A Portrait of the Portfolio as a Young Movement:

A Surprising Development

Trent Batson, Executive Director, The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL.org)

Meaning of the Title

Portrait: U.S. and global – patterns of use; trends; why

electronic portfolios are important to us

Portfolios: a portable instrumented learning space

supporting practices grounded in learning theory, native

to the social Web, and ideally suited to the higher

education enterprise as a guide and instrument for

transformation.

Young Movement: to fully benefit from portfolios or from

current knowledge technology requires deep changes in

the entire higher education enterprise.

Surprising: a potential path is on your campus

Details

Web-based, usually hosted by company

Student uploads artifacts (text, photos, graphics, video,

audio, links . . . )

Student work remains after semester; access continues.

Teacher can see student work and comment on it.

Student can read comments and reply; often not only the

student work but student reflections on the work.

Can produce a presentation on the Web

Can be used for outcomes assessment

It’s a digital repository designed for portfolio practices.

Those accessing AAEEBL Website are from: 1,559 visits from 42 countries in April

US

Canada

Chile

Guatemala

Costa Rica

The UK

Russia

Spain

Portugal

France

South Africa

Egypt

Saudi Arabia

Ghana

Pakistan

Poland

Netherlands

Sweden

Germany

Poland

Belarus

Hungary

Italy

Zimbabwe

India

China

Japan

Malaysia

Phillippines

Australia

New Zealand

Singapore

In the U. S.:

Usage Patterns

K-12: tracking, reporting to parents, graduation requirement, collaboration, creativity, reflection. Entire states, Texas, RI, Minnesota, Pennsylvania

Community College: employment and transfer, individual expression: wider range

Undergraduate in general: tracking progress toward learning goals; accreditation; IR reports; learning; richer resume; program review; general education programs; educational transformation; life-long.

Graduate programs: professional portfolios, reflection

In general: learning and assessment, not enough focus on employability

Problems

Technology

Misuse

Suited to academia-to-be

Requires trust

Expecting too much of technology

Promises

The Flowering of Active Learning

Active Learning

Current consensus: learning starts with experience.

Current practice: start with conception.

Truncating natural process by which learning occurs

With the scale of higher education and the (seemingly)

primitive atom-based technologies, not much choice.

New scheme:

1. Informational learning: preparation for action

2. Transformational learning: experiential

3. Forming perceptions – in portfolio

4. Collecting evidence

5. With teacher: forming discipline-specific conceptions

Transformational Situated Learning

Combine learning

research of last 40 years

with eportfolio practice

and you have 21st Century

Learning

George Kuh: High-Impact

Learning Practices:

First-Year Seminars and

Experiences

Common Intellectual

Experiences

Learning Communities

Writing-Intensive Courses

Collaborative Assignments

and projects

Undergraduate Research

Diversity/Global Learning

Service Learning,

Community-Based Learning

Internships

Capstone Courses and

Projects

http://www.aacu.org/leap/hi

p.cfm

Learning Takes Place Here, Too

Field work in botany, dendrology, archeology, ornithology, entomology, and many others.

What George Kuh Didn’t Include

Social development

Athletics

Clubs

Issue-based conversations

Identity formation

Should he have?

Portfolio Process

Colle

ctin

g evi

dence

• Art

• All file types

• Upload anywhere

• Comment on artifact

O

rgan

izin

g Evi

dence

• Sort evidence

• Tag or …

• Comments

• Choose who sees P

rese

nta

tion

• Select artifacts

• Create Web page with links to artifacts

• OR: use links in resume; evidence if needed

Portfolio Values

Ownership

Not passive

Has Stake

Sees Change

Continuity

Assessment

Reflective and

Integrative

Key skills of college grad

Interdisciplinary

Campus Implementations

Schools and departments of education

English, Art, Architecture, Music – “home” of portfolios

General education programs

Professions, especially the health professions

Rarely, full-campus orientation around evidence-based

learning

Also, rarely, entire state systems (California, Pennsylvania,

Minnesota)

Technical and Human Issues

Significant rollouts on campus face issues that single adoptions in a course don’t.

Integrate with campus course-management system

Determining what data the campus needs

Training students to use

Re-designing courses

Faculty development

Mining data hosted off-campus

Sustaining portfolios for graduates?

Determining if user requirements are being met

Staying ready to migrate to an alternate technology

Supporting portfolio “auxiliary tools”

Academic Issues

Losing the standardization the academic enterprise had,

based on behaviorism.

Making testing obsolete

How to assess portfolios?

How to alter mindsets of faculty and students?

And of parents and of the culture?

Addressing new critical skills: managing evidence over

time

Faculty using portfolios for their own professional review

Trusting students to do more learning on their own.

Help with these Issues:

The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL.org)

About AAEEBL

Emerged from an established global community of

practice

Affiliated with all major eportfolio projects or

organizations (and others): AAC&U, Campus Technology,

MERLOT, EPAC (at Stanford), Centre for Recording

Achievement, EIfEL/ePIC, Australian Flexible Learning

Framework, The Inter/National Coalition for Electronic

Portfolio Research.

Goal: build from COP to profession

Larger goal: assist higher education in its transformation

to the new knowledge ecology.

More about AAEEBL

Nearly 100 institutional members in 5 countries

15 corporate sponsors

Board of Directors

Scholarship: IJeP at Virginia Tech

4 annual conferences:

Annual Conference, Boston, with Campus Technology

AAEEBL Western US conference, Salt Lake City

AAEEBL Southeast US conference, Virginia Tech

AAEEBL Northeast US conference, Providence

The AAEEBL Learner

FIPSE grants

Annual AAEEBL survey

What’s on the horizon?

What’s the future for electronic portfolios in higher education?

Trends and guesses

Electronic portfolio technology – an array, not a platform

Technologies to manage learning process for students will become ubiquitous

The Social Web and services will quickly become part of the process

Employers will demand portfolio links in resumes

Portfolios will be employed for workforce development by states

Portfolios will help states recognize prior learning

Campus life will become only richer

Portfolio standards will not be universally recognized for years

Please join us --

AAEEBL/Campus Technology Conference, July 25-28, 2011 Boston, Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center

http://campustechnology.com/Home.aspx

http://www.aaeebl.org

And, join AAEEBL at www.aaeebl.org

trentbatson@mac.com

T H A N K S !!