on the future of ePortfolio - Roundtable
Found this interesting discussion on ePortfolios courtesy of a Stephen Downes post. It's a transcript of a panel discussion from a conference held by LaGuardia Community College in April last year but has just appeared on the Academic Commons site. Over quite a period of time now we have been researching the application of ePortfolios and ePortfolio policy from a number of perspectives and it is interesting to see just how often LaGuardia appears on our 'horizon' in relation to ePortfolios. Anyway, back to the discussion. It starts off with the age old tension between student centred ePortfolios and institution centred ePortfolios or as Helen Barrett, one of the panel members refers to it:
the Assessment OF Learning on one hand, and on the other: assessment FOR learning, assessment AS learning.The conversation moves on to discussing how LaGuardia went about implementing their approach to ePortfolios and as one of the panel members says:
We did a lot of planning before we started talking about systems. So the systems supported the process, as opposed to buying a system and then tweaking the process to fit. And we were lucky. We had so much support from the administration. And faculty development was key. We got buy-in from all the stakeholders, from the administration to the faculty to the students. Each had its own level of challenge, of course. But without all of this falling into place, I don’t think it would have blossomed the way it has.It seems, from the discussion, that LaGuardia is doing very well in balancing the needs of the institution with the needs of the learner. Panel members then start talking about transformation and if you like 'light bulb moments' they had along the way on their own ePortfolio journeys. There seems to be general agreement on a change in the educational paradigm, where educators are learning along with their students and what this means in their approach to teaching. The panel then moves onto lifelong and lifewide learning, which is one of my areas of interest and Helen Barrett throws out the challenge of what can you do for students after they graduate (in relation to ePortfolios in a lifelong, lifewide context). Now this interests me because many, many of us are lifelong learners with no current affiliations with educational institutions or have multiple (e)portfolios scattered all over the place. I have been wrestling with the benefits that systemic or regional ePortfolios may or may not provide for all of us. Provision of ePortfolio tools/services such as that which can be provided through a great many Web 2.0 type services are simply not enough. Some people will be able to exploit and benefit from such services far better than others. Importantly, it seems to me (from the transcript of the panel discussion at least) is that what LaGuardia and others like them may be doing is providing their students with the skills and competencies to benefit from the 'things' that ePortfolios provide. This is a real challenge for regional implementations that are trying to reach out to members of the public that have no connection to an environment where they can learn about things like reflection. I have rambled on a number of times about ePortfolios and mentioned a number of regional implementations from around the world and it is hard to gauge what, if any, success they are having. I wonder what strategies they are employing to help their populations develop the skills necessary to really take advantage of the services they are offering. Anyway, this is getting seriously sidetracked from the panel discussion. It starts to get really interesting then as panel members start to examine the narrative/story telling aspect of ePortfolios and what that means for assessment. It seems that it is here that panel members become really passionate about what they are saying. At about this time it seems that the panel opens up for questions from the audience which seem to be focussed on implications for faculty and how to get buy in from the faculty. All in all, an interesting discussion touching on some of the big challenges and potentials for ePortfolios.
technorati tags: elearning, eportfolio
