Newly Minted
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Thanks to Helen for telling us about the session on e-portfolios that she attended. I think that she asks some important questions about form and function that need to be considered carefully when taking on a project of this magnitude.
Also a reminder that our own teaching portfolios are due next week (4/29) and an announcement that there will be an end of the semester fe(a)st in HEAV 320 next Thursday from 9-10:15. This is an activity that will include all mentor groups and is sponsored by the mentors. We'll talk more about our private celebration later.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
As required by Samantha, I am posting what I learned from the workshop on E-portfolios offered by the School of Education here at Purdue and some of my questions on their approaches to such tools. Questions are welcome, but they gave no handouts, so no photocopies of their workshop is available. (I wonder about their use of technology here: why not giving handouts?)
First I will start with a definition of electronic-portfolios to offer some understanding of its construction and use as an educational technology. The electronic-portfolio, or the multimedia, digital collection and presentation of one’s work to provide a record of his or her effort, progress, and achievement, has been playing an increasingly important role in job-hunting, professional evaluation, and learning management these days. The use of the e-portfolio can cultivate growing capacities in using technology to support life-long learning by facilitating the use, reflection, integration, and sharing of knowledge and learning skills. It also has the potential to transform teaching and learning so that it is more leaner centered and outcome oriented.
Broadly speaking, there are four categories of portfolios in terms of purposes, namely, developmental (or formative) portfolios, showcase portfolios, employment (or marketing) portfolios, and assessment portfolios. The e-portfolios can be developed with generic tools (GT) such as word processors, HTML editors, multimedia authoring tools, PDF, and other productivity tool software and customized systems approaches (CS) that use online database to provide structures and service space for the development and storage of e-portfolios (Gibson & Barrett, 3). CS is top down with readily available models and structures and controlled by educational programs with accountability concerns, whereas GT is bottom up and controlled by learners to construct their own original representation and expression of their work.
The electronic-portfolios used by the School of Education here at Purdue are driven by the state and national demand of assessment and certification for educational majors. Starting with a four-year-tenure national grant, the P3T3 project at the School of Education adopted the customized systems (top-down) approach and designed and constructed a password-protected online database to conduct performance-based assessment of all enrolled students. E-portfolios are incorporated in most educational courses and become an integral part of the requirement. The purpose is to collect artifacts, to select good ones, to reflect on one’s evolving teaching practices by writing reflexive narratives for every assignment, and to project what steps need to be taken for further progress.
The reason the School of Education decided to use close-ended systems lies in their concern with legal issues related to human subject use, for many courses observe K12 kids or special education kids and analyze them in course assignments, which involves a lot of such issues with fair human subject use and privacy. Driven by the assessment demand defined by the Indiana Professional Standards Board, the School of Education will transfer the whole system to a commercial vender named TaskDream, which offers a much more comprehensive and assessment driven commercial e-portfolio package. The cost will be passed on to students, which is said to be around 25$ each semester for each student.
The problem I have with such system is its cost and limited access to users in general. Even though the commercial package incorporates hundreds of rubrics, measurement scales, and assessment tools and make the task of evaluation much easier for instructors in general, I still wonder whether it is worth all the cost though it will be eventually shifted to students. Is the adoption of commercial software the ultimate choice for educational institutions? My understanding of E-portfolios is more utopia here: I want to construct an open-ended, bottom-up database using generic tools, including free software such as Netscape Composer so that anyone interested can just create their own e-portfolios instead of having to pay or get enrolled in certain programs to get access to such tools. Considered as the innovative and transforming educational technology, e-portfolios should be disseminated and offered as a choice for everyone, for it can be constructed as a widely accessible concept of critical reflexive education practice using free software or with minimal cost instead of being a close-ended costly commercial package.
Thanks for taking the time to read through this long post:-)
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Morning, everyone.
Thinking of the university as a kind of cultural benefactor to the outside community is dangerous, and even more so if we as "public intellectuals" assume to know what kinds of cultural benefaction (is that a word?) the outside community needs.
