Electronic Portfolios

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Electronic Portfolios (e-portfolios) are active learning environments where students and faculty engage in a continual learning process throughout the students� undergraduate career. E-portfolios are a reflective collection of student work and experiences.

Following the UMass Dartmouth e-portfolio template, students organize, display, and discuss their work, which is ready for review at any time. The UMass Dartmouth e-portfolios rest upon the following process:

• Collect
  Students collect work from various evidence categories that include academic, extra-curricular, and personal information. Most often this work is in text format, but e-portfolios also work with visual works and can include sound recordings as well.
• Select
  Students determine what shape their e-portfolios take as they learn to consider the e-portfolio�s purpose and audience. Students then review their collected works and choose representative works of the learning outcomes and ideas they believe are important. Students also set up places to integrate reflective writing pieces that demonstrate their learning process.
• Reflect
  Students select specific projects, assignments, experiential learning experiences, or extracurricular activities to analyze and interpret for their audience. This work includes:
  • explaining what a project achieves,
  • revising or developing it further,
  • fitting the work into an academic program, and
  • considering future learning development.
• Publish
  Students post their works and reflective pieces to their e-portfolios and activate the site so that others may view it. Faculty review student progress and help students critique their portfolios.

Overall, UMass Dartmouth's e-portfolios helps students connect their classroom learning to their life experiences. Because e-portfolios combine information about family and work, education and hobbies, classrooms experiences and extracurricular experiences, they provide a picture of the student as a whole individual and demonstrate the student's learning experience over the course of his/her undergraduate career at UMass Dartmouth.

The ultimate goal is to implement a campus e-portfolio system that assesses students' undergraduate careers across academic and co-curricular experiences. Prompted by campus-wide interest in learning assessment, an E-portfolio Initiative Committee has worked in phases.

The first phase (AY 2004-2005) of the e-portfolio initiative established the conceptual structure and curricular objectives on learning outcomes assessment. This phase, supported by a UMass President's office grant, focused on developing an e-portfolio program that enables student reflection upon their undergraduate careers and learning experiences. In addition to reviewing other university e-portfolio initiatives, the pilot group reviewed literature on e-portfolio practices. Then, using webpage software, the pilot group created an e-portfolio template that included the first year experience, academic program, co-curricular activities, and career planning. Using this template, students developed e-portfolios that determined the initial template's effectiveness. Finally, the first phase identified issues for campus implementation and the next phase of the e-portfolio development process, including the need for more effective software, technical support for faculty/students, and departmental integration.

Participating in Phase One were: Jen Riley, WMS/English; Gail Berman, Career Services; Phyllis Curier, Nursing, Cathy Houser; English, and Rebecca Hutchinson; Ceramics.
Click here for the full report.

The second phase (AY 2005-06) focused on identifying software and developing student examples from a select class of business and nursing graduate students. Supported by the Computer Information and Technology Services, software technical support personnel made Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) software functional. Business and nursing faculty developed assessment grids into which graduate students uploaded documents. To date, this phase allowed us to understand the potential of a stable software, address issues of faculty/student support, and review embryonic examples of student e-portfolios.

Faculty included in Phase Two were Magali Carrera, CATLS; Phyllis Currier, Nursing, Susanne Scott, Business, Tim Shea, Business and Jen Riley; WMS/English.

Phase Three (AY 2006-07) will further:

1. conceptualize e-portfolio objectives, identify how e-portfolios contribute to departmental assessment requirements, and develop e-portfolio assessment rubrics;
2. develop reflective processes for students emphasizing integration of academic work with co-curricular activities;
3. add two undergraduate departments to the study; and,
4. open "Presentation" sections of OSPI.