do you feel that your writing skills have improved through these three assignments? Why/why not? In what ways has your writing process changed? 3. If you plan to continue your study of French, what is your goal for improving your writing skills in future courses? What aspect of the writing process will you focus on next? 4. Are there aspects of the writing and editing process in French that will be helpful to you in preparing written essays in English (or vice versa)? SPAN 2020 (Advanced Intermediate Spanish) Final Reflective Essay In your final reflective essay, you will reflect on what you learned in SPAN 2020 and throughout your studies of Spanish. Review your ePortfolio and consider all aspects of your work toward becoming a better Spanish speaker/ writer/listener/reader, culturally aware global citizen, and proficient user of digital media. Choose at least three concrete items from SPAN 2020 that helped you learn about your own learning and ongoing linguistic and cultural development. How do these provide evidence of your progress in these areas? What did you learn about your strengths and weaknesses as a language learner? What has been your greatest achievement as a language learner this semester? In what ways did you change or impact yourself or others? What have you learned from your peers? What connections do you see between your learning in this course and your other personal and academic interests? What role did the choice of digital media have on your final products and those of your peers? Discuss your development of digital literacy in this course.

Yancey.indb 68

21-03-2019 12:25:36

appendix

3a   69

If you completed an ePortfolio in prior Spanish courses at UVA, go back and review your work from those past courses. What do you notice about your development as a Spanish speaker from the beginning of those courses: your mastery of grammar and vocabulary, your skill development (speaking, listening, reading, writing), and your understanding of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world? Point to three to five pieces of work that showcase your development in those areas. How will you apply what you have learned in future Spanish study, internships, work, travel, volunteer work, or other areas of your life? What are three to five specific goals you have for further development of your Spanish beyond SPAN 2020? Write at least four paragraphs.

Yancey.indb 69

21-03-2019 12:25:36

Yancey.indb 70

21-03-2019 12:25:36

4 HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE e P O RT F O L I O S A Curriculum on Reflection to Support Individualized Educational Pathways Laura Wenk

H

ampshire College’s mission, like that of many liberal arts colleges, includes the goal of creating lifelong learners. It is assumed that a student will gain the interest and skills for lifelong learning simply by being immersed in the learning environment; fostering curiosity, independence, and reflection is part of the implied curriculum. And at Hampshire College, many of the requisite skills are part of the expressed curriculum. That is, the very structure of a Hampshire education explicitly asks students to articulate their questions, design their individual program of study under the guidance of a faculty committee, engage in self-evaluation for each course, produce portfolios with reflective retrospective essays at specific milestones in their college careers, and apply what they have learned in a robust year long independent project (see Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2017, for a case study of Hampshire’s high-impact practices). Until recently, the need to engage in self-evaluation and reflection was clear, but we lacked institution-wide materials that discussed the purposes of portfolio production and the strategies for effective self-evaluation or retrospective writing. We took these practices for granted and did not fully appreciate the variability in student tendency or ability for self-reflection (Landis, Scott, & Kahn, 2015). Our desire to improve reflection by all students led to an ePortfolio pilot, which in response to this insight conceptualizes the Hampshire ePortfolio as a curriculum to support reflection because we know the power of reflective writing for students’ integrative learning and goal setting. The ePortfolio templates scaffold reflection through which students are 71

Yancey.indb 71

21-03-2019 12:25:36

72   eportfolio as curriculum asked to make sense of their learning activities, set goals, and elaborate on their thinking—all endeavors that can help lead to the transfer of learning to new situations (National Research Council, 2000). It should be noted that at this time developing an ePortfolio is not a universal requirement; students can still opt to create paper portfolios. In the past five years, we have completed a number of research and assessment efforts that have led to improved understanding of, and practices for, supporting reflection. We have developed templates1 that scaffold students’ creation of self-reflective ePortfolios, which may seem ironic given that Hampshire students have the leeway to craft their own educational plan. Yet, the very core of our academic program asks all students to do roughly the same kind of thinking, to make meaning across disparate experiences despite huge variations in their routes. We ask them all to demonstrate their thinking through reflective writing, which is a skill that needs to be taught (Springfield, 2001). This chapter presents our current template choices and three examples of early student adopters showing how the ePortfolio template supported their work. We turn first, however, to the Hampshire program of study and the history of portfolio use at the college.

Hampshire’s Program of Study Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college where about 1,400 students create their own educational plans. Hampshire students progress through 3 levels of study, called Division I, II, and III. Faculty write narratives at the end of each course and at the completion of each division, in which they evaluate progress on the students’ stated goals for their learning. The faculty committee that oversees a student’s work determines when a student is ready for more advanced work in the next division, largely based on the student’s success in fulfilling the terms of an individualized educational plan. The students’ reflective writing in a portfolio is a critical component of the demonstration of learning. In Division I (first year) students practice the major approaches to scholarly inquiry guided by faculty in courses across a distribution and complete a collaborative project on campus with their peers. In Division II (second and third years) students develop and carry out an independent concentration in negotiation with a committee of two faculty members. Their educational plan is framed by their questions and goals, such as the concepts and skills (e.g., research methodologies, languages studied, or artistic skills) they would like to develop, as well as the types of experiences they want to incorporate (e.g., study abroad, internships, teaching assistantships).

Yancey.indb 72

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  

73

In Division III (fourth year) all students work with a committee of two faculty to design and complete a year-long independent project that builds on the work in their concentrations and that constitutes the majority of a full year of college work. This level of initiative and independence is considered a necessary feature of an undergraduate education and is expected of all students. At the completion of Divisions I and II, students present portfolios of work for evaluation by their adviser and committee. At the end of Division III they have a final meeting akin to a thesis defense and often present their work at a series of Division III public presentations. At each of these junctures, students are asked to reflect on the meaning of their learning and to set goals for the next division, program, or career path. Student reflection and constructive conversation among students and faculty mentors is essential for making this individualized system work.

Portfolios and Retrospective Writing at Hampshire: A Long History Hampshire students have been creating paper portfolios of their completed work for their independent majors since the earliest days of the college, almost 50 years ago. The portfolio contains the students’ retrospective essay, the contract for their educational plan, all their narratives and self-evaluations, faculty narrative evaluations, and samples of their work from courses and other evaluated experiences. The portfolio, whether in paper or electronic form, is the site of strengthening and demonstrating integrative learning (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2007, 2009). The student retrospective essay creates a narrative that frames the student’s experience, describing the ways the student’s questions changed as a result of specific courses, practical experiences, and personal growth. Integrative thinking is the goal and expectation at portfolio review. When the retrospective essay is chronological rather than integrative, the push for integrative thinking occurs through discussion at the final meeting when passing Division II—a less ideal mode. Because this process of reflective writing in the transition from Division II to III engages students in a deep learning experience, many faculty developed the practice of giving explicit instructions to students on writing the retrospective. The prompts faculty developed are now built into an institution-wide platform in the ePortfolio. The directions for the Division II retrospective in the ePortfolio suggest students consider the following: • What was your Division II about? What questions drove you? Did you make progress answering them?

Yancey.indb 73

21-03-2019 12:25:36

74   eportfolio as curriculum • What changed in your thinking? What were the important experiences that had an impact on your thinking? • What connections do you see among your learning experiences? • What are your thoughts and reflections on the narrative evaluations you received in Division II? Do you see patterns? How have you responded to the feedback you have received? • What did you get better at? What did you do well? What do you still need to work on? • What do you plan to do to follow up on your Division II work in the future? • Looking forward to Division III, what ideas or questions are arising? In the summer of 2017 we held a week-long session coding student reflective writing with faculty. From their deep experience reading students’ retrospective essays, faculty expected students would be writing about the story of their divisional work, the chronology of what they did. They knew too that some students would write about the questions that drove their work; the skills they developed; the knowledge and ideas they mastered; the people (faculty, staff, and peers) who helped them along the way; and what faculty called the pivotal experiences students had, that is, the experiences or moments when a student’s conceptions or interests shifted drastically because of new insights. As our ePortfolio examples demonstrate, it might very well be that ePortfolios are better than paper portfolios at capturing the experiences in and out of class that are pivotal and of creating the internal pivotal experiences or “aha moments” that selection and reflection provide.

ePortfolio Program In the spring of 2015 we began an ePortfolio pilot. Before this point, a number of students had been creating their own ePortfolios by scanning documents and creating one large PDF file, which were not really different from the paper portfolios their peers were creating; by posting individual PDF files to a website; or by using a Web-based platform such as Weebly. Although we still allow students to create their ePortfolios using whatever means they choose, we have institutional support for their use of the Hampshire College WordPress platform. Our ePortfolios grow out of our current portfolio practices. We do not have to convince anyone that portfolio production is useful, because portfolio development is a central activity in a Hampshire education. Yet one obstacle to creating a wholly different kind of portfolio experience is that many faculty understand ePortfolios as doing the same things that a hard-copy

Yancey.indb 74

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  

75

portfolio does but simply in a different medium—one they might not like to use. We are not alone in learning that the way forward includes ensuring that faculty agree on the outcomes and structure of the ePortfolio (Springfield, 2001). We also want to demonstrate to faculty that something wholly different can happen when students construct their portfolio electronically. To ensure faculty participation and interest, we started with focus groups of likely faculty adopters (Reynolds & Pirie, 2016). From the start, faculty wanted the ePortfolio to mirror the hard-copy portfolio; they wanted everything in the same place, from the divisional contract and faculty narrative evaluations to student self-evaluations and the retrospective essay and student work. Students also wanted everything in one place, as looking at their narrative evaluations and self-evaluations in a semester-by-semester view helped them craft their retrospective essays. Everyone wanted to keep the long retrospective essay. Our solution was to create a page for a student’s inventory of work, organized by semester. Each semester section includes prompts for students to include important pieces of work from courses, independent studies, and community-based experiences, along with a narrative and self-evaluations. That section is clearly a compilation, and calling it the inventory signals that it is not the ultimate product. Other pages suggest ways to select and curate their work, that is, to organize their work according to themes, methodologies, skills—whatever they would like to highlight in their work—along with their interpretation or reflection that results from considering what they see as they bring the selected pieces together (Yancey, 2009). Initially, faculty were hesitant to write any prompts to scaffold student reflection, wanting to see what students would produce of their own volition. After the first year of ePortfolios, it became apparent that just as there was variation in the degree of reflection among students in their paper portfolios, there was variation in reflection in ePortfolios. The ability to arrange work in more than one configuration did not result in better unprompted reflection. As a result, we have created a set of prompts on our main template that faculty can adapt if they have specific suggestions for their advisees.

Platform We selected WordPress for three reasons. First, we already host WordPress, so it is free for our students. Second, WordPress is now reported to be the content management system for 28% of all websites (W3Techs, 2017), making the learning of WordPress an important transferrable skill.2 Third, WordPress includes a number of themes that support customization for appearance and for showcasing different types of student work.

Yancey.indb 75

21-03-2019 12:25:36

76   eportfolio as curriculum Because faculty and students alike wanted narrative evaluations included in the ePortfolio, we house student ePortfolios behind our firewall, and students invite their faculty to view them. WordPress also allows students to customize their privacy settings either for the entire site or for specific pages. Our hope is that students will create public versions or have specific pages that are password protected and others that are open for viewing.

Training The introduction of ePortfolios required not only a need to train students on the use of WordPress and a need to support them in the processes of selection, organization, and reflection meant to bolster integrative thinking but also a culture shift. Faculty would have to be willing to read student work electronically, and they would have to see the usefulness of ePortfolios relative to their hard-copy predecessors, all without having the burden of supporting ePortfolio production fall on the faculty themselves. Luckily, the ePortfolio program was conceived at the same time of Hampshire’s development of Knowledge Commons with new library services. We have hired a cadre of recent alums as Knowledge Commons fellows. The alumni fellows associated with Instructional Technology, Media Services, and the Writing Center, along with staff and faculty in these programs, are developing workshops for students on the use of WordPress and on reflective writing. We are counting on students to present their ePortfolios in faculty meetings and describe their usefulness to their learning. Faculty will also be introduced to ePortfolios through experience by sitting on Division II and III committees overseeing student work. In this sense, the transition to ePortfolio is normal: Hampshire faculty are often introduced to new ideas and to teaching and advising practices through the shared oversight of student work, driven by student interest.

ePortfolio Templates In addition to samples of student work—film, photos, video, architectural drawings, paintings, digital stories, written works in many genres, and so on—pages in the ePortfolio template contain prompts to include evaluations, explanations, and reflection. The current iteration of the Division II template (Figure 4.1) is used here as our example. It has a first order of organization in a menu containing the following: 1. Division II Overview, which contains the contract, evaluations, retrospective essay, and inventory of work by semester (Figure 4.2)

Yancey.indb 76

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  





77

2. Curated Work, which has suggestions for how to arrange one’s work by area of study and by skills and goals, including the suggestion that students create pages according to their own goals (Figure 4.3); each page contains prompts for reflection (Figure 4.4) 3. Division III, which is where students write about their current ideas for their Division III project, building on their Division II concentration, and forms the basis of their draft Division III proposal

Figure 4.1.  Home page of a Division II template. Division II Overview

Curated Work

Division III

Note: This template is designed to show you some of the kinds of information that one might include in an ePortfolio (or a portfolio of any sort). We don’t expect that you will use the template exactly as is. We hope that you will customize, delete, add, and be as creative as you would like. Welcome to your ePortfolio! This is the home page for your site. We suggest writing a very brief introduction on this page that tells the reader what this site is about, how it is organized, and perhaps why you chose to organize it that way. We have created these resource pages to help you build and edit your ePortfolio.

Figure 4.2.  Overview of Division II template. Division II Overview

Curated Work

Division III

Division II Contract Evaluations Retrospective Essay Inventory of Work

This is the home page for your site. We suggest writing a very brief introduction on this page that tells the reader what this site is about, how it is organized, and perhaps why you chose to organize it that way. We have created these resource pages to help you build and edit your ePortfolio.

Yancey.indb 77

21-03-2019 12:25:36

78   eportfolio as curriculum Figure 4.3.  Division II template. Division II Overview

Curated Work

Division III

My areas of study My skills and personal goals Community Engagement Multiple Cultural Perspectives Program-Specific Requirements

Example page—skill, personal goal, theme Writing Independent Project Work Quantitative Reasoning

We have created these resource pages to help you build and edit your ePortfolio.

Figure 4.4.  Sample reflection prompts for curated work section of Division II template. Division II Overview

Curated Work

Division III

Example Page for a Personal Area of Interest This is a page to discuss the role of a particular area or field of study in your concentration. You can: • Talk about the importance of the field to your work • Tell how your understanding of this area changed over time • Showcase examples of work relating to a particular area of your interest or inquiry • Share which courses you took in this field and discuss why they were important to you • Talk about which activities both in and out of class contributed most to your learning in this area or anything else applicable to the field

Yancey.indb 78

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  

79

The semester-by-semester inventory includes the suggestion that for each semester’s work, students consider writing about any or all of the following: • • • •

What were your goals coming into the semester? How well did you meet your goals? What changed in your thinking as a result of your work? What patterns do you see in your narrative evaluations and selfevaluations? • What do you need to work on next? That is, what goals do you have for the next semester? (Consider such things as the questions you want to answer, the types of work you will try to produce in your classes, the resources you will make use of, and the strategies you will try.) • What plans do you have for meeting your goals? Because these prompts are relatively new, we do not yet know the variation we will see in student use. From the students who have used them so far, we know that reflecting in this way each semester has a few distinct benefits. Students use their reflection to set their own goals for the coming semester, guiding their choices in course selection and project approaches. Students also capture the changes in their thinking as they occur, rather than being expected to remember what happened for them at the end of a two-year concentration. Last, a portfolio built in this way has been an excellent advising tool (Hessler & Kuntz, 2003); a committee of two faculty members helps each student make course and community engagement choices semester by semester. The pages of the template seem stark. But what students come up with can be creative, interactive, and vibrant. One student posted a map of her ePortfolio on the home page (Figure 4.5). Using words as hyperlinks to the pages would make the entire ePortfolio navigable in a different way, and students in the arts and design can showcase their work beautifully.

Three ePortfolio Examples Each of the examples in this section illustrates an important advantage of ePortfolios. These students’ work and stories represent the perceptions articulated by others in focus groups, surveys, and conversations about how the ePortfolio benefited their learning. All were in some way about integration, whether integrating theory with community-based learning, integrating ideas across the disciplines, or integrating theory and practice to set new

Yancey.indb 79

21-03-2019 12:25:36

Yancey.indb 80

21-03-2019 12:25:36

Community Engagement

Div Il Contract

Courses

Andrea’s Division II

Clinical Work

Multiple Cultural Perspectives

Research

Community

Learning

Writing

Independent Work

Community Empowerment

Counseling and Psychopatherapy

Developmental Psychopathology

Building Bridges Home

Areas of Concentration

Psychology

Cumulative Skills

All Projects

My Toolbox

Overview

Div Il Retrospective

Culture and Child Development

Figure 4.5.  A novel visual and navigation tool on a home page.

hampshire college eportfolios  

81

goals, precisely the marks of integrative learning according to the VALUE rubrics (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2009). All made excellent use of the ability to show their work and reflect on its meaning in their completed Division II studies along with considering the implications for their future work.

Community Engagement: Integrating Theory and Community-Based Learning Andrea explored the interactions among biology, culture, and individual agency through child and adolescent development. Her studies included coursework and practical experiences in psychology, learning, and community. In psychology, her focus on culture and child development helped her answer questions about identity and the construction of cultural meaning systems in children who have grown up in multicultural or hybrid contexts. She studied psychopathology to understand the adaptive and maladaptive pathways people take in developing resilience. She began to develop counseling and psychotherapy skills. Andrea’s pivotal experiences, which occurred outside class, were many. She spent 1,500 hours during 2 summers as a counselor in a residential treatment program for youths. She spent a month observing and assisting in a fourth-grade integrated cotaught classroom in a New York City public school; she was an emergency medical technician on campus for more than two years; she interned in the International Student Orientation program at Hampshire; she spent 2 weeks working in a leadership project with youths in Malaysia; and she took a number of courses with practical placements, putting in many hours in schools and after-school programs. Andrea’s robust internships not only helped her develop skills but also had a strong effect on her questions and educational path. Integrating her practical experiences with her studies of psychology and culture drove home for Andrea the importance of considering how childhood experiences and cognitive capacities affect one’s trajectory. She grew in terms of her academic understanding of developmental psychopathology and trauma theoretically, clinically, and interpersonally. A big part of her growth in these areas came about because she was able to make work from outside the classroom and off campus visible and to consider these experiences in relation to her classroom learning. Arranging her work by skills used and by interest area made it obvious to her faculty committee (and perhaps even to Andrea) how her internships affected her academic path. In her reflective essay on her ePortfolio, Andrea wrote,

Yancey.indb 81

21-03-2019 12:25:36

82   eportfolio as curriculum I came into Div II with a broad interest in education, with thoughts about a career in education—Did I want to be a teacher? Throughout my Div II, I was able to really discover what exactly about learning environments was I passionate about. My summer of 2015, comprising . . . the P.S. 6 Inclusive Education Internship and Wediko Summer Program,3 was a critical turning point in addressing that question. The more I engaged with kids, the more I found the greatest satisfaction in empowering kids in their socio-emotional growth as a person—the interpersonal, social, and emotion regulation skills the kids will carry beyond the classroom, more so than just the cognitive aspect of learning. This gravitation to the field of social emotional learning can be seen in several of my papers: “Drawing Connections: Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning” (Final Paper) for How People Learn, and “Social and Emotional Learning: Building Resilience in Underserved Youth” (Final Paper) for Getting to College.

When Andrea speaks about her ePortfolio, she notes its impact on her critical thinking, integration, and reflection. Including photo documentation of her community-engaged work, along with reflective writing and the ability to pair these with theoretical papers, brought these experiences to the attention of her committee. The conversations that ensued in committee meetings with her faculty advisers included explicit discussions of the different paths Andrea might take in her Division III and post-Hampshire life; they elicited conversations about the different work lives possible for her, whether doing direct youth service work in educational settings or therapeutic settings or pursuing a research career. Over the course of her time at Hampshire, Andrea’s focus shifted from education to clinical psychology and finally to psychology research. Andrea is currently working as a research assistant in a prestigious university lab while she makes decisions about graduate studies in psychology.

Interdisciplinary Studies: Integrating Ideas Across the Disciplines Like that of many Hampshire students, Grusha’s work was highly interdisciplinary. She began Division II with broad interests in language and the mind. Her questions had roots in linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, and philosophy. Her questions included: “How does language affect the way we process the world around us? To what extent is language necessary for the process of thinking? What happens in our thinking across languages and in translation? What are the linguistic components and algorithms behind a software like Siri?” She had specific goals for skills and understandings in each field, and she knew she would have to put these together herself to prepare for the projects she wanted to undertake.

Yancey.indb 82

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  

83

The ePortfolio afforded Grusha the flexibility to present work in different formats from print papers to links to websites hosting code she wrote and documentation of her teaching neuroscience to eighth graders. The ePortfolio also allowed her to group her work by semester, by disciplines and subdisciplines, and by the skills she developed. Each arrangement had its strengths for her. The first helped her understand and modify her academic path. The second showed the ways that disparate fields contributed to her knowledge. The third allowed her to show off her skills in programming, experimental design, data analysis, writing, and so on. Grusha was also struck by what the ePortfolio did for visitors to her site, who could navigate her work as they pleased, so it was accessible to different users who could explore using their own paths. Thinking about a range of visitors, from family members to potential graduate school committees, also pushed Grusha to consider the language she used to describe her work, making it as accessible as possible. In the chronological perspective, represented by the semester-bysemester inventory page of the template, Grusha reflected on her growth over time. In the thematic sense, she organized her work by areas of concentration, highlighting the different disciplines that she integrated in her highly interdisciplinary Division II. For each of the four main disciplines in her concentration—linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, and philosophy—Grusha created a page describing why that discipline was important to her studies. At the next level, she posted work and written reflection by subdiscipline. Although this sounds atomized, Grusha’s pivotal experiences occurred from reflecting at a high level of abstraction as she looked across her work. In an excerpt from her reflective writing in her ePortfolio, she writes: For my Division 2, I wanted to understand the phenomenon of language by looking at it through the lens of linguistics, neuroscience, computer science and philosophy. From the classes I have taken, the discussions I have engaged in, the labs I have worked in and the independent work I’ve been involved in, I feel like I’ve gotten a really comprehensive foundation to the different ways of thinking about language and cognition. For example: I’ve been able to make connections between what I’ve learn[ed] in a theoretical linguistics class and cognitive neuroscience to create a psycholinguistic experiment. Similarly, I’ve been able to draw parallels between efficient binary search tree structures (like splay trees) and how cognitive concepts are possibly entrenched. I’ve been able to use philosophy of language and philosophy of mind to reason about the nature of computation involved cognition and how that compares to computations performed by other artificially intelligent systems. Overall I am extremely happy with the

Yancey.indb 83

21-03-2019 12:25:36

84   eportfolio as curriculum number of connections I was able to make and the different paradigms of thinking I was able to acquire because of taking classes in these wide but interrelated fields.

Grusha was selective about the pieces that demonstrated her skills and understandings, which she clearly articulated. In a focus group, she attributed the integration of her ideas and the language she ultimately adopted to describe her work in graduate school applications to her reflection during ePortfolio development. Grusha shared her ePortfolio with graduate faculty during her application process, and her work was very well received. She is now a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University with the stated research interests of conceptual and syntactic representations, language change, bilingualism, psycholinguistics, and computational modeling.

Theory and Practice: Finding Balance and Setting Directions Emma’s Division II concentration was designed to give her a strong grounding in architectural history, culture, and styles by studying environmentally conscious design, geology (natural landscapes and habitats), and engineering. In her Division II contract, Emma wrote that she hoped to incorporate not only the “sleek, efficiency of modern architecture, but also the innovative and sweeping lines and patterns from throughout history, and the eco-friendly symbolic depth of some vernacular architecture.” Emma’s Division II work was focused on creating, building, and developing her style. The ePortfolio was a wonderful medium for presenting her varied projects and designs and reflecting on what she learned on the same pages where she presented visual images of her work. In writing her retrospective essay on her ePortfolio site, Emma looked across her projects by courses. Doing so helped her understand that she wanted more depth in theory, despite the assumption on her part, and on the part of her committee up to that point, that she would complete a Division III project to design a building to meet the needs of a specific client. Emma’s reflection in her Division II portfolio helped her continue to focus, not only on her technical skills as the design project would have but also on the intersections of environment, design, and human use. She was looking forward to putting her research and analytic skills to the test through a residential architecture project focused on aging in place. Writing reflectively on the same pages that showed her design work and shared her theoretical papers challenged Emma to better understand what she really wanted to get out of college and ensure it would be a more fulfilling experience. Emma is currently an intern at an architecture firm.

Yancey.indb 84

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  

85

Lessons, Challenges, and Future Directions Perhaps the most important lesson we have learned through our assessment of students’ reflective writing and their creation of ePortfolios is that the complex thinking we hope to see requires scaffolding. We have been developing prompts to support students’ integrative learning and are trying to strike a balance between being too vague and being too prescriptive. After all, one real strength of the Hampshire curriculum over time has been individualization (Wenk & Luschen, 2013). With many choices, students put their ideas together, often in novel ways, while being guided to challenge themselves in fruitful directions. If the portfolio prompts do not support individualization, they will fall flat and be ignored. Getting it right will depend on iterative cycles of coding student reflective writing and, based on those results, revising the prompts. As we see the kinds of thinking we value, we will come closer and closer to knowing what to ask for. Another tension is between selection and compilation. Because faculty use portfolios to write overarching evaluations of student work at certain milestones at Hampshire, it is tempting to ask students to include all they have done, and building an inventory of work supports such a compilation. The trick, we believe, is to get students to think about the skills and understandings they really want to demonstrate and to make those pages sites of selection and reflection. For this reason, we include sample pages suggesting ways that students might organize and highlight their work in specific disciplines or in regard to skills and understandings. As we go forward, we anticipate seeing greater use of ePortfolios by incoming Division II students; they have the ability to create their ePortfolios as they progress if they so choose. Although students in the pilot study generally began assembling their ePortfolios at the end of a division, it is entirely possible that building an ePortfolio incrementally will have an effect on students’ understanding of their own learning process and choices, especially given the semester-by-semester reflective prompts on the inventory page. One can imagine, for example, in Emma’s story where she found new direction at the end of Division II, that if she had built the ePortfolio as she progressed, her reflection might have led to a different direction during her concentration. The biggest question that remains for us, however, is about the evolution and future of the reflective prompts. The prompts themselves are likely to change as we learn more. It may well be that as we develop new programming and materials to support the selection and reflection that we value, we’ll find that there will be less need for the ePortfolio template itself to scaffold integrative thinking.

Yancey.indb 85

21-03-2019 12:25:36

86   eportfolio as curriculum

Conclusion At Hampshire our individualized program of study is created student by student in response to personal goals and questions. Academic progress requires each student to make meaning across disparate courses and experiences, none of which was created with the student’s specific program of study in mind. We know from the literature on transfer, replete with human failure to apply learning to novel situations, it is a tall order to expect learners to think beyond the context in which they acquire new concepts, that is, beyond the specific courses and practical experiences in which they learn (Bransford & Swartz, 1999). Our ePortfolios were created intentionally to increase reflection and act as cognitive affordances for integrative learning, prompting students to extract essential ideas and look for patterns in their work. We see that this kind of thinking leads to those aha! moments that excite students about their learning and propel them forward. The practice of reflection as a way to make meaning is central to a college curriculum intended to lead to lifelong learning. It is a way to make explicit what we claim will happen at our institution. At Hampshire, the ePortfolio templates are the site of a curriculum on reflection.

Notes 1. It should be noted that our templates, reflective prompts, and student support pages are ever evolving. Visit http://resourceguides.hampshire.edu/eportfoliohelp for student resources. 2. W3Tech’s claims are based on their survey of the top 10 million websites. For an explanation of its methods and disclaimers, visit https://w3techs.com/ technologies. 3. The Wediko Summer Program is a residential treatment program serving boys and girls ages 9 to 19 who have social, emotional, and behavioral challenges.

References Association of American Colleges & Universities. (2007). College learning for the new global century: A report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise. Retrieved from http://www.aacu.org/leap/documents/ GlobalCentury_final.pdf Association of American Colleges & Universities. (2009). Integrative and Applied Learning VALUE Rubric. Retrieved from https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/ integrative-learning

Yancey.indb 86

21-03-2019 12:25:36

hampshire college eportfolios  

87

Bransford, J. D., & Schwartz, D. L. (1999). Rethinking transfer: A simple proposal with multiple implications. Review of Research in Education, 24, 61–10. Cambridge, D. (2010). ePortfolios for lifelong learning and assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hessler, A. C., & Kuntz, S. (2003). Student portfolios: Effective advising tools. In T. W. Banta (Ed.), Portfolio assessment: Uses, cases, scoring, and impact (pp. 30–34). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Landis, C. M., Scott, S. B., & Kahn, S. (2015). Examining the role of reflection in ePortfolios: A case study. International Journal of ePortfolio, 5, 107–121. National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Peden, W., Wolf, K., & Reed, S. (2017). Rising to the LEAP challenge: Case studies of integrative pathways to student signature work. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universities. Reynolds, C., & Pirie, M. S. (2016). Creating an ePortfolio culture on campus through platform selection and implementation. Peer Review, 18(3), 21–24. Springfield, E. (2001). A major redesign of the Kalamazoo portfolio. In B. L. Cambridge (Ed.), Electronic portfolios: Emerging practices in student, faculty, and institutional learning (pp. 53–59). Sterling, VA: Stylus. W3Techs. (2017). Usage statistics and market share of WordPress for websites. Retrieved from https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all Wenk, L., & Luschen, K. (2013). Multiple routes, alternative learning experiences: Developing analytic abilities, practical skills, creativity, and self-reflection at Hampshire College. In J. L. DeVitis (Ed.), The college curriculum: A reader (pp. 179–191). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Yancey, K. (2009). Reflection and electronic portfolios. In E. D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact (pp. 5–16). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Yancey.indb 87

21-03-2019 12:25:36

Yancey.indb 88

21-03-2019 12:25:36

5 IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT AS CURRICULUM A Metacognitive Approach Susan Kahn

“I

s identity development part of the curriculum?” asked an Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) faculty member during a Fall 2016 discussion of the mission of our campus ePortfolio initiative. Put in those words, the question has fascinated me ever since. Yes, much has been written about ePortfolios and identity development, and, yes, as we began and expanded the ePortfolio initiative at IUPUI, we engaged in many conversations about using ePortfolios as sites for student self-authorship, self-exploration, self-presentation, and empowerment. Still, it had not struck me until that moment that these discussions were premised on a too-often unarticulated idea about the fundamental purposes of higher education. There is, of course, a vast literature on the goals of higher education and, particularly, the tensions between vocationalism and broader intellectual, civic, and personal development. It is not my purpose here to explore this literature; I suspect that readers of this volume are, like me, interested in how higher education can best contribute to both students’ development and their career preparation. At my own institution, it is clear that for many, if not most, faculty members, identity development is and must be part of the curriculum, whether or not they have articulated or embraced the idea in so many words. Those of us who teach undergraduates at IUPUI understand that to succeed and graduate, our new majority students must learn to see themselves as capable of academic success. They must develop habits that support that success, resilience to persevere through inevitable setbacks, and, often, the flexibility to discover new academic or career interests. Nearing 89

Yancey.indb 89

21-03-2019 12:25:36

90   eportfolio as curriculum graduation, they need to assume identities as emerging citizens and professionals prepared to learn independently, work across cultural differences, and contribute to their communities, among many other qualities. Similarly, graduate and professional students need to develop identities as scholars or advanced practitioners to succeed academically and beyond graduation. Since 2016, student identity development has been discussed more explicitly at IUPUI as we continue to implement a strategic plan that identifies undergraduate student learning and success as the institution’s highest priority. New student support structures and initiatives have sprung up, existing ones have merged or coordinated efforts, and research on factors that contribute to or detract from student success has intensified. Meanwhile, a faculty committee is revising our Principles of Undergraduate Learning— our general education learning outcomes—and considering the addition of one or more outcomes focused on student development. The new Institute for Engaged Learning in our Division of Undergraduate Education cites student identity development as one of its primary goals. But what does it mean to make identity development an intentional part of the curriculum, and how do our students benefit when we purposefully include identity development in our ePortfolio practices? Along with my (now retired) team-teaching partner, Karen Johnson, I developed a reflection exercise for the latest iteration of IUPUI’s capstone seminar in English that may shed some light on these questions.

The Capstone Seminar in English and the Capstone ePortfolio The capstone seminar in English is designed to help graduating English majors accomplish several important tasks: carrying out a culminating project that extends and demonstrates their disciplinary learning; preparing for the transition to careers or further education; reflecting on relationships among their undergraduate learning experiences and articulating their conclusions in terms that are meaningful and compelling to employers and others (often including parents and other family members); and achieving a sense of closure, accomplishment, and empowerment as they enter the workforce or graduate or professional school. We use class readings, online and in-class discussions, and guest speakers (mostly past students pursuing various careers) as resources as students work on these tasks. We also ask students to develop a capstone ePortfolio wherein they reflect on and integrate learning from across their undergraduate experiences and represent themselves and their knowledge and skills to various audiences. The capstone ePortfolio as we have envisioned it is intended to support the purposes of the capstone, especially demonstration and articulation of

Yancey.indb 90

21-03-2019 12:25:36

identity development as curriculum  

91

learning gains, transition planning, and integrative learning. We stipulate that students include their capstone project, résumés, and the reflections they complete for the class (all of which can be in various media). Students choose all other items included and determine the structure of the portfolio website. Our ePortfolio assignment guidelines urge students to “make the whole greater than the sum of its parts” by carefully structuring the ePortfolio and contextualizing its contents in a way “that shows the audience who you are and what your educational and other experiences add up to.” Over the 10 years I have team-taught the capstone seminar, I cannot remember a single year where we instructors thought we had done the best possible job of guiding students through the process of developing reflective ePortfolios. One source of difficulty has been the diversity of students in the English major at IUPUI. Capstone students represent all 5 tracks available in the major: literature, writing and rhetoric, creative writing, linguistics, and film studies. Like their peers at our urban commuter campus, our English students are also diverse in age, maturity, academic preparation and ability, and socioeconomic background. For some students, the undergraduate experience has been especially fragmented; they may have transferred from another institution, stopped out of college, or changed majors at least once, making integration of learning experiences more difficult. They may be working part- or full-time or raising children alone or with a partner. In addition, although some senior English majors have decided on careers or plans for additional education, others are unsure of possible career paths and uncertain of the value of a liberal arts degree compared to a professional or technical credential. For our capstone students, then, one size decidedly does not fit all. We have struggled particularly with two issues: 1. Encouraging students to understand and approach their ePortfolios as unified compositions, rather than as accumulations of work samples, and as personal websites representing aspects of their identity (see especially Cambridge, 2010, and Yancey, 2004), rather than as just another class assignment or set of assignments. (We have found that merely telling students to approach their ePortfolios in these ways rarely produces the desired results.) 2. Designing reflection assignments and prompts that provide enough, but not too much, guidance and structure and that elicit meaningful responses rather than descriptions of experiences or recitations of platitudes about the value of a liberal arts education.

In recent years we have typically asked students to develop two extended reflections for their capstone ePortfolios: an experiential reflection (e.g., an

Yancey.indb 91

21-03-2019 12:25:36

92   eportfolio as curriculum experience that they now view differently than they did at the time or their first encounter with a transformative piece of writing) and an integrative reflection that delineates relationships among learning experiences. After many iterations, we had arrived at an approach to the integrative reflection that we were reasonably satisfied with, but we continued to wrestle with the experiential reflection. As we were creating the syllabus for the most recent semester, we thus decided, once again, to try a new approach to the experiential reflection.

The Life Stories Reflection We had noticed in previous years that students had striking reactions to one of the course readings: an excerpt from anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson’s (2001) Composing a Life. In the excerpt, Bateson proposes that anyone’s life story can be “composed” in multiple ways or from multiple perspectives. We all have stories about our own lives that we “use as lenses for interpreting experience as it comes along” (Bateson, 2006, p. 461), she says, but we do not always recognize that we make choices as we “compose” these stories. For example, she suggests, Most people can tell a version that emphasizes the continuities in their lives to make a single story that goes in a clear direction. But the same people can also tell their life stories as if they were following on this statement: “After lots of surprises and choices, or interruptions or disappointments, I have arrived someplace I could never have anticipated.” (Bateson, 2006, p. 462)

Offering alternative stories from her own and her father’s careers that emphasize continuities, on the one hand, or discontinuities, on the other, she observes that because our society has preferred continuous versions of stories, discontinuities seem to indicate that something is wrong with you. A discontinuous story becomes a very difficult story to claim. . . . The continuous story . . . is often a cultural creation, not a reflection of life as it is really lived. (pp. 463–466)

Noting that the ways in which people interpret their life stories has a “great effect” on how they “define their own identities” (p. 466), Bateson argues that using multiple interpretations of our lives and life stories—in which we understand that we ourselves construct these stories and are aware of the

Yancey.indb 92

21-03-2019 12:25:36

identity development as curriculum  

93

choices we make as we do so—confers an advantage. Our capstone students seemed to agree on the value of this (essentially) metacognitive approach to thinking about our life stories. In an online forum prior to class, one student wrote, I have never, ever thought of memory this way before. . . . It’s an interesting concept that we have creative freedom over our own memories and life stories. I’ve kind of always thought that my story goes one way and it can’t be altered. . . It’s interesting to think that I can be in complete control over my life story, how it is perceived, and what I decide it will mean for me. It’s actually kind of liberating.

Another student commented on the idea of continuity that Bateson discussed: WOW! What an empowering piece to read. . . . Is continuity in the sense that society thinks about it always right? If . . . continuity was all we looked for then no one would have room to grow.

The theme of continuity versus discontinuity is especially significant for English and other liberal arts majors. Although a few students plan careers as teachers of English as a second language, and some find first jobs where they can use their writing skills, most understand that their careers will probably not be directly related to their academic major. They have likely endured questions from family and friends about what they are planning to do with their English major and are often uncomfortably aware that whatever career they pursue will create a perceived discontinuity. Reacting to this perception, another student said, When most students go to college they are in their late teens, and [they] have to immediately decide what path they will take. Science? Math? English? . . . I have definitely felt the pressure to put myself on a linear path. . . . Every time I told someone I was majoring in English they’d ask, “What are you going to do with that?”. . . If you say “law school” or even just firmly say you want to be a teacher, you are “OK.” As long as you know what you are going to do with it, it’s OK. People should understand that they will most likely find themselves on a discontinuous path, and they should embrace it. You don’t have to have it all figured out at once.

Remembering these reactions the following year, Johnson and I decided to base our new experiential reflection on the Bateson (2006) reading. After students had read and discussed the excerpt, we asked them to write two

Yancey.indb 93

21-03-2019 12:25:36

94   eportfolio as curriculum brief stories representing distinct perspectives on their lives or educational experiences. Then we asked them to reflect on a series of questions about the two stories. Finally, they were to consider which of their stories their ePortfolios would tell, and how they would use the various components of the ePortfolio to tell the story they chose. Our goal was to address the two issues described previously: that is, to encourage students to think about their ePortfolios as compositions in their own right with an overarching narrative or argument supported by the artifacts included and to elicit from students some genuine introspection about their experiences as English and liberal arts majors and about possible future pathways. (See the assignment in Appendix 5A.) Because we have learned from experience that students often substitute description or narrative for reflection, we distinguished the narrative portion of this assignment from the reflective portion. Students were thus required to develop the two narratives and a separate reflection on them. We have also learned that meaningful reflection requires not only guidance but also ample feedback and opportunities to write multiple drafts. We thus designed this new assignment so that students received peer feedback in class and written feedback from us on their initial drafts. They then had several weeks to revise. Students also had the option of meeting with us after we had commented on their first drafts.

Student Responses Overall, students found this assignment both more difficult and more rewarding than we expected, although several students, particularly those who were double majors, were more easily able to develop and reflect on alternative perspectives on their lives. A few students drew on Bateson’s (2006) discussion of continuous and discontinuous interpretations of one’s life story in creating alternative narratives. Kelsey’s first story (Figure 5.1), told in first person and titled “Retrospective Perspective,” relates how she began college as a Web design major, fell in love, married, and left school the summer after her freshman year; spent a year volunteering in the Philippines; and returned to campus determined to pursue a rekindled interest in culture and literacy. Her second story, told mostly in third person and titled “The Girl Who Loved Words,” traces her lifelong love of reading and writing. It begins with her early childhood, moves through her current busy life as a student who also works, and anticipates a future in which she continues to read and write despite the demands of adult life. The first story focuses mainly on external events, highlighting “the zigzags, the unexpected experiences”; the second recounts a more linear internal and emotional journey.

Yancey.indb 94

21-03-2019 12:25:36

Yancey.indb 95

21-03-2019 12:25:37

Note. See http://klantripmoore.wixsite.com/kmoorelogophile. Retrieved with author’s permission.

Figure 5.1.  Front page of Kelsey’s ePortfolio.

96   eportfolio as curriculum In her reflection, Kelsey tells us that both stories are “true” and “meaningful.” The first “zigzag” narrative highlights her “youthful uncertainty” and describes “the events that have shaped me, stretched me, changed me.” In the course of these experiences, she says, “my perspective shifted and my values became clearer,” enabling her to choose “the road less traveled by most suburb girls whose course is laid out before them.” Reflecting on her second story, Kelsey notes that writing it in the third person enabled her to realize that “it was almost inevitable that my appreciation of literature would eventually lead me to choose to major in some sort of English related degree.” She sees the “bookish young girl” she once was and reflects on how she has changed: The older me has experienced brokenness. The older me has accepted responsibilities. And the older me knows what the younger me did not yet understand: the world is not black and white. There is a spectrum of varying colors that fall in between. My perspective shifted.

