designing portfolios

Designing Portfolios

Jennifer Turns

Assistant Professor, Technical Communication

[email protected]

Acknowledgements: This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, through grants ESI-0227558 (“The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education”) and REC-0238392 (“Using Portfolios to Promote Knowledge Integration in Engineering Education).

Setting the stage

• About me (in a nutshell)– My background– General interests– Current position– Current research

• About the talk– Relative to other talks– Information and discussion

And something about you

• What experiences have you had in designing portfolios? – Function? – Form? – What did you learn from the activity?

Outline of my talk

• Portfolios – What and Why

• Portfolios examples from my work

• Delving deeper into two research studies

• Some reflections

Portfolios

• As collection– A collection of artifacts, artifact annotations,

and overarching statements.

• As argument– A portfolio is an argument developed around

the claims you wish to make about yourself. Ultimately, the claims will be most convincing to readers when they are supported by documentation from a variety of sources.

Portfolio – Information architecture

Overarching Message

Artifact(s) Artifact(s) Artifact(s)

Annotation Annotation Annotation

Overarching message…• Teaching Philosophy• Professional Statement• Etc.

Artifacts…• Documents• Videos/photos• Scanned images• Etc.

Annotations…• Key features• Goals• Effectiveness• Etc.

(Eleven additional

pages)

OverarchingStatement

ArtifactAnnotation

Portfolio Example 1Professional Portfolio

developed using “E-Portfolio”

Designing a portfolio…

• Design decisions– Artifacts, number and nature– Annotations, nature– Implementation environment– Audience– Goals

• General issues– Socio-technical systems perspective: How to

distribute the decisions across the user, the student, the educator and the technology?

Why portfolios? • Portfolios as Communication Design:

– Audience, Argument, Multimedia composition, Usability…

• Portfolios as Cross-disciplinary Endeavor– Campus (Catalyst E-portfolio, FIGs and portfolios)– Teaching portfolios (College of Education, proposed for engr)– TC department (Writing portfolios)

• Portfolios as Learning Intervention– Reflective practitioner, reflection-on-action (Schon)– Learning through explanation (Chi)– Transformative nature of communication

(Scardamalia and Bereiter)– Learning through narrative and links to encoding of memory (Bruner)– Efficiency and leveraging of existing work

Examples…

Portfolios in my work…

Type of portfolio DescriptionSubmission portfolio A portfolio in which students submit

work along with annotations of that work.

Professional portfolio A portfolio intended to persuade the user that the creator has professional abilities.

Teaching portfolio A portfolio in which one explains and provides evidence of their teaching ability.

Learning portfolio A portfolio in which one makes and provides evidence of learning outcomes.

Assignment 1 – Document Design / Word

Submission Portfolio (E-portfolio)1. Assignments

2. Artifacts

3. AnnotationsDesign Rationale

Professional Activities

Learning

Professional Activities

Learning

Design Rationale

Assignment 2 – Presentations / PowerPoint

(Five additional

pages)


ArtifactAnnotation

Professional Portfolio

(Developed using Dreamweaver)

(Eleven additional

pages)


ArtifactAnnotation

Professional Portfolio

developed using “E-Portfolio”

Learning PortfolioWithin a course

1.Course

Learning Objectives

Use Software ToolsThis quarter, I was continually grateful that I took this class. I found that I became much more comfortable with computer applications during the course. I also felt less reluctant to sit down and attempt to learn new programs. Since I came to the class with very limited knowledge and skill in graphic design, I feel especially proud of my modest accomplishments.

My favorite project by far was Photoshop. I think I did the best job designing this web page based on the least knowledge and comfort. I was able to incorporate attractive graphics and practical navigation techniques. My wheel of heads directs navigation by outlining the picture of the current biography page in blue. I like that it offers a blend of freedom and accessibility to the user.

