Using E-Portfolios in a Web 2.0 Community to Develop Professional Skills
Open-access Web 2.0 tools provide learning options that challenge university traditions. Not only is so much material is available online, the ways that people can share information is quickly evolving. As digital natives, our students expect online learning tools to be as seamless as Facebook and other social networking tools.
The Educause Learning initiative’s Annual conference highlights national leaders in teaching with technology. It brings together administrators, faculty, learning technologists, librarians, teaching specialists and students to discuss improving the learning process and infrastructure.
Many of us are looking at how to make the transition from a centralized Learning Management System like Blackboard to a constellation of dispersed tools. To centralize information, universities are looking at overlaying a Web portal with one-point login authentication. To harness the student information for assessment, they are using something like Nils Petersen’s Harvesting Gradebook, creating various schemes for freezing a snapshot of each Web2.0 artifact and providing a confidential way to plug-in feedback and aggregate a whole class or department’s grades.
We explained how our ePortfolio project team is wrestling with the question of how to provide user flexibility within a supportable standardized system. We are working on identifying where choice is important, i.e. for personal expression and ownership, and where standardized plug-and-play is crucial for ease of use. I talked about how the ePortfolios are giving me an enriched understanding of my students’ abilities (i.e. those who can’t draw can often show their understanding through writing). Ron Bramhall provided anecdotes about how students are really understanding the purpose of their assignments. Andrew Bonamici provided a vision of the university transformed into a think-tank with thousands of students contributing to crucial research questions and solving knotty societal problems.
The conference challenged attendees to try out backchannel tools for networking during the sessions. Google Wave, Twitter, Pathable, Second Life, etc. provided secondary channels for interaction and collective discussion. With so many geeks, the online activity was about as active as I’ve ever seen for a conference. Lots of laptops open during the sessions: unclear how much was distraction vs. parallel focus.
Surrounding yourself with really serious geeks is a great way to up your standards!