Both narratives recount a shift in perspective—on the one hand, as a result of exposure to new and unexpected experiences, and on the other, as a result of growing from childhood to adulthood and beginning to understand and accept ambiguity. Kelsey concludes the reflection by embracing her identity as a writer: “Writing helps me make sense of the complexity that I encounter. As I write, my values emerge.” Kelsey’s ePortfolio emphasizes her second story, exploring her identity as a writer. Beneath her name on the Welcome page is the subtitle “writer/­traveler/ observer.” Below that, she invites readers to “peruse the pages and explore my writings,” and describes herself as “fascinated by layers of literacies, cultures, and the interconnectedness of language and ideas.” Her capstone project explores the importance of language, culture, and place in the stories her father and his brother told about their rural Kentucky childhood. Her Showcase section spotlights her versatility and creativity, with writing that includes literary journalism, memoir, poetry, and short story, all of which are framed by Kelsey’s commentary about writing and the functions that it serves for her. The last menu item in Kelsey’s ePortfolio is her integrative reflection, which delves more deeply into her development as a writer and learner. She believes that “stories help communicate complex ideas,” and after a class on literary journalism, she continues seeking to hone her skills in the genre. Through literary journalism, she observes, “We can share meaningful moments with others” and “gain a new perspective,” echoing a theme of her life stories reflection. For her, writing also “helps [her] work through difficult situations [and] sort out complex ideas.” She talks about how keeping

Yancey.indb 96

21-03-2019 12:25:37

identity development as curriculum  

97

a writing notebook for a class on teaching writing helped her through a personal loss, and she sums up her learning in the English major: My versatile English major has equipped me to approach complex issues with adequate tools. I know how to hone my language, how to communicate with my intended audience, how to convey meaningful ideas in terms that are appropriate to my rhetorical situation.

Other students sought to create portfolios that emphasized points of overlap and commonality between their two stories. Nate, for example, a double major in linguistics and religious studies, wrote a story about his love of education and his ambitions to become an educator, and another story about his passion for traveling the world (Figure 5.2). His ePortfolio, he explains, “will primarily focus on my identity as an educated educator and a strong secondary focus will be on my joy of traveling. I feel the two themes will commingle gracefully each reflecting the values of the other.” The elements of Education and Travel will thus be represented in “different, yet related” sections of his ePortfolio, whereas his “home page will predominantly feature [his] educational aspirations yet allude to [his] love of travel.” His Education section, according to his plan, will showcase his best academic work, with narrative explaining what each item represents, and also will include his study abroad experience teaching English in China. His Travel section will highlight several different trips with photos and explanatory narrative, and his About section will incorporate the education and the travel themes. Nate’s final ePortfolio for the class adheres closely to his plan. Across his home page, a quote from Saint Augustine encapsulates the dual themes of education and travel: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel only read one page.” Scrolling down, one finds sections on Nate’s study abroad experience, other trips, and academic interests, each with an illustrative image. Toward the bottom of the page, he offers his perspective on language, using quotations and images under the headings “Describing Not Prescribing Language,” “On the English Language,” and “Respecting All Languages and Dialects.” Nate’s Education section includes three subsections. The first, linked under a photo in which he holds two books, one representing each of his majors, describes the two majors and the relationships he sees between them. He writes, My interest in religious studies goes hand in hand with my interest in linguistics. Religion when studied as a natural human phenomenon has played an important sociolinguistic role in the formation of cultural identities worldwide. . . . Without language . . . religion would not exist.

Yancey.indb 97

21-03-2019 12:25:37

Yancey.indb 98

21-03-2019 12:25:37

Note. From http://natewynne1982.wixsite.com/exploreenglish. Retrieved with the author’s permission.

Figure 5.2.  Front page of Nate’s ePortfolio.

identity development as curriculum  

99

The academic work he showcases reflects his interest in the interplay of language and culture. For example, for a linguistics class, he wrote a research paper titled “Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Variations in Compliment Behavior,” whereas his experience in China, the focus of the second subsection, produced a paper titled “Sociolinguistic Comparative Research on Chinese and American English Education.” The third subsection features his local volunteer work as a literacy skills tutor. Other sections also remain true to the purpose of exploring the relationships among Nate’s interests and academic majors. The “About” section brings together his academic interests—represented by a scrolling image of books on linguistics, religion, and sociolinguistics—and his curiosity about other places and cultures. For example, one subsection, titled “Who Am I?” and subtitled “Educator, Traveler, Volunteer,” includes his two life stories; other (unfinished) subsections seem intended to link Nate’s personal experiences with universal themes. For example, he calls one subsection “My Story Is Our Story” and subtitles it “The Human Experience.” For Kelsey and Nate, the life stories reflection seemed to serve its first purpose especially well: It supported the development of more intentionally composed ePortfolios than we had seen in previous classes. Having chosen a self to portray, Kelsey and Nate developed ePortfolios that offered coherent and compelling accounts of who they were and what they had learned. In so doing, they engaged in exactly the kind of integrative thinking and meaningmaking that we hoped they would. Both Kelsey and Nate appeared to have reflected on their identities before taking the capstone seminar, and both had postgraduation career paths in mind. Less introspective students, and those who were unsure about future pathways, seemed to find the life stories reflection more difficult than we anticipated. Some students struggled even to imagine two different perspectives on their lives or educational experiences or struggled with what to say about their two narratives once they had written them. For these students, the peer and instructor feedback on their first drafts was crucial. In some cases, we also met individually with them to offer gentle guidance by suggesting or eliciting possible alternate viewpoints or areas for reflection. Most of these students wrote much improved second drafts. In fact, the majority of the class made substantial changes between drafts. The opportunity to revisit and revise, based on feedback and further reflection, contributed substantially to making the assignment more powerful than we had anticipated, as many students noted in their second drafts. Devon was among those initially unable to complete the reflection component of the assignment (see http://devstarr444.wixsite.com/-devonritter). Her two stories describe different phases of her life and different events. The

Yancey.indb 99

21-03-2019 12:25:37

100   eportfolio as curriculum first centers on her experience as a family member. From the age of six, she spent much of her time caring for siblings and other family members afflicted with chronic illness and disability: First and foremost, I am a daughter, a sister, and an aunt. . . . My life has been built around the stories of my loved ones. . . . These experiences have helped shape me into the person I am today.

The second story chronicles Devon’s college experiences: [As an entering freshman,] I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life—I had absolutely no direction. . . . I never found the one thing that I was passionate about, and back then I thought passion was something that would jump out at me when I least expected it.

Eventually, she decides on an English major, as she has always enjoyed writing. She has no regrets about the choice: “Becoming an English major is the best decision I have made. I have developed a passion for editing, and I still love to write in all forms.” Perhaps because the two stories seemed on the surface unrelated in topic and emphasis, Devon was at a loss to respond to the reflection prompts. In her comments on Devon’s first draft, Johnson observed that a lifetime of caring for others might explain “why your own passion isn’t at the top of your consciousness.” She suggested that Devon reflect on the kinds of writing she had done and which ones she most enjoyed and that, “if supporting others has become a part of who you are, you might consider working for a nonprofit, as a manager, a writer, or even a lobbyist.” After some additional discussion, Devon completed a second draft, including a reflection on comparisons, contrasts, and connections among the events and themes of her two narratives; that is, she began, arguably, to see elements of continuity in what had seemed discontinuous experiences. Her first story, “presents my life as an accumulation of my loved ones’ experiences.” Her priority was “the quality of life experienced by others.” Her second story, she says, is about “self-discovery and realization. . . . With college came a lot of confusion, because I was suddenly forced to decide who I wanted to become as an adult. The first two years was an incredibly trying time for me.” She is uncertain whether her “inability (or unwillingness)” to think about herself is “a weakness that could impede [her] ability to grow as a person” or a trait that might benefit her in some way. But she recognizes that “supporting others has become a part of [her] makeup” and is interested in pursuing Johnson’s suggestion that she consider a career in the nonprofit

Yancey.indb 100

21-03-2019 12:25:37

identity development as curriculum  

101

sector: “I would be legitimately making a difference (or trying to, at least), which is something I live for.” In her conclusion, Devon writes, “At first, I honestly didn’t see the point of considering my life story,” but now, I am very grateful for this assignment. . . . I have made some interesting realizations about myself in the process. Looking back on my life in different ways has proven to not only help me gain insight into where I’ve come from and who I am, but it has also helped me make decisions about my future.

Implications Of course, not all students engaged as sincerely with the life stories reflection as those cited here, but Johnson and I were surprised by the improvement in students’ ePortfolios, compared with previous classes, and the number of students who seemed to genuinely benefit from the assignment. Bateson’s (2006) argument that a life story and, indeed, a self, is a choice, a subjective construct that we continually compose as we navigate our lives and accumulate experiences, was an idea that most students had not previously encountered or considered. Asking them to apply this idea to their own stories and selves added a new metacognitive challenge. The task required students to not only engage in metacognition but also recognize explicitly that they were engaging in it. Devon was among a number of students who, to their surprise, found that the task helped them to think more creatively about their past and future selves. A recent article in The New York Times sheds additional light on what we gain by looking at our life stories in multiple ways. In “How to Build Resilience in Midlife,” Tara Parker-Pope (2017) reports on scientific studies demonstrating that the capacity to develop alternative life narratives contributes to resilience, “our ability to bounce back from adversity.” Citing scholars at Yale University, the Wharton School, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she notes that “study after study has shown that we can benefit from reframing the personal narrative that shapes our view of the world and ourselves” (para. 12). One expert cited in the article, Dr. Steven Southwick of the Yale University School of Medicine, explains that “it’s about learning to recognize the explanatory story you tend to use in your life” (para. 13). Indeed, Bateson (2006) makes a similar argument, observing that for her friends who fled Iran’s 1979 revolution, “the way they interpreted their situation [i.e., as refugees] was absolutely critical to their adjustment” (p. 463). Those who emphasized continuity, “interpret[ing] the present in a way that help[ed] them construct a particular future,” adjusted more quickly and

Yancey.indb 101

21-03-2019 12:25:37

102   eportfolio as curriculum easily than those who felt “that their lives had ended and they had to start from zero” (p. 463). Devon’s reflection is a case in point; as she began to see connections between her precollege and college experiences, she was more easily able to imagine future directions for her life. As I have reflected myself on the life stories assignment and discussed it with other ePortfolio practitioners, I have gained some further insights into its impact and potential value. It aligns with and builds on emerging research on ePortfolio pedagogy and, more broadly, on key themes of the higher education innovation and reform movement of the past few decades: constructivist epistemologies wherein students are the creators of knowledge and meaning; high-impact practices that ask students to apply and integrate learning; and active pedagogies in which students create, integrate, and apply knowledge together. These themes provide a foundation for effective ePortfolio practices, and research demonstrates that when students are fully engaged in constructing ePortfolios that interpret and integrate their learning for authentic audiences, the outcomes can be powerful: deeper learning, intentional selfauthorship, increased agency and self-efficacy, and what Tracy Penny Light (2016) calls metacognitive fluency (Cambridge, 2010; Eynon & Gambino, 2017; Yancey, 2004). Our students’ ePortfolios and reflections suggest that explicitly understanding one’s life story as a malleable cognitive construct can amplify all of these outcomes of ePortfolio development. Although I am convinced that the life stories reflection yielded valuable insights for students and generated more carefully thought out capstone ePortfolios, thus increasing the value of ePortfolio composition as a learning experience, I am also left with some questions: • Should we define desired learning outcomes for the life stories reflection apart from its value for ePortfolio composition/learning? If so, what would they be, and how would we assess them? • Should we be asking students to reflect on their life stories earlier in the curriculum? If so, when? • Most English majors have learned something about constructing and analyzing narratives by the time they reach their final semester. How would this assignment need adjustment for students in other disciplines? (I wonder especially about professional disciplines.) • What can we, as programs and institutions, learn from life stories reflections about how our students are interpreting their learning experiences? Finally, I would encourage my ePortfolio colleagues reading this volume to try adapting the life stories reflection to the context of their institutions

Yancey.indb 102

21-03-2019 12:25:37

identity development as curriculum  

103

and disciplines. My experience suggests that we and our students—and perhaps our programs and institutions—have much to learn by making metacognitive identity development part of the curriculum.

References Bateson, M. C. (2001). Composing a life. New York, NY: Grove Press. Bateson, M. C. (2006). Composing a life story. In M. R. Schwehn & D. C. Bass (Eds.), Leading lives that matter: What we should do and who we should be (pp. 459–467). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Cambridge, D. (2010). ePortfolios for lifelong learning and assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Eynon, B., & Gambino, L. M. (2017). High-impact ePortfolio practice. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Parker-Pope, T. (2017, July 25). How to build resilience in midlife. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/well/mind/howto-boost-resilience-in-midlife.html?_r=0 Penny Light, T. (2016, June). Depicting the outcomes of learning: ePortfolios as authentic records of achievement. Keynote address presented at the international seminar of the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning, Edinburgh, Scotland. Yancey, K. B. (2004). Postmodernism, palimpsest, and portfolios: Theoretical issues in the representation of student work. College Composition and Communication, 55, 738–762.

Yancey.indb 103

21-03-2019 12:25:37

APPENDIX 5A

Life Stories Reflection

E450 Capstone Seminar in English Spring 2015 “I am referring to the freedom that comes not only from owning your memory and your life story but also from knowing that you make creative choices in how you look at your life.” (From Mary Catherine Bateson, “Composing a Life Story,” Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2004) First draft due: Feb. 18, 2015 Final reflection due: Mar. 11, 2015 Create two one-page narratives that represent different versions of/ perspectives on your life story (or, if you’d prefer, of an experience or series of experiences—like your undergraduate experience or the “story” of how you became an English major). Next, re-read your stories and write a 2–3 page reflection that addresses one or more of the following questions. Feel free to use quotes from the Bateson article that illustrate your points or that you found especially thought-provoking. Conclude the reflection by telling us which version of your story you expect your ePortfolio to focus on. How will you build the portfolio so that its elements (text documents, section introductions, photos, introductions to examples of your work, and any other media you incorporate), viewed together, convey and demonstrate that story to your audience? Reflection questions (don’t try to answer all of these!): • What are the major similarities and differences between your two story lines? In what ways do they represent alternative ways of looking at the same events/experiences? For example, is one the story you tell yourself and is the other the story you tell others? Does one have more continuity or one more “zigzags” than the other? Why? • Which story do you prefer? Why? • Was it difficult for you to compose one or both stories? Why do you think that was the case?

Yancey.indb 104

21-03-2019 12:25:37

appendix

5a   105

• Have other people’s stories (like your parents’ stories) influenced yours? In what ways? • Did you compose your preferred story prospectively or retrospectively (i.e., are you looking forward or backward at your story)? • What insights did you gain from composing and rereading your two stories?

Yancey.indb 105

21-03-2019 12:25:37

Yancey.indb 106

21-03-2019 12:25:37

6 U N TA N G L I N G T H E P A S T AND PRESENT WHILE W E AV I N G A F U T U R E ePortfolios as a Space for Professional Discernment and Growth Gail Matthews-DeNatale

A

s an educator, my deepest desire is for my students to grow and to recognize their growth as a result of engaging in the learning experiences that I have designed for them. For me, this is the essence of curriculum because it entails translating the aspirations that I have for my students into a sequence of experiences that will intentionally prompt and support student progress toward those aims. But how can I know what students are making of the experience? This question makes explicit the shared existence of curriculum. How does the curriculum that I facilitated compare with the curriculum that my students experienced and lived? What did the students bring to the curricular experience that amplified, deepened, or diverged from the curriculum’s intent? These questions can be addressed only by viewing the experience through the students’ eyes, a seemingly impossible task. However, because ePortfolios are a manifestation of students’ personalized curriculum, an outward and visible sign of an inward and often invisible process, they are also a window into the student experience. This chapter explores the roots and theoretical perspectives of curriculum as a concept, positions ePortfolio as a manifestation of curriculum, and then uses curriculum theory as a lens for analyzing how students experienced ePortfolio as curriculum in the context of an online master of education program for which I served as lead faculty. 107

Yancey.indb 107

21-03-2019 12:25:37

108   eportfolio as curriculum The master of education program at Northeastern University describes itself as an “ePortfolio Program” (Matthews-DeNatale, 2013, p. 9) because portfolio work takes place throughout the curriculum. All students keep a learning ePortfolio to save and reflect on their signature work from each course, considering their personal growth as education professionals in relation to life aspirations. For example, in the gateway course titled Education as an Advanced Field of Study, the signature work saved in the ePortfolio is an education narrative that students author about the life experiences that have shaped their values in relation to education. These narratives are accompanied by reflections in which students compare their personal narratives with burning issues in the field to discern individualized and purposeful professional areas of interest. This ePortfolio work helps students make intentional decisions about topics they will focus on in the signature work they do for subsequent required courses and also helps them be more i­ ntentional in their selection of electives. In the capstone course, students draw on their work and reflections in their learning portfolios to create an outward-facing professional ePortfolio, publicly available on the Internet. In addition to serving as a tool for students to communicate their strengths to others, the process of developing this second ePortfolio helps them make the important identity transition from master’s student to education professional who has a master’s degree. In fall 2016 I interviewed recent alumni to better understand how students perceived the ePortfolio program experience and ascertain whether, and if so how, that experience continued to be valuable after graduation. I also interviewed a capstone instructor to reconcile alumni self-perceptions with the instructor’s view. A thematic analysis of the result indicates that the ePortfolio process helps learners document and organize their experiences, strengthening memorability; tease out and perceive connections among the threads of experience; discern goals and consider development; and develop an intentionally integrated vision for themselves as professionals.

ePortfolio as Curriculum: Substance and Process Curriculum can be perceived as the substance and the process of education (Pinar & Grumet, 2004; Slattery, 2006). According to the autobiographical theory of curriculum studies, curriculum engages the student in a process of remembering and analyzing multiple narratives of learning, envisioning a desired future, and synthesizing experience into a revised sense of self (Pinar, 2004; Pinar & Grumet, 1976). There are multiple tributaries to curriculum, what learners bring to the learning context, what educators have planned, and how the learning is experienced (Yancey, 2004). ePortfolios

Yancey.indb 108

21-03-2019 12:25:37

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

109

are uniquely positioned to encompass the content, the experience, and the interconnections of curriculum. The term curriculum is often perceived as synonymous with programs of study. Search the website of almost any degree program and you will see a list of core and elective courses presented as the curriculum. Derived from New Latin and Latin, curriculum means racecourse (Slattery, 2006). Viewed in this light, curriculum is a noun that refers to program content. According to Slattery (2006), “Generations of educators have been schooled to believe that the curriculum is a tangible object—the lesson plans we implement or the course guides we follow” (p. 62). In the 1970s, renowned curriculum theorists William Pinar and Madeline Grumet (1976) proposed a new approach to curriculum studies, which they referred to as currere, and positioned curriculum as a gerund, as in the experience of running the race. In What Is Curriculum Theory? Pinar (2004) explained [Curriculum studies are the] relations between academic knowledge and life history in the interest of self-understanding (p. 35) . . . . [C ]urrere promises no quick fixes. On the contrary, this autobiographical method asks us to slow down, to remember[,] even re-enter the past, and to meditatively imagine the future. Then, slowly and in one’s own terms, one analyzes one’s experience of the past and fantasies of the future in order to understand more fully, with more complexity and subtlety, one’s submergence in the present. (p. 4)

As both method and theory, this autobiographical process entails four phases: regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis. The regressive phase involves revisiting the past and taking actions that will make it possible to remember learning, documenting an experience or moment so that it can be used as a data source. In their landmark book titled Toward a Poor Curriculum, Pinar and Grumet (1976) wrote, “One returns to the past, to capture it as it was, and as it hovers over the present” (p. 55). The progressive phase is akin to meditation, in which the learner “looks toward what is not yet the case, what is not yet present” (Pinar, 2004, p. 36). In the analytical phase the learner asks, “How is the future present in the past, the past in the future, and the present in both?” (Pinar & Grumet, 1976, p. 60). Finally, in an act of synthesis, the learner “listens carefully to [her or his] own inner voice in the historical and natural world and asks, ‘What is the meaning of the present?’” (Pinar, 2004, p. 37). According to Miller (2010), Pinar and Grumet’s (1976) narrative approach to curriculum “drew attention to the necessity of rendering multiple accounts of selves and school knowledge and experiences to cultivate individuals’

Yancey.indb 109

21-03-2019 12:25:37

110   eportfolio as curriculum capacities to see through outer forms, the habitual explanation of things” (p. 62). However, Slattery (2006) cautions us to remember that curriculum is still a noun well back in history—the racecourse itself. The shift in focus to the active process of learning has never denied that texts, materials, lessons, tests, and classrooms are important; they are just not the substance of curriculum or the purpose of education. (p. 62)

Viewed in this light, curriculum refers to the combined impact of the race (process of learning) and the course (substance of content). Given this backdrop, what do we mean by the concept of ePortfolio as curriculum? In her work on the relationship among writing, reflection, and learning, Yancey (1998) notes that curriculum is not a singular entity: We have at least three curricula that operate simultaneously. The students bring with them their lived curriculum, that is, the product of all their learning to date. In the classroom, they engage in the delivered curriculum, which is the planned curriculum, outlined by syllabi, supported by materials and activities, and so on. The delivered curriculum, however, is experienced quite differently by different students: it is the experienced curriculum. The intersection among these three curricula provides the optimal place for learning; reflection is one means of establishing the location of that place, emphasis in original. (p. 18, emphasis in original)

Taking Yancey’s (1998) tripartite model into consideration with the work of education theorists, curriculum extends beyond the academic domain to include the memory of prior experiences; the interpretation of interactions with faculty and peers (tacit messages); and the experience of family, social, and workplace life. One begins to wonder what is not curriculum. In what way is ePortfolio curriculum? ePortfolio as a tool is no magic bullet. ePortfolio must be done well to make a genuine impact in the lives of learners (Eynon & Gambino, 2017). To be done well, ePortfolio needs to be positioned as an enactment of curriculum. ePortfolio has the potential to be the space in which the learner documents the what (curriculum as the substance of learning) in addition to engaging in the how and why of meaning-making (curriculum journey and the process of learning). Figure 6.1 depicts the complex interrelationship between curricular substance and process that students have an opportunity to reconcile in the ePortfolio space.

ePortfolio as Curriculum Substance The concept of artifacts as evidence of learning is central to ePortfolio pedagogy. ePortfolios are a curricular container in which the students can place items such as work samples, usually accompanied with written reflections;

Yancey.indb 110

21-03-2019 12:25:38

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

111

Figure 6.1.  ePortfolio as curriculum substance and process.

Artifacts

Past

Remember How can I record my work and current thinking to revisit the past as data in the future?

Documenting moments, saving course materials & work Syllabi, etc.

Envision What do I imagine and desire that is not yet present? What are the possibilities?

Future

Discerning goals, progress toward growth, & next steps ePortfolio as Curriculum

Feedback

Questioning, seeking patterns & connections Analyze What relationships do I perceive between the past, present, and future?

Reflections Gaining new perspective, revising personal & professional identity Synthesize Given what I have experienced, who am I now? How am I, and my thinking, transformed?

Present

Note. The curriculum artifacts entered into the ePortfolio and the curricular processes that ePortfolio enable. Adapted from Pinar and Grumet’s (1976) autobiographical theory of curriculum.

receive written feedback from peers and faculty; and store course-related collateral materials such as syllabi. This is the typical focus of educators who are new to the concept of portfolios. It is analogous to the noun conceptualization of curriculum. ePortfolio as repository has its merits, but that approach only helps the learner record what is; it does not, as Pinar (2004) advocates, help the learners transform their perspective to view “the present in the past, the past in the future, and the present in both” (p. 4).

ePortfolio as Curriculum Process Pinar and Grumet (1976) encourage us to recognize curriculum as a gerund, a word that is used as a noun but at its root is a verb. The converse is true with ePortfolios. To attain the goal of ePortfolio as curriculum, we must learn how to change our conceptualization of ePortfolio as a noun into an understanding of ePortfolio as a verb. Eynon and Gambino (2017) describe ePortfolio done well as a practice that is grounded in inquiry, reflection, and integration. According to Nguyen (2013), “A life examined through narrative leads to new ways of acting in the present. . . . This self-understanding comes about as the students take the time to reflect and articulate new meanings as part of the ePortfolio process” (pp. 141–142). When past, present, and future converge as students examine and act on lessons learned through their narratives, ePortfolio practice is a curricular process.

Yancey.indb 111

21-03-2019 12:25:38

112   eportfolio as curriculum But it is important to avoid elevating process over product, because the work products contained in an ePortfolio are an essential ingredient in enacting the learning process. Pinar and Grumet (1976) note that the first step in curriculum as process is documenting experience so that it can be used as data. Viewed in this light, ePortfolios are curriculum substance and curriculum process alike. Through ePortfolio, learners have the opportunity to gain a vantage point and to negotiate their learning in a way that would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish with any other pedagogical approach.

ePortfolios in Northeastern’s Master’s Program Curriculum The following case study describes one program’s journey from the positioning of ePortfolios as a self-directed space that is separate from the curriculum to the positioning of ePortfolios as the substance and the process of the ­curriculum. Given the planned ePortfolio curriculum, how did students experience the ePortfolio curriculum? Follow-up interviews with recent graduates and the capstone course instructor have helped me gain insight into the impact of the portfolio experience on my learners’ capacity to remember, analyze, envision, and synthesize their development as education professionals. Northeastern University is a private school located in the heart of Boston, with a total enrollment of about 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The master of education program is fully online with an enrollment of about 300. It includes 4 concentrations: higher education administration, eLearning and instructional design, K–12 learning and instruction, and learning analytics. Each concentration has a lead faculty member who coordinates course assignments, curriculum development, and course revision.

Phase 1: ePortfolio as Curriculum Substance Container In the summer of 2012 the faculty concentration leads revised the master’s curriculum, which also included the integration of ePortfolios into the curriculum. During this redesign process the faculty also coauthored a portfolio purpose statement for students: By pursuing a Master’s degree, you are in a process of—metaphorically speaking—writing the next chapter in the story of your life. Your courses are one part of that process. You construct meaning on your journey, considering how your program informs and shapes personal and professional goals. Your ePortfolio is designed to help you document this narrative of growth to see how parts relate to the whole. We believe it will help you improve the quality of your learning experience, both during and after your time in the program. (Northeastern University, 2011)

Yancey.indb 112

21-03-2019 12:25:38

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

113

Under the new system, it was decided that all students would take a gateway course titled Education as an Advanced Field of Study during their first term. This course carries five credits instead of the usual four, because it includes a systematic orientation to the ePortfolio component of the program. In addition to viewing technical tutorials, students write in their portfolios about every other week, attaching or embedding work such as an education narrative, an annotated bibliography, a presentation about a burning issue that resonated with their personal narrative, and a final reflection. The program directors created a new ePortfolio resource site that included the program’s ePortfolio purpose statement, materials about the value of ePortfolios in relation to metacognition and self-directed learning, program competencies, technical quick start guides, and video tutorials (Northeastern University, 2013). Each course in the revised program included at least one designated signature assignment. Students were instructed to create a page for each course in their portfolios, attach or embed the signature work for the course, and formally submit the most current version of the ePortfolio in the system at the end of each term. Faculty were expected to check the submitted ePortfolios at the end of the course, withholding a student's final grade until the ePortfolio was submitted. A passage about the ePortfolio requirement was included in all syllabi, and official communication with full- and part-time faculty conveyed the importance of the ePortfolio component and the expectation for checking the portfolios at the end of each term. This regulated approach to ePortfolio integration ensured that even ambivalent faculty would take minimal responsibility for ensuring that students used their ePortfolios as a space for program-related learning. ePortfolios served as a space in which students could track and create a record of the curriculum. Whenever possible, faculty assigned to the gateway course were those who believed in the importance of engaging students in a process of identity discernment and development and who were known to perceive reflection as key to student metacognition regarding their work. Under the new system, ePortfolios were used as a container for curriculum substance and sometimes, depending on the instructor’s pedagogical approach, also as a vehicle for curriculum process.

Phase 2: ePortfolio as Curriculum Substance and Process As the curriculum was revised and phased in from 2013 to 2015, some concentrations began to strategically position ePortfolios as the substance and the process of the curriculum. For example, How People Learn, the first course in the eLearning and Instructional Design program, engaged students in

Yancey.indb 113

21-03-2019 12:25:38

114   eportfolio as curriculum ePortfolio work throughout the term, first as a place to save a baseline concept map of their individual perception of what constitutes learning, as a tool for self-assessment and goal setting in relation to program competencies; s­ econd as a venue for the development of multimodal case studies on the course topic; and third as a place to reflect on their work and compare baseline and culminating concept maps to determine how their thinking had changed. By fall 2015 the new curriculum was fully phased in. Students were being prompted to save catalog descriptions and signature work from every course in their ePortfolios, and in some concentrations every course included at least one ePortfolio reflection. I was commissioned to develop a capstone course that would engage students in using their ePortfolios to process and integrate their program learning. I was excited by the possibilities, but as a proponent of reflection I was also uncertain if the work the students had done in their ePortfolios would be sufficient. I knew that many of the students had been prompted to use their ePortfolios only as curriculum containers. Would that be enough data to work with as I challenged them to experience ePortfolio as curriculum process? The revised capstone course now includes three carefully sequenced assignments, each of which helps students build toward a synthesized understanding of the curriculum and of themselves as education professionals: 1. Annotated curriculum and professional competency model (PCM) 2. Problem of practice case study 3. Integrated professional portfolio

Annotated Curriculum and PCM In the first few weeks of the course, students take advantage of the online program format. They revisit each of their previous courses in the Blackboard learning management system and write a three-paragraph annotation for each course. The annotations focus on three central questions: 1. What were the big ideas that you derived from the course? 2. What connections do you see between the course and others in the program? 3. How did this course influence your thinking? They then turn their attention to their program ePortfolios, comparing the work they accomplished with program and concentration competencies and expanding the list of competencies to include those that are specific to their professional aims. For example, one student who was an adviser at an urban community college expanded her list of competencies to include fluency in

Yancey.indb 114

21-03-2019 12:25:38

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

115

Spanish, which is the first language spoken by many of her students. Another student whose goal was to work as an instructional designer created subcategories for one of the program competencies, specifying software skills that were currently in high demand in her profession. With this approach, program competencies are more than curriculum as content, a preordained schedule assigned to them by the program. These students engaged in curriculum as process because they had an opportunity to personalize, augment, and reinterpret the program’s learning outcomes. Problem of Practice Case Study In the middle portion of the course students are challenged to put the curriculum into action in relation to a specific problem of practice at their place of work or at a local institution. They create a case study ePortfolio in which they document a critical incident at work that is emblematic of a larger systemic problem of practice. This documentation includes a thick description. Mining their ePortfolios, students use previous coursework to analyze root causes and potential responses to the problem. Finally, they propose a response, which, time permitting, they implement and document. For example, a college adviser was concerned that students who failed a course in their first term were not required to meet with an adviser. She documented the problem, presented research to her school demonstrating the value of intrusive advising for students who are at risk, and proposed a policy revision to the Faculty Senate that was approved. Her case study included an embedded video of her making the presentation to the Faculty Senate, a powerful testimonial to her capacity to serve as an agent of change. Integrated Professional Portfolio In addition to helping students process the curriculum, an important goal of the capstone is to help students make an identity transition from that of master’s student to professional who has a master’s degree. The learning portfolios that the students have kept throughout the program are compiled from their identity perspective as master’s students. Although it conceivably could be possible to copy the program ePortfolio and revise it to create a professional portfolio, it would be challenging because the student identity is embedded in the portfolio’s architecture, which is structured around a page for each course. Instead of revising their program ePortfolios, in the capstone students mine and analyze these ePortfolios as a rich data trove that illustrates their passions and proficiencies. Peet’s (2010) “The Integrative Knowledge Portfolio Process” served as the text for this portion of the course. The professional portfolio’s architecture is organized around strengths, with the expectation that work samples will be drawn from

Yancey.indb 115

21-03-2019 12:25:38

116   eportfolio as curriculum a range of sources, including workplace and community accomplishments in addition to a few carefully chosen products from the program. In essence, the majority of students’ ePortfolios work prior to the capstone was regressive curricular work from the perspective of Pinar and Grumet (1976), a process of documenting learning moments so that they could be mined as data during future curricular work. If they had not saved the products of their work each term, they would not be able to do the more generative work of synthesis during the capstone, integrating their prior academic and workplace experiences to portray themselves as professionals in the present.

The Research How did the students’ lived curriculum intersect with the planned curriculum to enact an experienced curriculum? What was the impact, if any, of ePortfolio as curriculum on their learning experience? In summer 2016 I decided to find out. With the assumption that learners would find it difficult to discuss the impact of the experience while they were in the middle of the program and to avoid the pressure that current students might feel to provide socially desirable responses, my study focused on recent alumni. All 15 students from my section of the winter 2016 capstone were invited to be interviewed; 11 agreed to be interviewed; and after navigating logistical challenges, I was able to interview 8 people. I also interviewed the instructor of another section of the capstone, whose experience with the students is comparable to mine because we both teach with the same online course shell. Sample alumni interview questions included the following: • Did the ePortfolio experience involve working and learning in ways that you hadn’t done before your master’s experience? (If so, in what ways? How was the experience different?) • What role, if any, did the ePortfolio play in your learning and development? • What additional value, if any, did the online format contribute to your learning? Sample capstone instructor questions included the following: • What vantage point do the major assignments provide you in regard to the students’ learning and development? • What patterns of strength and challenge do you observe?

Yancey.indb 116

21-03-2019 12:25:38

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

117

• What is the value added, if any, of the ePortfolio component? What aspects of the course, and work done in students’ ePortfolios prior to the course, are critical to successful outcomes of the experience?

The Findings I sought first to understand the alumni perspective. Much to my surprise, when I reviewed the literature on curriculum I discovered that the themes that emerged during interview coding closely map onto Pinar and Grumet’s (1976) four phases of curriculum.

Remembering One of the most intriguing findings was the importance of ePortfolio in documenting and organizing learning so that it could be mined as a data source, interpreted, and reinterpreted. In the world of Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy, remembering is foundational to learning. We often equate remembering with memorization, and in a digital world of abundant access to information, this capability might seem less important than other higher order skills. However, ePortfolios support the remembrance of an extended and multifaceted experience, and this capacity is far from rudimentary. Remembering involves a complex, iterative process of putting together, connecting, and reconfiguring learning across multiple experiences. According to one of the students interviewed, JC: I would make quotes . . . that I thought were pertinent and I gave a quick little rehash for my future self. . . . I was able to go back and it’d help me find either justifications or things that . . . put me in a different path from the way I was understanding. . . . I was able to go back to my ePortfolio to review previous ideas, previous concepts and see how that integrated in future classes and future topics that we did.

According to several interviewees, the multimodal, embedded, and linked online environment made it possible to gain a distinct and integrated vantage point on the past. For example: SD: I think it was very satisfying for me to make the argument that I’ve progressed in terms of this learning outcome, and here’s evidence of that. Right now embedded or linked to underneath this very paragraph. It’s not on a different page, it’s not in a different file that has to be emailed or sent, it’s all right there.

Yancey.indb 117

21-03-2019 12:25:38

118   eportfolio as curriculum PC: If I had just done my projects and left them on my laptop, I don’t know if I would have referenced them that much. I don’t know if I would have gone back and looked at them, even though it’s probably just as easy to click through a couple of folders, because it’s almost like you turn the page and then you’re done with it. But this is a nice way to see that you build off of what you started on.

It’s notable that a number of students indicated they wished all faculty had been more insistent on incorporating reflections for each course, and some also told the instructor that they wished they had saved materials beyond what was required. The capstone work of remembering was more difficult for students who didn’t have a complete collection of course reflections because the signature assignments for each course (curriculum as substance) did not include the students’ perceptions of the experience (curriculum as process); for example, one student commented, SN: I wish that each class made you write a reflection at the end that could also go into the ePortfolio because I think that it’s really important to end with a conclusion: summary of the big take aways, how it connects to your profession or your professional development, and the big concepts that were covered in the class.

Incomplete portfolios also made it more difficult for the instructor in her efforts to support students in the remembering process. Joan Burkhardt, capstone instructor, said, Students have told me, “I wish all faculty required that I upload my syllabus.” They wished they had the syllabus there, so the title, the description, the syllabus, signature assignments and a reflection [from each course in their portfolio]. I have a student this term in the capstone course who is doing his PCM. He emailed me, kind of a rude email actually, to tell me that the PCM was a “nightmare.” I wrote to him asking, “Is there something I can help you with? Because I’ve never heard that.” Students love the PCM assignment. The majority of it involves pulling things together. And so he eventually admitted to me, “Well, I didn’t do a very good job of maintaining my Learning ePortfolio along the way.”

Analyzing The interviewees noted that the process of reflecting on and analyzing their experiences often changed their pathway forward, academically and professionally, as one student said:

Yancey.indb 118

21-03-2019 12:25:38

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

119

PC: I was able to sit down and digest what I was doing. It hit me and I said, “Okay, now I get why I’m doing this particular project.” When you get that understanding of where you are, that directly influenced the work that I was doing in the program. But it also influenced a lot of the work I was doing at the job while I was actually doing the program. So I was working full-time and I was talking about the program all the time.

Pinar and Grumet (1976) described the analysis phase of curriculum as seeing the “future present in the past, past in the future, and the present in both” (p. 60). This multitemporal perspective also helps students perceive the intersections among lived, planned, and experienced curricula, as well as connections between formal and informal learning. One student said, SD: Looking at my education experiences in the past and how that’s formed my view on education today and the work that I [want to] do, that was something really unprecedented for me. I hadn’t thought about how the town that I grew up in and the education that I received there had an effect on my career choices today. I came to realize that there are multiple forms of education, multiple forms of learning. . . . You hear that in theory, but the e-portfolio exercise helped me untangle that a little bit.

Envisioning The interviewees often noted that their experience with ePortfolio reflection helped them see their way forward in addition to gaining a contextualized vantage point on the past. As demonstrated by the comments from the following three students, the ePortfolio helped them simultaneously consider and perceive connections among their past, present, and potential future selves: CE: I felt like I was pulling back the layers, and I’m not used to doing that. . . . Realizing how much I developed throughout the program, what I took away from each class, and what I had been able to apply throughout was a pretty eye-opening experience for me. KH: It’s not just self-reflection. . . . Not only could I understand it better myself, and I think go a little bit deeper than I had in the past, but it also made it easier for me to explain my reflection: “These are my goals, this is where I’m at, this is what I would like to do, this is what I’ve already done.” That’s the kind of reflection that I got from it, and again I’d never had that sort of experience before when doing similar projects. SN: If you approach yourself as a story, you have to really think of all the components that make you up. It puts you into context.

Yancey.indb 119

21-03-2019 12:25:38

120   eportfolio as curriculum

Synthesizing The professional ePortfolio assignment in the capstone challenged students to integrate what they derived from the curriculum into their identity, making the transition from master’s student to education professional who has a master’s degree. According to one interviewee, JL: It was a little challenging for me at first. “Okay, I [have to] hit the brakes here and kind of pause and kind of rethink how my whole experience with the program,” drawing all these conclusions to develop this whole personality, which it wasn’t easy. At first it’s like, “Okay it’s just self-reflection, not a big deal,” but it was a lot of work and a lot of writing and really just a lot of critical thinking and analysis of like, “Okay, what did this assignment mean to me? What are my goals? What are my aspirations? What does this program mean for me moving forward?” It was very comprehensive, challenging at times. Being honest with myself about the whole thing, trying to really get something out of it.

As interviewees grasped for metaphors that could convey the uniqueness of their experience, they often described the process in terms of untangling threads to weave new meaning. The ePortfolio experience helped them make meaning of themselves in addition to making meaning of the curriculum, with interviewees often speaking of the two interchangeably; for example, PC: The ePortfolio served in some ways as a thread that went through all of the subjects. I may not have understood the thread as I was going, which I think is probably part of it, but as you start reflecting back you can see, “Oh yeah, I can see why this was the sequence of subjects, why these were the choices for the portfolio projects.” SD: Key assignments like my education narrative had very personal information, in terms of how I have come to view education as a result of my experiences. So there is a bit of a risk there in terms of sharing all of that. But that said, I think the risk was certainly worth the reward, because I saw the impact that my personal life, my professional life, my educational life—how they weaved together.

These alumni perspectives, which demonstrate the integrative meaningmaking that is supported through ePortfolio work, resonate with observations made by the capstone instructor, strengthening the argument that the ePortfolio process is also a curricular process. This essential understanding is vital to meaningful engagement with ePortfolios, but it is also not selfevident. According to instructor Burkhardt,

Yancey.indb 120

21-03-2019 12:25:38

untangling the past and present while weaving a future  

121

I didn’t fully grasp the importance of the ePortfolio, until I taught the capstone. And I feel like maybe many instructors in the program view it as just another checklist item, because they haven’t done that. They haven’t seen it come full circle in [the Capstone]. . . . Students are taking these beautiful snapshots of themselves and where they are along the way. . . . They’re going back and they’re annotating their entire program experience. They start looking at their ePortfolio, and that’s when they realize there’s been a method to their madness. At the end, they have this holistic picture of where they started, where they are now, and all the pieces in between.

Conclusion ePortfolio as curriculum is ePortfolio done well, but it is also curriculum done well. The ePortfolio makes it possible for all the students’ previous program experiences to be made present in the capstone so they can reconcile the totality of their learning and consider how this past shapes the professional identity they will proclaim beyond the program. When we can simultaneously keep the idea of ePortfolio as content and ePortfolio as process in mind, we create an opening for students to put themselves and their learning into context. As one of my students said in his final reflection, Returning to the end at the beginning, my philosophy statement reflects what I have learned about those views I held so long ago in my educational narrative.   I still believe in equality of opportunity in education. I still believe in supporting students as individuals to find their respective paths in their lives through education. What has changed is my ability to help others achieve these goals.

References Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. New York, NY: Longmans, Green. Curriculum. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary (11th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum Eynon, B., & Gambino, L. (2017). High-impact ePortfolio practice. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Yancey.indb 121

21-03-2019 12:25:38

122   eportfolio as curriculum Matthews-DeNatale, G. (2013). Are we who we think we are? ePortfolios as a tool for curriculum redesign. Online Learning: Official Journal of the Online Learning Consortium, 17(4), 1-16. Miller, J. (2010). Autobiographical theory. In C. Kreidel (Ed.), The encyclopedia of curriculum studies (pp. 61–65). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Nguyen, C. (2013). The ePortfolio as a living portal: A medium for student learning, identity, and assessment. International Journal of ePortfolio, 3(2), 135–148. Northeastern University. (2011). About the requirement. Retrieved from https:// northeastern.digication.com/master_of_education_eportfolio_resources/About_ the_Requirement Northeastern University. (2013). 2013 M.Ed. ePortfolio resources. Retrieved from https://northeastern.digication.com/2013_master_of_education_eportfolio_ resources Peet, M. (2010). The integrative knowledge portfolio process: A program guide for educating reflective practitioners and lifelong learners. Retrieved from https:// www.mededportal.org/publication/7892 Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pinar, W., & Grumet, M. (1976). Toward a poor curriculum. Dubuque, IA: Ken­dall/ Hunt. Slattery, P. (2006). Curriculum development in a postmodern era: Teaching and learning in an age of accountability. New York, NY: Routledge. Yancey, K. (1998). Reflection in the writing classroom. Logan: Utah State University Press. Yancey, K. B. (2004). Teaching literature as reflective practice. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Yancey.indb 122

21-03-2019 12:25:38

7 L I M I T I N G e P O RT F O L I O REQUIREMENTS, RAISING STUDENT ENERGY Establishing a Culture of Student Advocacy for ePortfolio Programs Sue Denning

T

he Trinity Portfolio Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, is an elective course and an independent learning program and is not required by any academic program or major; despite this, it has grown about three times faster than can be accommodated in the elective course. In part, this stems from faculty promotion in some firstyear seminars as well as outreach in cocurricular offices, but most students come to the ePortfolio program from direct referrals: students who encourage friends, classmates, and teammates to build and maintain ePortfolios. Direct support from students has also helped drive awareness among faculty advisers, who then suggest ePortfolios to other advisees as a catalyst to clarify academic direction or postbaccalaureate ambitions. Student demand for ePortfolios has led to interest from advising programs, study away, career development, and even faculty revising course curricula. The Trinity Portfolio Workshop course began as many programs do when a faculty-initiated, grant-funded pilot program with big ambitions, a small budget, and a group of hand-picked, highly motivated students lobbied for approval of a quarter-credit course. The original concept was for students to build an advising ePortfolio, which would include one ePortfolio artifact from each class they took at Trinity, along with a reflection on the impact the experience had on their development. They would discuss these experiences with a faculty adviser and a small group of peers. At the end of 123

Yancey.indb 123

21-03-2019 12:25:38

124   eportfolio as curriculum the session, they would have a collection of work they could use to strategize future learning experiences and an ePortfolio they could share with other advisers, cocurricular organizations, and family and friends.

A Beginning During the first semester, there were approximately six groups of four students, with each group meeting with a faculty adviser and taking a series of WordPress workshops. The number of sections we offered wound down as the grant funding ended, but the pilot had been so successful that we were able to continue the course with Rachael Barlow, former social science research and data coordinator and first-year program course instructor, and me, Sue Denning, an instructional technologist, as the instructors. Since that first term, I’ve worked to refine the activities we conduct in class, simplify the type of Web design work students need to use to customize their ePortfolios, and focus on content curation and creation, activities that Barlow and I worked on defining in the first years we cotaught the course. We also gathered input from career development, study away, and advising programs. I’ve also worked with the writing center and research and instruction librarians to build in digital rhetoric and digital media literacy activities. It’s been a very collaborative project, and it feels as if I’ve talked to every entity at the college at one point or another. Despite the potential input I get from the community, the content of the course has remained fairly consistent. The gradual evolution of the course content has been primarily driven by student needs and desires, and the community that views students’ portfolios seems consistently impressed with the quality of their work. I keep the enrollment limit for the course around 10 for a simple reason: With any class larger than that, the amount of hands-on building and technical support I can give the group during our meetings is severely limited. Given the academic focus of the ePortfolio in this course, I also limit the number of seniors in the class, because the portfolios they build tend to be purely post-Trinity focused, and in many cases they don’t have future academic experiences to strategize. For similar reasons, I reserve seats for freshmen; they do have academic experiences to strategize, and more pragmatically, the course fills up before they have a chance to enroll if I don’t reserve the seats. Despite these restrictions, there is still a waiting list every semester. Because I don’t advertise the class or even make presentations on campus about it very often, the biggest reason I can see for the ongoing success of the class is that students are advocating for it. Students not only recommend

Yancey.indb 124

21-03-2019 12:25:38

limiting eportfolio requirements, raising student energy  

125

the class to their peers but also recommend the ePortfolio program to faculty and advisers. Based on the recommendations of students, the program has developed a more formalized engagement with advising programs and cocurricular departments. These relationships have generated interest in and out of the classroom, and the college continues to consider how the program might grow. Although this story started with a faculty grant, it will continue with students promoting ePortfolios. The activities and program qualities I describe in this chapter have proven that students who are meaningfully engaged with ePortfolios will generate interest for them in general. The Trinity Portfolio Program teeters on the edge of becoming a more formalized program, used by more students, advising programs, and course curricula. By examining characteristics of this program, I can identify several scenarios that lead students to advocate for ePortfolios; hopefully, this type of student-driven growth will help maintain the authentic momentum of the program and preserve its entrepreneurial spark.

The Repeat Student The backbone of the Trinity Portfolio Workshop is one of the original requirements of the grant-funded pilot: Students can take the quarter-credit course up to 4 times while they are at Trinity. Each semester, 30% to 50% of students have taken the course at least once before. Beyond the social conveniences of being in a class with friends, students respond to the year-to-year, interdisciplinary missing link in the metacognitive cycle that the Trinity Portfolio Program can help fill. I don’t ask the students to simply document what they’ve done; I ask them to document what they’ve done, what they thought about what they’ve done, and what they are going to do next. Although students who are athletes, who are members of organizations, or who live in a dorm might not act as formal mentors to other students, there is a recognition of successful decisionmaking in peers and an inquiry into what helped build those decision-making skills. Simply put, students talk about their work with other students, and when one student can show another an ePortfolio that was created in the class, the other student is more likely to take that class. The course is always different for the repeat student. I don’t specify subject matter or assignment type for completing course requirements. As long as students have new content to contribute to their ePortfolios, they have the ability to meet content requirements. I also require students to revise or add new reflections to entries from previous semesters. Finally, if there are no significant changes to the technology, repeat students serve as mentors to students who are new to the technology. This peer instruction begins with the

Yancey.indb 125

21-03-2019 12:25:38

126   eportfolio as curriculum technical aspect of ePortfolios but often evolves into a discussion of content and connected experiences.

Defining ePortfolio Content Although I don’t require specific content for students’ ePortfolios, or even a demonstration of competencies in their work, I do have content requirements, and in fact, I’ve actually increased the volume of content students need to create over time. Because of the simplicity of the WordPress tools, students do not have to spend time learning a complex technology. In the 2017 iteration of the semester-long course, the students were asked to • create 10 ePortfolio posts that include a reflection and an artifact and are tagged with at least 3 taxonomies; • draft 2 versions of a letter to the students’ ePortfolio audience, 1 at the beginning of the semester and 1 near the end; • build an interactive résumé with hyperlinks to other websites and other posts as frequently as possible; • choose a WordPress theme, customize the colors of the theme, and select appropriate typography; and • build a front-page design and site navigation that communicates the purposes and goals of their ePortfolios. These may seem like straightforward requirements, but they require fairly intense ideation and discovery to achieve. When you tell students they can put whatever they want in their ePortfolio, and they can define their own ePortfolio goals and audiences, you inevitably get what I call blank canvas syndrome. Students are overwhelmed by the options available to them, and if they don’t come to class with a clear picture of the ePortfolio they want to build, they are daunted by the task. Discovering how to best guide students from a blank canvas to a full ePortfolio has evolved over the past four years. When I became involved as the instructional technologist for this program, the course goal was for students to document and reflect on one artifact from every course taken at Trinity. This felt very limiting. My own liberal arts education and subsequent career in higher education were heavily influenced by my co- and extracurricular experiences while in college as well as by experiences that were not connected to the institution, like having a part-time job and living off campus. I would not have gone from a student of English to a practitioner of pedagogy and technology without these experiences; restricting the students

Yancey.indb 126

21-03-2019 12:25:38

limiting eportfolio requirements, raising student energy  

127

from documenting these experiences felt like depriving them of the ePortfolio opportunity I didn’t have. Research supports the findings of my personal experience. During athletic and co- and extracurricular activities, students form the kinds of peerto-peer relationships that will influence the development of their leadership, problem-solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal communication skills. These activities will also help raise their cultural awareness and their concept of self (Astin, 1993). Many of the students I’ve worked with start to consider their future careers seriously around the same time they are choosing a major. When they have the skills to reflect on the full scope of their Trinity experiences, they are able to make a better-informed choice. In 2014, for example, one student said that she decided on her major because while working on her ePortfolio, she found a connection between her summer job, a course she took, and a volunteer experience, and in that process she realized that this connection was the key to choosing her major. That realization might have been hard to make if she had restricted her portfolio to only academic experiences. The open definition of ePortfolio content also promotes course enrollment among peer groups. Yes, some semesters, there are a lot of lacrosse players in the course. But that same course will also have a few students who know each other from the Health Professions Advising Program (HPAP), from other students who studied abroad together, or from still other students who are taking the course strictly based on the course description. When you combine students from different peer groups in a cooperative learning environment, they are going to be exposed to the beliefs and values of each other’s peer groups (Austin, 1994). Combine this with the broad subject matter of the Trinity Portfolio Workshop, where students are reiteratively asked to think critically and discuss the college experiences that have been most meaningful to them, and you’re going to have a group of students who are at least more aware of different ways of living the college experience. I’ve worked with a variety of coinstructors, including librarians and first-year advisers, to develop the following set of activities to help students construct their ePortfolio and to use the digital technology not only to demonstrate their story on a Web page but also to identify the connections between experiences that may seem disconnected. For every activity in class, there is a technology that helps students find the larger narrative in the ePortfolio content they want to include. In some cases, such as WordPress tag clouds or category archives, the technology is built into the platform they are using. In other cases, they are using external text-analysis tools or experimenting with a digital storytelling tool. The results of these in-class activities may or may not be included as posts in their ePortfolio, but even if they are

Yancey.indb 127

21-03-2019 12:25:38

128   eportfolio as curriculum not included as experiences on their own, they influence the overall shape of the ePortfolio the student creates.

Navigation Building The first of these activities is also the longest process and perhaps the most effective. During the first meeting of the course, students generate a list of all the potential artifacts they have created while at Trinity. We call this content audit the Trinity Inventory. Students list every academic, athletic, social, and extra- and cocurricular experience they have had while at Trinity. They inventory any evidence they could attach to each experience: coursework, a photo, a link to a website, and so on. Finally, they do some unstructured, reflective writing about what might be meaningful about these experiences. The Trinity Inventory is a living document, and we encourage students to build it in a digital format because we will refer to their inventory for nearly every activity in the class, often adding to and evolving its content. The navigation planning continues over the semester, as students create ePortfolio posts. We require them to add three keyword tags to each post in WordPress. We give them a list of potential tags as a place to start (Figure 7.1), which are the result of brainstorming sessions by interdepartmental cocurricular staff, administration, and faculty, but we don’t require students to use any of these suggestions. Some of these potential tags are a little intimidating to students, who tend to shy away from using some of the most effective categories, particularly the ones I consider core to a liberal arts education. To address this issue, I designed a deconstruction exercise to help students demystify abstractions like leadership, critical thinking, organization, and interpersonal communication skills. The prompt differs depending on the abstraction, but one exercise with the term leadership provides a great example. I ask the students to brainstorm a list of qualities good leaders have. We use polling software to gather their responses, but the results could just as easily be plotted on a whiteboard with a marker. Although good, the term with the largest capacity by way of its applicability, is obviously the term students used to preface many other characteristics they cited in their responses, students are sometimes surprised by the variety of other qualities—like patience, selflessness, and problem-solving— that appear in the word cloud. As a result of this activity, many students realize they can document several of the qualities they feel a good leader demonstrates; consequently, some of the students are inspired to create a leadership category and assemble posts that fulfill their refreshed concept of leadership. Another approach is to take some similar tags, like critical thinking and problem-solving, and compare and contrast them. I’ve also asked the students

Yancey.indb 128

21-03-2019 12:25:38

limiting eportfolio requirements, raising student energy  

129

Figure 7.1.  Potential tags. Academics Adaptability Advocacy experience Analytical and quantitative skills Appreciation of cultural variety Athletics Attention to detail Awards and honors Capacity for improvement Clubs and organizations Collaboration Committees Competitions Conferences attended Creative expression Critical thinking Cross-cultural competence Entrepreneurial skills Ethical responsibility to self and others

Event planning Film, video, audio production Flexibility, adaptability Group projects Independent learning Internships Interpersonal skills (relates well to others) Jobs (summer or on campus) Language skills Leadership Online publishing Organization and productivity skills Performance stage or studio Planning skills Posters Presentations Problem-solving Project management Publications Public speaking

Quantitative reasoning Reliability and dependability Research skills Residential life Resilience and adaptability Scientific inquiry Service orientation Social media skills Social skills Strong work ethic Subject matter expertise Tactfulness Taking initiative Teamwork Technology skills Travel Verbal communication skills Volunteer work World knowledge Written communication skills

to break down concepts like ethical responsibility to self and others (which is one of the requirements that the HPAP program needs students to demonstrate for their medical school application letters). The tagging activities come to fruition at the end of the semester. WordPress’s taxonomies give us two tools that illuminate connections. The platform generates a tag cloud from the tags on a student’s site so that students can see the most common taxonomies they have added bubbling to the top. Academics is often at the top, but something like language skills might also become more prevalent when students see the relationship between coursework and study abroad experiences. We also export the full-text content of students’ sites and have them use text analysis tools to find keywords and phrases. This helps to illuminate other narratives that are woven through the content of their site. When words like analyze, decide, and compare come up with high frequency in the full text of a site, it’s a good opportunity to suggest that critical thinking may be a larger component of their skill set than it would initially seem. When students finally build the navigation of their site, they have several visualizations that can guide the WordPress categorization and navigationbuilding process. The navigation schema of sites have gone from the typical

Yancey.indb 129

21-03-2019 12:25:38

130   eportfolio as curriculum academic, extracurricular, professional triumvirate, to schemas that include categories like world perspective, passions, and capacity for growth. These classifications are not natural for students when they begin the ePortfolio construction, but through the effective application of technology, students engage in a process of discovery and find unique and more satisfying ways of using navigation schemes to support their personal narrative. A great example of the connection between creating individual site navigation and the student-led organic growth of the program is illustrated by its relationship with the HPAP program. A student in advising brought her ePortfolio to the attention of her adviser, William Church, and basically said that this is what should be used for the recommendation advising process. Church was looking for better ways for students to demonstrate a new set of competencies required by many medical schools. The student’s ePortfolio had sections demonstrating all the competencies Church was hoping to find in a student narrative, but it included the added bonus of a professional section for applying to internships and a profile of her athletic accomplishments for family and friends. Although Church was not the primary audience for these secondary categories, he learned something significant about his advisee’s interest and experiences from each. Church realized that encouraging students to begin building their ePortfolios as soon as they entered the HPAP would be an advantage for the adviser and the advisee. The ePortfolio program introduces itself to the HPAP students in the fall of every semester and holds independent workshops for them. However, many of the students opt to enroll in the ePortfolio course and build an ePortfolio for not only their health professions applications but also a wider audience. The course gives them the opportunity to fulfill a requirement and also create an ePortfolio they can distribute to others in the Trinity community and beyond.

Visualizing Audiences, Virtually and in Person Students struggle with creating the front page of their ePortfolio, often defaulting to a typical biographical introduction with a threefold purpose: stating who they are, what year they are in, and what their major is or will be. Early in the program, many students observed that although they felt these kinds of front pages fulfilled the need, they weren’t entirely satisfied with them. Moreover, it was difficult for them to envision other ways they could welcome visitors to their ePortfolios. In the rapidly shifting social-media-fueled Internet, the typical audience for a publicly accessible ePortfolio can be difficult for students to define (Rajchel, 2015). The students know their sites will be accessed mostly

Yancey.indb 130

21-03-2019 12:25:38

limiting eportfolio requirements, raising student energy  

131

through direct links, but they might also appear in search engine results or be discovered through professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Many students don’t fully understand how search engines work and can’t conceptualize how their sites might become part of larger Web conversation, through these tools. To help them address these challenges, I begin by leading them through a persona-generation activity. Personas, tools used by brands, technology companies, and marketers for creating user-centered designs that connect with their audiences (Nielsen, 2013), are invaluable to help students connect with their hypothetical ePortfolio audience. The activity is simple: I display a stock photograph of a person and ask students to imagine that this person landed on their ePortfolio site, and I ask them to jot down answers to the following: • • • • •

Who is this? How did this person find your ePortfolio site? What is this person looking for? How long do you want this person to spend on your site? What actions do you want him or her to take because of your site?

The pictures vary wildly but include a diverse sampling of ages and professional and personal styles. Students may assume personal relationships for some characters, whereas other characters might be total strangers. Often students imagine that one of the images represents someone they might see as a potential supervisor or other opportunity key master like an admissions officer for a graduate program or a human resources representative. At the end of the session, each student is asked to choose up to three people to refine as the target audiences for their site. Next we have them write two versions of a letter to that audience. They brainstorm a few points of information each individual reader will be looking for in their ePortfolio; then they create a master list of points, with any common or similar points eliminated. The first version of this letter is a straightforward welcome message, which guides these visitors to the content students are developing. Students set their letter aside until later in the semester, but the content needs outlined by that letter guide the posts they decide to add to their site. As the semester continues, students explore different WordPress and digital storytelling tools they can incorporate into their site, such as interactive maps, videos, slideshows, and audio features. Near the end of the semester, they redraft their welcome message and front-page design to include different content feeds, slideshows and galleries, and other featured content intended

Yancey.indb 131

21-03-2019 12:25:38

132   eportfolio as curriculum to draw the visitors imagined in their letters into deeper engagement with their ePortfolio. They also refer to their personas when designing their customized site navigation, which is one of the most powerful storytelling tools at their disposal. The final step in the audience outreach activity is to invite three members of the Trinity community to the ePortfolio Showcase held at the end of the semester in the library’s Center for Educational Technology. The showcase is an informal presentation session we host at the end of each semester that serves as a launch party for the ePortfolios in progress. Students take attendees on guided tours of their ePortfolios, and attendees ask questions, providing another layer of feedback. I ask all students to invite at least one faculty member, one peer, and one other member of the cocurricular staff to the showcase. I also circulate a set of invitations, but the students send invitations to many faculty, staff, and students to attend the ePortfolio program. A key promise of the ePortfolio Showcase is sandwiches. The showcase takes place in the library on one of the reading days before finals in a building packed with hungry students. Sandwiches (from an off-campus vendor) are a strong motivation for students to drop in to the showcase. If you’ve ever talked with students, faculty, and staff about on-campus dining options, particularly by the end of a semester, you understand the excitement new food options can generate. The ePortfolios are really a bonus find. When our guests see the ePortfolios that students have built during the semester, many are motivated to explore the program and sign up for the course. That doesn’t mean the majority of students who build their ePortfolios happened to be hungry while they were cramming for finals. I would characterize typical ePortfolio course members who enroll after attending a showcase as moderate to highly motivated students who are impressed by what their peers have done and feel they can build something equally impressive. They want more control of their digital story than Facebook and LinkedIn are willing to give, and they are starting to think about their futures—right after they finish a sandwich.

An Environment for Risks When all is said and done, the Trinity ePortfolio Workshop offers students a variety of opportunities they won’t get from another course. Storytelling provides students with an alternative way of conveying ideas by helping students forge a personal relationship with their subject matter (Halpern & Lepore, 2015). When their own experiences become the subject matter of the story,

Yancey.indb 132

21-03-2019 12:25:38

limiting eportfolio requirements, raising student energy  

133

it’s necessary to foster an environment where students are comfortable taking risks and defending their perspectives. In Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors, Tracy Penny Light, Helen L. Chen, and C. John Ittelson (2011) summarize the following design mind-sets that ePortfolios allow students to explore: craft clarity, the embrace of experimentation, a focus on human values, an engagement in radical collaboration, a show don’t tell approach, a process orientation, and an action approach. The Trinity ePortfolio workshop offers opportunities for all these mind-sets in a low-risk environment. The course does not award a letter grade; a passing mark is given to students who fulfill the basic requirement of creating an ePortfolio with a critical mass of content and a coherent communication goal. We adopt a learning-based approach to this course with no performance-based evaluation. We ask the students to look back on their experiences and select the ones that made a significant contribution to their intellectual and personal development (Bain, 2004). A student is not going to be able to meet the requirements of the course by the end of the semester if that student isn’t doing the kind of critical thinking that the activities in this course encourage. I require several revisions of almost everything students create, but their decision to incorporate any feedback I give them is relatively consequence free. As long as they discuss with me the suggestions I’ve given them, I consider the requirements of the submission met. Students in this course have the opportunity to collaborate with me and other faculty and staff to create an ePortfolio according to their own vision in an environment that allows them to take risks and experiment. Needless to say, navigating this environment takes a lot of effort. I spend more time with each student individually than I do in any other course or workshop. I am constantly eliciting feedback from the students and working to shape WordPress and the tools I recommend in it to fulfill the needs of the students. With every round of feedback I provide, students can choose to disagree, and it can be difficult to nurture an environment where students are comfortable entering a debate with me. However, through this work students become experts at telling their own stories, which is the promise of ePortfolios that excites students, faculty, and staff alike.

Conclusion Although not every institution may be able to offer an ePortfolio curriculum inside a stand-alone course, components of the curriculum can be adapted in other settings. The principal theme here is that when you give students opportunities to show the work that is important to them in an ePortfolio,

Yancey.indb 133

21-03-2019 12:25:38

134   eportfolio as curriculum they are going to share their experiences with the greater community. They are going to better understand how to take control of their education, strategize future college experiences, and become more involved in the subjects they are passionate about. They are going to become the students who make teaching rewarding.

References Astin, A. W. (1993). What matters in college. Liberal Education, 79(4), 4–15. Bacal, J., Ly, M., Einbinder, A., Walters, J. (2014, July). Fulfilling the promise: Using reflection to connect students to college mission and priorities. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Authentic, Experiential and EvidenceBased Learning, Boston, MA. Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halpern, R., & Lepore, L. (2015). Scholarly storytelling: Using stories as a roadmap to authentic and creative library research. In H. Jagman & T. Swanson (Eds.), Not just where to click: Teaching students how to think about information (pp. 349–355). Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries. Nielsen, L. (2013). Personas–user focused design. London, UK: Springer. Penny Light, T., Chen, H., & Ittelson, J. (2011). Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Rajchel, J. (2015). Consider the audience. In J. Dougherty & T. O’Donnell (Eds.), Web writing: Why and how for liberal arts teaching and learning (pp. 125–135). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Yancey.indb 134

21-03-2019 12:25:38

8 C R E AT I N G A N e P O RT F O L I O STUDIO EXPERIENCE The Role of Curation, Design, and Peer Review in Shaping ePortfolios Kathleen Blake Yancey

W

hen I arrived at Florida State University in 2005, my principal goal was to rebuild a graduate program in rhetoric and composition that had been dormant. I took up all the kinds of tasks one does in that situation, from inviting new faculty to share in program building and developing a curriculum to recruiting MA and PhD students and creating the program’s Internet presence. As the program developed, several patterns did as well; one of them was that students were independently creating electronic portfolios for multiple purposes, among them to meet a requirement for the MA program if they decided to complete the program with a portfolio instead of a thesis, to compose it as part of a digital dossier when looking for a faculty position in the academy, or to assemble one as a component of their application for a teaching award. Interestingly, although a signature emphasis of our rhetoric and composition program was the role of digital technologies in composing, the ePortfolios were not always well composed. After further reflection, it became clear why, at least in part: The students were creating these ePortfolios without any systematic assistance from the faculty. I thought that lack of assistance might be a problem, and I also thought it would be wise to see what difference, if any, it makes to provide such assistance. So in 2013, I created our first one-credit ePortfolio course, which I have taught every year since and which is the focus of this chapter, where I consider the design of this ePortfolio course, the logic of that design, and some evidence of the course’s efficacy. 135

Yancey.indb 135

21-03-2019 12:25:38

136   eportfolio as curriculum I begin with its predecessor, an independent study course with an undergraduate that taught me much about what an ePortfolio course might look like.

Background The year before I left Clemson University for Florida State University, I offered an independent study to Josh Reynolds, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in creative writing. The goal in the independent study was to help him create a new, more comprehensive ePortfolio. Josh had already created two ePortfolios during his time at Clemson, one in his speech communication class and another in his first-year composition class. Now a junior, he wanted to construct an ePortfolio that would bring together his learning in many areas, among them general education, his major, and his minor. My helping Josh, however, wasn’t entirely altruistic. In addition to wanting to help him, I had three other motives: I was interested in learning more about how students create an ePortfolio, especially outside a conventional course; I was interested in learning more about how I might develop a course specifically designed for ePortfolio creation; and I knew that working with Josh—given his prior ePortfolio experience and his interest in creating a larger, more cumulative ePortfolio—would be instructive. In sum, I knew that I would learn, too. We began with the potential contents of the ePortfolio, what I called stock, or the possible artifacts that might be included. In calling it stock, I was thinking of the stock a cook uses to make soup, something rich and foundational to which we add other ingredients. Josh built on that concept of stock, observing that with such materials, one can do a better job of ­taking stock, of seeing where one is and where one might go. More conventionally, he and I also referred to stock as an inventory, a term that has taken hold. Given his major in engineering and his minor in creative writing, he had much to list on that inventory, including projects from his English and engineering classes, reports and images from his engineering labs, awards he had won, and publications and works still in draft that he hoped would be published. Our next task paralleled the first: gathering visual stock. My assumption in moving to this task so quickly was twofold. First, I thought that it would be helpful for Josh to think with images and visuals as he considered what artifacts to include and how to arrange them. Second, I believed in the commonplace assumption that given the influence of movies, television, and the Internet, college students think visually. As it turned out, that second assumption was wrong: Josh had nothing to gather, nor had he used or created a

Yancey.indb 136

21-03-2019 12:25:38

creating an eportfolio studio experience  

137

single image in any of the 20-some courses he had completed at Clemson. Moreover, he found that identifying visuals was a new task and a new way of thinking that wasn’t coming naturally at all. As a remedy, I asked Josh to look at how others had used images and the visual, such as background colors and font colors, in their ePortfolios, and provided him with URLs for ePortfolios that made different uses of images. His task was to review them and record what worked from his perspective as well as what didn’t. That task turned out to be very useful. In reviewing an ePortfolio that made limited use of the visual, for example, Josh noted that without an integrative visual approach, the ePortfolio contents seemed disconnected. In analyzing another ePortfolio using the Boston subway map as a means of charting education as a journey, Josh pointed out that such a map could include hypertext links keyed to subway stops connected to student work. Josh’s analysis, in other words, was purposeful in two ways: It helped him understand the ePortfolio as a genre, and it helped him plan his own. Returning to his own ePortfolio, Josh decided on an image of a synthesizer as a unifying visual element that accomplished three goals: It showed his interest in music, thus showing more of him as a person; it showed his understanding of the ePortfolio as a site of synthesis; and it brought the different elements of his ePortfolio together conceptually and visually. Last but not least, I also built in peer reviews of Josh’s ePortfolio. Fortunately, two Studio Associates—students who worked as peer mentors in the Clemson Class of 1941 Studio, a site supporting students’ work in communication, who had created ePortfolios themselves—were available to provide peer review. Hearing from multiple audiences was a critical move for Josh’s final ePortfolio draft, providing a sense of what audiences needed. Summarizing the two reviews, Josh then began deciding which recommendations he would take, which recommendations he would reject, and reasons for both. Given that information, he and I met to discuss his tentative decisions, and he developed a plan for revision that he completed by the term’s end. As anticipated, in helping Josh I learned a good deal. First, students don’t think of what they have learned as stock, as conceptual and physical materials demonstrating learning that might be shared in an ePortfolio. If prompted to do so, however, they have concepts and materials to inventory, although it’s fair to note that asking them to save materials are only more likely to make them available. How students then make sense of concepts and materials is an ePortfolio-related task. Second, many students, like Josh, don’t think visually at all. Although the culture may be increasingly visual, that doesn’t mean that students have been asked to think visually or have been explicitly taught about visuals. Building in time for thinking visually, especially early in the

Yancey.indb 137

21-03-2019 12:25:38

138   eportfolio as curriculum ePortfolio process, allows students another means of interrelating the disparate artifacts of their lives. Such thinking may not be easy, and such thinking may take time. Third, the collaborative component of ePortfolio creation is important. The collaboration built into this model of ePortfolio, which required a student to share with others what was learned as represented in the ePortfolio, is the stuff of reflective practice (Schön, 1983; Yancey, 2016), which is itself a form of making knowledge, always for the learner, and often for others.

The ePortfolio Course at Florida State University The ePortfolio studio course I created for graduate students at Florida State University built on the independent study with Josh. It includes several categories of inquiry and design, five of which I describe here: context, artifacts, curation, visuals, and review. Reflection, the missing piece, is woven throughout.

ePortfolio Context The twofold purpose of the ePortfolio context section of the course is to help students learn about ePortfolios as a genre and to support their review of the range of models enacting that genre. To accomplish this aim, students begin by reading about ePortfolios and ePortfolio reflection. Rodgers’s (2002) consideration and definition of Deweyian reflection, which has played a prominent role in the ePortfolio world (e.g., the Catalyst for Learning ePortfolio site, c2l.mcnrc.org), usefully identifies four characteristics of reflection: rigorous, systematic, community based, and personal. Another course reading is the chapter “Reflection and Electronic Portfolios: Inventing the Self and Reinventing the University,” from Cambridge, Cambridge, and Yancey’s (2009) edited Electronic Portfolios 2.0, which highlights various kinds of reflections while arguing that students, when engaging in reflection and ePortfolios, reinvent the university for themselves. Students also learn about ePortfolio models (e.g., showcase portfolios, developmental portfolios, career portfolios) and undertake a review of several models as a way to begin to think about how they might design their own. Much like Josh, the composition students at Florida State University described in chapter 1, and the students in the science communication program at Stanford University (chapter 10), students review several ePortfolios, detailing what they see and using that as a context to begin thinking about features they want to build into their ePortfolio. Because students are interested in

Yancey.indb 138

21-03-2019 12:25:38

creating an eportfolio studio experience  

139

ePortfolios generally and in their own specifically, their observations are typically very thoughtful, as the following itemization from one student suggests: ePortfolio One — glosses/highlights and annotates his own texts — provides a way in for readers who are linear, and mixes linear and scrolling — includes some linking — provides a reflective text that is an exercise in “good natured selfcriticism” — well written and edited, so credibility is enhanced — adjusts the template to achieve some individuality — connects to high school experiences — achieves consistent voice across a range of texts

In class we also review these ePortfolios together, a particularly important exercise given that our review and discussion can illustrate how readers may read the same ePortfolios very differently; the discussion also allows us to identify features that ePortfolio creators have employed to personalize their portfolios, and we compile those features into a list available to all.

ePortfolio Artifacts: Creating an Inventory Students also complete a list, or an inventory, of possible artifacts and exhibits, preferably one that is lifewide, that is, open to artifacts created in multiple contexts, among them past experiences or coursework; current coursework; job experiences; cocurriculars, including internships; and personal artifacts. The purpose of this task is to create as rich an archive of materials as possible, including materials representing learning over time; before college began, much like the Macaulay Honors College program (chapter 9); and materials demonstrating learning in multiple spaces. These materials speak to students’ experiences both lifelong and lifewide. Surprisingly, or it surprised me at least, students don’t tend to create what I would call an open inventory; rather, they tend to create an inventory that is already organized. Those preparing to enter the academic job market tend to organize their artifacts into three categories—learning, teaching, and service, a three-part scheme approximating the research, teaching, and service categories so important for the academic tenure and promotion process. Those preparing an ePortfolio for a teaching award or the MA portfolio cluster the items on their inventory in the categories stipulated by those programs. In short, in creating inventories, students tend to think “naturally” in a specifically

Yancey.indb 139

21-03-2019 12:25:38

140   eportfolio as curriculum organized way without even being aware of it. This thinking isn’t very surprising, of course, as research shows that humans don’t remember items so much as the category organizing the items (Sparrow, Liu, & Wegner, 2011). At the same time, organizing artifacts before one knows what there might be to organize is a twofold problem. First, it means that anything outside those categories is likely excluded; such out-of-category artifacts might be very important. Second, it means there’s a lost opportunity to see these artifacts in different relationships to each other; the potential of an open inventory is in its ability to help students generate new categories, much as in the case of the University of Virginia ePortfolio makingness course. To paraphrase Kenneth Burke (1966), categories enforce a way of seeing, but that’s also a way of not seeing. To address this issue, I encourage students to create inventories listed alphabetically or chronologically. I also ask students to move items outside whatever categories they have employed so that we can read the artifacts for other patterns: When we do that, we see other characteristics and features— like creativity, collaboration, and leadership—otherwise invisible. And even if these latter features don’t organize the ePortfolio, they often inform the ePortfolio, with students noting that their teaching was especially creative, or their service activities were collaborative as well as lifelong and lifewide.

ePortfolio Curation The idea of ePortfolio curation has considerable appeal: It suggests that ePortfolio creators are intentional about selecting and contextualizing the ePortfolio artifacts. My own definition of curation, and thus my use of it in this ePortfolio course, is informed by 2 experiences, 1 on curating a set of artifacts keyed to the term ePortfolio and 1 connected to the Museum of Everyday Writing. Some years ago, I was asked to curate a set of resources on ePortfolios in the humanities as part of a Modern Language Association project. I accepted the invitation in part because I wanted the experience of curation. Each curator was required to compose a defining statement on a key term, including context, and then choose 10 artifacts illustrating that term. In my case the term was ePortfolio. I created something of an inventory so as to have a wide set of ePortfolio artifacts to choose from; collectively, they demonstrated ePortfolio types, ePortfolio issues, and useful examples. Like a student ePortfolio composer, I assembled the set of 10 artifacts. Working on this set of artifacts, I found the role of the audience to be paramount: The purpose of creating this set of curated artifacts was to help others. My second curatorial experience is connected to the Museum of Everyday Writing, a first of its kind online museum that I sponsor. Created by 3 Florida State

Yancey.indb 140

21-03-2019 12:25:38

creating an eportfolio studio experience  

141

University graduate students, the museum hosts many exhibits on everyday writing, including letters soldiers wrote during World War II, more recent protest writing, and handmade wedding invitations. Students, who create these exhibits in classes and in an undergraduate internship program I designed, have been quite eloquent in explaining what they have learned in the processes of exhibit curation. In both of these experiences, curation can be defined as an interpretive act involving three activities: identifying texts; contextualizing texts; and putting texts and contexts into dialogue, or relationship, with each other in a public interface. This is the definition I use in the ePortfolio studio class, modified only to note that the ePortfolio is the interface. In the ePortfolio class, students begin the curatorial process with a homework assignment: “Identify and bring to class 3 artifacts you want to include in your ePortfolio, and for each write a 150-word annotation, indicating what it reveals about you and contributes to your portfolio.” In class they share these artifacts and annotations with their colleagues to be sure that they are pointing out what is important about the artifacts and that they are communicating clearly. I also emphasize that these annotations are unlikely to be transferred in toto to their ePortfolios; rather, they are intended to help students learn to identify characteristics of artifacts and the experiences they represent and to describe them well. Having identified and contextualized these three artifacts, students engage in another curatorial activity of putting artifacts in conversation with each other. To do that, they participate in an elaborated process of thinking about what the artifacts mean when in dialogue, first writing about that dialogue and then discussing what they see. To begin, students label each of the three artifacts as A, B, and C. With the artifacts labeled, students are asked to write about three relationships: 1. What is the relationship of A to B? Is B an extension of A, an elaboration, a contradiction, a juxtaposition, something else? What is the relationship of A to B? 2. What is the relationship of B to C? Is C an extension of B, an elaboration, a contradiction, a juxtaposition, something else? What is the relationship of B to C? 3. What is the relationship of A to C? Is C an extension of A, an elaboration, a contradiction, a juxtaposition, something else? What is the relationship of A to C? In answering these questions, students begin to trace two new understandings. First, through this comparative exercise, students see and articulate

Yancey.indb 141

21-03-2019 12:25:39

142   eportfolio as curriculum aspects of their artifacts that were previously invisible or hidden. Second, they also begin to see themes not only in a single artifact and its contexts, which the annotation exercise fosters, but also across the artifacts. This second process helps students identify themes that cannot be seen when the artifacts are treated as isolated texts and contextualized singly. In addition, in the collaborative discussion that follows, students often identify the observations they want to make in their reflections. Another curatorial task involves a thought experiment located in a forced-choice exercise. Of the three artifacts discussed previously to include in the ePortfolio, which two would the student choose? The intent of this last curatorial task is to ask students to prioritize artifacts and to encourage focus. It’s worth noting that this exercise with its twofold focus on selecting artifacts and exploring the relationships among them produces very different results from more conventional approaches to ePortfolio artifact selection. Often students are asked to select artifacts within a given framework, with the framework itself guiding the selections. In that case, the primary relationship is among the student, the framework (often one of outcomes), and the artifacts. Here, in the curatorial exercise described previously, an outcome, an insight, or a theme is generated inductively; it emerges from a focused dialogue among the artifacts themselves and the student. This exercise thus supports students in identifying and articulating the meaning they make of their artifacts.

ePortfolio Visuals In this part of the course students decide on the visuals that will characterize the ePortfolio and unify it. My emphasis on the visual in ePortfolios is partly informed by Richard Lanham (1993), who described the oscillation present in both Renaissance paintings and computer screens, arguing that it’s a function of what he calls “Looking AT/Looking THROUGH” (p. 9). He said that we view and read through these two lenses simultaneously. According to McKee (2005), Lanham’s emphasis points especially to oscillation of the computer screen: But as Lanham repeatedly asserts, all text is, of course, mediated, and it is important for people to recognize the mediated nature of texts. Such a recognition is made easier by computers, Lanham claims, because with computers people can create malleable, interactive digital texts in which “the textual surface has become permanently bi-stable. We are always looking first AT it and then THROUGH it, and this oscillation creates a different implied ideal of decorum, both stylistic and behavioral. Look THROUGH a text and you are in the familiar world of the Newtonian interlude. . . . Look AT a text, however, and we have deconstructed the Newtonian world. (p. 5)

Yancey.indb 142

21-03-2019 12:25:39

creating an eportfolio studio experience  

143

In other words, especially in reviewing electronic texts, we look twice—at and through. This framework is fundamental. I ask students, how will looking at their ePortfolio align and match looking through? Given this introduction, which also includes a review of students’ ePortfolios to see how they have managed these two lenses in a single portfolio text, students complete the following homework assignment: Identify in a one-pager possible visuals—color scheme, font style, photos or visual metaphors—and explain their logic, especially in relation to (a) the representation of yourself you are creating; and (b) what you want the reader/audience to understand; also consider possible platforms.

Students bring this plan to class, where they consult with their peers about the choices they are considering. A common issue occurs when students like a particular visual or color scheme that doesn’t align with the identity they are seeking to represent in the ePortfolio. For example, one student expressed a fondness for birds, even though images of birds didn’t represent any of her professional interests showcased in the ePortfolio. Put simply, looking at the birds conflicted with the looking through to the professional content, resulting in a confusing ePortfolio. Some time later, when she revised the ePortfolio as part of a job search, she deleted the birds, which points to the other lesson I’ve learned: Visual design is disciplinary and developmental. Portfolios in very different fields such as civil engineering and elementary education, for instance, will have very different aesthetics. Also important, students learn about the visual in multiple ways—by reading about it, seeing and analyzing examples, and mostly playing with it. Developing a visual identity through the ePortfolio takes time.

ePortfolio Review The ePortfolio review has two forms. The first invites students to answer a limited number of questions—(a) What is working? (b) What is not working? (c) If this were your ePortfolio, what else would you do with it?—in the context of a conversation with their peers. Practically, I assign students to small groups who share their draft ePortfolios with their group members, eagerly explaining to them why they made the various choices defining the ePortfolio, with peers making comments in response to the three questions. Feedback having been provided, students then share with me the feedback they received from their peers keyed to the three questions, their reactions to the reviews, and their plans for the next draft. I reply as a guide thinking with them about their next steps in the context of their aims for the ePortfolio.

Yancey.indb 143

21-03-2019 12:25:39

144   eportfolio as curriculum The second review proceeds very differently; students read the ePortfolio of a single student whose work they have not seen before and without the student’s commentary. In other words, students read and review the ePortfolio as many readers will, without extra context or explanation. The peer review is guided by the following eight questions: 1. Who is the composer? 2. What does the composer do well? 3. What questions are raised (that could be addressed in a revision)? 4. What do you see looking through? 5. What do you see looking at? 6. How or do they match? 7. If this were my ePortfolio, I would ______. 8. Anything else?

