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On Wednesday, April 7th, Dr. Helen Barrett spend the day at Wake Forest talking with various constituencies about E-portfolios in higher education. Lauren Pressley, Jolie Tingen and I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Barrett early in the day and discuss the status of E-portfolios at Wake Forest. Later in the day Dr. Barrett gave a presentation on E-portfolios in the Benson Center to a group of 30 faculty, staff and students. Susan, Lauren and I were fortunate to be able to attend the session where Dr. Barrett focused on “The two faces of E-portfolios”.She described hou the term E-portfolios often gets used to refer to assessment, when the presentation and assessment pieces of portfolios needs to be separate. Dr. Barrett described how purpose drives the process, referring to:
The four pillars of lifelong learning:
-Knowing the learner
-Planning for learning
-Understanding how to learn
-Evaluating learning
Dr. Barrett also described how portfolios need a reflective journal, that “Deep Learning” involves reflection, is lifelong . The confusion of terminology can be clarified by understanding that E-portfolios are student centered and accountability systems are institution centered. Dr. Barrett looks for where these can overlap of assessment types (student and institution centered).Traditionally the definition of portfolio applies to collections of work by visual artists and writers.
Purposes of e-portfolios:
-learning
-marketing
-assessment
A portfolio tells a story.What is the best tool? The answer…It depends!
We need tools for conversation, not tools for telling
Web 2.0 tools for E-portfolios:
-Allow for more interactivity
-Architecture of participation
-Pedagogy of interaction (e-portfolio 2.0)
Web 2.0 is the personal social learning environment.What drives the use of social networks and how do we incorporate that into E-portfolios?How can we make E-portfolios stick? These were questions Dr. Barrett posed to the group. She recommended a balanced approach with separate tools for E-portfolio and assessment. She also described how important it is to give students ownership of the E-portfolio and that we all understand the difference betweenworkspace and showcase e-portfolios.
Dr. Barrett describes reflection as the heart and soul of a portfolio.E-portfolio is qualitative data, but rubrics can assign numbers/scores to the materials submitted. Students are building a digital brand, bluring the boundaries between social networking and personal brand.
The audio of her presentation can be found at:http://www.wfu.edu/~yipcw/edu/eportfolio.mp3
The slide share can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/eportfolios/wake-forest0410
2 Comments on ‘Dr. Helen Barrett and the Two Faces of E-Portfolios’
Thanks for the summary, Giz! I’d hoped to make it to yesterday’s session, but that didn’t pan out, so I’m glad to hear that you, Susan and Lauren went.
Am I correct in understanding that e-portfolios are meant to be used/maintained beyond the years an individual is a student?
Molly, you are correct! Helen sees these portfolios as the owned by the student and continuing after college!