My undergrad university has a pretty notable institutionalized service learning program. During first week orientation, freshman students are "given the opportunity" (i.e. assigned jobs) to engage in community outreach. Some tutored ESL students, some helped renovate old houses, etc. The general feeling of "forced volunteerism" was, I remember, overwhelming. Furthermore, the service learning stopped when orientation stopped. How can we expect students to take this idea seriously when it's still handled in such a self-congratulatory, simplistic way? I worry about any institutional service learning program that does not have specific and extensive pedagogical objectives as well as constant communication between the students and the community at large.
Having said that, this is a good idea as long as we communicate with people in the community--ask them what they'd like to see happen, and ask for their help in affecting change. We have to resist the idea of being paternalist, intellectual agents of social change outside of the university. If we don't, we risk as Ryan put it coming off as paternalistic/liberal do-gooders.
And this is a complex issue--it will be difficult to resist the idea of "intellectuals venturing out into the masses" when most universities are set as separate entities from the surrounding community.
Hi all,
Considering we all study/teach at a “public” university this week’s reading has immanent implications for us all. What I think Cushman succeeds in doing is to show that literacy has purpose, not just functionality. The overlapping benefits of service learning-structured coursework is obvious from the tri-fold advantages gained from teaching, research, and service (College English 331). I would think the greatest challenges which face students in such a course would be to defy their “stand-point” perspective and interact effectively and coherently with the groups they intend to “service.”
Pedagogically, I liked the idea of personal journals; this invites both students and community members to see that literacy has a context in addition to a personal connection to reading/writing themselves. Maybe next semester I might try to incorporate this idea by having my students compose their own personal websites; in this way they may learn to understand how their learning affects not only themselves, but serves to facilitate learning “outside” the classroom as well.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
I am a big fan of social justice, and believe that it is something people should be involved with, but I am very wary of employing this directly through my position as an "intellectual." I think that Cushman's article is a good start towards qualifying exactly how academics should affect the community, but I support an even more cautious approach than this. One of her most important ideas is that things academics do as academics should be limited to their field of expertise. It is a strong temptation to use an academic position to drive change that is felt to be important, but I think this is an overstepping of the bounds (on the contrary, I think there are many things people can be involved with as humans that is avoids this conflict... in other words academics can strive to fight hunger or poverty or racism or substance abuse on their own time along with accountants and truck drivers and waitpersons.) Causes that people participate in through an official role as intellectual should be limited to their sphere of expertise. Furthermore, Cushman endorses keeping things scholarly instead of just going in as though you are the savior of the world. This "liberal do-gooder" attitude is noble but also dangerous and simplistic- it risks being paternalistic and avoiding the complexities that are required for real and lasting change. These criteria are important and I would suggest sticking to them even more rigidly than Cushman does... I think professional integrity depends on it.
PS- I also believe that people who are not academics fall into this same mode and must meet the same standards. Many well-intentioned volunteers rush into situations without having the knowledge needed to really influence a situation. It is the responsibility of anyone trying to help others to inform themselves about the situations surrounding those they wish to assist.
I strongly agree with Cushman’s argument that academics need to get out of their ivory towers—but I disagree that her method is the way to do so. I don’t want to be a public intellectual. First, self identifying as an “intellectual” has overtones of snobbery and elitism. Second, I don’t have the passion to devote my life to changing the world. And this passion is needed to strive to emulate Gates (who I think was on Moneyline a few weeks ago) and Fish (who I saw on O’Reilly.) I don’t want to be the person the local or national news turns to to put events into perspective. If Cushman does, good for her.
One way to get out of the ivory tower is to teach rather than devote time researching arcane issues for the sake of building an academic reputation. Further, and I think Cushman’s examples illustrate this, there are local issues that might be less daunting than trying to solve the Middle East crisis. However, these issues need not always be in “under-served neighborhoods.” Might the emphasis on these neighborhoods be considered a subtle form of racism or elitism? No one would propose a service learning project to caddy for rich old white males at the country club where a round of golf is $500. To quickly summarize—is helping “individuals who have no home, not enough food, or no access to good education,” the province of higher education? Is it the only province?
Thanks for your pat on the back, friends!
Ryan, you forgot to post ROSES together with this virtual encouragement, but thanks anyway!
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Helen for winning the Graduate School's Special Incentives Fellowship for the 2004-2005 AY. Helen's proposed project deals with using electronic portfolios in the classroom. Once again, congratulations to Helen.