The questions are derived from students’ work throughout the course. Some of the questions, like “If this were my ePortfolio, I would ______,” are repeated from the first review. Others, such as questions 4, 5, and 6, draw on conceptual lenses, in this case the Lanham (1993) framework. Having completed this review, the student returns it to the ePortfolio creator. All students have a complete ePortfolio by the end of the term, but students may elect to continue revising it. The final set of questions, completed by the ePortfolio composer, sets the stage for both my response and future ePortfolio revisions: 1. What did you learn, about ePortfolio makingness, artifacts and ­representation, design, and anything else? 2. What remains to be done, or what else might you want to do? 3. What if anything would you like me to comment on? 4. How will you use what you have learned in the future? 5. How, might, or will this affect your teaching ePortfolio? 6. What else?

These questions guide my responses to students and help students plan for the future.

Results Two good questions are “How well does this course work?” and “What makes me think that it serves students’ interests?” To answer these questions,

Yancey.indb 144

21-03-2019 12:25:39

creating an eportfolio studio experience  

145

I typically point to three forms of evidence: student evaluations, achievement of students’ stated goals, and their own reflections. One source of impact is the set of student evaluations of this course, which are uniformly high across all dimensions—the content of the course, its organization, and the activities. When asked if they would recommend the course to others, 100% say yes. Several reasons, I think, account for this rating. First, as indicated previously, students are supported—with literature on ePortfolios, with examples they analyze, and with multiple structures, such as the course structure itself and structured activities in the course—as they pursue a goal important to them, be it creating a teaching ePortfolio or one facilitating a job search. Second, like the Trinity undergraduate ePortfolio course described in chapter 7, this is a pass or fail course. As a result, there is very little pressure, so students can attend fully to learning. Third, also as already discussed, the course is highly collaborative; students find working in the company of their peers, as they note on the evaluations, very helpful, and another source of learning. But most important, I think, is the combination of these factors: the chance for students to be supported and receive credit as they create an ePortfolio important to them and in the process learn about ePortfolio makingness itself. Another way to evaluate the effect of the course is to ask if students were able to achieve and advance the purposes for which their ePortfolios were designed; again, the evidence here is instructive. In the lowest-stake situation, where students want to create an ePortfolio as a thinking space, it does just that, as one student said: I am not sure that I will use the portfolio in this form. I had approached the task primarily as a thinking space to organize and make connections between my work, so the portfolio—and the act of constructing it—has value for me, but I wouldn’t use it as a professional site in this form. That said, the organization, the concepts, and the general principle may evolve into an actual, shareable professional site.

Others were engaged in enterprises with higher stakes, which of course bring their own stresses. Although not all the TAs applying for a teaching award won, several of them did, and an additional benefit of their ePortfolios is the space it provides to highlight the digital work created by these TAs’ students. Perhaps more important, all the students creating the TA-award ePortfolio, winners or not, have said that the process of creating this portfolio, which included reflecting on their teaching, helped them understand their teaching more fully. The students creating ePortfolios to fulfill an MA culminating requirement all have passed, and all the students creating an

Yancey.indb 145

21-03-2019 12:25:39

146   eportfolio as curriculum ePortfolio as part of a job search have succeeded in finding suitable positions. The ePortfolio doesn’t fully account for either of these outcomes, but it did showcase the students’ achievements as well as how the achievements were earned, in the case of the MA ePortfolio with a set of artifacts showing depth and breadth and in the case of the job-related ePortfolio with synopses of research, video clips of teaching, and examples of leadership experiences. Interestingly, several of these TAs who are now faculty members have continued to revise their ePortfolios as their careers have developed. Four years later, those ePortfolios are still alive and still meaningful to former students who are now faculty members. Not least, the students’ reflections also provide insight into the impact of the course. Given the questions I ask at the end of the course, some of those insights are articulated quite directly. One student, for instance, made three observations of note. First, like many TAs, she learned that all ePortfolios are not alike: Creating one for a course, she said, was much easier. The artifacts were course related and thus available, and the context of the course meant that the ePortfolio had a kind of natural coherence that is unavailable when making an ePortfolio representing a larger lifewide identity. She said that coherence in that case had to be achieved through arrangement of artifacts, visual design, and reflection. Second, reflection was especially useful in establishing coherence, the student claimed, because it enabled her to explore relationships among very different artifacts. And third, the TA said that she’d be teaching ePortfolio differently in the future; rather than asking students to write a single overarching reflection, she will ask them to include an informative reflection on each page, telling the audience what they are seeing and why it is important. Another student said that what she learned in the course was twofold: about what she needed to do to create her ePortfolio and, in that context, about ePortfolio making itself: Until this point, most of the portfolios I have created have been for a course, so they functioned as both portfolios and web-texts. In our workshops, though, we were able to discuss how to construct a site that was navigable for someone who would not be carefully reading or who would not read the entire portfolio. For example, most [of my peers] felt that [my ePortfolio] pages were a bit long or that there was a lot of text. I tried to break up the pages using subheadings and blocks of color, but they are still a bit long. Some people recommended that each project have its own page, which I am trying to avoid as it might defeat the purpose of using categories to create connections between projects. . . . In other words, I was forced to consider different genres and/or purposes of portfolios that I

Yancey.indb 146

21-03-2019 12:25:39

creating an eportfolio studio experience  

147

had not considered before as I navigated the differences between creating a portfolio as an assignment and creating a professional portfolio.

In sum, the course is achieving its outcomes: helping students create ePortfolios and learning about ePortfolio makingness.

Conclusion I created this ePortfolio one-credit course to support students as they created new portfolios for diverse purposes. Building from the independent study course with an undergraduate, I expanded and elaborated components on review of ePortfolios, on creation of an inventory, on visual design, and on peer review. In addition, I added a unit on curating artifacts, first as single artifacts, then as artifacts in dialogue, and then as a selection of artifacts. And as is so often the case, I learned at least as much about ePortfolios as the students—about their inventorying practices; about their visual preferences; and about their understanding of ePortfolios and the possibilities, like using reflection on every page to create coherence, that are still emerging.

References Burke, K. (1966). Language as symbolic action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lanham, R. (1993). The electronic word. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McKee, H. (2005). Richard Lanham’s the electronic word and AT/THROUGH oscillations. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 5, 117–129. Rodgers, C. (2002). Defining reflection: Another look at John Dewey and reflective thinking. Teachers College Record, 104, 842–866. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. Boston, MA: Basic Books. Sparrow, B., Liu, J., and Wegner, D. M. (2011). “Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips.” Science 333, 776–778. Yancey, K. B. (2009). Reflection and electronic portfolios: Inventing the self and reinventing the university. In D. Cambridge, B. L. Cambridge, & K. B. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent research on implementation and impact (pp. 5–16). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Yancey, K. B. (2016). Defining reflection: The rhetorical nature and qualities of reflection. In K. B. Yancey (Ed.), A rhetoric of reflection (pp. 303–321). Logan: Utah State University Press.

Yancey.indb 147

21-03-2019 12:25:39

Yancey.indb 148

21-03-2019 12:25:39

9 M A C AU L AY S P R I N G B O A R D S The Capstone as an Open Learning ePortfolio Joseph Ugoretz

A

department office at a large public university is often a busy place. When I was an undergraduate long ago that was certainly the case. There was, however, a small room entered through a frosted-glass door, attached to the department office at the university where I was a student, and that room was not busy at all. Nobody, it seemed, ever went in or out that frosted-glass door. One day, while waiting for a signature on a form, I opened the door and looked in. The room was full of filing cabinets, tall, gray, and solidly packed against the walls. Even peeking through the door, I could see dust on the tops of the cabinets. These were not apparently cabinets for frequently used files. Closing the door, I asked the department secretary what those were. “The honors thesis files,” she said. “To graduate with honors, you have to write a thesis. When you turn it in, I file it in there.” I was certainly not an honors student myself. I wasn’t going to write a thesis, turn it in, or have it filed anywhere. But I was struck by the dusty, secluded fate of those theses. Later, as a graduate student, I did write a thesis and a dissertation. I served as an adviser and committee member receiving and evaluating many theses. Later still, I saw the movement in many institutions from the strict definition of a thesis to the somewhat broader concept of a capstone. It’s with that concept that I want to begin.

The Capstone Requirement A capstone project involves significant reach and scope designed to bring together and demonstrate a student’s learning in a specific major or program. 149

Yancey.indb 149

21-03-2019 12:25:39

150   eportfolio as curriculum According to George Kuh (2008) of the Association of American Colleges & Universities, “These culminating experiences require students nearing the end of their college years to create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they’ve learned” (p. 11). Generally speaking, a capstone, like a thesis, is supposed to culminate an educational experience and demonstrate that a student is now experienced and capable as a scholar and practitioner in the field in which that student has been trained. The capstone demonstrates and clearly documents a student’s level of expertise and serves as a significant example of accomplishment that can be certified by an institution. Certification and exhibition, in other words, are the purposes of the capstone. Generally, these productions are judged and rated by a body of experts that rules them acceptable. A capstone is often supported by a course or group of courses. It may also include creative or artistic productions, but more frequently than not, it is a long formal paper, usually but not always longer than the final assignment for a single course. Often it takes the form of a mini dissertation, complete with the sections that are often found in a dissertation or monograph produced by advanced scholars. My institution, Macaulay Honors College (macaulay.cuny.edu), is the honors college of the City University of New York. We have high-performing students across 8 campuses in more than 300 different majors, united by a common identity as honors students, a common set of interdisciplinary seminars in critical thinking in the first 2 years, and a common set of rigorous academic requirements (see the student handbook at macaulay.cuny.edu/ community/handbook). One of those requirements, from the launch of the honors college in 2001, is to complete an honors thesis or capstone project. This is a common requirement in honors programs nationally. The National Collegiate Honors Council, for example, includes an honors thesis or capstone requirement as one of the “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College” (National Collegiate Honors Council, 2017, para. 9). At Macaulay, these projects were disciplinary, completed in the students’ major or program with the advisement of a faculty member from that department whose responsibility was assigning, reviewing, and judging these projects. Each year advisers, campus directors, or the students themselves nominated a thesis to be considered for the annual Thesis Award to be presented at commencement. These awards were the only central review of the projects that took place, even though creating the projects was a central requirement. Almost every project nominated was, as should be expected, high in quality and broad in scope. It was often difficult for the committee to select a winner. The Thesis Award was later renamed the Capstone Award, as that broader terminology was more current and a positive reinforcement for the students who received it.

Yancey.indb 150

21-03-2019 12:25:39

macaulay springboards  

151

Beginning in 2005, Macaulay Honors College also offered a course in a year long, two-semester sequence thesis colloquium as a purely optional or voluntary support mechanism for students who wanted extra structure and encouragement in completing their projects. Students from different majors or programs were accepted as well as those who had interdisciplinary or hard to classify interests. It was a successful course; students had uniformly strong thesis projects at the end and made presentations at national and local undergraduate research conferences. Because it was optional and the students taking the course were self-selected, the numbers were always small, often only 5 or 6 students from a graduating class of about 500 in the college as a whole. This was the model at Macaulay, not an uncommon model for an honors college or many kinds of similar programs. Students were required (even if the stringency of that requirement was somewhat inconsistent) to complete a project that was called either a thesis or a capstone. The college and the departments provided varying levels of support and scaffolding for these projects, but for the most part, like a master’s thesis or a dissertation, the projects were independent, closely echoing the master’s thesis or dissertation but on a slightly smaller scale. In 2008 we introduced our own ePortfolio platform for all students called ePortfolios@Macaulay (macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios). Built in WordPress to allow maximum flexibility and individual control for students, within the first semester of its introduction the platform was being used as a learning management system; a host for group projects, individual student projects, student and faculty publications, class assignments, and reflective travel journals; and a tool supporting a wide range of other purposes. The diversity and individuality of the ePortfolios were appealing to students, and the openness and flexibility of design and audience interaction were providing students with a strong motivation to do impressive work and spend time and energy on representing and reflecting on their learning. At the time, I was associate dean for teaching, learning, and technology, and I consulted with the instructor of the thesis colloquium course and showed her a few examples of the kinds of work students were doing with ePortfolios. She was impressed by the students’ increased sense of ownership of their work, the integration of the diverse elements of their learning, and the students’ participation in actively deciding what was most powerful and significant for inclusion in their ePortfolios. She agreed to make a small preliminary adjustment to the thesis colloquium course: As an addition to the assignments and activities of the course, all of which led to the traditional thesis paper, we asked each of the students to create an ePortfolio as a representation of the thesis project.

Yancey.indb 151

21-03-2019 12:25:39

152   eportfolio as curriculum A lengthy, well-researched written paper was still required as a final outcome or production of the class, but some students also elected to use an ePortfolio to do something more than simply posting the paper online. They included early drafts, initial research directions that weren’t ultimately followed, and personal reflections. The first students to take this direction in spring 2011 were students who had interests that were more interdisciplinary; who were more connected to contemporary culture; and who were, not surprisingly, more fluent and capable with digital tools. In the first projects that took this direction, we started to see a kind of richness, a connection to the material, and a kind of life beyond the requirement, the bachelor’s degree, and the dusty secluded fate of the thesis room’s filing cabinets. An early and successful example is shown in Figure 9.1, the site “Ending Dualism at Hogwarts” (Tobias, 2011). We noticed several implications of this project as the student was developing it that we wanted to explore further. First, in the About Me and the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sections, the student provided a context and a connection to her interests, to what made the thesis project interesting and valuable to her beyond the scope of a requirement or an assignment. In her FAQ list, she asked, “Why Harry Potter? Wouldn’t a more serious thesis be a better way to spend your time and energy?” She answered, [The enormous popularity of these books] puts a lot of kids (and adults!) on the receiving end of a pretty explicit moral message about the importance of love, selflessness, tolerance and social justice. I don’t think it would be a waste of time to study how Rowling was able to achieve that kind of success. It would certainly be of interest to future authors and anyone else who also wants to promote those values in a way people can understand and enjoy. As someone who falls into that latter group, I think this project is just about as serious as it gets.

This answer links her own project to a wider universe of discourse, as well as to her own identity and personality. In making design decisions and thinking about how to present and organize her ePortfolio site, she was able to think about categories and taxonomies for her work: When is a draft a draft? What takes a revision in a separate direction? Because the site resides on the open Internet, she could make decisions about licensing (she chose an Attribution-NonCommercial license from the Creative Commons website) and sharing. She could not only decide that her work, or portions of her work, could move beyond the secluded file cabinet but also actually invite and encourage further interaction beyond the moment of completion of the project and the degree. It’s worth noting that

Yancey.indb 152

21-03-2019 12:25:39

macaulay springboards  

153

Figure 9.1.  Ariana Tobias’s “Ending Dualism at Hogwarts.”

Note. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/hpapocalypse. Reprinted with permission of A. Tobias.

this student still has a link to the site on her LinkedIn profile as of this writing, more than six years after she graduated and while she is fully established in a postgraduate career. As an English teacher and student of literature, I like to think through terms and terminology and dig into metaphors. Looking at Figure 9.1, “Ending Dualism at Hogwarts,” and other projects from our early efforts to use ePortfolios as part of a capstone experience, I started to think further

Yancey.indb 153

21-03-2019 12:25:39

154   eportfolio as curriculum about the term capstone. A capstone is a crowning accomplishment, a moment of completion. As an object, it is also outside any metaphorical meaning; in the most literal sense, it is a stone. This idea was somewhat troubling. We didn’t (and don’t) want the final project of a student’s undergraduate degree to be something heavy and limiting. A stone that is a cap implies an end to further exploration, a finished structure that can’t be altered, a maximum high point that can’t be surpassed. A capstone will sit in one place, immovable and unexamined. But that was not the kind of product we wanted these projects to lead to, and it was not the kind of experience we wanted for our students as they finished their undergraduate degrees.

The Springboard Concept This thinking led to the idea of the springboard course and project. In using the term springboard, I was thinking of the typical meaning—a diving board at a swimming pool—but I was also drawing on some of my own long-past circus experience and imagining an act that we called the springboard, but which I’ve since learned is usually called the Russian Bar (see Figure 9.2). The Russian Bar is held on the shoulders of two strong performers, while a lighter, agile performer (the flyer) does jumps, twirls, and stunts using the launching impetus gained from the flexibility of the bar and the strength of the holders. I liked the idea of the project as a launching pad, an impulse to further growth and research and exploration, but, more than that, as a type of performance that was not only practiced but also public, meant to be shared and received by an audience and actually even produced as a community effort. The student creating a springboard project, like the flyer on the Russian Bar, launches higher because the student is working from a flexible base and because others are helping and pushing and working in concert. The individual performance is not completely or solely an individual effort based on individual strength. The concept emphasizes the reality, which is also one of our desired outcomes, that every individual project is also collective. Without the participation of others, the project is incomplete and doesn’t go as far as it needs to. With this metaphor in mind and this new approach developed, we recruited students for a new version of what used to be our thesis colloquium. This course used the ePortfolio as the central organizing element of the curriculum so that students from diverse academic interests and with diverse types of projects could work together to produce the products, the springboard projects, that would be represented in the ePortfolio, which along with their written thesis project is the final outcome of the course. In some ways, the ePortfolio was a new and additional requirement for students who previously were required only to complete written projects, but by integrating the

Yancey.indb 154

21-03-2019 12:25:39

macaulay springboards  

155

Figure 9.2.  The Russian Bar circus act.

Note. “The Russian bar,” a circus act created by Russian artistic director Valentin Gneushev. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Evstafiev-circus-russian_bar.jpg.

ePortfolio into the thesis colloquium, it worked as a support system for the existing requirement. Working on the springboard helped the work on the thesis, and the thesis helped the work on the springboard. We launched the course with a website, “Macaulay Springboards: Open Learning Projects” (Ugoretz, 2013) (see Figure 9.3), and we developed the idea and proposed it in spring 2013 to interested students who would begin the course in fall 2013 and graduate with completed projects in spring 2014. On the site, and in presentations for students to explain the idea, we started with the following foundational principles: The Springboard Project: 1. Builds on a student’s earlier work and displays and reflects that work. 2. Proposes new directions, asks unanswered questions, poses unresolved dilemmas. In response to these challenges, the Springboard Project

09_Yancey_C009.indd 155

26-03-2019 18:23:58

Yancey.indb 156

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Note. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/springboard.

Figure 9.3.  The springboard website.

macaulay springboards  

157

poses specific research and learning pathways, providing a plan with clear goals and defined next steps 3. Includes personal reflection, uniting the affective and the cognitive elements of research. 4. Includes multimedia facets, utilizing appropriate tools and presentation techniques to present extratextual resources. 5. Is presented to, and open to the interaction of, a wide public audience. It is a multidirectional communication.

These have remained as the guiding principles or ground rules for the course, although we have continued to modify and develop the practical expressions of these principles. Each of these principles feeds directly into ePortfolio-connected activities in the course curriculum, and each draws from the particular benefits of ePortfolio pedagogy.

The Springboard Course The springboard course, as the first principle states, is designed to be integrative, to pull together the disparate pieces of a student’s educational career during, before, and after college. To help students make these connections, we ask them to develop online digital, multimedia, and educational time lines and post them on their ePortfolios. These digital time lines allow students to map the course of their education from their earliest days (in elementary school and before) to the present and to project into the future. Because the time lines are digital, students are able to include illustrative images, videos, and links to websites and other media to represent each of the separate moments or dates on the time line that the students designate as significant in their education, and to provide a sense of movement and progress that a static text-based time line can’t easily communicate. Students generally use the open-source TimelineJS tool (timeline.knightlab.com). In most cases, these separate dates or moments on the time lines were also developed and described in posts on the ePortfolios. By building this assignment into the course curriculum and making the inclusion of this wide-ranging time line part of the presentation of the final project, we ask students to locate the final projects not only as culminations or final achievements of their education but also as connected pieces of the larger set of experiences. Students include classes and in-school activities and assignments in their time lines as well as life events and discoveries that are not connected directly to school (see Figure 9.4).

Yancey.indb 157

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Yancey.indb 158

Note Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/thevictoriaproject/timeline

Figure 9.4.  A moment on Victoria Tan’s educational time line.

.

21-03-2019 12:25:40

macaulay springboards  

159

As shown in Figure 9.4 the student includes her day care experience, various elementary and middle school teachers and projects that were memorable for her, college courses and study abroad trips, and more. We also specifically ask students in connecting their classwork and outside classwork to these final projects to look ahead as well as behind. By providing students with a space to capture their research process and to reflect on it as it develops, the ePortfolios prompt a projection of their work into the future, beyond the confines of the undergraduate degree. Locating learning as a process that is ongoing and integrated helps students see that they can plan specific paths and directions, even when they were unclear at first or remained unclear, for uniting their interests and launching their learning into new areas and new interactions. One student (Ahmed, 2014) wrote, With my springboard project, I sought to figure out what factors cause frustration in the math classroom, and then I looked at different techniques currently used by educators to reach ELL [English language learner] students. Hopefully, I can take these lessons with me, as I move forward with my goal of becoming a math teacher in the New York City public school classroom.

We ask all springboard students, no matter their field, to complete an assignment to create and post on the ePortfolio a syllabus for a future class taught on the subjects of their projects. Even students who don’t have majors or career goals in education have years of experience with classes and s­ yllabi on the student side and very strong opinions about what makes an effective or ineffective syllabus. This assignment gives students the opportunity to conceive of their education as something that gives them the role of expert, a sharer of expertise. Making their syllabus public on the ePortfolio gives them a concrete reality and commitment to communicating their expertise and participating in the further development of their field. One of the things that so often gets lost in the thesis or capstone project, which our third principle tries to address, is the affective component that is so critical to personal connection with the work. Advanced scholars know that the joy of research balances the frustration. The suspense and inspiration balance the tedium and the concentration. The ePortfolio model, with reflection made central and with a space (prominently featured) for keeping a record of the process, as well as the product, allowed our springboard students to include rather than deny the different emotional responses they were having to the work. The students keep their research journals in a section of their ePortfolios, which can enliven the final product while still allowing the students to have and honor the emotional component and connect it to the intellectual component of their work (see Figure 9.5).

Yancey.indb 159

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Yancey.indb 160

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Note. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/monsters. Reprinted with permission of H. McCallum.

Figure 9.5.  Heather McCallum’s reflections on a trip to Salem while researching “In the Footsteps of Monsters.”

macaulay springboards  

161

While researching monsters in popular culture, for her site “In the Footsteps of Monsters” (McCallum, 2016) the student author begins her journal with, “At some point in my research, I knew I would have to visit Salem.” Her journal entry details not only her research but also the entire process of dealing with an unfamiliar small town, problems with weather, businesses being closed, uncertain public transportation, and all the emotional effects of these obstacles: When I could contact the family who tried to help me get out of Salem [the student had missed a train, missed a meal, gotten lost, brought the wrong coat, and tried to contact her family for help and directions], I expressed my fears, uncertainties, gratitude, fatigue, and chill. I sent photos of how red my hands had become, jammed in the pockets of the winter jacket, and the inability to Facetime just covered the embarrassing tear-streaks over reddened cheeks as I tried to make my voice normal for them. I spoke more of the cold and the quick turn of the weather than the real life horror scenario I’d just run through.

She connects her own experience to the subjects and her research: My experience of uncertainty and fear was brief and largely psychologically built, but life in the colonies was filled with uncertainties and fears of that nature in day-to-day life. These could include insecurities about health of the self or young children, where mortality from sicknesses was much higher than today; insecurities about crops or catches leading to food insecurity or commercial insecurity; insecurities about the weather impacting home and property; insecurities about wild animals and other dangers of the wilderness surrounding them; and even insecurities in soulcraft, where Satan was real, his effects visible, devils prominent, and salvation uncertain and subject to rescindment.

Because the ePortfolio captures all the different steps of the process, students are able to evaluate for themselves the kinds of techniques—­outlining, annotating, mind mapping, interviewing, fieldwork, lab experimentation, and so on—that are most effective for their own particular learning styles and topics. All these techniques and the students’ self-evaluations of them become pieces of the larger picture that the project presents; it’s about not only the product but also the entire process. Unlike traditional written papers, ePortfolios provide the unique opportunity of including multimedia materials. Interactive digital time lines are one such element, as mentioned earlier. In addition to time lines, students include videos, maps, drawings and photography, and audio files that are

Yancey.indb 161

21-03-2019 12:25:40

162   eportfolio as curriculum appropriate and connected to their projects. This has proven especially helpful for students who are using the springboard option to pursue a more interdisciplinary approach than their major field of study would normally include. When students’ academic interests include biology and art, for example, and they want their research and project to include the connections between the two fields, an ePortfolio is often the best space to make those connections. Because an ePortfolio can have a range of different designs and make connections with hyperlinks, allowing the connections to be multiple, multidirectional, and digressive when necessary, a student can create a design about, for example, medical illustration as a unified, complete, and integrated interest rather than segregating his or her skills in lab research or in charcoal drawing. The student doesn’t need to ignore or shortchange any of his or her interests or diminish the connections between and among them (see Figure 9.6). The fifth principle of the springboard course and project is uniquely fulfilled by the ePortfolio and is a direct response to the problem of the dusty filing cabinets in the thesis room. Macaulay’s ePortfolio platform provides a range of options for publication and sharing. Students themselves decide whether to make their final ePortfolios public, public only to the Macaulay community, password protected, or private. They can make these decisions in different ways at different times, changing the settings as they develop the ePortfolios. They can also choose to have only certain parts or sections of the ePortfolio public, or partially public, at certain times. This gives students the freedom to take risks and explore difficult material and to share and take part in a wider intellectual community as a sanctioned goal. The WordPress platform is extremely well optimized for search engine discovery, if students set the options to allow it, so that their work, rather than sitting isolated and abandoned, is discoverable widely and by the entire range of learners who might be interested in their topics. Those external learners, that wider community, have the potential to add comments and further the discussion. This openness to participation from an audience is a key feature of the ePortfolio. We encourage students, when appropriate, to actively promote and invite participation from their audiences through FAQs, posting and linking to their ePortfolios on social media, or even opening a “Share Your Story” page on the springboard ePortfolio site (see Figure 9.7). In some ways this openness to external participation calls into question the traditional definition of an ePortfolio. If an ePortfolio includes the work of others, rather than just the student, is that still an ePortfolio? Is it still the work of the student? These questions are about not only ePortfolios as a genre but also the overall nature of scholarly inquiry; they are what we want students to see as live issues, as philosophical positions they can take a stance on and contribute to. In making decisions about what kind of sharing and

Yancey.indb 162

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Yancey.indb 163

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Note. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/. Reprinted with permission of K. Cheng.

Figure 9.6.  Laboratory research, personal experience, and charcoal drawing integrated in Katie Cheng’s “Worms and Learning: An Illustrated Investigation Into the Genetic Implications of Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Yancey.indb 164

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Note. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/. Reprinted with permission of C. Oros.

Figure 9.7.  The “Share Your Story” page on Christina Oros’s site, “Storytelling and Sign Language.”

macaulay springboards  

165

what kind of participation they want to offer to readers, even into the future, students are pushed to consider and debate actively rather than to just passively receive conclusions about research and scholarship that will continue to influence their learning far beyond college. Our commitment to having students present their work at national conferences, such as the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, is critical to our efforts to have students open their projects to a wider audience. Traveling together as a class, having the experience of acting as members of an academic community, and sharing their research with other scholars across disciplines provide the students with a perspective on their work and its place in the intellectual landscape they are entering.

Conclusions and Looking Forward As the springboard class and its curriculum have developed over the past few years, we have noticed some surprises. Perhaps connected to the way we originally proposed and presented the course, we have encountered larger numbers of students who have interdisciplinary or otherwise unusual ideas for topics. A major challenge for the course and the students has been pushing the students to narrow and focus these topics. The freedom the ePortfolio curriculum offers and the inclusiveness of digressions and a range of only minimally connected material has sometimes been more of an obstacle than a benefit. Yet at the same time, the ePortfolio’s emphasis on process and reflection has allowed the course instructors to point clearly and concretely to when these obstacles were arising. Because students could so explicitly narrate and process the obstacles, professors had more of an opportunity to give advice. They could help students to accomplish what is often so difficult for novice researchers: to narrow and specify their topics while still preserving the digressions and “unrelated” pathways as directions to be pursued in the future. Another challenge for the course instructors is that students sometimes undertake projects that have subjects well outside the instructor’s area of expertise. The math major in a springboard class taught by a historian or the comparative literature major in the course taught by an ecologist has challenges that are nonexistent in a more typical thesis project supervised by a professor in that particular field. We address this by asking colleagues for consultation when necessary. But because an emphasis of the course and the project is to help students learn to communicate to a wide range of audiences, we see this challenge as more of a benefit. A math thesis included in a student’s ePortfolio may not be readily understood by a nonmathematician. But the research process, journal keeping, reflection, and the student’s

Yancey.indb 165

21-03-2019 12:25:40

166   eportfolio as curriculum summaries and proposals about the project are readable and understandable by a wider range of audiences, which can then decide whether to read the thesis itself. The wider audiences will certainly have the context required to understand the thesis more fully, even if they are not mathematicians. We also have found (what should not have been surprising) that this curriculum is not a panacea. The ePortfolio-centered curriculum, the collaborative support and scaffolding of assignments, the shared commitment to presentation and personal engagement and integration are all helpful for students with a wide range of abilities and levels of commitment to the project. The factors that make this class different tend to have a positive effect on even the weakest students and those most distracted by life events and stressors. The class and the project do require intellectual ability, motivation, and commitment. Even in a self-selected group of students or a course pilot that is optional and open, we still do not always see that. Looking to the future, we hope to make this model more prominent to convert a majority of our current thesis or capstone projects into springboard classes. Already in the few years since our first pilot, we have transferred the instruction of the course to several different professors, all of whom have added their own elements and refined the approach. Each year, the number of students volunteering for this option has grown. There are, of course, requirements to successfully implement this type of curriculum. The instructor has to have an interdisciplinary bent—in the 2017–2018 academic year, for example, we are experimenting with a team-teaching approach with two instructors and two linked sections of the course. The instructor must also be willing to work closely with a group of students with varying interests over a full year. The class size has to be small as the amount of close participation in student work through many stages is otherwise too onerous. The instructor has to be extremely adept with the ePortfolio platform as well as the other digital and multimedia tools the students will want to explore and use. At Macaulay we assign an instructional technology fellow, a doctoral student with teaching experience and digital technology expertise, to help students and the professor, no matter how adept, to use the latest tools for research, communication, and presentation and to incorporate these into the ePortfolio. The ePortfolio-centered curriculum of the Macaulay Springboards is developing, for our students, as a productive and powerful alternative to the dusty seclusion of the filing cabinets of the thesis rooms. Students in this program are able to complete projects and to develop ePortfolios that situate their learning in their larger life narratives, that integrate their studies across disciplines and fields, and that give them a place in the wider scholarly and intellectual communities across academia and the digitally connected world.

Yancey.indb 166

21-03-2019 12:25:40

macaulay springboards  

167

References Ahmed, M. (2014). Improving secondary mathematics instruction for English-language learners.” Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/mehnaj Kuh, G. D. (2008). High-impact practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universities. McCallum, H. (2016). In the footsteps of monsters: The monsters we make and the monsters who make us. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/ monsters National Collegiate Honors Council. (2017). Basic characteristics of a fully developed honors college. Retrieved from https://www.nchchonors.org/uploaded/NCHC_ FILES/PDFs/NCHC_Basic_Characteristics-College_2017.pdf Tobias, A. (2011). Ending dualism at Hogwarts: Reading Harry Potter as post­ modern apocalyptic fiction. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/ hpapocalypse Ugoretz, J. (2013). Macaulay springboards: Open learning projects. Retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/springboard

Yancey.indb 167

21-03-2019 12:25:40

Yancey.indb 168

21-03-2019 12:25:40

10 M E TA C O G N I T I O N A C R O S S THE CURRICULUM Building Capstone ePortfolios in Stanford University’s Notation in Science Communication Jennifer Stonaker, Jenae Druckman Cohn, Russ Carpenter, and Helen L. Chen

S

tanford University’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric launched the Notation in Science Communication (NSC) program in 2013. Students in the NSC complete directed coursework, collaborate with advisers, and create capstone ePortfolios that can earn a notation designation on official transcripts. Each ePortfolio is a digital, multimodal product with three main components: artifacts from academic and cocurricular activities, artifact reflections that contextualize these different learning experiences, and a cover letter in which students reflect metacognitively on how these learning experiences have shaped their understanding of science communication. The program builds on folio thinking (Penny Light, Chen, & Ittelson, 2011) and writing in the disciplines pedagogy devoted to writing as learning (Clark & Fishbach, 2008; Thaiss & Porter, 2010) to help students build broader communication acumen. As students create their ePortfolios from materials from their academic and cocurricular experiences, we ask them to see their writing and learning as centrally situated in their social practice. In so doing, the NSC encourages students to articulate their learning process as “not merely a condition for membership” in the scientific discourse community but as “itself an evolving form of membership” in this community (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53). The NSC provides a foundation to help students not only improve as communicators but also develop identities in the scientific discourse community by building learning ePortfolios (Figure 10.1). 169

Yancey.indb 169

21-03-2019 12:25:41

170   eportfolio as curriculum Figure 10.1.  Model for implementing ePortfolio curriculum in NSC at Stanford University. 99 Series Curriculum  Iterative reflection  Multimodal construction  Audience awareness promotes Metacognitive Thinking to create Representations of Learning that build Disciplinary Identity

Two courses in ePortfolio preparation that are integral to the NSC emphasize systematic reflection, multimodal construction, and audience awareness to encourage metacognition as students work toward curating Web-sensible ePortfolios (Yancey, 2004). In this chapter, we describe our ePortfolio preparation curriculum and argue that this directed coursework in metacognitive thought, alongside the writing as learning that occurs in building an ePortfolio, provides students with an opportunity to connect disparate elements of their academic and cocurricular lives, showcase learning broadly, and refine their agency as communicators. Moreover, the development of students’ identities as science communicators, and the confidence this process engenders in them, is the ultimate transferrable skill.

Program Structure The NSC grew from a campus-wide push for more student opportunities to practice writing and oral communication. Housed in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, an independent writing program under the vice provost for undergraduate education, the notation was proposed as a way for students to build communication acumen. Students can earn a notation designation on their official transcript indicating their advanced communication studies by completing coursework, collaborating with advisers, and creating a capstone

Yancey.indb 170

21-03-2019 12:25:41

metacognition across the curriculum  

171

ePortfolio assessed by a panel of faculty experts. Final ePortfolios are archived in an institutional repository and linked to the transcript, creating a more comprehensive student record to help students more easily showcase their learning to graduate and professional schools and potential employers. This ePortfolio-based assessment provides students from a variety of science and engineering majors with the flexibility to select courses to meet the NSC learning objectives (Appendix 10A) and their own academic and professional goals. NSC students take three science communication courses, two in the writing program and one in a disciplinary department (Figure 10.2). In the required courses, Portfolio Preparation I (99A) and Portfolio Preparation II (99B), taught in the writing program, students complete the difficult work of creating their ePortfolios. In this practice, we follow the recommendations of Bowman, Lowe, Sabourin, and Sweet (2016) and Driessen, van Tartwijk, Overeem, Vermunt, and van der Vleuten (2005) and support the development of student ePortfolios over several courses rather than as merely a final project for one course. Additionally, this structure emphasizes the importance of asking students to move between creating artifacts produced as part of their individual development as scientists and composing reflections as students learning about the rhetorical moves required to become budding scientists in their discipline. This combination of artifact curation and metacognition can

Figure 10.2.  Typical pathway to completion for a student in NSC. II ep Pr its) io n ol 2 u rtf B, Po (99

I ep Pr it) io n ol 1 u rtf A, Po (99

Enter NSC

Freshman Year

Sophomore Year

Junior Year

t ec El m om ) i C its e Sc un tiv ed (4 lec E nc e va iv s) Ad ns it te un In –5 (3 m

e iv

Yancey.indb 171

m

Sci Comm course in STEM department (graded)

om iC Sc its) to un (4

Sci Comm course in writing program (graded)

Senior Year

m Co

tro

In

Folio Thinking Course (pass / fail)

Assessment, Graduation

21-03-2019 12:25:41

172   eportfolio as curriculum then allow students to “easily make the transition from their everyday vernacular languages to the specialist languages required by the University” (Granville & Dison, 2005, p. 100). Therefore, our curricular framework is designed around the principle that fostering students’ awareness of their writing work may develop their identities as science communicators in the years to come.

Curricular Frameworks A crucial part of students’ development as thinkers in a particular disciplinary writing context is a curriculum that asks students to understand that disciplinary participation requires assuming an identity that may at times be disconnected from their identity as students. According to Lave and Wenger (1991), the act of learning involves becoming a part of a structure of social practice that “implies becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by those systems of relations” (p. 53). That means that students are engaging in what Lave and Wenger refer to as “legitimate peripheral participation” (p. 29); students may not yet be full-fledged members of a new discourse community, but they are engaging in the process “by which newcomers become part of a community of practice” (p. 29). Clark and Fishbach (2008) similarly explained that asking students to take on their disciplinary identity was crucial for them to see a clear connection between their work as writers and their work as budding scientists and, in their particular context, public health professionals. The NSC program extends this line of thinking by asking students to not only produce artifacts from their scientific disciplines but also offer metacognitive and reflective framing for these artifacts to demonstrate their awareness of how they take on new roles and identities as science communicators. Our curriculum incorporates this work through three curricular frameworks: constructivism, writing in the disciplines, and folio thinking. A constructivist paradigm encourages teachers and students alike to constantly assess their work before final assessment, a process that accepts and values “the participants’ (teachers and learners) perceptions of and judgments about the work they do in class from day to day and the levels of achievement on work that matters to the participants” (Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 1999, p. 8). Writing in the disciplines philosophy, on the other hand, encourages students to learn about writing in their discipline by deeply engaging with the genres of their discipline (Thaiss & Porter, 2010). Finally, folio thinking encourages students to engage in metacognition at every part of their learning by connecting their learning experiences in an ePortfolio (Penny Light et al., 2011).

Yancey.indb 172

21-03-2019 12:25:41

metacognition across the curriculum  

173

By combining these curricular frameworks, we see ePortfolios giving members of all disciplines a way “to see writing (and critical thinking) as a means of learning throughout college” (Thomas, 2009). In other words, ePortfolios are visible proof that students are learning through written reflections emphasizing critical engagement with disciplinary work.

Framing Reflection as an Iterative Process Reflection is the main focus of Portfolio Preparation courses 99A and 99B. Structurally, the curricula of the two courses are similar, sharing five instructional units that scaffold students through the process of ePortfolio creation (Figure 10.3). The first unit is an overview of folio thinking and an Figure 10.3.  Overview of the series 99 curriculum units with approximate instruction times. 1. Explore background and models 99A: 2 hours 99B: 2 hours

2. Gather artifacts 99A: 1.5 hours 99B: 2 hours

3. Develop site map 99A: 1.5 hours 99B: 3 hours

4. Build ePortfolio 99A: 3 hours 99B: 5 hours

5. Share, reflect, and revise 99A: 2 hours 99B: 8 hours

Yancey.indb 173

21-03-2019 12:25:42

174   eportfolio as curriculum exploration of ePortfolio models. This basic framework supports students as they work through the second unit, gathering artifacts from their academic and cocurricular activities. Students begin the work of curating and designing their ePortfolios in Unit 3, and in Unit 4 they construct the key elements of their NSC ePortfolio. In the fifth and final unit, students work collaboratively with peers, instructors, and advisers to deepen reflections, improve site usability, and revise the ePortfolio as a whole. The amount of time spent on each unit differs between the two courses, in part because 99A meets for one hour a week, and 99B meets for two hours a week. However, the proportion of time spent on each unit varies between the two courses because of differing student needs. The students in 99A have been accepted into the NSC program, and because they are just beginning to gather artifacts and experiences to include in their final ePortfolios, the introductory 99A course spends proportionally more time preparing them to do the work of ePortfolio creation (Units 1, 2, and 3) than on producing a highly polished product (Units 4 and 5). In contrast, the capstone 99B course is taken by graduating students who have completed their science communication coursework and are ready to craft an ePortfolio to submit for assessment. In this second ePortfolio course, 99B, students spend proportionally less time on the early units (1 and 2), reviewing and building on the work done in 99A, and significantly more time producing a polished and professional final product (Unit 5). Overall, this repeated engagement with metacognitive reflection positions reflective writing as equally important to other academic writing. Reflection becomes more than random musings meant only for the individual; instead, reflection is treated as a powerful meaning-making process (Dewey, 1933). Further, this approach resonates with our scienceminded student body, as iterative reflection is similar to other process-based approaches such as the scientific method or design thinking. By framing reflection in terms of these more familiar processes, we get more acceptance from our students. An example of the reflective work we do in the 99 series is an assignment adapted from the History of the Future exercise (Penny Light et al., 2012; Venezky, 2001). In the following prompt given to students on the first day of 99A, we ask them, Imagine that your NSC ePortfolio is finished, and it has succeeded in all of its goals. Imagine that you’re writing a letter to the NSC Evaluation Board to explain what you’ve accomplished in your ePortfolio. Use this opportunity to brainstorm what, specifically, you want your ePortfolio to accomplish. What specific skills/experiences/learning

Yancey.indb 174

21-03-2019 12:25:42

metacognition across the curriculum  

175

outcomes/and so on do you want to highlight in the ePortfolio? What story (or stories) do you want to tell about yourself? What identity do you want to project in your ePortfolio?

