The use of ePortfolios in evaluating the curriculum and student learning

Journal of Social Work Education, Fall, 2008 by Dale Fitch, Melissa Peet, Beth Glover Reed, Richard Tolman

Electronic Portfolios

Although the literature suggests the value of the portfolio process, the logistical issues of managing all the artifacts and notebooks associated with the process can be quite onerous, especially from the institutional perspective. The development of ePortfolios provides one way to address these demands. Several projects/companies have undertaken electronic portfolio development, such as Chalk and Wire, http://www.chalkandwire.com; LiveText, http: //college.livetext.com/college/in dex.html; iWebfolio, http://www.nuventive .com/index2.htm; IMS Global, http://www. imsglobal.org/ep/; and eFolio, http://efolio minnesota.com. For a more exhaustive discussion of ePortfolios in general, please see http: //www.educause.edu / 645?PARENT_ID=475.

Our university is exploring the use of the Open Source Portfolio (OSP) introduced by the University of Minnesota, Duluth, in 1995. The OSP is an open-source project freely available at http://www.osportfolio.org and is part of the larger Sakai Project comprised of more than 96 universities across the United States. The University of Michigan School of Social Work (SSW) is collaborating with other professional schools and several programs/divisions at UM to explore the use of this platform. The OSP application is conceptualized in the following diagram reproduced with permission by the RSmart group (Coppola, 2006). rSmart is a professional support organization that assists educational institutions to deploy, integrate, update, manage, train, and support open source software applications focusing on Sakai and Kuali, http://www.rsmart.com.

The diagram in Figure 1 illustrates two separate processes not always distinguished in the literature pertaining to paper-based portfolios. For the portfolio creator/owner (circle on the right), it begins at "collect" where students gather their work. The work might be gathered by a course management system (CMS), to be discussed later. The students then "reflect" on selected materials, which can be an unstructured process or a structured process using scaffolding (i.e., specific guiding reflection questions), with or without peer feedback. What the students choose to show to others is selected at the "design" step, and variations on what is shown can be developed accordingly. The design phase is also integrative in nature--it prompts students to connect pieces of their learning in specific ways. What the "public" sees occurs at the "publish" stage, and what is seen can vary by audience (Portfolio Guest) or by purpose (i.e., whether it be for assessment, reflection, integration, or showcase purposes).

Concurrent with the processes on the right are the curricular processes in the triangle on the left. A "guide" introduces the notion of structure via scaffolding. That is, students could be asked to "collect" certain types of artifacts (e.g., demonstration of competencies), and/or they could be asked to "reflect" on these artifacts by being asked specific questions. We asked our students to identify issues, tasks, insights, and skills learned for their artifacts. Note that the guides can be organized around a course, practice areas or methods, or Council on Social Work Education competencies; by a student-created framework; or by any combination thereof. A "review" of the artifacts takes place and assessment is given with feedback or a grade. Finally, a report writer in OSP v. 2.2 allows program administrators to "analyze" portfolio data by any number of means. The common interest group (CIG) coordinator represents the management of the portfolio development process. There could be many CIG coordinators per student, reflecting the various curricular paths our students travel. For example, a CIG might be a family violence workgroup, and they would identify typical artifacts a student might want to include in a portfolio. The same might be said of a community organizing CIG, a child welfare CIG, and so forth. Finally, the group responsible for the computing environment would serve as the program administrator.