The E-Portfolio Forum: Deepening High Impact Learning Sessions
January 29, 2011 - San Francisco, CA
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Student Outcomes as Academic Currency:
A New Institutional Context for ePortfolios
Presenter: David Shupe, Chief Innovation Officer, eLumen Collaborative.
Session Description: The implicit message of ePortfolios to both students and faculty is that the personal, professional, and intellectual development of each individual student matters. Meanwhile, there are two other loud institutional messages: the larger institutional context of the credit system continuously communicates to students that what matters is the accumulation of course credits and grades, and the assessment imperative communicates to faculty that what matters are snapshots of aggregated data (even samples of data) that are entirely oblivious to individual students. In that mix of conflicting messages, ePortfolios in an institution may not achieve their academic potential or be easily sustained over time. However, a new unexpected opportunity is coming into focus. The growing sophistication of electronic technology is now making it feasible for faculty-defined expected student outcomes-for-graduates and explicit criteria for their evaluation (such as LEAP / VALUE) to become the academic currency by which student achievement, simultaneously individual and collective, is tracked. The emphasis of the session is on what practical steps can be taken to introduce outcomes-as-currency into an institution.
Downloadable Presentation Files:
PDF: Student Outcomes as Academic Currency Power Point Presentation (PDF)
Read David's Blog:
A New Day - from David Shupe, eLuman Founder and CIO