Through this prompt, students are invited to describe their goals in participating in the NSC program, and it identifies the ePortfolio as the platform for representing learning and making meaning across learning experiences. Students can return to this reflection later in 99A and even 99B to see how their expectations match their reality. In doing so, they can explore how their identities, that is, the way they speak about and represent their learning, change over time. In the next section, we show how students have used multimodal composition practices to create digital representations of their learning and disciplinary identities.

ePortfolios Require Multimodal Composition We contend that the process of curating an ePortfolio in the 99 course series requires students to extend their metacognitive thought from the act of reflecting on their academic and cocurricular work to the act of engaging in digital multimodal composition. As Silver (2016) suggested, integrating digital tools into the composition process allows “more parts of the writing process [to] become visible, retrievable, and accurately measurable” (p. 3). An ePortfolio allows students to think critically about the order of their ideas when a user navigates the contents of their ePortfolio. As students continue to communicate in a variety of media and modes, from print texts and pre­sentation slides to podcasts and social media, the ePortfolio gives them the critical opportunity to showcase their ability to communicate in visual, auditory, and textual ways. According to a survey of faculty across the disciplines conducted by Reid, Snead, Pettiway, and Simoneaux (2016), faculty in the sciences are among the most prolific creators of multimodal content, regularly composing diverse texts ranging from presentations with visual and multimedia components to technical writing and websites. Reiteration is also a signature practice in our program. Delagrange (2009) argued that “designing scholarship in new media requires continuous oscillation among the text, the images, and the visual and conceptual framework. . . . Each step in the design process is scaffolded by what has gone before, and anticipates what might come next.” By encouraging students to iterate designs and consider how design helps to represent the artifacts and

Yancey.indb 175

21-03-2019 12:25:42

176   eportfolio as curriculum reflections in their ePortfolio, students can apply their metacognitive thinking to not only their written work but also the full user experience of their ePortfolio. In so doing, the student approach to design moves beyond technical choices and into deliberate, metacognitive thought about constructing their identities. In the 99 course series, several activities help students develop metacognitive thought as they practice multimodality. For example, in Unit 2 students start to think about how the architecture of their ePortfolio communicates their personal narratives through completing a concept map. In this map, students connect different activities from their academic and personal journeys at the university (see Figures 10.4A and 10.4B). Student responses vary widely, and students frequently mention the challenge of deciding which experiences to include and how to group those experiences in ways that are legible to an outside audience. The students discover that these challenges in constructing the concept map are the same challenges involved in creating an ePortfolio site map. In Unit 3 when students move from completing their concept maps to working in the ePortfolio platform, they are asked to reflect more on overall ePortfolio design choices, including concerns with visual rhetoric and the representation of multimodal artifacts. Students look at several examples of previous students’ ePortfolios and comment on the other students’ work, noting what they know about the student based only on the design of the ePortfolio. Just as Munday, Rowley, and Polly (2017) argued that the construction of visual images is a particularly powerful way for “people to discuss and explore professional traits” (p. 54), we suggest that students also need to examine the employment of visual metaphors in their ePortfolios. For example, one class exchange involved a long discussion of a sample ePortfolio where the student included an image of clouds in the heading. One student suggested that the clouds made him think that the student was interested in meteorology, although the content of the portfolio suggested no such interest. We discussed the implications of the student’s image choice; the students pointed out the importance of identifying key repeated images in the ePortfolio that would evoke the themes and stories they wanted to tell more precisely. Through these kinds of activities, we emphasize how central visual design is to students’ metacognitive work. Indeed, visual design is incorporated into the curriculum (Units 3 and 4) in both portfolio preparation classes so that students clearly see the connections between multimodal composing and their work as science communicators. As a result of conversation about visual design, many students adopt visual elements in their ePortfolios thoughtfully. Three case studies demonstrate the myriad creative ways that students adopted these visuals: Student 1

Yancey.indb 176

21-03-2019 12:25:42

metacognition across the curriculum  

177

Figure 10.4A.  An example of a concept map created in the introductory portfolio class at Stanford University.

Yancey.indb 177

21-03-2019 12:25:42

178   eportfolio as curriculum Figure 10.4B.  An example of a concept map created in the introductory portfolio class at Stanford University.

used images to represent her choice of artifacts and their connection to each other, Student 2 used images to represent her identity as a global communicator, and Student 3 used images to represent his institutional affiliation and two sets of navigational pathways to help multiple audiences access his work. Student 1 chose visuals throughout her ePortfolio that reflect her interest in the intersections between physics and philosophy. To represent her myriad range of artifacts, she chose particular images to represent each artifact. A screenshot of the student’s ePortfolio in Figure 10.5 is taken from one of the ePortfolio pages that includes artifacts that represent rhetorical breadth. To capture what the “rhetorical breadth” heading means, the student included a cartoon as her image choice, which explains the ways scientists need to make better rhetorical choices to represent and communicate their ideas to target audiences. The artifacts in this student’s section demonstrate the range of techniques the student used to communicate science to different stakeholders. The artifact in Figure 10.5—a literature review for studying consciousness—is distinguished from the other artifacts by a distinct background image that represents the content in the artifact. Because the artifact is a literature review paper on the scholarship on studying human consciousness, the image is a digital graphic of a gene sequence. Student 1’s visual choices

Yancey.indb 178

21-03-2019 12:25:43

Yancey.indb 179

21-03-2019 12:25:43

Figure 10.5.  An example screenshot of Student 1’s ePortfolio, organized by different background images to differentiate the content in her artifacts.

180   eportfolio as curriculum help her readers quickly interpret the organization of her content and the content itself (the student’s name is obscured for privacy). In contrast, Student 2 chose a unified design scheme throughout her ePortfolio that captured a clear part of her identity not only as a scientist but also as a professional. An environmental science major, Student 2 used her ePortfolio to show how she is above all else a global explorer interested in communicating international environmental concerns. As a result, Student 2 designed her ePortfolio with images of her many global excursions for ecological fieldwork, and the entire ePortfolio is organized by different global locations where she produced her ePortfolio’s artifacts. For example, the section “Patagonia” includes artifacts either produced in Patagonia or produced about the trip to Patagonia. Figure 10.6 shows an example of the student’s page about her travels in Tanzania. (The student’s name is obscured for privacy.) Student 3 constructed his conception of visual design differently. By creating multiple pathways on his ePortfolio, he thought less about images that guided the reader and more about how design would help his reader understand his story as someone who communicated computer science concepts to general business and academic audiences. The images of the Stanford University campus are an intentional nod toward institutional affiliation. Although Students 1 and 2 veered away from visually representing Stanford, Student 3’s choice represents how his multiple audiences may equally value his institutional affiliation as a context for understanding Student 3’s work. Likewise, the visibility of his multiple pathways at the top and the bottom of his ePortfolio demonstrates the importance of creating a navigable user experience for reaching his multiple audiences (Figures 10.7 and 10.8). From thinking broadly about the concept of creating a site map to focusing closely on choices about including particular visuals in the ePortfolio, our curriculum continues to reinforce the value of weaving metacognitive ­decision-making into all parts of the ePortfolio composition process. By asking students to make careful design choices keeping the meaning behind particular visuals and organizational patterns in mind, we motivate students to represent themselves not only at the layer of text but also at the level of visual design. The discussion of multimodal composition is rooted substantially in a discussion of how the audience affects these choices, which is discussed in the next section.

Audience as a Metacognitive Tool Through the NSC curriculum, we ask students to consider a variety of audiences in the academy and beyond and to think about how they would present artifacts, reflections, and design choices to best appeal to these different groups. In 99A and 99B students have many opportunities to engage with

Yancey.indb 180

21-03-2019 12:25:43

Yancey.indb 181

21-03-2019 12:25:43

Figure 10.6.  An example screenshot of Student 2’s ePortfolio, organized by places she visited.

Yancey.indb 182

21-03-2019 12:25:44

Figure 10.7.  An example screenshot of a student ePortfolio organized by audience appeal with a minimalist, institution-centered design.

Yancey.indb 183

21-03-2019 12:25:44

Figure 10.8.  A screenshot with the menu unpacked to provide multiple pathways for navigation in the ePortfolio.

184   eportfolio as curriculum their audiences, particularly in Units 4 and 5, where students receive feedback from their peers. During the penultimate class session in Unit 5, students receive additional feedback from writing program faculty and science faculty during a showcase of their work. Similar in organization to a poster session, students do not prepare a formal presentation but rather project their ePortfolios on screens while campus community guests circulate, ask questions, and provide feedback. These stakeholders give students a further audience to consider as they revise their ePortfolios, and the performative aspect of the event, a new mode of delivery, helps students see their ePortfolios from a new perspective. For example, one 99A student commented, I found myself adding some details about the artifacts as I presented in person [at the showcase] that weren’t present in my artifact reflections, so I hope to go back and add in those bits of information so that everything I want to say is present in my portfolio.

In addition to the support in the 99 course series, students are also required to solicit two advisers, one based in the writing program and one from their major (or closely related) discipline. This interdisciplinary advising approach creates a platform for students to explore and embody their different academic identities, those of rhetorician and of scientist. Because these two advisers have different academic and professional backgrounds, not to mention personality traits, students must think critically about how their choices affect the ways both of their advisers see their work. Students tend to choose advisers they have worked with in the past, either in a course or in a research context. In our experience, these relationships are valuable for students and advisers as they discuss ways the content is exhibited in multiple contexts and reflect together on the significance, challenges, and benefits of effective science communication. For example, many NSC students include a slide deck they compiled to support an oral presentation as an artifact in their ePortfolio. Their initial reflections are often limited to observations of their experience. For example, Public speaking can be a difficult task, and when I created this presentation I really worked to make slides that were not too text-heavy and had clear visuals. I practiced this presentation several times so that I felt comfortable speaking in front of an audience.

Discussing this artifact with advisers, however, could lead students to think more critically about their learning. A writing program adviser may ask the student to think more about why slides with a lot of text can hinder audience

Yancey.indb 184

21-03-2019 12:25:44

metacognition across the curriculum  

185

understanding or the role practice plays in helping a speaker feel, and appear, more confident. Conversely, a meeting with a discipline-specific adviser may lead to asking students about the challenges of data visualization and how their choices influence the way different audiences may interpret the same data. Having these conversations with two distinct academic audiences helps students work through the conceptually difficult task of communicating what they learned from their scientific communication experiences. The advisers are useful not only because of their academic perspectives and the types of questions they’re asking but also because those questions help students understand and articulate the rhetorical choices they made in their artifacts. Students, therefore, can analyze these conversations for themselves and in their reflective work consider the ways they had to adapt their materials to meet their different audience’s needs. As with advising, ePortfolio assessment is completed by an interdisciplinary team of faculty and lecturers from across the institution. The team meets face-to-face to normalize the grading process. Working in line with the practices of early ePortfolio practitioners in composition, the assessment team works through sample ePortfolios individually and as a group, discussing the elements of cover letters, artifacts, and reflections, providing space for questions and discussions particularly with relevance to the stated learning goals (Elbow & Belanoff, 1986; White & Wright, 2016). By providing space in the norming session to work through sample elements individually and in a group, we strive to create an expectation level that is consistent across teams and fits squarely in the learning outcomes of the NSC. As a benefit, these practices and their evolution over time inform how we engage with students in the classroom, helping to create transparent and flexible expectations and learning outcomes. Following the norming session, assessors are assigned to working groups and tasked with assessing a subgroup of ePortfolios. Working groups then meet again to discuss their ePortfolios and make final evaluations. Each member of a team is asked to read all ePortfolios in the group and be a primary evaluator for one and a secondary evaluator for a second. In this way, much like traditional grant evaluation, each ePortfolio has in-depth evaluation and two critical sets of feedback to stimulate discussion in the final assessment meeting. Although we acknowledge the challenges inherent in holistically scoring ePortfolios in this way (see rubric in Appendix 10B), particularly with interreader reliability and score validity, our method allows us to “move away from absolute judgements about writing into more shaded, nuanced understandings of difference” (Durst, Roemer, & Schultz, 1994). Indeed, the balance between verbal conversation and written notes among our readers allows an open interrogation of our program’s values.

Yancey.indb 185

21-03-2019 12:25:44

186   eportfolio as curriculum As students are asked to think throughout the NSC coursework about diverse audiences for their ePortfolios, including peers, instructors, advisers, and the broader campus community, the diversity of feedback informs the choices they make and prepares them for the interdisciplinary assessment team that will evaluate their work. The interplay between showcasing one’s work and reflecting on what went well; what could have been done better; and, most important, what they learned in the process is informed by the diverse audiences that students engage with throughout their time in the NSC. By considering audience as an essential component of the choices they make, the idea of being a rhetorically nimble communicator in traditional as well as multimodal contexts becomes second nature to the students who successfully complete the NSC.

Conclusion As students craft their identities as science communicators in the NSC program, the process and the product of the ePortfolio are critical to help them think metacognitively about their learning. As an expanded capstone experience, the ePortfolio actively promotes integration of the discrete elements of what students have accomplished in their Stanford education, drawing from learning that has occurred inside and outside the classroom and on and off campus to create an identity that can be brought to new situations and contexts. The design of the NSC program weaves folios throughout the discipline and practices of science communication while also incorporating reflective practice, the persuasive use of multimodal evidence, and a focus on audience. These curricular elements promote and support the development of transferrable outcomes and perspectives that are increasingly recognized by employers, students, alumni, and other higher education stakeholders as being essential to college learning and career success (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2015a, 2015b). Participating in an ePortfolio curriculum program provides students not only with an opportunity to create a tangible product that showcases their work but also a space for them to cultivate an identity facilitating their next steps. Our program continues to evolve, but we know that placing metacognition at the core of our curriculum and applying metacognitive thought throughout the creation of an ePortfolio will remain unchanged. As students reflect on their college experiences deeply enough to create a unified representation of their college journey, they develop the communication skills they will need for a variety of professional contexts.

Yancey.indb 186

21-03-2019 12:25:44

metacognition across the curriculum  

187

References Bowman, J., Lowe, B. J., Sabourin, K., & Sweet, C. S. (2016). The use of ePortfolios to support metacognitive practice in a first-year writing program. International Journal of ePortfolio, 6(1), 1–22. Clark, I. L., & Fishbach, R. (2008). Writing and learning in the health sciences: Rhetoric, identity, genre, and performance. WAC Journal, 19, 15–28. Delagrange, S. H. (2009). When revision is redesign: Key questions for digital scholarship. Kairos, 14(1). Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Driessen, E. W., van Tartwijk, J., Overeem, K., Vermunt, J. D., & van der Vleuten, C. P. M. (2005). Conditions for the successful reflective use of portfolios in undergraduate medical education. Medical Education, 39, 1230–1235. Durst, R. K., Roemer, M., & Schultz, L. M. (1994). Portfolio negotiations: Acts in speech. In L. Black, D. A. Diaker, J. Sommers, & G. Stygall (Eds.), New directions in portfolio assessment (pp. 286–300). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Elbow, P., & Belanoff, P. (1986). Portfolios as a substitute for proficiency examinations. College Composition and Communication, 37, 336–339. Granville, S., & Dison, L. (2005). Thinking about thinking: Integrating self-reflection into an academic literacy course. English for Academic Purposes, 4(2), 99–118. Hamp-Lyons, L., & Condon, W. (1999). Assessing the portfolio: Principles for practice, theory, and research. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Munday, J., Rowley, J., & Polly, P. (2017). The use of visual images in building professional self-identities. International Journal of ePortfolio, 7(1), 53–65. Penny Light, T., Chen, H. L., & Ittelson, J. (2011). Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors. San Francisco, CA: Wiley. Reid, G., Snead, R., Pettiway, K., & Simoneaux, B. (2016). Multimodal communication in the university: Surveying faculty across disciplines. Across the Disciplines, 13(1). Silver, N. (2016). Reflection in digital spaces: Publication, conversation, collaboration. In K. Yancey (Ed.), A rhetoric of reflection (pp. 166–200). Logan: Utah State University Press. Thaiss, C., & Porter, T. (2010). The state of WAC/WID in 2010: Methods and results of the U.S. survey of the International WAC/WID mapping project. College Composition and Communication, 61, 534–570. Thomas, F. L. (2009). Developing a culture of writing at Virginia State University: A new writing emphasis. Across the Disciplines 6(1). Venezky, R. L. (2001). Procedures for evaluating the impact of complex educational interventions. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 10(1), 17–30. White, E. M., & Wright, C. A. (2016). Assigning, responding, evaluating: A writing teacher’s guide (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. Yancey, K. B. (2004). Postmodernism, palimpsest, and portfolios: Theoretical issues in the representation of student work. College Composition and Communication, 55, 738–761.

Yancey.indb 187

21-03-2019 12:25:44

APPENDIX 10A

Notation in Science Communication Learning Outcomes

T

hrough their Notation in Science Communication (NSC) coursework, students will learn how to

• Communicate to specialist audiences using precise technical language, accurate visual and diagrammatic representations of data, and appropriate disciplinary conventions. • Employ critical thinking and intellectual rigor in developing analyses of complex issues in science, including proposing appropriate actions, solutions, or responses. • Effectively translate complex scientific ideas for non-specialist audiences through minimal use of jargon, careful use of metaphors, and other rhetorical strategies to increase audience interest and understanding. • Communicate science using a range of appropriate modes and technologies, including oral, visual, and multimedia components. • Understand the broader societal impacts of effective scientific communication. • Analyze how rhetorical choices influence the way science is communicated and understood across genres, contexts, and audiences. • Reflect on the range and effectiveness of varied communicative strategies for conveying scientific information and crafting persuasive and accessible arguments about science. • Reflect on how ePortfolios provide opportunities for crafting a professional identity as a scientist and communicating work to both institutional and industry audiences. Students will demonstrate mastery of these skills through their ePortfolios. The ePortfolio evaluation committee will use these learning objectives as part of the criteria for assessing portfolios as “pass” or “no pass.”

188

Yancey.indb 188

21-03-2019 12:25:44

APPENDIX 10B

Holistic Rubric for Notation in Science Communication ePortfolios

Pass The ePortfolio as a whole, including the cover letter, artifacts, and artifact reflections, demonstrates a high level of proficiency and expertise in science communication and consistent achievement of the Notation in Science Communication’s (NSC’s) learning outcomes. The cover letter provides a coherent and compelling framework for the ePortfolio, reflecting on the student’s development as a versatile and effective science communicator and offering sufficient evidence to support individual claims. Artifact reflections articulate the rhetorical situation of the document and more specifically how artifacts demonstrate achievement of NSC’s learning outcomes. Artifacts represent a range of genres, modes, and contexts of communicating scientific information and engage in translating and communicating science to a range of audiences, specialist and nonspecialist. Individual artifacts illustrate effective use of appropriate and effective science communication strategies.

No Pass The ePortfolio as a whole, including the cover letter, artifacts, and artifact reflections, does not demonstrate an adequate level of proficiency and expertise in science communication and sufficient progress toward achieving NSC’s learning outcomes. The cover letter does not provide a clear framework for the ePortfolio and does not provide sufficient reflection on the student’s development as a science communicator. Artifact reflections generally fail to articulate clearly the rhetorical situation of the document and/or fail to illuminate how artifacts demonstrate achievement of NSC’s learning outcomes. Artifacts do not represent a sufficient range of genres, modes, and

189

Yancey.indb 189

21-03-2019 12:25:44

190  

appendix

10b

contexts of communicating scientific information and do not effectively translate and communicate science to a range of audiences, specialist and nonspecialist. Individual artifacts do not illustrate appropriate and effective use of science communication strategies.

Yancey.indb 190

21-03-2019 12:25:44

11 T H E I N V I T E D e P O RT F O L I O CURRICULUM Katherine Bridgman

I

n his testimony during the 1979 hearings for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, Alvin Rivera, representing the Hispanic Higher Education Coalition, called on Congress to address four areas that “needed attention to increase Hispanic higher education success: access, retention, professional development, and institutional representation” (Valdez, 2015, p. 8). Calls such as Rivera’s and those of many others led to the designation of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) under Title III of the 1992 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (Gasman, 2008), and two years later federal funding was designated under Title III of the Strengthening Institutions Program of the Higher Education Act (Núñez, Hurtado, & Caldéron Galdeano, 2015). Unlike many other minority-serving institutions, HSIs are defined according to enrollment rather than mission (Núñez, 2015; Núñez et al., 2015); they are “accredited degree-granting, public or private, nonprofit colleges and universities with 25% or more total undergraduate Hispanic student enrollment” (Laden, 2004, p. 186). In 1998 another criterion was added in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act: HSIs were placed under Title V with the stipulation that a minimum of 50% of Hispanic students at these institutions meet the poverty level determined by the U.S. Census (Gasman, 2008; Laden, 2004; Núñez, 2015). Since the early legislation of 1992, the number of HSIs in the United States has more than doubled, and nearly 60% of Latinx students currently attend one of these institutions (Excelencia in Education, 2017). Moreover, at 17%, Latinx students now make up the second largest student population enrolled in higher education (Santiago, Taylor, Calderón, & Galdeano, 2016). As teachers and administrators at HSIs, we are called to turn our attention to the ways our classrooms become borderlands where multiple 191

Yancey.indb 191

21-03-2019 12:25:44

192   eportfolio as curriculum communities and sources of knowledge intersect. Such borderland classrooms invite negotiation and value multiple ways of knowing, languages, and communities across our curricula. As we celebrate the permeability of boundaries that are frequently assumed to encase the university, borderland classrooms become fertile locations for the development of ePortfolio curricula. Aligning with the values of borderland classrooms, ePortfolio curricula support the complex negotiations of the borderland classroom and engage students as negotiators of community and as producers of knowledge in the university. The invited ePortfolio curriculum of borderland classrooms conceptualizes ePortfolios as sites of what Hughes (2009) calls “leaky seams” (p. 56) between the university and the communities that surround it. As students do the work of the borderland in an ePortfolio curriculum, they are negotiating new knowledge, new identities, and new communities largely through building their portfolios and engaging in the reflection that accompanies this building. However, at the same time they may be building these digital spaces as individualized reflections of themselves and their memberships across communities, students in an ePortfolio curriculum are also doing the very public work of coinventing the university. The borderland classroom, then, becomes a space of negotiation and a space of coinvention where “most significantly, through reflective activities, we [see] students inventing ­themselves as they co-invented our universities,” a process that is central to borderland classrooms and ePortfolio curricula (Yancey, 2009, p. 6). The focus of this chapter is what this process looks like and, more specifically, the early steps taken by a relatively young university to respond to the invited ePortfolio curriculum of the borderland classroom. One of the latest universities to receive the designation of HSI, Texas A&M University–San Antonio (A&M–SA) is located in an area once described by a local newspaper as what “could have been considered a degree desert” (Foster-Frau, 2016, para. 11) on the south side of the city. In an effort to respond to the invited ePortfolio curriculum of the borderland classrooms that faculty and staff inhabit alongside students, A&M–SA has developed a set of four courses that guide students through their transition into and out of the university over the course of four years. Named after our university mascot, Jaguar Tracks I, Jaguar Tracks II, Jaguar Tracks III, and Jaguar Tracks IV are each taken for one hour of credit and are designed to provide students with a learning community that supports their progress through the rest of our university’s curriculum. Although these courses are in many ways studentsupport courses, they are also beginning to do the work of an ePortfolio curriculum more broadly as they emphasize students as creators of knowledge, negotiators across communities, and coinventors of the university.

Yancey.indb 192

21-03-2019 12:25:44

the invited eportfolio curriculum  

193

Throughout these courses, students are invited to use their ePortfolios as locations where their perspectives and experiences are explored and shared with others. The Jaguar Tracks courses scaffold this exploration of community across students’ academic careers. Jaguar Tracks I invites students to explore their place in our local university community. Students explore their place in our global community in Jaguar Tracks II, while Jaguar Tracks III emphasizes students’ place in the disciplinary community of their major. Finally, students explore their place in the communities of their chosen careers during Jaguar Tracks IV. Moreover, while these courses are focusing students’ attention on different facets of their community membership in the university, they also emphasize that communities are dynamic and built by community members who are active creators and negotiators of knowledge.

Community Inspired by the design of learning communities, each Jaguar Tracks course invites students to explore a facet of their new university community as they develop their self-awareness of what it means to be members of the many communities that make up the broader Jaguar community. In Jaguar Tracks I, for example, student learning outcomes include “exhibit growth in selfawareness and personal experience” and “become active members of the campus community” (Texas A&M University–San Antonio, 2017a, p. 1). Students reach these outcomes through course assignments that include a research presentation on a student organization as well as reflective journals that may be uploaded into their digital portfolios. Throughout the guided activities of the course, the classroom becomes a space where students get to know each other and develop frameworks that may guide their interactions in other contexts on campus. In addition to the relationships that students are building with other students as they become members of the university community, Jaguar Tracks I supports students in negotiating relationships with faculty and staff across campus. For example, in one exercise, Jaguar Tracks I provides students with the opportunity to role-play interactions with faculty and staff through scenarios that are introduced during class time. After role-playing the interaction, students go outside the classroom and pursue this interaction, perhaps e-mailing a professor or meeting with an academic success coach who provides continual individualized support to students throughout their time at A&M–SA. As students interact with members of their university community during their first year on campus, their ePortfolios become spaces where they reflect on these experiences and record the knowledge they create about various communities through this and other Jaguar Tracks courses. The primary source of knowledge in this curriculum is

Yancey.indb 193

21-03-2019 12:25:44

194   eportfolio as curriculum created through student engagement with a university context that is new to them and through the negotiation of their place within this context and the various communities they will join in and outside school. Although entrance into the university’s communities is almost exclusively the focus of Jaguar Tracks I, each subsequent Jaguar Tracks course continues to build on this idea while also turning students’ attention to other communities they are entering. For example, the learning outcomes for Jaguar Tracks II include “become active members of the broader community” and “exhibit growth in global perspective” (Texas A&M University– San Antonio, 2017b, p. 1). Thus, in this example of contextualized learning, at the same time students are becoming intentional members of a more global community, they are also developing their awareness of how they are negotiating various perspectives as members of this global community. Likewise, course outcomes for Jaguar Tracks III and Jaguar Tracks IV build on this trajectory. Jaguar Tracks III turns students’ attention to how they are moving into the disciplinary communities of their majors, and in Jaguar Tracks IV, students attend to the ways they are making the transition into the professional communities of their careers. Activities that support students in joining these communities and affirm the knowledge students are making about them are at the center of the discussion of community in these classes. For example, in Jaguar Tracks III, students may interview a professional in a career field related to their major and present this information in their ePortfolios. Coupled with reflective activities, assignments such as this support students in joining new communities and negotiating the relationship of these communities to the vibrant communities of which they are already a part. A broader framework for conceptualizing an ePortfolio curriculum such as this is provided by scholars across a range of fields including borderlands and Latinx studies. This work, for example, underscores the importance of the ePortfolio curriculum’s acknowledgment and affirmation of students as creators of knowledge and negotiators of community. Fundamentally, these borderland spaces across our universities that invite us to challenge the epistemologies maintaining authorized forms of history, community, and authority also challenge “objectivity, a universal foundation of knowledge, and the Western dichotomies of mind versus body, subject versus object, objective truth versus subjective emotion” (Delgado Bernal, 1998, p. 560). Traditional investments of the university in such objectivity result, largely, from what Ladson-Billings refers to as “the dominant Euro-American epistemology” (as cited in Delgado Bernal, 2002, p. 107). This perspective, which has historically shaped our classrooms and given rise to a “Eurocentric epistemological perspective” (Delgado Bernal, 2002, p. 111), emphasizes “(a) the belief that

Yancey.indb 194

21-03-2019 12:25:44

the invited eportfolio curriculum  

195

the perspective of the Euro-Americans is the norm and (b) the practice of ignoring and/or delegitimizing the experiences, motivations, aspirations, and views of people of color” (p. 111). A key way this delegitimizing has taken shape across traditional curricula has been through the positioning of “a middle class Euro-American” as the norm in our classrooms (Villenas, Godinez, Delgado Bernal, & Elenes, 2006, p. 3), which contributes to classrooms Delgado Bernal (2002) characterizes as delegitimating: “Although students of color are holders and creators of knowledge, they often feel as if their histories, experiences, cultures, and languages are devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings” (p. 106). By way of contrast, the invited ePortfolio curriculum at A&M–SA works to incorporate multiple ways of knowing and multiple ways of valuing, including spaces for students to share their values and the values of their communities that may counter the frequently assumed values that shape many college experiences. Rendón, Nora, and Kanagala (2015) point out that the values and norms of university culture are often at odds with those of the cultures and communities our students are coming from: Norms such as “doing your own thing” and “realizing your own potential” can run counter to values of some first-generation students who typically focus on giving back and collective success. Further, the world of college includes academic values and conventions such as merit and independence, along with specific formal and informal forms of language expression, codes of behavior, and belief systems, which are often foreign to first-generation, low-income students. (pp. 97–98)

Likewise, they note that many of our students from Latinx communities bring with them an ethic that is more collective than individual; these students “are driven by the notion that their success is not just for themselves, but for the benefit of the Latin@ community” (p. 113). As students are bringing these values into the borderland classrooms of our universities, an ePortfolio curriculum facilitates the documentation and affirmation of these values and the communities they are rooted in, supporting students in their negotiation of the new communities they bridge as they move through our classrooms and into their careers.

Curation As students in the invited ePortfolio curriculum taking shape at A&M–SA explore facets of the new communities they encounter and develop their selfawareness of how communities are negotiated, this curriculum also guides

Yancey.indb 195

21-03-2019 12:25:44

196   eportfolio as curriculum them in using their ePortfolios as a space of invention where knowledge is made through a range of reflective activities and a space of curation where students document and share the knowledge they have made about their time at our university. Reflection is central to this invention and curation. During an early instructor training on reflection provided for the Jaguar Tracks courses in collaboration with the Writing Across the Curriculum program, for example, instructors were introduced to reflection as a form of professional practice that students develop through their four years in these courses. Eynon, Gambino, and Török (2014) underscored this value of reflection when they wrote that students creating ePortfolios “use reflection to examine their own learning, to explore the meaning of specific course activities, and to see how those activities add up to larger course goals and objectives” (p. 4). Each of the Jaguar Tracks courses seeks to do this through the incorporation of reflection throughout the course rather than simply including it at the end. For example, in Jaguar Tracks I, students are able to reflect on any number of topics related to their exploration of the university community throughout the semester. In Jaguar Tracks II, students reflect on their experiences working in groups and on what they have learned from this experience. In Jaguar Tracks III, students are invited to reflect on their disciplinary community through interviewing a member of this community and writing a profile on a professional organization. In Jaguar Tracks IV, students continue their reflection on the community they will enter as professionals engaged in their careers by writing a reflection on what they see when they explore a professional blog or electronic mailing list. In addition to these reflections distributed throughout each course, students are invited to reflect on all four years of their work in the Jaguar Tracks courses by revising their ePortfolios for a public audience. This culminating assignment underscores the multiple layers of outcomes for students, reminding them of the following: Compiling such a portfolio will allow you to gather, to arrange, and to display your work for multiple audiences; highlight your best work; and market your abilities. Consequently, this portfolio will help you present yourself as a professional in your field. (Texas A&M–SA, 2017e, para. 1).

As students put together this ePortfolio, they are required to introduce each artifact they include with a brief reflection on its significance. These artifacts include assignments ranging from a student’s curriculum vitae to the reflection students write on a professional blog or electronic mailing list. Although this cumulative ePortfolio for a public audience requires students to create some new texts, it also provides them with the opportunity to return to the work that has accumulated in their ePortfolios over the past four years and

Yancey.indb 196

21-03-2019 12:25:44

the invited eportfolio curriculum  

197

to reflect on the broader narrative of their development as negotiators of community and creators of knowledge. This twofold process is much like what Cambridge (2009) described as students’ development of networked and symphonic selves. Through the networked self, students create “intentional connections,” “crossing boundaries such as those between courses, disciplines, institutions, and groups” (p. 42). Through the symphonic self, students achieve “integrity of the whole”: this latter self examines “how the sum of [a student’s] experiences and ideas has an overall coherence” (p. 42). As students develop and articulate their networked and symphonic selves, their ePortfolios, telling the story of their exploration and negotiation during college, become potential locations of testimonio. Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, and Flores Carmona (2015) describe testimonio as a “pedagogical tool that lends itself to a form of teaching and learning that brings the mind, body, spirit, and political urgency to the fore” (p. 5) of our classrooms. Testimonio thus turns our attention to how students are “creating new knowledge” (p. 5) and how instructors are affirming the epistemologies enacted through the ePortfolio texts students create. As “a product and a process” (p. 3), testimonio highlights the individual in relation to others while it simultaneously turns our attention to the broader collective experience of which our students are also a part. As we reflect on and draw from this scholarship in our implementation of an invited ePortfolio curriculum, we are reminded to attend to our classrooms not just as spaces of abstract negotiation. Instead, the negotiations going on in our classrooms are very much located in the lived embodied realities of our students and ourselves, a view underscored by hooks (1994): Trained in the philosophical context of Western metaphysical dualism, many of us have accepted the notion that there is a split between the body and the mind. Believing this, individuals enter the classroom to teach as though only the mind is present, and not the body. (p. 191)

Acknowledging the embodiment of our students in the invited curriculum of ePortfolios enables us to more fully recognize ourselves and our students as coproducers of knowledge and reflect on the multiple ways of knowing that are always negotiated in our classrooms.

Collaboration As we come to see our students as part of broader communities that create and negotiate knowledge, we are also invited to see ourselves as faculty, staff, and administrators in a broader context where knowledge is made and negotiated through the university. In particular, our development of these

Yancey.indb 197

21-03-2019 12:25:44

198   eportfolio as curriculum curricula requires new forms of coordination and collaboration across the university. Through these new collaborations, we can respond to the call from ePortfolio leaders Watson, Kuh, Rhodes, Penny Light, and Chen (2016) to “embrace and devote resources to the ePortfolio as an engaging pedagogy across a campus” (p. 67). As A&M–SA took its first steps in developing the invited ePortfolio curriculum of our borderland classrooms, we formed new collaborations among staff, faculty, and administrators at our institution. A first step in these collaborations occurred when a group of faculty, staff, and administrators from our university attended the 2015 Association of American Colleges & Universities’ Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success in Madison, Wisconsin. At this institute, members of student affairs and academic affairs put together A&M–SA’s initial plan for comprehensive expansion to a four-year university that included the Jaguar Tracks courses as one of several high-impact practices that would be introduced across the university. These collaborations continued throughout the following years of planning and implementation as a large committee, made up of faculty from our three academic colleges and administrators and staff from student affairs, academic affairs, and business affairs, continued to refine and implement the original plan. Jaguar Tracks was guided in its initial implementation by a subcommittee of staff, librarians, faculty, and administrators from across the university who developed these courses and planned for their implementation. As the makeup of this subcommittee has shifted through the program’s short history, the committee has demonstrated the breadth of collaboration needed to begin implementing an invited ePortfolio curriculum and the extensive negotiations that are in turn facilitated through these collaborations. This initial collaboration across the university is reflected in the administrative structure of Jaguar Tracks. Each course is guided by a collaboration of staff and faculty from student affairs and academic affairs through a committee that directs curricula and implementation. Currently, most of the Jaguar Tracks I and II sections are taught by a mix of faculty and staff, whereas Jaguar Tracks III and IV are located within specific majors and are taught by faculty. In addition to the coordination of instructors from across the university, this program coordinates with our Office of Experiential Learning and Civic Engagement, which oversees the service-learning component of the Jaguar Tracks curriculum that takes place through a universitywide Day of Service in which many Jaguar Tracks students are required to participate. For example, our spring 2017 Day of Service was scheduled in coordination with Global Youth Service Day. For this volunteer opportunity, students helped the San Antonio Food Bank prepare for its summer

Yancey.indb 198

21-03-2019 12:25:44

the invited eportfolio curriculum  

199

food program by harvesting fruits and vegetables from the food bank’s farm. An additional key player in the administrative structures surrounding these courses is our peer mentoring program developed to support Jaguar Tracks courses by placing students in their third and fourth years at the university in Jaguar Tracks I and Jaguar Tracks II classrooms. The mission of this program is to “promote student engagement and foster an inclusive environment for students to find their sense of belonging and thrive on campus” (Texas A&M–SA, n.d., para. 2). In Jaguar Tracks classrooms, peer mentors collaborate with instructors on classroom activities and provide first- and second-year students with what is often seen as insider information and insights about being a college student and the best ways to negotiate these new terrains. These collaborations highlight for us that at the same time we are expecting students to do the often-difficult work of negotiating community, so too must we engage in this difficult work of negotiation if we are to facilitate the creation of a successful ePortfolio curriculum. For ­example, these collaborations have prompted conversations among people in units that might otherwise have few occasions to dialogue with each other in the context of our rapidly expanding university. As these dialogues have unfolded, so too have we, like our students, been pushed to negotiate our membership across multiple communities inside and outside the university. At the same time, these collaborations have invited rich discussions highlighting for us the different ways that we make knowledge about the university through our work individually and collaboratively in building and implementing curricula. These collaborations have also resulted in negotiations that have unfolded across the curriculum itself; one of our current questions, for example, is what are the advantages of requiring the use of digital portfolios throughout the four Jaguar Tracks courses? As we become more familiar with ways to support our students, such considerations illustrate how flexible these curricula are as they attend to the needs of a variety of stakeholders and, in our case, develop alongside our broader growth as an institution.

Conclusion As this reflection on the early implementation of the invited ePortfolio curriculum at a young HSI demonstrates, our ePortfolio courses are dynamic and subject to revision as various stakeholders come and go from the classrooms and committees I describe here. Consistent through this curriculum’s initial design, however, is the recognition of knowledge as plural and community as negotiated. In this curriculum, students become curators of their learning across contexts through their creation of an ePortfolio and in the

Yancey.indb 199

21-03-2019 12:25:44

200   eportfolio as curriculum process make the transition from passive consumers of knowledge to active producers of knowledge and the broader contexts shaped by this knowledge. Moreover, as ePortfolio curricula authorize students as producers of knowledge and negotiators of community, they also begin to prepare students for what Chen (2009) described as the “informal learning” (p. 29) that will take place throughout much of our students’ lives during and after the time they spend at our universities and colleges. Fueling the breadth of collaborations necessary to support an ePortfolio curriculum is for many a growing awareness that students’ time in college represents only a small fraction of the learning they will do across the course of their lifetime. Chen discusses this in the context of increasing life expectancies, stating that “the 12 to 16 years one might spend in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education becomes somewhat less significant relative to the nonformal and informal educational experiences encountered during one’s entire life” (p. 30). Our response to the invited ePortfolio curriculum at our institution is in many ways informed by this expanded perspective of learning as the breadth of collaborations that shape these curricula has the potential to contextualize the formal learning taking place during students’ time in college within their lifewide learning that will continue to occur for years to come. Although the invited curriculum I’ve discussed is only in the early stages of implementation in an HSI, the lessons from this apply much more broadly. In addition to reshaping our curricula and our classrooms, this ePortfolio curriculum has the potential to reinvigorate our relationships with surrounding communities through our work with students. This work with ePortfolios also demonstrates the ways ePortfolios facilitate student-centered classrooms by authorizing student knowledge about not only things outside the university but also the university itself. In doing so, this curriculum reveals how ePortfolios can be a vehicle for facilitating student success and introducing institutional change. As we celebrate this potential of ePortfolio curricula, however, we are also cautioned by Selfe and Selfe (1994) to be mindful of what Hawisher and Selfe (1991) described elsewhere as the “rhetoric of technology” (p. 56) that uncritically praises the potential of digital technologies to open democratic spaces. Selfe and Selfe (1994) remind us that instead of opening these spaces, such technologies may also become “maps that enact— among other things—the gestures and deeds of colonialism” (p. 482). A key way our invited ePortfolio curriculum responds to this threat is by embracing university communities as plural and negotiated by all their members, who potentially disrupt these maps of colonialism through their role in reinventing the university.

Yancey.indb 200

21-03-2019 12:25:44

the invited eportfolio curriculum  

201

References Cambridge, D. (2009). Two faces of integrative learning online. In D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0 (pp. 41–50). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Chen, H. (2009). Using ePortfolios to support lifelong and lifewide learning. In D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0 (pp. 29–36). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Delgado Bernal, D. (1998). Using Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research. Harvard Educational Review, 68, 555–582. Delgado Bernal, D. (2002). Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 105–126. Delgado Bernal, D., Burciaga, R., & Flores Carmona, J. (2015). Chicana/Latina testimonios: Mapping the methodological, pedagogical, and political. In D. Delgado Bernal, R. Burciaga, & J. Flores Carmona (Eds.), Chicana/Latina testimonios as pedagogical, methodological, and activist approaches to social justice (pp. 1–10). New York, NY: Routledge. Excelencia in Education. (2017). HSIs by location, 2015–16. Washington, DC: Author. Eynon, B., Gambino, L. M., & Török, J. (2014). Reflection, integration, and ePortfolio pedagogy. Retrieved from http://c2l.mcnrc.org/wp-content/upload/ sites/8/2014/01/Reflective_Pedagogy.pdf Foster-Frau, S. (2016, October 21). TAMUSA’s first freshmen and sophomores have changed it overnight. San Antonio Express News. Retrieved from https:// www.expressnews.com/news/education/article/TAMUSA-s-first-freshman-andsophomores-have-999504.php Gasman, M. (2008). Minority-serving institutions: A historical backdrop. In M. Gasman, B. Baez, & C. Viernes Turner (Eds.), Understanding minority-­serving institutions (pp. 18–27). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Hawisher, G., & Selfe, C. (1991). The rhetoric of technology and the electronic writing class. College Composition and Communication, 42(1), 55–65. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York, NY: Routledge. Hughes, J. (2009). Becoming ePortfolio learners and teachers. In D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0 (pp. 51–58). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Jaguar Tracks Committee. (2017). Jaguar Tracks Syllabi. Lorrie Webb, Chair. Texas A&M–San Antonio. Laden, B. (2004). Hispanic-serving institutions: What are they? Where are they? Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28, 181–198. Nuñez, A. (2015, April). Hispanic-serving institutions: Where are they now? A commissioned presentation for the meeting of Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the 21st century: A convening, El Paso, TX.

