Well, it looks like the U of A is getting one step closer to a campus wide implementation of portfolios, through WebCT Vista 4.0. I know some of you out there are already using this, if so, how are you finding it? Others are using other solutions and it seems that many are seeing good results. If you want to see what it looks like login here with the username bg and password editme. Please note that the preview is only active until November 11th, 2006.
When this went online there was a bit of conversation on our mailing list as to how it may pan out on campus. Here is a bit of the conversation:
Colleague [paraphrased]-
It’s interesting how most pilots are done in MA programs that are smaller, cohort based and have a definite outcome. It would be daunting to put portfolios into place in larger programs like Arts or Science without these features.
Making a portfolio a capstone course could help save it from being another “hoop”. This way it would be taught well and have professional and pedagogical uses. Administrators wouldn’t like it, because it’s another course, but from teaching and learning it’s a good idea.
My reply:
I agree that one of the things that is going to make this difficult is that there needs to be a focus from the instructors – they have to understand it and encourage it’s use across the board, but even more so, there needs to be some awareness created on the part of potential employers. I know when I have talked to people who are interested in what I do and I suggest that they read my blog – they often give me a puzzled look before saying… oh that is one of those online diary things right?
Without a cohort, the instructors are not going to buy in as well, without that buy in, we don’t get the students. If we don’t have “the world” at least interested in portfolios outside of professional fields, we are out of luck again. The best we can hope for is an exit requirement. But if that is where we are starting, maybe we should work with student advisors to increase the profile of the portfolios and then when students go out, regardless of their interviewer’s knowledge of the system, they will have it there anyway.
Even in Education where the portfolio (at least in Elementary Ed) is something of a touchstone for many students as being their pride and joy, many students are disheartened that they are not even looked at during the interview. To this I tell my Ed friends and students who ask, it’s not only about what others see in the product, it’s about what it took for you to create it, and that is often more valuable.
If we look at that last point as a way to sell faculty on it, then maybe we can get something as one of the gripes that I often here is that students hardly ever transfer knowledge from junior to senior courses, much less across disciplines. If instructors encourage portfolio use for reflection and exam preparation, and require artifacts from outside their course, I think we have a seed that we can start to build on.
So, while I hope it works, I’m also hoping that those who use it are going to be able to get their students to be so proud of it that they are going to bring it along with them when they leave. That way, we don’t really have to worry about buy in from the “rest of the world” as students will be pushing their work just as they push their resumes, and hopefully thinking that the two are linked. The trick of course with this and with all the other great ideas that come out of EDIT people convincing the marginally motivated that this is a good thing.
Edit – thanks for the tip of the hat from Michael Lindeman who also posted a link to a review of BB’s portfolio.
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