Eportfolio Introduction Video #2 Hello. This video is designed to introduce SLCC’s ePortfolio requirement by answering the kinds of questions that might have occurred to you. It features screenshots of actual ePortfolios created by SLCC students. So what, exactly, is the General Education ePortfolio Requirement? SLCC’s Gen Ed ePortfolio requirement provides you a space to display your work from General Education courses in a medium that is the norm for communicating, sharing, and showcasing ideas – the Internet. When you take your Gen Ed courses, you will place signature assignments (assignments that are intended to demonstrate your achievements of course goals/objectives, and your talents) for display and reflect on projects from those courses in a website that you create, own, and maintain using free Web 2.0 platforms. The school supports three of these platforms—Weebly, Yola, and Wordpress—and students are creating amazing ePortfolios with all three. The ePortfolio is not a social networking space – it’s a professional exhibition of your learning. You will share the ePortfolio with your instructors; beyond that, you decide who can see your work. What are the Educational Advantages of Having an ePortfolio? The level of effort and commitment you and your instructors put into the ePortfolio ultimately determines what you get out of it. Your instructors are responsible for giving you challenging assignments and reflection prompts that really push you to think deeply about your learning. You are responsible for doing your best on those assignments and allowing yourself to be pushed to reflect on them. At its most basic, the ePortfolio is an electronic filing cabinet to organize and store your best work while you are at SLCC. If you make the most of it, however, you’ll find that the ePortfolio helps you see patterns and relationships in your learning, and helps you become a better student. I challenge students in my programs to go beyond even that and use the ePortfolio as a professional portfolio to showcase themselves for admission to 4-­‐year institutions and to impress scholarship committees. But ultimately the ePortfolio is about making connections and owning your education. I encourage you to avoid being one of those passive students who receives and education; instead, use the ePortfolio, the signature assignments, and the reflection to claim an education from Salt Lake Community College. What Role does Reflection Play in the ePortfolio? Reflection is an intentional thought process you go through after you have completed an assignment. The ePortfolio gives you many opportunities for you to reflect on your papers, projects, and other evidence of your effort in school. You might reflect on why a particular assignment fits in your ePortfolio where it does, or even why it belongs in an ePortfolio of your best work at all . You might reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of your work, and not depend on your professors to do that for you. All of this adds to your learning process. A reflective person is one who thinks critically, and critical thinking is one of SLCC’s five learning outcomes for all of its graduates. Critical thinking is the process of analyzing, processing and then applying a concept. When you reflect upon your work you are asking yourself questions about its correctness and validity. By taking the extra step of reflecting on your work, you learn more about your thought process. You begin to understand why you made the decisions you made and in the future you can make better educated decisions. One of our assignments in College Algebra helps students calculate how much money they can save on a trip if they drive a little slower. At the end of the assignment, the reflection asks students to take the concept they have learned and apply it to another class. Maybe in a business class you used a similar mathematical concept to save a company money by making its vehicle fleet more efficient, or maybe it relates to your Biology class and the way the body regulates energy consumption in different conditions. EPortfolios allow you to think and analyze and reflect outside of a single assignment, course, or academic discipline. The reflection process inside the ePortfolio helps you connect all your General Education at SLCC. Aside from the Educational Benefits, What Else is in it for Students? When first they hear about ePortfolio, many students think, “Oh, this is one more thing I have to do for the College,” when in fact it is a way for the College to serve students, and better prepare them to succeed when they leave SLCC. Let me give you some possibilities. Other colleges and universities have found that while a General Education ePortfolio is not likely to get you a job, per se, it does provide two distinct advantages in the job market. For one thing, students who have built an ePortfolio appear to be better prepared for job interviews where they need to quickly encapsulate their strengths for a potential employer. There’s something useful and empowering about the process of collecting your work and reflecting on it that translates well to the interview setting. In addition, many students take the Gen Ed ePortfolio further and either add a tab for their majors work at the university, or they create a separate portfolio, more specifically tailored to finding a job…and SLCC’s Gen Ed ePortfolio taught them how to do that effectively. The ePortfolio is a way for SLCC to give students more than just a diploma when they graduate. With your effort and SLCC’s professors giving you good assignments and effective reflection prompts, you should graduate with an impressive showcase of what you know and can do. We’ve already had students use their rich ePortfolios to impress scholarship committees at other universities. Finally, I’ll just say that unless your ambition is to be a greeter at WalMart someday, you are probably aiming for a career in which it will be increasingly important to be able to present yourself professionally on the web. I use my own ePortfolio of my work at the College for my regular tenure reviews and administrative evaluations. What is the relationship between ePortfolios and Assessment? Electronic portfolios play several important assessment roles. Colleges and universities around the country are turning to student electronic portfolios to do the kinds of rich assessments of student work that are not possible with standardized tests. SLCC uses random assessment of a sample of ePortfolios—anonymously, with no student names attached—as evidence in the College’s regular accreditation reports. Faculty use ePortfolios—especially the reflections that accompany student work—
to assess their own courses. They can tell from student reflections whether their signature assignments are helping students make intellectual connections and achieve important learning outcomes. EPortfolios perform a self-­‐assessment function for students as well. The more effort students put in to their ePortfolios, the easier it is for them to see how they are doing in a given semester and over time. It is very enlightening to compare artifacts and reflection from your first semester at SLCC with those from your final semester. To get started on your ePortfolio, you should. Go to the ePortfolio page on SLCC’s website. Click on “Info for Students” There you will find the Student ePortfolio Handbook with complete details You’ll find links to online ePortfolio tutorials. You’ll also be able to sign up for free ePortfolio workshops in SLCC’s Libraries. If you have further questions, email eportfolio@slcc.edu.