Yancey.indb 201

21-03-2019 12:25:44

202   eportfolio as curriculum Núñez, A., Hurtado, S., & Calderón Galdeano, E. (2015). Why study Hispanicserving institutions? In A. Núñez, S. Hurtado, & E. Calderón Galdeano (Eds.), Hispanic-serving institutions (pp. 1–22). New York, NY: Routledge. Rendón, L. (2015). Introduction. In J. Perez Mendez, F. Bonner II, J. MéndezNegrete, & R. Palmer (Eds.), Hispanic-serving institutions in American higher education (pp. 1–4). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Rendón, L., Nora, A., & Kanagala, V. (2015). Ventaja/assets y conocimientos/knowledge: Leveraging Latin@ assets to foster student success. In J. Perez Mendez, F. Bonner II, J. Méndez-Negrete, & R. Palmer (Eds.), Hispanic-serving institutions in American higher education (pp. 92–118). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Santiago, D., Taylor, M., & Calderón Galdeano, E. (2016). From capacity to success: HSIs, Title V, and Latino students. Washington, DC: Excelencia in Education. Selfe, C., & Selfe, R. (1994). The politics of the interface: Power and its exercise in electronic contact zones. College Composition and Communication, 45, 480–504. Texas A&M University–San Antonio. (2017a). Jaguar Tracks I syllabus. San Antonio, TX: Jaguar Tracks Committee. Texas A&M University–San Antonio. (2017b). Jaguar Tracks II syllabus. San Antonio, TX: Jaguar Tracks Committee. Texas A&M University–San Antonio. (2017c). Jaguar Tracks III syllabus. San Antonio, TX: Jaguar Tracks Committee. Texas A&M University–San Antonio. (2017d). Jaguar Tracks IV syllabus. San Antonio, TX: Jaguar Tracks Committee. Texas A&M University–San Antonio. (2017e). UNIV 4101: Cumulative portfolio assignment. San Antonio, TX: Jaguar Tracks Committee. Texas A&M University–San Antonio. (n.d.) First-year experience mentoring program. Retrieved from http://www.tamusa.edu/university-college/first-year-experience/ mentoring-program.html Valdez, P. (2015). An overview of Hispanic-serving institutions’ legislation: Legislation policy formation between 1979 and 1992. In J. Perez Mendez, F. Bonner II, J. Méndez-Negrete, & R. Palmer (Eds.), Hispanic-serving institutions in American higher education (pp. 5–29). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Villenas, S., Godinez. F., Delgado Bernal, D., & Elenes, C. (2006). Chicanas/Latinas building bridges. In D. Delgado Bernal, C. Elenes, F. Godinez, & S. Villenas (Eds.), Chicana/Latina education in everyday life (pp. 1–10). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Watson, C. E., Kuh, G., Rhodes, T., Penny Light, T., & Chen, H. L. (2016). Editorial: The eleventh high impact practice. International Journal of ePortfolio, 6(2), 65–69. Yancey, K. (2009). Reflection and electronic portfolios. In D. Cambridge, B. Cambridge, & K. Yancey (Eds.), Electronic portfolios 2.0 (pp. 5–16). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Yancey.indb 202

21-03-2019 12:25:44

12 I N T E G R AT I V E L E A R N I N G A N D e P O RT F O L I O NETWORKS Cheryl Emerson and Alex Reid

I

n the 2017 fall semester, the University at Buffalo (UB) began the UB Curriculum, replacing a program that had been running for more than 25 years and was sorely in need of updating. In addition to being a scholarly and pedagogical enterprise, general education operates as an institutional force that is measured not only in terms of students achieving learning outcomes but also for its effect on student recruitment, retention, success, and time to degree. Each of these factors drives tuition dollars, but these metrics also shape institutional ranking and reputation. As a result, general education reform affects every aspect of university life. General education’s material effects will surprise no one who has engaged in curricular reform or worked as a university administrator, and this larger picture is important in understanding the operation of an ePortfolio as part of a general education curriculum. Our investigation of the UB Curriculum’s use of ePortfolios accounts for this broader context. Specifically, we examine the intersection (or, less charitably, collision) of two competing institutional imperatives as they manifest themselves in our use of an ePortfolio tool. The first was a decision to prioritize, make visible, and embed in the UB Curriculum’s structure an emphasis on integrative learning. This priority arose from the influence the best practices documents produced by the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) had on curriculum design (e.g., AAC&U’s The LEAP Vision for Learning, 2011). Following on research in best practice, the ePortfolio tool became a primary mechanism for achieving integrative learning (Cambridge, 2010; McCoy Wozniak, 2012; Pirie & Reynolds, 203

Yancey.indb 203

21-03-2019 12:25:44

204   eportfolio as curriculum 2016; Reynolds & Patton, 2014). The second imperative was the ubiquitous need for institutional assessment. The growing technological capacity for data gathering and analysis continues to shape assessment and accreditation policies, and ePortfolio tools represent a significant means for doing so.

The UB General Education Curriculum and Its ePortfolio The UB Curriculum, like most general education programs, is designed to provide students with coursework across the curriculum. The UB curriculum begins with a first-year seminar, generally taught by tenure-track faculty. According to the program’s website, the seminars are “designed around ‘big ideas’ and faculty passions” (UB Curriculum, 2017d, para. 4). Foundational courses in communication literacy, math and quantitative reasoning, and scientific literacy and inquiry follow the seminar. Students also take courses in pathways that loosely bundle courses in history, social sciences, humanities, arts, languages, and other areas. Students are also required to take a global pathway, which might include learning a new language or participating in study abroad, and a thematic pathway, where courses are topically organized (e.g., Environment and Sustainability or Human Nature). The final requirement is a one-credit capstone in which students complete their UB Curriculum ePortfolio, which provides students with a curricular site where they can work with materials created in their first-year seminar, first-year composition courses, and the rest of their general education coursework. In the capstone, students reflect on their prior learning and make personal learning connections among the courses they have taken. Specifically, students are asked to write two integrative essays, one focused on the global pathway and the other on the thematic pathway, where the aim in each is to recognize the interdisciplinary links among the courses and strengthen the experience of the curriculum as cohesive rather than as a laundry list of requirements. Capstone students also produce an ePortfolio presenting not only the essays written in the course but also materials from across their UB Curriculum experience, which collectively serve to document their learning and achievements. So what exactly is an ePortfolio in the UB Curriculum? Certainly, it is a product of the capstone course as capstone students produce ePortfolios. It also includes various assignments from the curriculum, which might have required as little as uploading an assignment into the student’s ePortfolio account or as much as producing a stand-alone course ePortfolio. However, viewing the ePortfolio as a series of atomized products obscures its primary pedagogical purpose in the curriculum as a means for achieving integrative learning. The capstone ePortfolio brings together these uses of ePortfolios in

Yancey.indb 204

21-03-2019 12:25:45

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

205

courses across the UB Curriculum and asks students to articulate their personal learning experience across their coursework. In this respect, ePortfolios serve as a tool for the activity of integrative learning. By tool we mean not only the commercial Web application we use (Digication) but also the pedagogical and curricular practices that might be associated with it. For some courses, those practices might be nearly invisible, little more than reminding students to upload some assignment from the course to their account. Other professors embrace integrative learning more fully with integrative learning experiences in the course (e.g., combining concepts with a course or connecting the course with students’ extracurricular experiences) and connections between their course and others in the UB Curriculum. However, as we suggested previously, if general education is to be understood in terms of its material effects as well as its connection with institutional priorities, then the same might be said of the curriculum’s component parts. This is particularly the case for ePortfolios and integrative learning in the UB Curriculum as they are the central organizing means and principles for the program’s delivery. From this perspective, one gets a different answer to the question, What is an ePortfolio in the UB Curriculum? If the first inclination is to imagine the ePortfolio as the work of a single student, representing personal learning experience, that same ePortfolio in this shifted perspective becomes a data point, or really a series of data points, not only for measuring student performance in terms of individual grades or for evaluating curriculum in terms of conventional assessment but also for analyzing the effectiveness of university investment in achieving institutional priorities related to retention, time to degree, and other measures. In addition, because the ePortfolio platform allows students to create as many ePortfolios as they wish (and not simply ones associated with a course), and those ePortfolios can be made available on the Internet, ePortfolios collectively represent individual students and the institution. This can be particularly challenging when a university invests in making a general education program distinctive as part of a strategy for recruiting students and improving its national reputation, with ePortfolios as a centerpiece of that program. The results are a set of competing imperatives that start with a pedagogical emphasis on personal reflection and expression, move through various data-driven valuations that put stress on those personal reflections to document specific kinds of learning experiences (i.e., pressuring students to view their personal experiences through institutional discourses), and end in a moment where the encouragement of students to construct and represent personal experience collides with institutional narratives and values about curriculum. In this context, the answers to the question What is an ePortfolio? begin to proliferate; they cannot be contained in the UB Curriculum as other parts

Yancey.indb 205

21-03-2019 12:25:45

206   eportfolio as curriculum of the university begin to take interest. In the case of the UB Curriculum, the simultaneous introduction of an ePortfolio tool, a capstone course with an ePortfolio product, integrative learning outcomes with a pedagogy ­reliant on ePortfolios and the ePortfolio tool, and new assessment procedures built on data coming from the ePortfolio tool creates a complex new ecosystem. The often competing imperatives result in a series of resistances. Integrative learning practices emphasize a value on reflection, self-discovery, and identity formation and representation but quickly run up against institutional outcomes, requirements, and policies. Thus, as this chapter suggests, although the ePortfolio tool presents itself as a mechanism for self-expression and customization, it is also enfolded in a set of institutional demands that students and faculty often interpret as impositions.

ePortfolios Across the UB Curriculum Student engagement with ePortfolios begins in their first year in two courses, their UB seminar and their composition course. One of the curricular goals of the UB seminar is for students to use an ePortfolio for at least one assignment. What that one assignment is, and what it means to use an ePortfolio, however, are at the discretion of individual instructors who themselves are still new to the platform. The answer to What is an ePortfolio? in the UB seminars ranges from use as a digital filing cabinet, when uploading a final paper to an ePortfolio fulfills the requirement (see Figure 12.1), to more detailed projects incorporating text and media (see Figure 12.2). Figure 12.1.  ePortfolio as filing cabinet.

Note. Screenshot of sample UB seminar final paper upload (summer 2017). Retrieved from https:// buffalo.digication.com/art_history_paper/Welcome/published.

Yancey.indb 206

21-03-2019 12:25:45

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

207

Figure 12.2.  ePortfolio as multimedia project.

Note. Screenshot of UB seminar video analysis (fall 2017). Retrieved from https://buffalo.digication.com/ wiggle_a_song_that_will_have_you_shaking_your_butt1/Home/.

In each case an ePortfolio is used for at least one assignment, but at varying levels of student engagement. In assignments where use of the tool is relevant to the project itself, such as the music video analysis shown in Figure 12.2, students more readily engage with the new platform. Because the seminar’s engagement with the ePortfolio is driven by faculty-created assignments, these differences in assignments reflect faculty responses to the tool, among them pedagogical concerns, lack of technical ability, or rejection of an institutional imposition on their teaching. As the seminars are largely taught by tenure-track faculty from across the university, there are few mechanisms to ensure much curricular cohesion across the sections. In the first-year composition course, ENG 105: Writing and Rhetoric, the answer to the question What is an ePortfolio? is more coherent. The courses are all delivered through the English department and largely taught by teaching assistants. Each section of ENG 105 is also supplemented by a one-hour library lab with technical guidance in the use of a common ePortfolio template (see Figure 12.3). In addition to serving as a collection site for multiple writing projects, ePortfolios are customized by students as part of constructing an online identity, and students are also introduced to the ethical use of source

Yancey.indb 207

21-03-2019 12:25:45

208   eportfolio as curriculum Figure 12.3.  ENG 105 student template.

Note. From fall 2016 screenshot. Retrieved from https://buffalo.digication.com/eng_105_writing_and_ rhetoric_student_template_1_fall_2016/Welcome/published,public access

material, to support the development of digital citizenship, by their library lab instructors. Although the ePortfolio still operates as a digital filing cabinet, the multimodal features of the tool itself come into play in the students’ overall visual designs and as a functional part of one or more ENG 105 assignments. Several of the course’s learning outcomes—“Locate, evaluate, synthesize and manage information (text, visuals, media) effectively and ethically”; “Understand, evaluate, and compose effective visual communications”; and “Understand and use current digital composition methods” (UB Curriculum, 2017c, para. 4)—are met through use of an ePortfolio. A completed ENG 105 ePortfolio houses multiple writing projects, a multimedia oral presentation, and often additional process narratives and peer reviews.1 As in the UB seminars, degrees of faculty and student engagement still vary across the many sections of ENG 105, with some instructors requiring students to use ePortfolios throughout the semester, whereas others ask only for an end-of-term upload. Predictably, students who regularly work on ePortfolios throughout the semester create sites that convey a greater sense of a digital place (versus a filing cabinet), which helps to cultivate a sense of audience as visitors to their site. To support this end, the Office of Curriculum and Assessment has offered faculty development workshops that introduce the idea of visual hospitality2 as an adaptation of visual rhetoric to an ePortfolio setting,

Yancey.indb 208

21-03-2019 12:25:45

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

209

suggesting a relation between host and guest in place of the traditional dyad of author and audience. An emphasis on the ePortfolio as a digital site, or a virtual dwelling, invites greater time spent in thoughtful design and (ideally) greater time spent tidying up (editing, proofreading, customizing) visual and written content in expectation of guests who might be peer editors, an instructor, or (at the level of assessment) an unknown administrator. Potentially, the idea of visual hospitality could help mediate tensions that arise over questions of privacy, such as who will be looking, in favor of an ethos of welcome and community as an important component of digital citizenship (see Figure 12.4). The issue of the public-private divide in ePortfolios also informs the capstone ePortfolio, which requires students to draw connections between academic experiences and experiences beyond the classroom as they project “a trajectory of ongoing learning that emerges from diverse past experiences and anticipates subsequent challenges” (see Appendix 12B). In fact, the public-private divide in the capstone ePortfolio is complicated in ways that ePortfolios elsewhere in the curriculum are not. The capstone is a project of Figure 12.4.  Pilot capstone student’s effort to create an ePortfolio site where visitors are made to feel welcome.

Note. Visitors here are peer groups and instructor. The student’s casual salutation “Hey guys!” reflects her decision to appeal to a peer audience (Spring Capstone Pilot, 2016). Retrieved from https://buffalo .digication.com/hannah_griffi th/Home_Page/.

Yancey.indb 209

21-03-2019 12:25:45

210   eportfolio as curriculum personal reflection on the self as learner and a means to document learning outcomes on multiple levels: capstone, pathways, and overall program learning outcomes. In this context, the attention given to self at the capstone level can be a help or a hindrance to student engagement, because at least some level of self-disclosure is not only invited but also required. The willingness (or unwillingness) of students to engage in personal learning reflection is directly relevant to documenting outcomes, especially when students are asked to connect classroom learning to beyond the classroom experiences. As this book demonstrates, although many students eagerly make such connections, not all students do, at least in our program. For example, a spring 2017 capstone student omitted his outside work as a grocery store clerk from his reflective essays, even though it was an ideal opportunity to integrate his coursework into business psychology with experiences beyond the classroom.3

The Capstone ePortfolio The last component of the curriculum is a graded one-credit, online capstone course that guides students, typically in their junior year, through the process of constructing their capstone ePortfolio. The capstone ePortfolio differs from other ePortfolio use in terms of scope, content, and purpose in the new curriculum, as indicated by its direct supervision by the director of curriculum and assessment instead of faculty in academic departments. In scope, the capstone ePortfolio is to serve as the culminating experience of the UB Curriculum program. It is a onecredit mentored learning experience in which [students] will work in UBPortfolio [UB’s account name], with the guidance and support of the instructor, to create a holistic reflective and integrative eportfolio, weaving together [the student’s] learning in college coursework and lived experiences outside of the formal classroom. (UB Curriculum, 2017a, para. 1)

Not only is the capstone ePortfolio the end product of the capstone course but the process of its construction is the course itself. In this sense, it is less a course in the strict sense than a paced and mentored online ePortfolio project. The process of construction leads to online discussions, consultations with teaching assistants, and peer review but with no formal course content beyond the project itself (see Appendix 12A). Although individual capstone instructors assign supplementary readings to facilitate online discussions, there is no common textbook or schedule of exams. The capstone course grade is determined by a combination of a rubric-based assessment of the

Yancey.indb 210

21-03-2019 12:25:45

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

211

final ePortfolio (weighted as a minimum 70% of the final grade) and student participation in online activities including peer review (weighted as a maximum 30% of the final grade). As in ENG 105, capstone students begin with a common course template, constructing their pages in a prearranged order: personalized home page, UB Curriculum coursework, beyond the classroom, reflective essays, and Learning Philosophy Statement (see Figure 12.5). The pages are sequenced so that each section provides a basis of reflection for the next, making the construction process itself an act of integrative thought. We now turn to an overview of the capstone ePortfolio design, which begins with construction of the personalized home page, which provides a technical review of how to use the ePortfolio tool and is the first reflective moment of the capstone where students consider audience, online identity, and the public-private divide. Along with a welcome and brief bio statement, the page often includes a personal photo gallery that might reveal a student’s country of origin, family and friends, special interests, travel abroad, or a future career (e.g., https://buffalo.digication.com/alexander_salinas/Home_ Page/). The challenge is to strike a balance: to introduce the students in such

Figure 12.5.  UB capstone ePortfolio template screenshot, spring 2017.

Yancey.indb 211

21-03-2019 12:25:46

212   eportfolio as curriculum a way that their visitors (known and unknown) know enough but not too much about the students and are interested to read more.4 As the introductory assignment, construction of the home page sets the tone not only for individual ePortfolios but also for student engagement with the capstone course itself. Students arrive at the capstone with a familiar set of questions, for example, What am I making? Why are we doing this? Who will be looking at it? and Is this for a grade or is it pass/fail? These questions arise wherever ePortfolios are used in the curriculum, but the answers become more complex at the capstone level because purpose and audience are multilayered. As the culminating, reflective moment of the new curriculum, a student’s personal learning self-reflection is also a tool of collective program assessment. The personalized home page is thus somewhat depersonalized at the same time. The tone and online identity introduced in the home page carry through to the coursework samples, uploaded to a UB coursework page that duplicates the course sequence of the UB Curriculum (see Figure 12.6). For each sample, students write a brief criteria statement (100–150 words) that reflects on the artifact in the context of the course, its significance to the student’s development as learner, and in anticipation of future Figure 12.6.  Curriculum sequence.

Yancey.indb 212

21-03-2019 12:25:46

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

213

challenges.5 Students choose coursework samples based on their personal learning value rather than on standards of academic excellence. Because the capstone ePortfolio is a vehicle for reflection and integration, why a sample is chosen is more important than the grade it received at the time. In retrospect, assignments that previously failed, or a screenshot of written course notes, for example, might best recall for the student an important moment of learning. The selection process repeats for the beyond the classroom page, with the difference that students create any number and sequence of subpages. The course template instructs students to “highlight experiences outside of the classroom that have influenced your learning in the classroom or those that have been influenced by your classroom learning” (UB Curriculum Capstone Template [Classic], 2018a). The beyond the classroom page builds on the home page and coursework samples, sometimes by revisiting a personal detail (family, interests) that was previously mentioned but also by maintaining the tone and online identity established on the welcome page. Using the coursework samples and criteria statements as a base of reflection, this page asks students to locate experiences that extend classroom learning into nonacademic life, and the reverse: moments when nonacademic life has influenced classroom learning (see Figure 12.7). Criteria statements in this section tend to run over the suggested 100- to 150-word length for students as reflections on life outside of the classroom often take the form of stories. The purpose and audience of the capstone is multilayered. In the two reflective essays, housed in the fourth section of the capstone ePortfolio, the interests of program assessment begin to encroach on the purpose of student self-discovery. Furthermore, these two essays are used to document three sets of learning outcomes: capstone component outcomes, pathways component outcomes, and overall UB Curriculum program learning outcomes. In theory, the component outcomes are mutually supportive of the overall program goal of integrative learning, but the capstone is tasked with making connections across the whole curriculum, beginning to end and beyond, whereas the global and thematic pathways focus on specific themes (health, humanity, innovation, justice, and the environment) and imperatives of global citizenship (to “develop a global perspective that prepares you for citizenship in a continually evolving world”) (UB Curriculum, 2017c, para. 9). To accommodate this overlap, the scope of the capstone integrative essays is trimmed for pathway assessment, asking students to draw connections among a specific set of courses instead of the broader horizon of the whole curriculum, a horizon that encompasses the pathway courses but also looks beyond.

Yancey.indb 213

21-03-2019 12:25:46

Yancey.indb 214

21-03-2019 12:25:46

Note. Retrieved from https://buffalo.digication.com/mariya_zlobinskayas_capstone_eportfolio/Subpage_3

Figure 12.7.  Screenshot of a beyond the classroom page, spring 2017.

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

215

The Capstone Scoring Rubric (see Appendix 12B), an adaptation of the AAC&U’s Integrative and Applied Learning VALUE Rubric, was developed by a UB Faculty Senate capstone committee (2014–2016) as the measurement instrument for assessing the student’s final capstone ePortfolio. The rubric was first tested in spring 2016 as part of a pilot capstone course (see Morreale, Van Zile-Tamsen, Emerson, & Herzog 2017), and later revised by curriculum and assessment to tie the outcomes of integrative learning specifically to the Pathways coursework. The highest benchmark for “articulate connections across different academic disciplines and perspectives” (p. 222, this volume) a capstone learning outcome, seeks evidence that students “[make] clear and specific connections between examples and perspectives across Pathways coursework and [use] these connections to reflect upon larger meanings (value) of the Pathway experience” (p. 229, this volume). For sources of evidence, the rubric specifies “Thematic and Global Integrative Essays” (Appendix 12B). This specification limits the potential for student self-discovery in three ways. First, the boundary presupposes that students can and will formulate connections within their pathways course experience, whether connections can be made or not. Should a student fail to formulate connections within these specific courses, assessment gains valuable data but at the cost of lower course grades for individual students. Second, the integrative essays become less integrative than summative, falling into a pattern of general course overviews. Third, the reflective work in previous pages of the ePortfolio, except for the global and thematic pathways coursework samples and criteria statements, ceases to provide a basis of reflection for the next page. Students are welcome to draw connections from other areas, should they wish, but the essays tend to confine themselves to content from the pathways sequence. Ideally, the capstone mirrors the structure of the UB Curriculum overall, which strives to be “a purposeful program with a beginning and an end, where every step of the journey builds on the last, readying graduates for everything to come” (UB Curriculum, 2017b, para. 1). The new curriculum implies a narrative arc: “a beginning” (UB seminar) and “an end” (capstone; UB Curriculum, 2017b, para. 1), with steps (foundations) and paths (global and thematic) between, and like the UB Curriculum model itself, the capstone ePortfolio depends on a cumulative integration of parts. The end of the ePortfolio is the Learning Philosophy Statement, where students take a last reflective look over their learning experience and contemplate where it might take them from here (Appendix 12C). Ideally, they leave the construction site (the ePortfolio) with a sense of closure, purpose, and preparedness, if not for everything to come, then at least ready to learn from future experiences.

Yancey.indb 215

21-03-2019 12:25:46

216   eportfolio as curriculum

The Vertical Integration of ePortfolio Selves If ePortfolios serve as a means for individual student integrative learning and reflection, they are also a site of integration among students, faculty, and administration. In one sense, ePortfolios are stand-alone compositions by individual students, but they are equally component elements of a larger institutional data set. Through the ePortfolio tool, pedagogical practices in the UB Curriculum, which were once largely isolated to a single class, are vertically integrated into institutional assessment procedures. For example, an essay assignment in a first-year composition course that was once created, assigned, and evaluated by a single teaching assistant now becomes a component in larger processes. Although student essays have always been a site for assessment, and program and institutional assessment are long-standing practices, the ePortfolio tool encourages a heightened level of backward integration, where the institutional assessors at the end of the supply chain can move down the chain into classrooms, assignments, and even the processes of individual students to gather data and shape students’ and faculty’s practices. The clearest and broadest examples of backward integration in the UB Curriculum are the creation of standard templates and rubrics for student ePortfolios, but there are other more singular examples where administrators in their review of the ePortfolio identify concerns with the content of student ePortfolios and call meetings to address these concerns. Institutional standards for curricula are nothing new, of course, but the ePortfolio platform allows a far more granular implementation of those standards. This is an entirely different spin on the notion of integrative learning in which the integration is occuring not only with the individual student who tries to draw connections among the different courses and experiences but also across the institutional network of actors and processes producing those courses and experiences. Although these two integrative processes can oscillate between supporting and contradicting one another, they are simultaneously undertaken by students and faculty as they work with the ePortfolio tool. When students upload a particular file or modify an ePortfolio template, they are simultaneously contributing to an effort to create a personal, integrated digital self and an effort to vertically integrate pedagogical labor for institutional ends. If the latter sounds nefarious, that is not our intent. Certainly in some situations the ends might be deemed unethical, but in others they might be viewed as a genuine, well-intentioned effort to assist students in gaining value from their education through ongoing reflection. Our intention is not to argue that this vertical integration must be rejected out of hand but rather to describe how such processes interact with the common, visible, and expected

Yancey.indb 216

21-03-2019 12:25:46

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

217

pedagogical practices of ePortfolio creation. A writer typically must work with and against the expectations and requirements of a given genre, and in that sense ePortfolios are no different. The templates and requirements in the UB Curriculum capstone might be considered as simply another example of a genre. However, in the UB situation, it would be an error to conceive of the ePortfolio tool solely as a genre in conventional rhetorical terms as it is also a communication and data analysis tool. In this respect, the ePortfolio shares features with many contemporary digital composing environments in which one is always also writing for machines in addition to any other audiences or purposes. From a pedagogical perspective, an ePortfolio can be a powerful means for individual students to take ownership of their own learning through their personal integration of experiences inside and outside the curriculum. It can be a process in which they see how their many different digital and nondigital selves fit together and how students make education meaningful. It is with that intention that the UB Curriculum administrators pursued integrative learning objectives, identified an ePortfolio tool, and built courses around them. However, tools are rarely that simple, and digital networked technologies can be particularly complex. In theory, one might teach with ePortfolios while insulating students from the effects of backward, vertical integration emerging from institutional goals for students to present themselves as particular kinds of integrated selves. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that students could be indifferent to these institutional expectations or even actively resistant to becoming the students UB envisions for them. Similarly, a user might be insulated, indifferent, or resistant to the way Google, Facebook, and other Web corporations seek to shape user participation and create value from user interactions. However, in a general education curriculum that explicitly values critical thinking as all such programs do, these options seem counterproductive. Instead, as a writer and student, one might seek a nuanced rhetorical relationship among these competing forces intersecting at the site of the ePortfolio tool. That is, rather than being insulated, indifferent, or simply resistant to the operation of digital media, students can learn to recognize the various actors and interests at work in this digital-rhetorical situation and develop strategies for negotiating among them to pursue their own personal and educational goals. The UB Curriculum is still in its infancy, and as we write this, the program is in its second year, which means only a handful of transfer students have encountered the capstone course, which would typically be taken in the junior year. Many implementation glitches are yet to be addressed. In all that, improving the use of the ePortfolio tool is only a minor consideration, and the answer to the question What is an ePortfolio? remains ambiguous,

Yancey.indb 217

21-03-2019 12:25:46

218   eportfolio as curriculum at least here. The experience of integration might result in a proliferation of digital selves rather than capturing them in a single measurable unit. One might recognize students’ shifting identities with each new composition and upload a sign of that proliferation rather than a data point describing a single, cohesive integrated self to be, awaiting its arrival in the capstone course. But from the perspective of a process of backward vertical integration, that final integrated student subject is always in the design of the curricular process from the first days in student orientation. Ultimately, dealing with these questions will require an awareness of the multiple purposes the ePortfolio serves and how they intersect.

Notes 1. To view an example of a completed ENG 105 student ePortfolio, see https://buffalo.digication.com/digication_eportfolio_eng105/Welcome/published. Note how this student has redesigned the common template to reflect her topic of interest. 2. Visual hospitality is a term Emerson introduced to her fall 2014 ENG 101 students while participating in the first pilot use of ePortfolios at UB and was subsequently incorporated into the UB seminar, Communication Literacy 1, and capstone professional development workshops. 3. This student’s final capstone ePortfolio is closed to public view. Although he discussed his grocery store experiences in teacher conferences and peer reviews, he omitted relevant examples from his reflective essays. His reluctance to disclose his experience in the private work sector suggests a limit on the scope of integration that can be documented through an instrument of student self-reflection. 4. A spring 2017 capstone student whose ePortfolio is closed to public view negotiated the boundary by writing a brief welcome statement with an added subpage titled “Letter From—” for visitors who would like to get to know the student a little better. Through a process of peer review, several capstone classmates followed suit and added their own letter to their home pages. 5. The following is an example of a criteria statement to accompany an Honors English 102 artifact by a 2016–2017 UB transfer student: This essay captures the revolution of the role of women, challenging the ideals of a conservative French, Bourgeois class of the 19th century. Madame Bovary is empowered as a woman through her sexuality in the novel, Madame Bovary, but empowerment can come from education, too. Women have long fought for equal rights, specifically fostering gender equality in schools. By banding together to fight gender inequality issues and underrepresentation in STEM careers, the passing of Title IX in 1972 paved the way for future generations of female students.

Yancey.indb 218

21-03-2019 12:25:46

integrative learning and eportfolio networks  

219

So, what does this have to do with me? Today almost half of all dental students and a quarter of practicing dentists are women whereas before the 1970s, women made up less than 3.3% of dentists. Thus, my aspirations of pursuing a degree in dental medicine is something that would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the female scientists before me. (Zlobinskaya 2017, p. 3, para. 2–3)

References Association of American Colleges & Universities. (2011). The LEAP vision for learning: Outcomes, practices, impact, and employers’ views. Washington, DC: Author. Cambridge, D. (2010). ePortfolios for lifelong learning and assessment. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. McCoy Wozniak, N. (2012). Enhancing inquiry, evidence-based reflection, and integrative learning with the lifelong ePortfolio process: The implementation of integrative ePortfolios at Stony Brook University. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 41, 209–230. Morreale, C., Van Zile-Tamsen, C., Emerson, C. A., & Herzog, M. (2017). Thinking skills by design. International Journal of Eportfolio, 7(1), 13–28. Pirie, M. S., & Reynolds, C. (2016). Creating an ePortfolio culture on campus through platform selection and implementation. Peer Review, 18(3), 21. Reynolds, C., & Patton, J. (2014). Leveraging the ePortfolio for integrative learning: A faculty guide to classroom practices for transforming student learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus. UB Curriculum. (2017a, June 16). Capstone. Retrieved from http://www.buffalo .edu/ubcurriculum/capstone.html UB Curriculum. (2017b, June 16c). Overview. Retrieved from http://www.buffalo .edu/ubcurriculum/overview.html UB Curriculum. (2017c, June 16a). Program learning outcomes. Retrieved from http://www.buffalo.edu/ubcurriculum/overview/outcomes.html UB Curriculum. (2017d, June 16d). UB seminar. Retrieved from http://www .buffalo.edu/ubcurriculum/seminar.html UB Curriculum Capstone Template (Classic). (2018a, August 17). “Beyond the Classroom.” Retrieved from https://buffalo.digication.com/ub_curriculum_capstone _template_classic/Resume UB Curriculum Capstone Template. (2018b, Aug 17) (Classic). Welcome Capstone. Retrieved from https://buffalo.digication.com/ub_curriculum_capstone_ template_classic/Welcome/published Zlobinskaya, M. (2017). Mariya Zlobinskaya’s capstone eportfolio. Retrieved from https://buffalo.digication.com/mariya_zlobinskayas_capstone_eportfolio/ Communication_Literacy_1

Yancey.indb 219

21-03-2019 12:25:46

APPENDIX 12A

UBC 399 Syllabus UBC 399: University of Buffalo Capstone Course Syllabus Spring 2017

Course Information Dates/Times:

January 30, 2017–May 12, 2017 / asynchronous with lab walk-in hours available Credits: 1 unit Instructor: Cheryl Emerson E-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: Online: Thursday, 11:00 am—12:00 pm In-person: Wednesday, 11:00 am—12:00 pm and by appointment Office Location: Clemens 618

Course Description The University of Buffalo (UB) Capstone is the culminating experience of the UB Curriculum. The Capstone is not a seated class, but rather a digital space set aside for thinking, reflecting, and integrating elements of the program through the creation of a Capstone ePortfolio: a multimedia, Web-based platform where students will gather and integrate their learning experiences at UB into a meaningful whole, demonstrating their growth and development as learners. Having completed or neared completion of their UB Curriculum requirements, students will have used their ePortfolio in at least the following UB Curriculum courses: UB Seminar and Communication Literacy 1. To complete the UB Capstone, students are asked to select examples from previous ePortfolio work as well as from projects and assignments completed in other UB Curriculum courses—Communication Literacy 2, Scientific Literacy and Inquiry, Math and Quantitative Reasoning, Diversity Learning, and Thematic and Global Pathways—to build and customize their ePortfolio in preparation for final submission. Students transferring in work from other 220

Yancey.indb 220

21-03-2019 12:25:46

appendix

12a   221

institutions will select work that demonstrates their achievement of learning outcomes of the UB Curriculum. A completed Capstone ePortfolio will consist of: • A personalized home page that serves as a brief introduction to the student, his or her studies, general interests, and career goals. • One or more ePortfolio pages that draw upon the multimedia design features of the digital platform. • Coursework Samples of completed papers and assignments from various areas of the student’s UB Curriculum coursework, accompanied by a brief criteria statement describing the significance of each project/assignment to the student’s growth as a learner. • The Coursework Samples page will also include the Diversity Learning essay completed during his/her coursework, with an opportunity to revise existing drafts prior to submitting the final Capstone ePortfolio. • A Supplementary Materials page with examples of student experience beyond the classroom (i.e., engagement with the arts; community volunteer work; internships; club and athletic activities; alternate break or study abroad experiences). • Two reflective essays: This culminating section of the Capstone demands a rigorous application of integrative thought, asking students to examine a complex issue from multiple theoretic perspectives or to adapt and apply skills to solve a complex problem. The two reflective essays will draw connections between the Thematic and Global Pathway courses, respectively. • A Learning Philosophy Statement: The Learning Philosophy Statement is a critical reflection upon the self as learner, and how the student’s understanding of self as learner has evolved or changed since his/her time at UB. The Learning Philosophy Statement will also consider the ethical challenges posed to learning in an age of global digital citizenship. The student’s Learning Philosophy Statement will be the closing piece of the Capstone project, written after all other sections are complete.

Course Prerequisites: • Students may enroll in the Capstone course upon completion of all UB Curriculum courses—or—during the same semester a student is completing the last of these requirements.

Yancey.indb 221

21-03-2019 12:25:46

222  

appendix

12a

• Completion of at least 60 credits toward degree (including transfer coursework) and be in an intended or approved major.

Course Requirements • On time completion of online topics and assignments • Participation in pre- and post- student surveys to aid in the assessment of the Capstone ePortfolio program and to provide feedback to instructor and administrators • Participation in weekly online discussion forum (topics TBA each Monday a.m.) • Two scheduled office consults with instructor

Student Learning Outcomes Upon completion of the Integrative Capstone Course, students will be able to: • Articulate connections across different academic disciplines and perspectives. • Adapt and apply skills, abilities, theories or methodologies acquired in one situation to new situations. • Connect relevant experiences and academic knowledge. • Demonstrate an evolving sense of self as learner. • Integrate different forms of communication to enhance meaning (prose, sound, visual media). • Formulate a concept of digital citizenship and be able to fashion an online identity that demonstrates an awareness of the public/private divide.

Course Materials • UB ePortfolio General User Startup Guide (posted in Digication and UB Curriculum website) • Digication ePortfolio (accounts provided to students) • Technical and Assignment videos/podcasts by topic (posted in Digication) • Selected readings from Portfolio Keeping (3rd Edition), by Nedra Reynolds and Elizabeth Davis (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014) *(on reserve in Lockwood Library) • Other course documents posted in Digication

Yancey.indb 222

21-03-2019 12:25:46

appendix

12a   223

Schedule and Assignments The Capstone course is organized into online modules addressing the content and technical skills needed to complete the Capstone project. Since the course is non-seated and delivered asynchronously, it is vital that students keep pace with weekly milestones to ensure timely completion of the final ePortfolio.

Yancey.indb 223

Date

Topics

Assignments/Participation Activities

Due Date

Week 1:

Introduction to the Capstone ePortfolio: concept and design

Participation: Completion of student pre-survey and posts to week 1 online discussion forum (topics TBA each Monday morning).

Mon, 2/6

Week 2:

Review of Digication technical skills and privacy settings; Basics of Digital Literacy

Assignment: Construct student home page; customize visual theme (banner, screen, directory and user icons)

Mon, 2/13

Weeks 3–4

“Curating the Exhibit”

Assignment: Posting UB Curriculum Coursework samples and Criteria Statements

Mon, 2/20 (draft); Mon, 2/27 (final)

Week 5

“Beyond the Classroom”

Assignment: Completion of the Supplementary Materials page (with criteria statements)

Mon, 3/6

Weeks 6–7

Integrative Learning 1

Assignment: 1st Reflective Essay (thematic pathway courses)

Mon, 3/13 (draft); Mon 3/27 (final)

SPRING BREAK: 3/20–25

(No assignments!)

Weeks 8–9

Integrative Learning 2

Assignment: 2nd Reflective Essay (global pathway courses)

Mon, 4/3 (draft); Mon 4/10 (final)

Weeks 10–11

Digital Ethics and Citizenship

Assignment: Completion of Learning Philosophy Statement

Mon, 4/17 (draft); Mon, 4/24 (final)

21-03-2019 12:25:46

224  

12a

appendix

Week 12

Peer Review and Revisions

Participation (x2): Complete peer and student self-evaluation rubrics

Mon, 5/1

Week 13

Final Revisions

Submit final Capstone ePortfolio

Mon, 5/8

Participation: Completion of student post-survey

Wed, 5/17

Week 14 (finals)

Note On Due Dates: Please note that weekly assignments are due on Mondays* to allow extra time over the weekend to complete work. Students are welcome (and encouraged!) to work ahead with early submissions on any and all assignments. The dates listed mark deadlines for full credit for on-time work (see grade policy below). *(exception: student post-survey due Wednesday of finals week)

Grading Policy GRADE WEIGHT CATEGORIES PARTICIPATION ACTIVITIES

10%

WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS

20%

FINAL CAPSTONE EPORTFOLIO

70%

1. Weekly Assignments and Participation Activities: Weekly Assignments and Participation Activities will be assigned a point value according to the following scale:

Yancey.indb 224

Category

Point Value

HP (High Pass)

10

P (Pass)

8.5

LP (Low Pass)

6.5

NP (NO Pass)

5

DNS (Did Not Submit)

0

21-03-2019 12:25:47

appendix

12a   225

2. Final Capstone ePortfolio: The Final Capstone ePortfolio will be assessed through an evaluation rubric reflecting the Student Learning Outcomes listed above, with each of the six outcomes scored along a percentage scale. The average percent of the Capstone ePortfolio will constitute 70% of the student’s final course grade. 3. Late Work: Students with extenuating circumstances (such as illness, family trauma, and unexpected emergencies) should contact the instructor by email as soon as possible to request a reasonable accommodation on due dates, no later than 24 hours prior to deadline. Instructor reserves the right to request documentation of extenuating circumstance and to refuse non-emergency requests. Late penalities will be assessed as follows: Assignments, Drafts, and Participation Activities

1-point deduction per each day late

Final Capston ePortfolio

5% deduction per each day late

4. Midterm Progress Report: Students will receive a letter grade at week seven of the semester (March 17) as an indication of quality and timely completion of assignments. Midterm grades are offered for informational purposes only and will not be averaged as part of the final course grade. 5. Final Course Grades: Please note that the Capstone is a graded course included in the student’s cumulative GPA, according to the following scale:

Yancey.indb 225

Grade

Percentage Range

A

93–100

A-

90–92

B+

87–89

B

83–86

B-

80–82

C+

77–79

C

73–76

C-

70–72

D+

67–69

D

63–66

D-

60–62

F

 0–59

21-03-2019 12:25:47

226  

appendix

12a

Course Repeats: Only students who earn a failing grade may repeat the UB Capstone. Students who repeat UBC 399 will be subject to the university’s repeat policies.

Incompletes Students are required to be familiar with the University’s policy on incomplete grades, outlined at the following address: http://undergrad-catalog.buffalo.edu/policies/grading/explanation.shtml

Academic Integrity Academic integrity is a fundamental university value and equally expected of students in the Capstone course. Through the honest completion of academic work, students sustain the integrity of the university while facilitating the university’s imperative for the transmission of knowledge and culture based upon the generation of new and innovative ideas. • Link to the university Undergraduate Academic Integrity policy: http://undergradcatalog.buffalo.edu/policies/course/integrity.shtmn

Accessibility Resources If you have any disability which requires reasonable accommodations to enable you to participate in this course, please contact the Office of Accessibility Resources, 60 Capen Hall, 645-2608, and also the instructor of this course. The office will provide you with information and review appropriate arrangements for reasonable accommodations, http://www.student-affairs.buffalo .edu/ods/. Digication interfaces with screen readers such as Jaws and VoiceOver, with further support available through [email protected]. Audio course materials will be captioned or accompanied by transcript.

Attendance Policy • Online presence: Capstone students show active participation in this course by maintaining an online presence in discussion boards, peer review, and through timely completion of weekly modules.

Yancey.indb 226

21-03-2019 12:25:47

appendix

12a   227

In addition, students are expected to arrive on time for scheduled conferences with instructor, whether in-office or online. • Students with extenuating circumstances should contact his/her Capstone instructor.

Online Decorum • Students are expected to maintain a respectful, professional tone in all online discussion board topics as well as material posted to ePortfolios. The practice of appropriate Online Decorum is a necessary component of responsible Digital Citizenship as well as one of the non-quantitative learning outcome goals of the Integrative Capstone course. Failure to maintain Online Decorum may adversely affect student’s course grade or (in extreme cases) result in dismissal from the Capstone course as well as referral to student judicial affairs. (cf. Undergraduate Academic Integrity policy, above).

Yancey.indb 227

21-03-2019 12:25:47

APPENDIX 12B

Capstone Scoring Rubric

UBC 399: University of Buffalo Curriculum Capstone Learning Outcomes: Through successful completion of the University of Buffalo (UB) Curriculum Capstone, students will: • Articulate connections across different academic disciplines and perspectives. • Adapt and apply skills, abilities, theories or methodologies acquired in one situation to new situations. • Connect relevant experiences and academic knowledge. • Demonstrate an evolving sense of self as learner. • Integrate different forms of communication to enhance meaning (prose, sound, visual media). • Formulate a concept of digital citizenship and be able to fashion an online identity that demonstrates an awareness of the public/private divide.

228

Yancey.indb 228

21-03-2019 12:25:47

Yancey.indb 229

Uses skills, abilities, theories, or methodologies gained in one situation in a new situation to attempt to solve problems or issues.

(Continues)

Uses and connects skills, abilities, theories, and/ or methodologies gained in one situation to offer a solution for complex problems or issues in an original way.

May be evident in any or all of the following: Home Page, Learning Philosophy Statement, Artifact Criteria Statements, Beyond the Classroom, Integrative Essays

Uses skills, abilities, theories, or methodologies gained in one situation in a new situation to understand problems or issues.

Sources of Evidence

Uses, in a basic way, skills, abilities, theories, or methodologies gained in one situation in a new situation.

Insufficient evidence

Makes clear and specific connections between examples and perspectives across Pathways coursework and uses these connections to reflect upon larger meanings (value) of the Pathway experience.

Adapt & Apply Skills

Makes clear and specific connections between examples and perspectives from Pathway courses. Connections may gesture toward the larger breadth of the Pathway, but do not make this explicit.

100%

Thematic and Global integrative essays.

Establishes connections between examples or perspectives across courses in a Pathway. Yet, connections may still only pertain to coursework within a single Pathway course. Connections across Pathway courses may still be vague.

85%

Sources of Evidence

Presents unclear or vague connections between Pathway courses. Connections may only pertain to coursework done in a single course and not across courses in a Pathway.

70%

Insufficient evidence

60%

Articulate Connections

0%

appendix

12b   229

21-03-2019 12:25:47

Yancey.indb 230

Envisions a trajectory of ongoing learning that emerges from diverse past experiences and anticipates subsequent challenges.

May be evident in any or all of the following: Home Page, Learning Philosophy Statement, Artifact Criteria Statements, Beyond the Classroom.

Evaluates selfdevelopment over time within diverse learning contexts.

Sources of Evidence

Articulates strengths and challenges within specific experiences to elaborate one’s relation to context.

appendix

Locates self in learning narrative with relevant but limited number of experiences.

Insufficient evidence

Meaningfully synthesizes connections among experiences outside of the formal classroom to deepen understanding of fields of study and to broaden own points of view.

Sense of Self as an Evolving Learner

Effectively selects and develops examples of experiences outside of the formal classroom, drawn from a variety of contexts to illuminate concepts/theories/ frameworks of fields of study.

Compares experiences outside of the formal classroom and academic knowledge to infer differences, as well as similarities, and acknowledge perspectives other than own.

100%

May be evident in any or all of the following: Home Page, Learning Philosophy Statement, Artifact Criteria Statements, Beyond the Classroom.

85%

70%

Sources of Evidence

Identifies connections between experiences outside of the formal classroom and those academic texts and ideas perceived as similar and related to own interests.

60%

Insufficient evidence

0%

Connect Relevant Experiences & Academic Knowledge

(Continued )

230   12b

21-03-2019 12:25:47

Yancey.indb 231

Insufficient evidence

The whole of the ePortfolio.

Digital Citizenship

Sources of Evidence

Uses the ePortfolio to convey an unreflective understanding of the elements of Digital Citizenship.

The whole of the ePortfolio.

Sources of Evidence

Uses the multimodal capabilities of ePortfolio (e.g., text, images, video, and/ or sound) to produce basic meaning.

Insufficient evidence

60%

Integrate Different Forms of Communication

0%

Use the ePortfolio to convey a limited understanding of the elements of Digital Citizenship.

Uses the multimodal capabilities of the ePortfolio (e.g., text, images, video, and/ or sound) to produce basic meaning with a beginning awareness of purpose and audience.

70%

Uses the ePortfolio to convey a critical awareness of the elements of Digital Citizenship.

Uses the multimodal capabilities of the ePortfolio to explicitly connect content with mode (e.g., text, images, video, and/or sound), demonstrating awareness of purpose and audience.

85%

Uses the ePortfolio to convey an active engagement with the elements of Digital Citizenship.

Uses the multimodal capabilities of the ePortfolio in ways that enhance meaning, making clear the interdependence of meaning and mode (e.g., text, images, video, and/or sound) and demonstrating awareness of purpose and audience.

100%

appendix

12b   231

21-03-2019 12:25:47

APPENDIX 12C

Learning Philosophy Statement

I

have always thought about education as the cornerstone to any developed society. As an immigrant, I’m privileged with the ability to contrast and compare my old home and my new home, Yemen and the United States of America. Yemen has been in turmoil for years, poverty and famine is rampant in all the parts of that region, and every time I take a minute to look back on my old life, and wonder why is my old home in ruins and decay and my new home in prosperity and glory, I always come to the conclusion that the only difference between these two homes of mine is the level of education that the average individual in a society or country has achieved. Humans are the same everywhere, there is not a genetic difference beyond the physical that somehow impairs an individual to build a prosperous society, there are only levels of education that vary from one society to another, and from one country to another. To me, the sentence “knowledge is power” is the truest sequence of words to ever be uttered. I know with absolute certainty that the only reason some parts of the world remain underdeveloped is education or the lack thereof. I consider education as a right because I firmly believe it is a God-given right that is as basic as the need for food or water. Almost every problem in the world is due to ignorance in some shape or form. With enough education all the problems in the world could theoretically be eradicated, racism stems from ignorance of other cultures and shades of skin, poverty stems from ignorance of viable economic systems and learned skills that can be used to generate money, and hate and aggression stems from both racism and poverty. Education to me is an unending journey, I continue to learn every day and I do not think I will ever be satisfied with my education. The value of education to me is unmeasurable because of how it has changed my life, I will never take it for granted. My only motivation for gaining a college education is to learn, my only wish for the world is to be free from any monetary obstacles just so that our only currency would become knowledge. That motivation was not always there for me, it has changed considerably through my 232

Yancey.indb 232

21-03-2019 12:25:47

appendix

12c   233

college years. I only realized the value of education recently and it might be the biggest regret of my life. In high school, I would barely wake up in the morning to go to class, I did not have a mentor in my life that would help me understand the value of education, nor did my teachers inspire the love of education in me. It was not until college that I understood just how important education is for me as an individual and for the world as a whole. Thankfully, I became a mentor for my younger brother and made sure he avoided all the mistakes I made. My younger brother graduated from high school with honors and received a full scholarship to a private and well-respected university. He now wants to be an opthamologist [sic] and currently has a 3.9 GPA and I couldn’t be more proud. In my opinion, what happened to me and then my younger brother exemplifies the value of education and what the passing of knowledge can achieve. I only wish that I was born in a different time, where science has progressed enough to offer us immortality so we can spend the rest of eternity learning. But would infinite time to learn lessen the value of education? That is a topic for another discussion.

Yancey.indb 233

21-03-2019 12:25:47

Yancey.indb 234

21-03-2019 12:25:47

13 C O N C L U D I N G F O R WA R D Kathleen Blake Yancey

A

s the chapters in this volume demonstrate, an ePortfolio curriculum writ large has three goals. First and most immediately, it supports students in creating ePortfolios. Second, this curriculum fosters ePortfolio literacy, constituted by a knowledge about ePortfolios and a set of practices useful for creating them. And third, this curriculum helps students become ePortfolio makers, able to create not only one ePortfolio, but rather ePortfolios for various purposes in various contexts. More specifically, knowledge about ePortfolios includes information about ePortfolios, such as about ePortfolios as a genre, about ePortfolio models and types, about distinctive ePortfolio features, and about ways of creating ePortfolios. ePortfolio practices include artifact archiving, selection, and curation; ePortfolio designing, with all it entails from use of the visual to site arrangement; and ePortfolio reflecting. Students who have developed such knowledge and practices have also developed knowledge about ePortfolio makingness, which is an ability to create ePortfolios to serve different purposes, among them designing and curating an ePortfolio thinking space; composing a developmental portfolio, keyed perhaps to collateral learning; making a showcase ePortfolio, possibly for a capstone; and creating an ePortfolio to secure employment. An ePortfolio curriculum is thus a general curriculum located in ePortfolio knowledge and practices; it is also a localized curriculum responsive to individual institutional missions, as illustrated throughout this volume. In the chapter on Hampshire College, for instance, the curriculum includes individual and interdisciplinary progress over all four years of the academic career. At Clermont College, the curriculum is strongly linked to students developing the identity and mind-set of a student, and at the University at Buffalo (UB) the ePortfolio curriculum is integrated with and caps a cumulative pathway–informed general education program. Moreover, an ePortfolio curriculum can be offered in several curricular sites. It can be 235

Yancey.indb 235

21-03-2019 12:25:47

236   eportfolio as curriculum offered inside another curriculum, as in the Florida State University and Clermont College writing courses; can in effect partner with a given curriculum, as at the University of Virginia and Northeastern University; can anchor new general education programs, as at UB and Texas A&M–San Antonio; and can be the topic of its own course, as in the Florida State University studio model, the Trinity University model, and the Stanford science communication model. Thus, an ePortfolio curriculum is not necessarily located inside a course or a set of courses, although in some cases it is; it is not always an explicit part of another curriculum, although that too is possible; and it is not always programmatic, although later models often are. An ePortfolio curriculum includes attention to knowledge about portfolios and experience with creating them, especially as provided in structured ePortfolio activities like curation and reflection. Likewise, the curriculum is often collaborative, interdisciplinary, and integrative, open to prior as well as current knowledge. It fosters shifts in identity and supports student autonomy, often concurrently, and it enlarges students’ ability to negotiate meaning with the tools of digital literacy as they, in the ePortfolio, use reflection to not only trace the past but also chart the future.

Features and Dimensions of an ePortfolio Curriculum The ePortfolio curriculum described in these chapters has six features. It includes (a) artifacts, which with reflection, are the substance of ePortfolios. Tacitly or explicitly, this curriculum encourages students to understand an ePortfolio as (b) a site of integration, what UB calls a digital place where students can make sense of, and bring into coherence, artifacts and experience as well as their multiple selves, past, present, and future. Composing this ePortfolio, students—sometimes explicitly, sometimes tacitly—engage in the (c) curation of their artifacts for ePortfolio exhibits, sometimes to demonstrate development or accomplishment keyed to previously identified outcomes and at other times to express an emerging articulation of their own meaning. In all cases, the (d) audience, inherently online but often physically present, is a critical feature as students often find that in explaining their learning and their insights to an audience, especially an external audience, they in fact explain those insights to themselves as well. Last but not least, (e) reflection, which can take multiple forms, is the lifeblood of ePortfolios. Through reflective practice, students connect and contextualize artifacts, exploring their meaning and explaining their value. This curriculum, then, supports students in the construction of a (f ) digital identity and in its representation.

Yancey.indb 236

21-03-2019 12:25:47

concluding forward  

237

At the same time, the ePortfolio curriculum as explored and represented in this volume is neither standard nor uniform; programs emphasize different dimensions of ePortfolios, seven of which seem especially important.

Archive and Reflection Working together in an ePortfolio, the two dimensions of archive and reflection complement each other. As Matthews-DeNatale notes in chapter 6, “The process of reflecting on and analyzing their [the students’] experiences often changed their pathway forward, academically and professionally” (p. 118) with artifacts representing those experiences. Indeed, as Matthews-DeNatale observes, a good deal of ePortfolio activity is located in the two activities of remembering and analyzing to envision the future. The archive often serves two purposes in an ePortfolio curriculum. In the first, more conventional instance, students collect their artifacts into an archive, a kind of repository where students can select from among these artifacts and reflect on them. Archives can also prompt students to create concept maps showing how archival artifacts relate to each other, as in the Stanford program. As important, however, is the second purpose of ePortfolio archives: to house students’ own reflections, thus supporting them in reviewing their own reflections as documents of development and sites of meaning-making. In other words, although ePortfolio archives are associated with artifacts, they can also include student reflections. When students draw on such archived reflections, they can present evidence of what Hampshire College, in chapter 4, calls pivotal experiences, “the experiences or moments when a student’s conceptions or interests shifted drastically because of new insights” (p. 74). To help students with this task, Hampshire has been especially attentive to the kinds of questions students can ask of their reflections, for instance asking quite directly, “What patterns do you see in your narrative evaluations and self-evaluations?” (p. 79). In addition, a set of ePortfolios can constitute a continuing archive, as the language program at the University of Virginia suggests. As students progress in their language study, they are advised to trace their development as constructed in their earlier ePortfolios, in part to understand it and in part to set goals for future work: If you completed an ePortfolio in prior Spanish courses at [the University of Virginia], go back and review your work from those past courses. What do you notice about your development as a Spanish speaker from the beginning of those courses: your mastery of grammar and vocabulary, your skill development (speaking, listening, reading, writing), and your understanding of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world? Point to three

Yancey.indb 237

21-03-2019 12:25:47

238   eportfolio as curriculum to five pieces of work that showcase your development in those areas. How will you apply what you have learned in future Spanish study, internships, work, travel, volunteer work, or other areas of your life? What are three to five specific goals you have for further development of your Spanish beyond SPAN 2020? (p. 69)

As students engage in an ePortfolio curriculum, they collect artifacts they can study for several purposes, such as to discern development; record achievement; identify pivotal moments of learning; and see learning across contexts inside and outside school, in the past and in the moment. In addition, in an ePortfolio curriculum, students may collect and study their own reflections; they too are sites of meaning and of meaning-making.

Role An ePortfolio curriculum often positions students as what Yancey (1998) has called “agents of their own learning” (p. 5). In the Clermont College model, for example, students focus on developing their expertise as learners who can put aside, or draw on as necessary, their collateral knowledge. At Hampshire College, students are the planners of their own interdisciplinary curriculum; in the Stanford science communication program, much like the Northeastern master’s program, students are developing professionals; in the Macaulay Honors program, students are interdisciplinary project creators. In the Texas A&M–San Antonio model, students are learners developing progressive expertise in four areas: college, the world, their major, and their profession. At UB, students are learners, inside and outside school, whose failure counts as a part of their learning and as an option opening the door to a wider reflective emphasis in the ePortfolio: Students choose coursework samples based on their personal learning value rather than on standards of academic excellence. Because the capstone ePortfolio is a vehicle for reflection and integration, why a sample is chosen is more important than the grade it received at the time. In retrospect, assignments that previously failed, or a screenshot of written course notes, for example, might best recall for the student an important moment of learning. (p. 213)

The UB ePortfolio concludes with the “Learning Philosophy Statement, where students take a last reflective look over their learning experience and contemplate where it might take them from here” (p. 215): Much like the Macaulay Springboard ePortfolio, the UB model asks students to speak to the past so as to design a future.

Yancey.indb 238

21-03-2019 12:25:47

concluding forward  

239

More generally, in many of the ePortfolio models presented in this volume, the student plays a specifically assigned agentive role.

Multimodality The use of multiple modes to make meaning, including words, slides, visuals, audio, and video, is critical for an ePortfolio curriculum, although the rationale for multimodality can vary. The University of Virginia’s language program positions all language learning as multimodal, which is at the heart of the program and the ePortfolio centering it. The Macaulay program emphasizes the e in ePortfolio, with the result that students are expected to draw on the multiple resources electronic environments offer. The Stanford science communication program takes yet another tack, emphasizing the role of multimodality in the communication of science and the role faculty play in modeling such communication practices: As students continue to communicate in a variety of media and modes, from print texts and presentation slides to podcasts and social media, the ePortfolio gives them the critical opportunity to showcase their ability to communicate in visual, auditory, and textual ways. According to a survey of faculty across the disciplines conducted by Reid, Snead, Pettiway, and Simoneaux (2016), faculty in the sciences are among the most prolific creators of multimodal content, regularly composing diverse texts ranging from presentations with visual and multimedia components to technical writing and websites. (p. 175)

Another version of multimodality animates the Florida State University writing ePortfolio. As Cicchino, Efstathion, and Giarusso suggest in chapter 1, some artifacts, like those that are three dimensional, don’t immediately lend themselves to the screen. In designing their ePortfolios, students also need to decide how readers will access their artifacts, and this kind of decision-making calls for another kind of multimodality, one keyed less to representation and more to the delivery of the artifact and the way(s) the reader will engage with it. Put more generally, in this version of ePortfolio multimodality, students have several decisions to make: They need to consider how the affordances of the digital platform can offer strategies to display such texts effectively. This might mean including videos or a gallery showing a visual piece from multiple angles or adding a textual description articulating effaced details. Even when students choose to move digital texts to this new digital space, however, they must still consider the delivery of the artifact: Downloading a Word document is a very

Yancey.indb 239

21-03-2019 12:25:47

240   eportfolio as curriculum different exercise from viewing an embedded PDF or seeing the words directly placed on the ePortfolio’s page. Considering how to reproduce and design texts in the space of the ePortfolio is rhetorical work. (pp. 17­–19)

Multimodality is thus another critical dimension of an ePortfolio curriculum, one that can take various forms.

Design Often considered part of multimodality, design in an ePortfolio curriculum can play a somewhat different role given its connection to identity construction and representation, audience considerations, networking, and metacognition. In Florida State University’s one-credit studio ePortfolio course, for instance, design focuses on visuals that define the ePortfolio and ways they represent the student and provide coherence across multiple artifacts and experiences. The relationship between design and identity is also an important focus in the Northeastern teacher education model: By encouraging students to iterate designs and consider how design helps to represent the artifacts and reflections in their ePortfolio, students can apply their metacognitive thinking to not only their written work but also the full user experience of their ePortfolio. In so doing, the student approach to design moves beyond technical choices and into deliberate, metacognitive thought about constructing their identities. (pp. 175–176)

At Macaulay Honors College, attention to design includes issues of audience, networking, and circulation, as Ugoretz explains by using the example of a single student: In making design decisions and thinking about how to present and organize her ePortfolio site, she was able to think about categories and taxonomies for her work: When is a draft a draft? What takes a revision in a separate direction? Because the site resides on the open Internet, she could make decisions about licensing (she chose a Attribution-NonCommercial license from the Creative Commons website) and sharing. She could not only decide that her work, or portions of her work, could move beyond the secluded file cabinet but also actually invite and encourage further interaction beyond the moment of completion of the project and the degree. It’s worth noting that this student still has a link to the site on her LinkedIn profile as of this writing, more than six years after she graduated and while she is fully established in a postgraduate career. (pp. 152–153)

Design considerations, in sum, range from the ePortfolio composer’s identity and its representation to audience and circulation.

Yancey.indb 240

21-03-2019 12:25:47

concluding forward  

241

Capstones Although capstones provide an opportune site for ePortfolios at several institutions, capstone functions can differ. At UB, for example, the capstone and its ePortfolio are a culminating experience for a capacious general education program; Macaulay Honors College’s capstone was renamed Springboard precisely to signal its forward orientation, which the ePortfolio enacts. Northeastern’s capstone, much like Stanford’s, provides a site for a culminating professional ePortfolio that is a remix and revision of an earlier portfolio created at the inception of the program. Such deliberate revisions and remixings support the transitions that students will make from school to after school, as stated by Matthews-DeNatale: In the capstone course, students draw on their work and reflections in their learning portfolios to create an outward-facing professional ePortfolio, publicly available on the Internet. In addition to serving as a tool for students to communicate their strengths to others, the process of developing this second ePortfolio helps them make the important identity transition from master’s student to education professional who has a master’s degree. (p. 108)

Another kind of capstone, the more conventional disciplinary site, provides other opportunities for identity formation, as Susan Kahn illustrates in her description of the capstone at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. Interestingly, this capstone’s purpose is holistic, as is the idea of a life story that provides a reflective foundation for this ePortfolio curriculum: Bateson’s (2006) argument that a life story, and, indeed, a self, is a choice, a subjective construct that we continually compose as we navigate our lives and accumulate experiences, was an idea that most students had not previously encountered or considered. Asking them to apply this idea to their own stories and selves added a new metacognitive challenge. The task required students to not only engage in metacognition but also recognize explicitly that they were engaging in it. (p. 101)

Capstones are particularly hospitable sites for ePortfolios and for an ePortfolio curriculum in part because a capstone is understood as an opportunity for synthesis and culmination as well as a site of transition, whereas ePortfolios are understood as a unique vehicle for facilitating synthesis, culmination, and transition.

Community and Collaboration The characteristics of an ePortfolio curriculum often include community and collaboration. In Florida State’s ePortfolio studio course, students share ePortfolio reviews, visual designs, and peer reviews. At Texas A&M–San

Yancey.indb 241

21-03-2019 12:25:47

242   eportfolio as curriculum Antonio, the collaboration, influenced by testimonio, includes students, staff, and faculty in creating new kinds of personal, academic, and institutional knowledge. At the University of Virginia, this collaboration, especially as it extends beyond class, can reduce anxiety as it also provides new occasions for learning: The informal, meaningful exchange of ideas and opinions outside class— sharing student journals, culture-focused activities, and commenting by peers and instructors in the ePortfolio—contributes to building a supportive community of learners in a class, lowering student anxiety about foreign language use, and offering valuable additional opportunities for meaningful communication in the target language. This collaboration and sharing also increases input, production, and frequent exposure to cultural topics in ways that weren’t possible without ePortfolios. (p. 56)

And the Macaulay curriculum conceptualizes such collaboration as a necessary component of the springboard ePortfolios: The student creating a springboard project, like the flyer on the Russian Bar, launches higher because the student is working from a flexible base and because others are helping and pushing and working in concert. The individual performance is not completely or solely an individual effort based on individual strength. The concept emphasizes the reality, which is also one of our desired outcomes, that every individual project is also collective. Without the participation of others, the project is incomplete and doesn’t go as far as it needs to. (p. 154)

In addition to collection, selection, and reflection (Yancey, 1991), ePortfolio processes for many of the programs presented in this volume include collaboration and community participation.

Citizenship Sometimes global, other times digital, and sometimes both, citizenship is a theme in several of these models. By definition, the University of Virginia language ePortfolio encourages students to explore the world as global citizens—through different languages, multimodal artifacts, and reflection: In your final reflective essay, you will reflect on what you learned in SPAN 2020 and throughout your studies of Spanish. Review your ePortfolio and consider all aspects of your work toward becoming a better Spanish speaker/

Yancey.indb 242

21-03-2019 12:25:47

concluding forward  

243

writer/listener/reader, culturally aware global citizen, and proficient user of digital media. (p. 68)

Interestingly, the twofold goal here is to become a “culturally aware global citizen” as well as a “proficient user of social media” (p. 68), and although they are listed as separate items, students use the one to help with the other. Taking a different tack but for a similar purpose, the Texas A&M–San Antonio model includes an emphasis on exploring students’ place in the global community in the sophomore year, Jaguar Tracks II one-credit course. Another kind of citizenship, this one located specifically in digital environments, is an important component of UB’s general education ­capstone model; first-year students learn about ways to construct an online identity, and like their firstyear peers at Florida State, they also learn about “the ethical use of source material” (pp. 207–208) in the UB program explicitly “to support the development of digital citizenship” (p. 208) all as part of “creat[ing] sites that convey a greater sense of digital place . . . which helps to cultivate a sense of audience as visitors to their site” (p. 208). A key concept locating this digital citizenship is visual hospitality, which suggests “a relation between host and guest in place of the traditional dyad of author and audience” (p. 209). A related concept locating digital citizenship is the ePortfolio as “a virtual dwelling” providing hospitality, which can motivate students to understand their role as hosts. Interestingly, citizenship in the context of the ePortfolio can take many forms and can in some cases function to reconceptualize the ePortfolio itself. Taken together, what these six characteristics and seven dimensions of ePortfolio curriculum collectively create, as one student at the University of Virginia observes, is a continuous opportunity for serendipitous learning, one informed by but operating outside of the conventional curriculum: As an Economics and Government double major I find the role of Governments and Economies fascinating, and what this e-portfolio allowed me to do was explore those topics scattered throughout our textbook and collect them here on a single site. I learned about French, new cultures, and about new economies in a way that I found far more interesting than previous class assignments. To give a specific example, I found the study of the program AFMIN very interesting since as we read about its micro-financing goals I was also in my Economics class studying reasons why some countries have such a lack of capital. And if this weren’t coincidence enough I also started studying global development in Comparative Politics. For a period of about a week or two I had 3 classes essentially discussing different perspectives of the same thing. I think moments like these for any student

Yancey.indb 243

21-03-2019 12:25:47

244   eportfolio as curriculum at a university are both rare and exciting, and in particular I found them very intellectually inspiring. (p. 55)

New ePortfolio Genres and Metaphors The relationship of ePortfolios, ePortfolio curriculum, and genre is an interesting one for three reasons. First, electronic portfolios are a new genre (Yancey, 2004). As Darren Cambridge has observed, As a genre, an ePortfolio is not just any reflection supported by technology or any digital evidence of learning, but reflection on evidence of learning that is also part of the portfolio. Making the link between reflection and evidence is what distinguishes an ePortfolio. (as cited in Eynon, 2009)

Second, the goal of an ePortfolio curriculum is to help students understand and enact the ePortfolio genre; in completing this curriculum, students develop ePortfolio literacy while also becoming ePortfolio makers. Third, the ePortfolio and its curriculum have fostered new ePortfolio-specific genres supporting the creation of ePortfolios—like Macaulay’s digital time lines, Stanford’s concept maps, and UB’s Learning Philosophy Statement. Some of these ePortfolio-related genres are adaptations of other genres. Several courses and programs represented here, for example, use concept maps, which can be described as a general learning and representation tool. As might be expected, concept maps in the context of an ePortfolio curriculum are directed toward ePortfolio reflection and design. At Northeastern University, students make two concept maps, “baseline [concept maps] and culminating concept maps” (p. 114), whose comparative visuals help students trace how their thinking has changed. At Stanford, concept maps play a different role: Students create them as a mechanism for connecting different activities, a process also forecasting how the ePortfolio’s arrangement might be designed: In this map, students connect different activities from their academic and personal journeys at the university. . . . Student responses vary widely, and students frequently mention the challenge of deciding which experiences to include and how to group those experiences in ways that are legible to an outside audience. The students discover that these challenges in constructing the concept map are the same challenges involved in creating an ePortfolio site map. (p. 176)

Another adapted genre is the digital time line used at Macaulay Honors Challenge. Like the concept map, the digital time line can be used for several

Yancey.indb 244

21-03-2019 12:25:47

concluding forward  

245

purposes. For the ePortfolio curriculum, it allows students to develop a rich, full representation of learning that is lifelong and lifewide: By building this assignment into the course curriculum and making the inclusion of this wide-ranging time line part of the presentation of the final project, we ask students to locate the final projects not only as culminations or final achievements of their education but also as connected pieces of the larger set of experiences. Students include classes and in-school activities and assignments in their time lines as well as life events and discoveries that are not connected directly to school. (p. 157)

This time line, in other words, is especially helpful in its openness to the whole student, and because of its digital nature, it engages students in the kind of electronic moves they will be making in composing the ePortfolio. The tag, now an ePortfolio reflective tag (McDonald, 2016), is yet another adapted ePortfolio genre. As Sue Denning explains, in chapter 7’s description of the Trinity program, ePortfolio tags serve three purposes. First, students tag each of their portfolio posts as a way of identifying and cross-referencing them. Second, drawing from an expansive list of tags created by interdepartmental cocurricular staff, administration, and faculty, students define tags and in the process recognize features—like language skills and leadership— in their own experiences. Third, as a culminating activity, students apply “text analysis tools to find keywords and phrases” (p. 129) to their ePortfolio artifacts, a process that illuminate[s] other narratives that are woven through the content of their site. When words like analyze, decide, and compare come up with high frequency in the full text of a[n ePortfolio], it’s a good opportunity to suggest that critical thinking may be a larger component of their skill set than it would initially seem. (p. 129)

Other genres described here seem to be ePortfolio specific. Electronic portfolio inventories, for instance, are especially important for students creating ePortfolios outside conventional courses. Students who create course ePortfolios typically work with course-specific artifacts, although as in the case of the FSU writing ePortfolio, they may be allowed to include a limited number of artifacts from outside class. Nonetheless, in course ePortfolios, all or most of the artifacts are already identified. In an ePortfolio where constructing and representing learning taps multiple courses and includes artifacts from outside school, the artifacts are not preidentified. The responsibility of finding, identifying, and gathering artifacts is the student’s, and in that context, an ePortfolio inventory is very useful. Trinity’s experience provides a case in point:

Yancey.indb 245

21-03-2019 12:25:47

246   eportfolio as curriculum During the first meeting of the course, students generate a list of all the potential artifacts they have created while at Trinity. We call this content audit the Trinity Inventory. Students list every academic, athletic, social, and extra- and cocurricular experience they have had while at Trinity. They inventory any evidence they could attach to each experience: coursework, a photo, a link to a website, and so on. Finally, they do some unstructured, reflective writing about what might be meaningful about these experiences. The Trinity Inventory is a living document, and we encourage students to build it in a digital format because we will refer to their inventory for nearly every activity in the class, often adding to and evolving its content. (p. 128)

The idea of an inventory as a living document speaks to the dynamic quality of the ePortfolio curriculum and the kinds of genres being created to support this curriculum. A second ePortfolio-specific genre is an ePortfolio review of the kind required in both of the Florida State University models and in the Stanford program; this genre includes the reading, reviewing, and analyzing of one or more ePortfolios. In completing this assignment, students define the new genre of ePortfolio by analyzing different instantiations of it and identify features of ePortfolios they might want to design into their own ePortfolio. A third ePortfolio-specific genre is UB’s Learning Philosophy Statement, a required component of the UB ePortfolio that seems to parallel the faculty teaching philosophy statement. This ePortfolio genre gives students an opportunity to make sense of their learning in the context of diverse artifacts created inside and outside school. The ePortfolio curriculum is also prompting new ePortfolio metaphors. Of course, as Darren Cambridge (2013) explains, metaphors have historically informed nearly every aspect of ePortfolios, from their purpose and their function to ways to design them. Cambridge reminds us of the 3 portfolio metaphors identified by Mary Dietz (1996) more than 20 years ago: “the mirror (portfolio as reflection of the past and the self ), the map (portfolio as plan for the future), and the sonnet (portfolio as form that helps identify what is most significant)” (p. 155). Other uses of metaphor include assistance in the visual design of ePortfolios (Kimball, 2002), and even programs can rely on such metaphors. At Kapi’olani Community College, for example, students are encouraged to think of their educational development in the cultural matrix represented in an outrigger canoe (Kirkpatrick, Renner, Kanae, & Goya, 2009). With the ePortfolio curriculum, however, new metaphors are emerging. Both Macaulay and Northeastern contrast ePortfolios with filing cabinets, the latter as static and ignored, the former

Yancey.indb 246

21-03-2019 12:25:47

concluding forward  

247

as dynamic and valuable. UB ePortfolio draws on the metaphor of a digital place in describing its general education ePortfolio where students can build in and extend visual hospitality; in this case the metaphor has resonance for ePortfolios generally while also speaking to the specific UB program. The Florida State University studio course calls on students to gather and create stock, a metaphor indicating a richness of possibility. And not least, a weaving metaphor at Northeastern speaks to the possibility ePortfolios present to students: As interviewees grasped for metaphors that could convey the uniqueness of their experience, they often described the process in terms of untangling threads to weave new meaning. The ePortfolio experience helped them make meaning of themselves in addition to making meaning of the curriculum, with interviewees often speaking of the two interchangeably. (p. 120)

Areas for Future Focus As the ePortfolio curriculum continues to develop, several questions remain, four of which seem particularly important. First, who is the author of the ePortfolio and, more specifically, is the author singular? In the springboard ePortfolio, some students “promote and invite participation from their audiences through FAQs, posting and linking to their ePortfolios on social media, or even opening a ‘Share Your Story’ page on the springboard ePortfolio site” (p. 162). As Ugoretz points out, this widening of authorship, which he calls an “openness to external participation” (p. 162), is somewhat at odds with a more conventional, presumed singular ePortfolio authorship. Moreover, a collaborative ePortfolio authorship, resembling authorship in scholarly publications, participates in a wider epistemological ecology. Ugoretz asks, “If an ePortfolio includes the work of others, rather than just the student, is that still an ePortfolio? Is it still the work of the student? These questions are about not only ePortfolios as a genre but also the overall nature of scholarly inquiry” (p. 162). Second, what concepts and strategies can help students navigate the public-private divide? Given the role of assessment in the UB ePortfolio curriculum, the public-private divide takes on new salience. To help students, the idea of visual hospitality was created, and as Emerson and Reid observe, this concept and its associated practices may “help mediate tensions that arise over questions of privacy, such as who will be looking, in favor of an ethos of welcome and community as an important component of digital citizenship”

Yancey.indb 247

21-03-2019 12:25:48

248   eportfolio as curriculum (p. 209). Are there other metaphors and strategies that can help students and faculty navigate this divide? Third, how important is digital literacy to an ePortfolio curriculum? In some cases, like Florida State University’s writing course, UB’s general education program, and Macaulay’s honors program, digital literacy, including use of digital tools, understanding copyright especially in digital environments, and attention to circulation of materials and identity, is at the center of the ePortfolio curriculum, whereas in other programs it seems much less important. Attention to digital literacy in an ePortfolio curriculum might also provide a way of navigating between the twin competing goods of supporting learning and assessing it, especially when digital technology is facilitating both, as Emerson and Reid explain. In a “general education curriculum that explicitly values critical thinking,” as general education programs do, it might be useful, they suggest, to explore a nuanced rhetorical relationship among [the] competing forces intersecting at the site of the ePortfolio tool. . . . Students can learn to recognize the various actors and interests at work in this digital-rhetorical situation and develop strategies for negotiating among them to pursue their own personal and educational goals. (p. 217)

In addition, the digital literacy animating an ePortfolio curriculum can help students explore analogous issues in other electronic environments, such as the rules of engagement in and use of personal information on social media sites. In sum, ePortfolios offer an opportunity for students to learn about and practice digital literacy, but the question remains: Is digital literacy fundamental to an ePortfolio curriculum? Fourth, how important, if at all, is the role of failure in an ePortfolio curriculum? Failure, and learning from it, as opposed to trying to avoid it, is important and possibly fundamental to learning (Metcalfe, 2017). By providing for failure in digital time lines and in Learning Philosophy Statements, Macaulay’s and UB’s ePortfolio curricula make real a truism often heard in education but not always honored: It’s not failing that counts, but what we do with those failures. How else might failure be incorporated into an ePortfolio curriculum? These questions—about the private and the public, about the ways digital tools and networking function relative to the ePortfolio, about the nature of identity and authorship, and about the role of failure in the ePortfolio curriculum—emerge from an ePortfolio curriculum operating at the intersection of students, the academy, and the larger world. It is a curriculum supporting student learning, not only in a unique site with a unique curriculum

Yancey.indb 248

21-03-2019 12:25:48

concluding forward  

249

but also in its curricular practices, providing important questions about the future of the world we all inhabit.

References Cambridge, D. (2013). From metaphor to analogy: How the National Museum of the American Indian can inform the Augusta Community Portfolio. In K. V. Wills & R. Rice (Eds.), ePortfolio performance support systems: Constructing, presenting, and assessing portfolios, (pp. 155–180). Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. Eynon, B. (2009). The future of ePortfolio roundtable. Retrieved from http://www .academiccommons.org/the-future-of-eportfolio-roundtable/ McDonald, C. (2016). Toward defining a social reflective pedagogy for ePortfolios. In K. B. Yancey (Ed.), A rhetoric of reflection (pp. 203–226). Logan: Utah State University Press. Metcalfe, J. (2017). Learning from errors. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 465–489. Yancey, K. B. (Ed.) (1991). Portfolios in the Writing Classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English Yancey, K. B. (1998). Reflection in the writing classroom. Logan: Utah State University Press. Yancey, K. B. (2004). Postmodernism, palimpsest, and portfolios: Theoretical issues in the representation of student work. College Composition and Communication, 55, 738–762.

Yancey.indb 249

21-03-2019 12:25:48

Yancey.indb 250

21-03-2019 12:25:48

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Katherine Bridgman is an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University–San Antonio. Her research, which focuses on the use of digital social media by activists with an emphasis on how protestors work across digital interfaces to garner transnational support, has appeared in several venues, among them the journal Kairos as well as the edited collection Re/ Framing Identifications (Waveland Press, 2014). She is also a cofounder of the Florida State University postcard archive; her scholarship on the archive was recognized with the Michelle Kendrick Prize. She directs the Texas A&M– San Antonio Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum program and teaches classes in composition, writing center practice and theory, and historical and contemporary rhetorical theory. Sharon Burns is an associate professor in the English, Languages, and Fine Arts Department at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College. Her research includes the influence of culture and dialect on sustained literacy practices, online writing pedagogy, and writing across the curriculum. Burns serves as the writing program administrator and coordinates training and assessment institutes at Clermont College. Russ Carpenter is a lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University. He has a PhD in neuroscience and has a passion for science communication. In addition to teaching courses in the Notation in Science Communication program at Stanford, he works with faculty in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields across Stanford, helping them create better writing and speaking assignments. As an instructor in the continuing studies program at Stanford, he also works with individuals from across Silicon Valley as a presentation coach. Helen L. Chen is a research scientist in the Designing Education Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She earned her undergraduate degree from University of California, Los Angeles and her PhD in communication with a minor in psychology from Stanford University. In her engineering work, Chen has been involved in several major engineering education initiatives including the National Science

251

Yancey.indb 251

21-03-2019 12:25:48

252  

about the contributors

Foundation’s Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), and the Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education. She is a cofounder of EPAC, an ePortfolio community of practice, and serves as a board member for the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and EvidenceBased Learning and coexecutive editor for the International Journal of ePortfolio. Chen has collaborated with the Association of American Colleges & Universities on a variety of general education and assessment-related initiatives and is coauthor of Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Her current research and scholarship focus on engineering and entrepreneurship education, the pedagogy of portfolios and reflective practice in higher education, and the redesign of how learning is recognized and communicated through traditional records and degrees as well as other emerging credentials. Amy Cicchino is a doctoral candidate at Florida State University (FSU), where she studies digital pedagogy and writing program administration. At FSU, she teaches in the college composition program and in the editing, writing, and media major. She is also the assistant to the writing program administrator. Cicchino has served as an elected leader of the Writing Program Administration Graduate Organization and as editorial assistant for the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. Jenae Druckman Cohn is an academic technology specialist in the program in writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. As a faculty developer and instructional designer, she develops workshops, training, and other forms of programming around topics such as using course websites to create student-centered learning experiences, designing accessible online and face-to-face classes, and understanding digital literacy. Her current research interests include digital rhetoric, information literacy, and multimodal writing. She has published articles in Computers and Composition, Journal of Faculty Development, and Journal of Response to Writing. She has presented her work at Computers and Writing, the Conference on College Composition and Communication; the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory; and the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning. Sue Denning is currently a learning experience architect at General Assembly, a private, for-profit education organization, designing upskilling programs for corporate clients in marketing, data, and product management. Before working at General Assembly, she was an instructional technologist at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Yancey.indb 252

21-03-2019 12:25:48

about the contributors  

253

Rachel Efstathion is a freelance writer and marketing professional in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a BA in English from Temple University and an MEd in curriculum and instruction from the University of South Florida. She completed 44 graduate hours in English at Florida State University. She has presented at several conferences, including the Watson Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Cheryl Emerson, a former high school teacher, is a PhD candidate in comparative literature at State University of New York at Buffalo (Buffalo), with interests in phenomenology, feminist theory, and aesthetics. Her dissertation, “The Flesh of Forgetting,” brings feminist theory and poetics to an analysis of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical writings on language, history, and embodiment. As lead teaching assistant for Buffalo’s general education capstone project, she has presented at many conferences, including the International Symposium in Phenomenology (Perugia, Italy), the New York College English Association, the Louisville Conference of Culture and Literature, the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and the Digital Domains Conference. Yitna Firdyiwek is senior instructional designer in the Arts and Sciences Learning Design & Technology group at the University of Virginia. He works with instructors in the College of Arts and Sciences on the redesign, development, and implementation of ePortfolios and other innovative approaches to technology integration in undergraduate courses. Christina Giarrusso is an adjunct professor of first-year writing at the University of Scranton. She holds two degrees from Florida State University, a BS in English education and an MA in rhetoric and composition. Her conference presentations have focused on graffiti as everyday writing, assemblage pedagogy, and ePortfolios as vehicles for learning. Her most recent presentation was on racism and first-year writing at the 2018 Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference. Karen Simroth James is associate professor, general faculty, and language program director in the Department of French at the University of Virginia, where she trains graduate student teaching assistants and teaches courses in language pedagogy and French language, culture, and literature. Her research interests include instructional technology for language acquisition and humanities education; ePortfolios; and meaningful, useful assessment in language teaching and learning. She is the corecipient, with Emily E. Scida and Yitna Firdyiwek, of three Learning Technology Incubator Grants at the University of Virginia for design and curricular integration of ePortfolios.

Yancey.indb 253

21-03-2019 12:25:48

254  

about the contributors

Susan Kahn joined Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in 1998 as national director of the Urban Universities Portfolio Project, a six-campus collaboration that produced the first generation of electronic institutional portfolios. Since 2007, she has served as director of IUPUI’s campus-wide student ePortfolio Initiative and as an administrator within its Division of Planning and Institutional Improvement. In these roles, she works to promote student learning and development and to help faculty, departments, schools, and the institution support and document student learning of key collegiate abilities and skills. Previously, Kahn directed a University of Wisconsin systemwide faculty development program that led initiatives focused on effective teaching and learning and on expanding campuses’ capacity to support teaching and learning. She publishes, presents, and consults widely on faculty development, assessment, and electronic portfolios, including coediting Electronic Portfolios: Emerging Practices in Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning (American Association of Higher Education, 2001). She is past chair of the board of directors of the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL), the international association for ePortfolio practitioners, and is particularly interested in ePortfolios as integrative narratives of development. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has enjoyed team teaching the Capstone Seminar in English for the past 10 years. Gail Matthews-DeNatale, who earned her PhD from Indiana University, is associate director of Northeastern University’s Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research, where she leads the Faculty Scholars Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) program, offers workshops and institutes, and consults with faculty on course design and facilitation. Prior to working at the center, as a full-time faculty member in Northeastern’s Graduate School of Education, she founded the eLearning and instructional design MEd program and chaired the Faculty Academic Council’s Academic Programs Committee for her college. Matthews-DeNatale still serves as a lecturer for the graduate school, teaching How People Learn and the Master of Education Capstone. Prior to Northeastern, she held positions at Simmons College, Emmanuel College, George Mason University, and the University of South Carolina. Matthews-DeNatale is the recipient of Northeastern University’s 2014 Award for Teaching Excellence and the Online Learning Consortium’s 2013 Learning Effectiveness Award. She is also a founding board member of the Association of Authentic, Experiential, EvidenceBased Learning, whose focus includes ePortfolio pedagogies. From 2011 to 2014 she led Northeastern’s involvement in Connect to Learning, a national

Yancey.indb 254

21-03-2019 12:25:48

about the contributors  

255

network that developed the catalyst for learning framework of effective ePortfolio practice (see http://c2l.mcnrc.org). She provides editorial review for a number of journals, including the Online Learning Consortium’s Online Learning Journal. Alex Reid is an associate professor of English at the University at Buffalo, where he studies digital rhetoric. He is the author of The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition (Parlor Press, 2007); coeditor of Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Professional Writing Programs (Parlor Press, 2010); and author of “Exposing Assemblages: Unlikely Communities of Digital Scholarship, Video, and Social Networks,” published in the journal Enculturation and selected for Best of Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals. His works appear in various journals, including Enculturation, Computers and Composition, and Karios, and in book collections. He writes a blog for Digital Digs (profalexreid.com). Emily E. Scida is professor of Spanish and director of the Spanish Language Program in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia. Her research interests include teacher education, learning technologies, ePortfolios, and contemplative pedagogies. Scida is the recipient of a number of grants and awards, including the 2011–2014 Daniels Family National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship, a fall 2012 Hybrid Course Challenge Grant, and a 2005–2006 Teaching and Technology Initiative Fellowship. She is also a corecipient, with Karen Simroth James and Yitna Firdyiwek, of three Learning Technology Incubator Grants. Jennifer Stonaker is an advanced lecturer at Stanford University. Trained as a plant geneticist and with experience as a science educator, she now teaches in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric. From 2014 to 2018 she was coordinator of the program’s Notation in Science Communication, an interdisciplinary program that combines coursework, advising, and reflection to help Stanford undergraduates build their communication acumen. She continues to teach for the notation, including a course where students produce science podcasts and publish them on iTunes, in addition to teaching general writing and oral communication courses. She also supports undergraduate and graduate writers in Stanford’s Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. Her research interests include exploring ways to use reflection and ePortfolios to promote student metacognition; designing effective strategies for the public outreach of science, particularly podcasting; and supporting developing scientists as researchers and communicators.

Yancey.indb 255

21-03-2019 12:25:48

256  

about the contributors

Terrel L. Rhodes, formerly a faculty member for 25 years, is vice president, Office of Quality, Curriculum and Assessment, and executive director of VALUE at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). He focuses on the quality of undergraduate education, access, general education, ePortfolios, and assessment of student learning. He leads the faculty-driven VALUE assessment project for student learning, titled Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education, and the VALUE Institute, a nationwide opportunity to assess student learning quality using authentic student work. For the past 10 years, he has also led AAC&U’s ePortfolio initiatives to enhance student learning, including the annual ePortfolio Forum. Jo Ann Thompson is an associate professor in the English, Languages, and Fine Arts Department at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College. She has an EdD from the University of Kentucky and has been involved in designing faculty development for online classes and in ePortfolio development, including participating in the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research. Joseph Ugoretz earned his master’s degree in teaching of English at Columbia University Teachers College, and his doctorate at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Currently senior associate dean and chief academic officer at Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, he is also an adjunct faculty member of the Graduate Center’s Certificate Program in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. Ugoretz has taught high school English; served as a professor of English at a large urban community college; and led initiatives across the liberal arts, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) disciplines. He has taught fully online courses, first-year honors seminars, and graduate courses as well as faculty development programs from workshops to retreats to unconferences. Aside from the scholarship of teaching and learning, his research interests include urban legends and Internet lore, science fiction, and oral performance art, the last of which is the subject of his fieldwork with pitchmen at county fairs and carnivals and of “Quacks, Yokels, and LightFingered Folk: Oral Performance Art at the Fair” in Americana: Readings in American Popular Culture (Press Americana, 2006). Laura Wenk is the dean of curriculum and assessment and an associate professor of cognition and education at Hampshire College. She directs the Hampshire Research Project, an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods research project with the goal of understanding the effects of a Hampshire education; data from the study led to ePortfolios at Hampshire. Among other issues,

Yancey.indb 256

21-03-2019 12:25:48

about the contributors  

257

Wenk has been examining the role of narrative evaluation and self-reflection in students’ educational pathways. She has written about the Hampshire College curriculum in “Hampshire College’s Division III—To Know Is Not Enough” (Peer Review, 15[4]) and “Multiple Routes, Alternative Learning Experiences in the College Curriculum” ( J. L. DeVitis [Ed.], 2013, Peter Lang). Wenk received her BS in plant pathology from Rutgers University and her MS in botany, MEd in secondary science education, and EdD in curriculum studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She teaches in the areas of educational research, applied cognition, and curriculum design. Kathleen Blake Yancey, Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University, has focused her research agenda on portfolios for her entire career. She is the author of Portfolios in the Writing Classroom (National Council of Teachers of English, 1992); coeditor of Situating Portfolios (Utah State University Press, 1997); coeditor of Electronic Portfolios: Emerging Practices in Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning (American Association of Higher Education, 2001); and coeditor of Electronic Portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact (Stylus, 2009). She has served on the steering committee for the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project, and on the board of directors for the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidencebased Learning, and she is a faculty member for the WASC Senior College and University Commission’s Assessment Leadership Academy and a mentor for its Community of Practice project. Yancey has also been the president or chair of several writing studies and literacy organizations, including the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and the National Council of Teachers of English. She is immediate past editor of College Composition and Communication and cofounder and past coeditor of the journal Assessing Writing. She has published more than 100 refereed articles and book chapters and is the author, editor, or coeditor of 15 scholarly books, among them the award-winning Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing (Utah State University Press, 2014) and A Rhetoric of Reflection (Utah State University Press, 2016). She has been recognized with several awards, including the Council of Writing Program Administrators Best Book Award, the Conference on College Composition and Communication Research Impact Award, the Florida State University Graduate Mentor Award, the Florida State University Graduate Teaching Award, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication Exemplar Award.

Yancey.indb 257

21-03-2019 12:25:48

Yancey.indb 258

21-03-2019 12:25:48

INDEX

AAC&U. See Association of American Colleges& Universities accessibility, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 226 ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. See American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines advisers, for NSC program, 184–85 advising tools Hampshire ePortfolio as, 79 Trinity Portfolio Program as, 130 agency, 239 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 238 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 238 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 238 Allen, L. Q., 50 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines (ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines), 49 analysis curriculum, as phase of, 109, 111, 115, 118–19 Matthews-DeNatale on, 237 Northeastern University master of education program and, 115, 118–19 rhetorical viewing and, 16–17 text, 129 annotated curriculum, Northeastern University master of education program and, 114–15 archives Hampshire ePortfolio as, 237

NSC program and, 171 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 237–38 artifact annotation, 141 artifact attachment curation in, 19–21 Florida State University composition course and, 17–21 artifact relationships, 141–42 assessment capstones and, 150, 210–11, 215 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 9 Florida State University composition course and, 30, 32 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 71, 79, 85–86 holistic, 185, 189–90 institutional, 204–6, 216–17 norming session and, 185 NSC program and, 170–71, 185, 188–90 pivotal experiences and, 3 self-, 53, 68–69, 71, 79 of St. Olaf CIS, 5–7 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 133 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 210, 215, 224–25, 228–31 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 48, 52–53, 56–57, 68–69 assignments, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 223–24 assignment sheets checkpoints in, 30–32 fair use in, 32

259

Yancey.indb 259

21-03-2019 12:25:48

260  

index

identity in, 32 peer review workshops in, 32 process in, 30–31 reflection in, 31–32 time lines in, 31–32 Association of American Colleges& Universities (AAC&U), 203 Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success by, 198 attendance policy, of UB Curriculum capstone project, 226–27 audience, 236 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 35–36, 40–42 design and, 20–21 Florida State University composition course and, 20–21 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 79–83 invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 196 life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 97, 104 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 157, 162, 165–66, 240 as metacognitive tool, 180–86 multimodality and, 239 NSC program and, 176, 180–86, 188 public-private divide and, 209–11, 247–48 search engines and, 131 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 130–32 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 208–9, 211–13, 218n4 visualizing, 130–32 authorship, 247 awards Macaulay Honors College capstone project and, 150 teaching, 140, 145 Ayres, J. R., 36 Barlow, Rachael, 124

Yancey.indb 260

Bateson, Mary Catherine, 92–94, 101–2, 104, 241 beyond the classroom page, in UB Curriculum capstone project, 213–14, 221 blank canvas syndrome, 126 Bloom, B. S., 117 borderland classrooms HSIs and, 191–92 invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 192–200 objectivity challenged by, 194–95 universities co-invented in, 192 Bowman, J., 171 Burciaga, R., 197 Burke, Kenneth, 140 Burkhardt, Joan, 118, 120–21 Cambridge, Darren, 197, 244, 245 capstones. See also life stories reflection, IUPUI; Notation in Science Communication program, at Stanford University; UB Curriculum capstone project assessment and, 150, 210–11, 215 Kuh on, 150 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project versus, 154 Matthews-DeNatale on, 241 Northeastern University master of education program and, 114–21, 241 professional ePortfolios as, 241 theses versus, 149–54 Capstone Scoring Rubric, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 215, 228–31 capstone seminar in English, at IUPUI (capstone seminar, IUPUI), 90 experiential reflection and, 91–92 integrative reflection and, 91–92, 96–97 life stories reflection and, 92–105, 241 prompts for, 91 student diversity and, 91

21-03-2019 12:25:48

index  

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1 case studies, Northeastern University master of education program and, 115 checkpoints in assignment sheets, 30–32 ePortfolio makingness and, 17 Florida State University composition course and, 17, 30–32 Chen, Helen L. collaboration and, 198 design mind-sets, allowed by ePortfolios, and, 133 folio thinking and, 22 informal learning and, 200 Chui, C. S., 50 circulation design workshops and, 22–24 ethics of, 26–27 fair use and, 26–27 Florida State University composition course and, 14–15, 22–27 peer review workshops and, 22–26 privacy and, 26 City University of New York. See Macaulay Honors College capstone project Clark, I. L., 172 class size Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 166 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 124 Clemson University, 136 Clermont College, University of Cincinnati (UC Clermont College). See also collateral learning, at UC Clermont College Composition Roundtable at, 43 student backgrounds in, 33–34 collaboration, 138, 145, 236 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 242 invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 197, 241–42

Yancey.indb 261

261

Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 242 Watson, Kuh, Rhodes, Penny Light, and Chen on, 198 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 55–57, 60, 242 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, 7, 236 agency and, 238 audience and, 35–36, 40–42 in composition curricula, 36–39 faculty involvement in, 42–43 guided reflection and, 38–42 home pages and, 40 identity and, 38–39, 235 lived curriculum and, 37 prior knowledge and, 34–35, 42 reflection and, 35 rule-bound strictures suspended by, 36 student engagement and, 39–40, 44 student ownership emphasized by, 34–35 collectivity invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 195, 197 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 154 colonialism, technology and, 200 communicative competence, second language pedagogy and, 49 community Hampshire ePortfolio and, 79–83 invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 193–200 Latinx, 193–95 composition curricula collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 36–39 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 67–68 Composition Roundtable, at UC Clermont College, 43

21-03-2019 12:25:48

262  

index

concept maps as genre, 244 Northeastern University master of education program and, 214, 244 NSC program and, 176–78, 237, 244 constructivism, NSC program and, 172 content requirements blank canvas syndrome and, 126 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 125–28 context ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 138 Macaulay Honors College capstone project and, 152 continuity, in life stories reflection, IUPUI, 92–97, 100–102 course descriptions, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 220–21 course materials, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 222 course prerequisites, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 221–22 course requirements of UB Curriculum, 204 for UB Curriculum capstone project, 220, 222 course schedules, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 223–24 creation, 14–15 criteria statements, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 212–13, 215, 218n5, 221 cultural learning second language pedagogy and, 50 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 52–60 curation, 235, 236 artifact attachment and, 19–21 as design, 20–21 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 140–42, 147 Florida State University composition course and, 14–15, 19–21

Yancey.indb 262

invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 195–97, 199–200 NSC program and, 170–71, 175 outside artifacts and, 21 reflection and, 38 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 223 currere, curriculum as, 109 curriculum. See also invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA; University of Buffalo Curriculum analytical phase of, 109, 111, 115, 118–19 annotated, 114–15 autobiographical theory of, 108–10 composition, 36–39, 67–68 as currere, 109 delivered, 37, 53, 110 ePortfolio as manifestation of, 107, 110 experienced, 53, 110, 116, 119 lived, 37, 110 Pinar and Grumet on, 109, 111–12, 116–17, 119 as program of study, 109 progressive phase of, 109, 111, 119 regressive phase of, 109, 111, 116–18 synthetic phase of, 109, 111, 114, 116, 120–21 curriculum process, ePortfolio as, 14, 108–16 curriculum substance, ePortfolio as, 14, 108–16 Davis, Elizabeth, 222 Davis, M., 17 Delagrange, S. H., 175 delegitimation, of students of color, 194–95 Delgado Bernal, D. delegitimation of students of color and, 194–95 testimonio and, 197 delivered curriculum, 37, 53, 110 design, 235

21-03-2019 12:25:48

index  

audience and, 20–21 curation as, 20–21 Florida State University composition course and, 20–21, 240 identity and, 143, 240 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 240 Northeastern University master of education program and, 240 NSC program and, 176–85 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 208–9, 211–12 design mind-sets, allowed by ePortfolios, 133 design workshops, Florida State University composition course and, 22–24 Dias, C., 50 Dietz, Mary, 246 Digication, UB Curriculum capstone project using, 205, 222–23 digital citizenship, 247 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 3, 208–9, 221–22, 227–28, 231, 243 digital ethics Florida State University composition course and, 26–27, 243 UB Curriculum and, 208 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 221 digital literacy, 248 digital place, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 208, 236, 247 Driessen, E. W., 171 due dates, for UB Curriculum capstone project, 224 electronic portfolios. See ePortfolios embodiment, invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 197 envisioning, 109, 111 Northeastern University master of education program and, 119 ePortfolio as wrapper, 2–3

Yancey.indb 263

263

ePortfolio curricula. See specific topics ePortfolio literacy, 2–3, 235 ePortfolio makingness, 4–5, 14, 28, 235 checkpoints and, 17 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 146–47 Florida State University composition course and, 17 ePortfolio metaphors, 246–47 ePortfolio models, ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, using, 138–39 ePortfolio review ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 143–44, 246 as genre, 246 NSC program and, 246 ePortfolios. See specific topics ePortfolio Showcase, in Trinity Portfolio Program, 132 ePortfolios@Macaulay, 151 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, 4, 135, 236, 247 artifact annotation and, 141 artifact relationships and, 141–42 assessment of, 9 background of, 136–38 collaboration and, 242 context and, 138 curation and, 140–42, 147 ePortfolio makingness and, 146–47 ePortfolio models reviewed in, 138–39 ePortfolio review and, 143–44, 246 forced-choice exercise in, 142 inventories in, 139–40, 147, 245 outcomes of, 146–47 peer review and, 143–44, 242 professional ePortfolios in, 145–46 reflection and, 138, 146–47 results of, 145–47 student evaluations of, 145 student goals and, 145–46 teaching awards, as application for, 140, 145

21-03-2019 12:25:48

264  

index

visuals in, 142–43 ePortfolio time lines, 31–32 ethics of circulation, 26–27 Eurocentrism, 194–95 evaluation. See assessment experienced curriculum, 53, 110, 116, 119 experiential reflection, 91–92. See also life stories reflection, IUPUI external participation, in ePortfolios, 162, 165, 247 extracurricular activities, Trinity Portfolio Program and, 126–27 Eynon, B., 44, 111 reflection and, 196 student ownership and, 14 faculty involvement collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 42–43 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 74–76 failure, 248 fair use in assignment sheets, 32 circulation and, 26–27 Florida State University composition course and, 26–27, 32 remediation and, 27 FIPSE Catalyst Project. See Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education Catalyst Project Fishbach, R., 172 Flores Carmona, J., 197 Florida State University. See ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University; Museum of Everyday Writing Florida State University composition course artifact attachment and, 17–21 assessment and, 30, 32 assignment sheet for, 30–32 audience and, 20–21 checklist for, 13 checkpoints and, 17, 30–32

Yancey.indb 264

circulation and, 14–15, 22–27 curation and, 14–15, 19–21 design and, 20–21, 240 design workshops and, 22–24 digital ethics and, 26–27, 243 ePortfolio makingness and, 17 fair use and, 26–27, 32 home pages and, 16 identity and, 16, 32 multimodality and, 239 outside artifacts and, 21 peer review workshops and, 22–25, 32 process and, 30–31 QR codes and, 21 reflection and, 31–32 revision and, 14–15 rhetorical viewing and analysis and, 16–17 time lines and, 31–32 videography and, 21–22 YouTube in, 21 folio thinking Chen on, 22 NSC program and, 169, 172, 186 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 53 forced-choice exercise, 142 Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education Catalyst Project (FIPSE Catalyst Project), 2 Gambino, L., 111 reflection and, 196 student ownership and, 14 gateway courses, Northeastern University master of education program and, 113 general education. See invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA; University of Buffalo Curriculum genre, 247 concept maps as, 244 ePortfolio review as, 246 inventories as, 245–46

21-03-2019 12:25:48

index  

Learning Philosophy statement as, 246 tags as, 245 time lines as, 244–45 global citizenship invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 243 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 213 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 47, 242–44 grading policy, of UB Curriculum capstone project, 224–25 Grumet, Madeline currere and, 109 curriculum and, 109, 111–12, 116–17, 119 guided reflection, collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 38–42 Hampshire College ePortfolio (Hampshire ePortfolio), 235 as advising tool, 79 agency and, 238 as archive, 237 assessment and, 71, 79, 85–86 audience and, 79–83 community and, 79–83 Division II and, 73–74, 76–78, 80–85 Division III and, 77–78, 82, 84 examples of, 79–85 faculty involvement and, 74–76 home pages and, 77, 79–80 integrative thinking and, 73, 79, 81, 84–86 interdisciplinary studies and, 82–84 internship and, 81–82 inventories in, 75, 83 Knowledge Commons and, 76 lifelong learning and, 71 paper portfolios as precedent for, 73–75

Yancey.indb 265

265

pivotal experiences and, 8, 74, 81, 83–84, 86, 237 prompts for, 73–79, 85–86 reflection and, 71–79, 81–86, 237 retrospective writing and, 72–75, 84–85 scaffolding and, 71–72, 85–86 selection versus compilation in, 85 self-assessment and, 71, 79 templates for, 71–72, 76–79, 85–86, 86n1 training for, 76 VALUE rubrics and, 81 WordPress in, 74–76 Hampshire College program of study, 86 Division III in, 73, 77–78, 82, 84 Division II in, 72–74, 76–78, 80–85 Division I in, 72 Hawisher, G., 200 Health Professions Advising Program, at Trinity College (HPAP), 127, 129–30 Higher Education Act HSIs and, 191 Strengthening Institutions Program of, 191 Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) A&M-SA as, 192–200 borderland classrooms in, 191–92 enrollment defining, 191 Higher Education Act and, 191 holistic assessment, 185, 189–90 home pages, 17, 24–25 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 40 Florida State University composition course and, 16 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 77, 79–80 identity and, 16 life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 97–98 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 209, 211–13, 218n4, 221 honors theses, 149–50

21-03-2019 12:25:48

266  

index

hooks, bell, 197 HPAP. See Health Professions Advising Program HSIs. See Hispanic-serving institutions Hughes, J., 192 identity, 7, 236 in assignment sheets, 32 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 38–39, 235 design and, 143, 240 English majors and, 93, 96–97, 100 Florida State University composition course and, 16, 32 home pages and, 16 IUPUI and, 89–90 life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 92–103 Macaulay Honors College capstone project and, 152 metacognitive identity development and, 8 Northeastern University master of education program and, 115–16, 120–21, 240 NSC program and, 169–70, 172, 175, 178, 180, 186, 188 professional ePortfolios and, 9, 115–16, 120–21 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 207–8, 211–13, 216–18, 222, 228, 230 immigrant experience, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 232–33 incompletes, in UB Curriculum capstone project, 226 Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), 8. See also life stories reflection, IUPUI capstone seminar in English at, 90–105, 241 identity development and, 89–90 Institute for Engaged Learning in our Division of Undergraduate Education at, 90

Yancey.indb 266

Principles of Undergraduate Learning at, 90 informal learning, 200 Institute for Engaged Learning in our Division of Undergraduate Education, at IUPUI, 90 Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, AAC&U, 198 institutional assessment, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 204–6, 216–17 instructor expertise, Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 165–66 integrative learning UB Curriculum and, 203 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 204–6, 210–11, 213, 215–18, 222–23 integrative reflection, capstone seminar, IUPUI, and, 91–92, 96–97 integrative thinking, Hampshire ePortfolio and, 73, 79, 81, 84–86 interdisciplinary studies Hampshire ePortfolio and, 82–84 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 162, 165 internships, Hampshire ePortfolio and, 81–82 inventories, 136 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 139–40, 147, 245 as genre, 245–46 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 75, 83 organization of, 139–40 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 128, 245–46 invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, 10, 192, 236 agency and, 238 audience and, 196 collaboration and, 197, 241–42 collective values in, 195, 197

21-03-2019 12:25:49

index  

colonialism, as attempt to disrupt, 200 community and, 193–200 curation and, 195–97, 199–200 embodiment and, 197 global citizenship and, 243 informal learning and, 200 Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success and, 198 Latinx communities and, 193–95 networked selves developed in, 197 outcomes of, 193–94, 196 peer mentoring and, 199 reflection and, 196 role-playing in, 193 service-learning and, 198–99 symphonic selves developed in, 197 testimonio and, 197, 242 Ittelson, C. John, 133 IUPI. See Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Jaguar Tracks courses. See invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA Johnson, Karen, 90, 100 Kanagala, V., 195 Kapi’olani Community College, 246 Kennedy, B., 38 Kern, R., 59 Knowledge Commons, Hampshire ePortfolio and, 76 Kuh, George capstones and, 150 collaboration and, 198 Ladson-Billings, Gloria, 194 language. See second language pedagogy; world language learning language programs, traditional, world language learning, at University of Virginia versus, 47–48 Lanham, Richard, 142, 144 Latinx communities, 193–95

Yancey.indb 267

267

Lave, J., 172 Learning Philosophy statement, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 10, 211, 215, 221, 238, 246 example of, 232–33 lifelong learning, Hampshire ePortfolio and, 71 life stories reflection, IUPUI audience and, 97, 104 Bateson and, 92–94, 101–2, 104, 241 continuity in, 92–97, 100–102 example assignment for, 104–5 home pages and, 97–98 identity development and, 92–103 metacognitive fluency and, 102 outcomes of, 102 peer review and, 94, 99 prompts for, 104–5 questions regarding, 102 resilience and, 101 revision and, 94, 99–100 student difficulties with, 99–100 student responses to, 94–102 study abroad and, 97–99 LinguaFolio, second language pedagogy and, 50 links, 7 lived curriculum, 110 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, as, 37 Lowe, B. J., 171 Macaulay Honors College capstone project, 3 awards for, 150 context and, 152 ePortfolios@Macaulay for, 151 foundational principles of, 155–57 identity and, 152 thesis colloquium for, 151 WordPress used in, 151, 162 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project, 9–10, 163–64, 241 agency and, 238

21-03-2019 12:25:49

268  

index

audience and, 157, 162, 165–66, 240 capstones versus, 154 class size for, 166 collaboration and, 242 as collective, 154 design and, 240 external participation in, 162, 165 failure and, 248 instructor expertise and, 165–66 interdisciplinary studies and, 162, 165 as multimedia, 157, 161–62 multimodality and, 239 outcomes of, 152, 154 reflection and, 157, 159–61 specifying topics in, 165 student engagement and, 166 syllabi as assignment in, 159 TimelineJS in, 157 time lines in, 157–58, 244–45 Matthews-DeNatale, Gail, 48 analysis and, 237 capstones and, 241 reflection and, 237 McKee, H., 142 meaning-making, world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 59–60 metacognitive fluency, 102 metacognitive identity development, 8 Miller, J., 109 multilteracies, second language pedagogy and, 49 multimodality audience and, 239 Florida State University composition course and, 239 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 239 NSC program and, 175–80, 239 second language pedagogy and, 49–50 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 48–49, 51–52, 59–60, 239

Yancey.indb 268

Munday, J., 176 Museum of Everyday Writing, 140–41 narrative, 111 reflection versus, 94 navigation building, Trinity Portfolio Program and, 128–30 networked selves, students developing, 197 Nguyen, C., 111 Nora, A., 195 norming session, NSC program and, 185 Northeastern University master of education program, 107, 236, 247 agency and, 238 analytical phase of, 115, 118–19 annotated curriculum in, 114–15 capstone course in, 114–21, 241 case studies in, 115 concept maps and, 214, 244 curriculum process, ePortfolio as, and, 113–16 curriculum substance, ePortfolio as, and, 112–16 design and, 240 gateway courses in, 113 identity and, 115–16, 120–21, 240 PCM and, 114–15, 118 Phase 1 of, 112–13 Phase 2 of, 113–16 portfolio purpose statement for, 112 professional ePortfolios in, 115–16, 120–21, 241 professional growth and, 108 progressive phase of, 119 reflection and, 113–14, 118–20 regressive phase of, 116–18 research on, 116–21 signature assignments in, 113 synthetic phase of, 114, 116, 120–21 Notation in Science Communication program, at Stanford University (NSC program), 10, 236 advisers for, 184–85

21-03-2019 12:25:49

index  

archiving ePortfolios in, 171 assessment and, 170–71, 185, 188–90 audience and, 176, 180–86, 188 concept maps in, 176–78, 237, 244 constructivism and, 172 curation and, 170–71, 175 design and, 176–85 ePortfolio review and, 246 folio thinking and, 169, 172, 186 identity and, 169–70, 172, 175, 178, 180, 186, 188 multimodality and, 175–80, 239 norming session in, 185 outcomes of, 185, 188 pathway to completion of, 171 peer review and, 176 prompts for, 174–75 reflection and, 170–75, 188–89 structure of, 170–72 student goals and, 174–75 writing in the disciplines and, 172 NSC program. See Notation in Science Communication program objectivity, borderland classrooms challenging, 194–95 online decorum, UB Curriculum capstone project and, 227 outcomes of ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, 146–47 of invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, 193–94, 196 of life stories reflection, IUPUI, 102 of Macaulay Honors College Springboard project, 152, 154 of NSC program, 185, 188 of UB Curriculum capstone project, 213, 215, 222 of world language learning, at University of Virginia, 54–59 outside artifacts curation and, 21 Florida State University composition course and, 21

Yancey.indb 269

269

QR codes and, 21 Overeem, K., 171 paper portfolios, 4 Hampshire College and, 73–75 Parker-Pope, Tara, 101 PCM. See professional competency model peer instruction, Trinity Portfolio Program and, 125–26 peer mentoring, invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 199 peer review, 137–38 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 143–44, 242 life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 94, 99 NSC program and, 176 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 132 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 223–24 world language learning, at University of Virginia, and, 51–53, 56, 58, 66–67 peer review workshops in assignment sheets, 32 circulation and, 22–26 Florida State University composition course and, 22–25, 32 revision after, 24–26 Peet, M., 115 Penny Light, Tracy collaboration and, 198 design mind-sets, allowed by ePortfolios, and, 133 metacognitive fluency and, 102 persona-generation, Trinity Portfolio Program and, 131–32 Pettiway, K., 175 Pinar, William currere and, 109 curriculum and, 109, 111–12, 116–17, 119

21-03-2019 12:25:49

270  

index

pivotal experiences assessment and, 3 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 8, 74, 81, 83–84, 86, 237 Polly, P., 176 prior knowledge, collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 34–35, 42 privacy circulation and, 26 public-private divide and, 209–11, 247–48 process in assignment sheets, 30–31 curriculum, 14, 108–16 Florida State University composition course and, 30–31 reflection as iterative, 173–76 professional competency model (PCM), Northeastern University master of education program and, 114–15, 118 professional ePortfolios capstones as, 241 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 145–46 identity and, 9, 115–16, 120–21 Northeastern University master of education program and, 115–16, 120–21, 241 professional growth, Northeastern University master of education program and, 108 prompts for capstone seminar, IUPUI, 91 for Hampshire ePortfolio, 73–79, 85–86 life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 104–5 for NSC program, 174–75 for reflection, 64–69, 85–86 for retrospective writing, 73–75 for world language learning, at University of Virginia, 64–69

Yancey.indb 270

public-private divide, 209–11, 247–48 QR codes, outside artifacts accessed through, 21 reflection, 236 in assignment sheets, 31–32 capstone seminar, IUPUI, and, 91–103 collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 35 curation and, 38 ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 138, 146–47 experiential, 91–92 Eynon, Gambino, and Török on, 196 Florida State University composition course and, 31–32 guided, 38–42 Hampshire College program of study and, 72–73 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 71–79, 81–86, 237 integrative, 91–92, 96–97 invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 196 as iterative process, 173–76 life stories, 92–105, 241 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 157, 159–61 Matthews-DeNatale on, 237 narrative versus, 94 Northeastern University master of education program and, 113–14, 118–20 NSC program and, 170–75, 188–89 prompts for, 64–69, 85–86 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 210, 213, 215–16, 218n3, 221, 223, 232–33, 238

21-03-2019 12:25:49

index  

world language learning, at University of Virginia and, 51, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 64–69, 237 regional institutions, UC Clermont College as, 33–34 Reid, G., 175 remediation, fair use and, 27 remembering, 109, 111 as foundational to learning, 117 Northeastern University master of education program and, 116–18 Rendón, L., 195 repeat students Trinity Portfolio Program and, 125–26 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 226 resilience, life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 101 retrospective writing Hampshire ePortfolio and, 72–75, 84–85 prompts for, 73–75 revision Florida State University composition course and, 14–15 life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 94, 99–100 peer review workshops and, 24–26 world language learning, at University of Virginia and, 67–68 Reynolds, Nedra, 222 rhetorical viewing and analysis, 16–17 Rhodes, T., 198 risk taking, Trinity Portfolio Program as environment for, 132 Rivera, Alvin, 191 Robertson, L., 39 Rodgers, C., 138 role-playing, invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 193 Rowley, J., 176 rule-bound strictures, collateral learning suspending, 36

Yancey.indb 271

271

Sabourin, K., 171 scaffolding, 9, 21, 28 Hampshire ePortfolio and, 71–72, 85–86 world language learning, at University of Virginia and, 57 search engines, 131 second language pedagogy ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and, 49 communicative competence and, 49 cultural learning and, 50 ePortfolios in, 50 LinguaFolio and, 50 multilteracies and, 49 multimodality and, 49–50 self-assessment Hampshire ePortfolio and, 71, 79 world language learning, at University of Virginia and, 53, 68–69 Selfe, C., 200 Selfe, R., 200 service-learning, invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 198–99 signature assignments, Northeastern University master of education program and, 113 Silver, N., 60, 175 Simoneaux, B., 175 Slattery, P., 109–10 Snead, R., 175 social media, ePortfolios versus, 42 Southwick, Steven, 101 Stanford University. See Notation in Science Communication program St. Olaf College’s Center for Integrative Studies (St. Olaf CIS), 5–7 Strengthening Institutions Program, of Higher Education Act, 191 student backgrounds 7-10 split in, 33 UC Clermont College and, 33–34

21-03-2019 12:25:49

272  

index

student diversity capstone seminar, IUPUI, and, 91 Trinity Portfolio Program and, 127 student engagement collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, and, 39–40, 44 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 166 UB Curriculum and, 206–7 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 210, 212, 218n3 world language learning, at University of Virginia and, 52 student evaluations of ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, 145 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 222, 224 student experience, ePortfolios making visible, 107–8 student goals ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 145–46 NSC program and, 174–75 student ownership collateral learning, at UC Clermont College, emphasizing, 34–35 Eynon, Gambino, and Török on, 14 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 217 students of color, delegitimation of, 194–95 study abroad, life stories reflection, IUPUI, and, 97–99 Sweet, C. S., 171 syllabi Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 159 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 220–27 symphonic selves, students developing, 197 synthesis, 137 curriculum, as phase of, 109, 111, 114, 116, 120–21

Yancey.indb 272

Northeastern University master of education program and, 114, 116, 120–21 Taczak, K., 39 tags as genre, 245 Trinity Portfolio Program using, 128–29, 245 Tartwijk, J., 171 teaching awards, ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, and, 140, 145 templates for Hampshire ePortfolio, 71–72, 76–79, 85–86, 86n1 for UB Curriculum capstone project, 216–17 testimonio, invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA, and, 197, 242 Texas A&M University–San Antonio (A&M–SA), 192–200. See also invited ePortfolio curriculum, at A&M-SA text analysis, Trinity Portfolio Program and, 129 theses capstones versus, 149–54 honors, 149–50 thesis colloquium, for Macaulay Honors College capstone project, 151 thinking space, ePortfolio as, 145 TimelineJS, 157 time lines in assignment sheets, 31–32 Florida State University composition course and, 31–32 as genre, 244–45 Macaulay Honors College Springboard project and, 157–58, 244–45 Török, J. reflection and, 196

21-03-2019 12:25:49

index  

student ownership and, 14 training Hampshire ePortfolio and, 76 world language learning, at University of Virginia and, 59 Trimbur, J., 14 Trinity College, HPAP at, 127, 129–30 Trinity Inventory, 128, 245–46 Trinity Portfolio Program, 236 as advising tool, 130 assessment and, 133 class size for, 124 content requirements of, 125–28 ePortfolio Showcase in, 132 extracurricular activities in, 126–27 HPAP and, 127, 129–30 inventories in, 128, 245–46 navigation building in, 128–30 peer instruction in, 125–26 peer review and, 132 persona-generation and, 131–32 pilot program for, 124–25 repeat students in, 125–26 risk taking, as environment for, 132 student demand for, 123–25 student diversity in, 127 tags in, 128–29, 245 text analysis in, 129 visualizing audiences in, 130–32 WordPress in, 124, 126, 128–31, 133 UB Curriculum. See University of Buffalo Curriculum UB Curriculum capstone project, 235, 241 accessibility and, 226 agency and, 238 assessment and, 210–11, 215, 224–25, 228–31 assignments for, 223–24 attendance policy of, 226–27 audience and, 208–9, 211–13, 218n4

Yancey.indb 273

273

beyond the classroom page in, 213–14, 221 Capstone Scoring Rubric for, 215, 228–31 course description for, 220–21 course materials for, 222 course prerequisites for, 221–22 course requirements for, 220, 222 course schedule for, 223–24 criteria statements and, 212–13, 215, 218n5, 221 curation and, 223 design and, 208–9, 211–12 Digication in, 205, 222–23 digital citizenship and, 3, 208–9, 221–22, 227–28, 231, 243 digital ethics and, 221 digital place and, 208, 236, 247 due dates for, 224 failure and, 248 global citizenship and, 213 grading policy of, 224–25 home pages and, 209, 211–13, 218n4, 221 identity and, 207–8, 211–13, 216–18, 222, 228, 230 immigrant experience and, 232–33 incompletes in, 226 institutional assessment and, 204–6, 216–17 integrative learning and, 204–6, 210–11, 213, 215–18, 222–23 Learning Philosophy statement in, 10, 211, 215, 221, 232–33, 238, 246 online decorum and, 227 outcomes of, 213, 215, 222 peer review and, 223–24 reflection and, 210, 213, 215–16, 218n3, 221, 223, 232–33, 238 repeat students in, 226 student engagement and, 210, 212, 218n3 student evaluations and, 222, 224 student ownership and, 217

21-03-2019 12:25:49

274  

index

syllabus for, 220–27 templates for, 216–17 visual hospitality and, 208–9, 218n2, 243 UC Clermont College. See Clermont College, University of Cincinnati University of Buffalo Curriculum (UB Curriculum), 3, 10, 236 course requirements of, 204 digital ethics and, 208 integrative learning and, 203 student engagement and, 206–7 vertical integration and, 216–18 University of Cincinnati. See Clermont College, University of Cincinnati University of Virginia, 4–5 VALUE rubrics, Hampshire ePortfolio and, 81 van der Vleuten, C. P. M., 171 Vermunt, J. D., 171 vertical integration, UB Curriculum and, 216–18 videography, 21–22 visual hospitality, 247 UB Curriculum capstone project and, 208–9, 218n2, 243 visualizing audiences, Trinity Portfolio Program and, 130–32 visuals, in ePortfolio studio course, at Florida State University, 142–43 visual thinking, 136–38 Watson, C. E., 198 Wenger, E., 172 WordPress Hampshire ePortfolio using, 74–76 Macaulay Honors College capstone project using, 151, 162

Yancey.indb 274

Trinity Portfolio Program using, 124, 126, 128–31, 133 world language learning, at University of Virginia, 8, 236 archives in, 237–38 assessment and, 48, 52–53, 56–57, 68–69 background of, 48–49 collaboration and, 55–57, 60, 242 composition curriculum and, 67–68 cultural learning and, 52–60 folio thinking and, 53 global citizenship and, 47, 242–44 language programs, traditional, versus, 47–48 meaning-making and, 59–60 multimodality and, 48–49, 51–52, 59–60, 239 outcomes of, 54–59 peer review and, 51–53, 56, 58, 66–67 Phase 1 of, 51–52 Phase 2 of, 52–57 Phase 3 of, 57–59 primary objective of, 47 prompts for, 64–69 reflection and, 51, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 64–69, 237 revision and, 67–68 scaffolding and, 57 self-assessment and, 53, 68–69 student engagement and, 52 training for, 59 writing in the disciplines, NSC program and, 172 Yancey, Kathleen Blake, 14, 17, 21, 53–54, 110 YouTube, 21

21-03-2019 12:25:49

High-Impact ePortfolio Practice A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning Bret Eynon and Laura M. Gambino Foreword by George D. Kuh “Eynon and Gambino’s new book presents the hopeful premise that ePortfolios may be the first truly high-impact practice that can be developed and deployed fully in the online realm. ePortfolios provide learners of all types the tools to track, showcase, reflect on, and assess their own learning, both over time and across curricular and co-curricular learning environments. Like all eLearning tools, however, ePortfolios are only as effective as the context in which they are deployed. High-Impact ePortfolio Practice is a research-based introduction for faculty, administrators, and academic technology experts exploring ePortfolio practices and how to use them as a tool to promote cohesive, reflective, and integrated pedagogy.” —Teachers College Record “A handbook of everything educators need to know about the current state of the art, capped off with a provocative look at the synergy of ePortfolios with other student success interventions.” —John N. Gardner, President and Betsy O. Barefoot, Senior Scholar, Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education

22883 Quicksilver Drive Sterling, VA 20166-2019

Yancey.indb 275

Subscribe to our e-mail alerts: www.Styluspub.com

21-03-2019 12:25:49

Also available from Stylus Catalyst in Action Case Studies of High-Impact ePortfolio Practice Edited by Bret Eynon and Laura M. Gambino Foreword by Carol Geary Schneider “Catalyst in Action makes a compelling case that ePortfolios—when made central to degree programs and to students’ educational development—spur transformative redirection and new connections across both of these conceptions of student success: degree or credential completion and students’ demonstrated development of capacities needed and rewarded in the world beyond college.”—Carol Geary Schneider, Lumina Fellow, and president emerita of the Association of American Colleges & Universities As higher education enters a challenging new era, it must find new ways to adapt and change, to support and demonstrate student growth and development. Catalyst in Action is a powerful combination of intensive research and practical experience. Offering exciting new evidence and fresh new insights, Catalyst in Action will be an invaluable resource for those who wish to build student success, advance higher learning, and meet the demands of the twentyfirst century. (Continues on preceding page)

Yancey.indb 276

21-03-2019 12:25:50