2. One Page per

Objective

4. Annotation:

Explain Achievement

3. Artifacts:Evidence

of Achievement

Learning Portfolio

Coop/internship experience

Teaching Portfolios

• Binders… containing– Teaching philosophy/statement– Example artifacts from teaching

• Syllabi, exams, emails sent to students, descriptions of in-class activities, comments from students, etc.

– Annotations of those artifacts • Word documents, directly on artifact images..

Research Example 1

Teaching Portfolios

• Challenge– Engineering graduate students have limited opportunity to advance

their teaching skills– Any solution to this challenge needs to reflect the diversity of

engineering graduate students and programs

• Proposed solution– Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program (ETPP)– Peer-led, self-paced program– Activities support the building of the portfolio– Weekly meetings (1.5 hours) to discuss activities – Significant time spent on to peer review

Research Study

• Content– Summer 2003– Two groups complete the 8 week program– Five and six participants respectively

• Method - Participant observation +– Session field notes– Interviews with participants– Collect artifacts– Focus groups– …

One Current Analysis

• Thesis– The inclusion of the “diversity statement” led to

productive learning conversations.

• Analysis (on-going)– Focus on relevant sessions (week 6 and 7)– Coding for

• Task – Diversity statement, Portfolio, Job search (5 codes)• Teaching – Discussion of teaching (7 codes)• Diversity – Discussion of diversity (5 codes)

Preliminary Findings

• Conversation has a tight interweaving of task, teaching, and diversity elements (GOOD)

• Discussion of task topics (e.g., how is a diversity statement to be structured) frequently gave way to discussion of diversity and teaching issues. (GOOD)

• … • The research group is currently working through

this analysis…

Research Example 2

Challenge – Knowledge integration

Effective EngineeringPractitioners

EmergingPractitioners

Curriculum Modular Courses + Additional Interventions

C2C1

Broad, Integrated Conceptual Structure

B

A

Broad, IntegratedConceptual Structure

Narrow, DisconnectedConceptual Structure

Proposed “Solution”Engineering Professional Portfolio

• Definition:– A collection of artifacts, artifact annotations, and

overarching statements that a student uses to communicate an understanding of engineering and preparedness to perform engineering work in their area.

• Examples– Mechanical engineering portfolio– Technical communication portfolio– Manufacturing engineering portfolio– Jet propulsion engineering portfolio

Variation 1: Cross-curricular Engineering Professional Portfolio




C2C1


B

A



The Portfolio:

Students link coursework and extra-curricular activities to their understanding of their discipline…

(Eleven additional

pages)


ArtifactAnnotation

Example: Cross-curricular

Engineering Professional Portfolio

Variation 2: Course-based EPP




C2C1


B

A



The Portfolio:

Students link coursework from one class to their understanding of their discipline…

(Five additional

pages)


ArtifactAnnotation

Example: Course-based

Engineering Professional Portfolio

Research (July’03-Jun’08)

• Overarching Question: – In what ways does construction of the Engineering Professional

Portfolio promote knowledge integration?

• Cross-curricular EPP– Context: Extra curricula program where students create

portfolios *annually* (longitudinal study)– Data via participant observation, interviews, surveys

• Course-based EPP– Context: A single course (study 1), courses across different

departments (study 2), and multiple courses within a single department (study 3)

– Data via participant observation, interviews, surveys

Assessing Knowledge Integration

• Indirect assessment, through performance-based tasks.

Statement Agree?1 I understand how my courses relate to my engineering discipline

4

I feel my courses are preparing me to be a professional engineer

3

I see connections between my classes

5

1The scale: 0 – no agreement, 5 – complete agreement

Indirect assessment, data on attitudes.

Direct assessment, by probing the conceptual structure directly.

Subje ct S1

Fra

me

of

refe

ren

ce

Phys ic al loc atio n

technical

no code

no code

sh orebankwaterwall

natural

logistical

social

Reflections / Lessons

Parting observations…

• On student abilities…– Students have significant difficulty talking *about* their work…

• On technology… – E-portfolio is a powerful flexible tool but does not replace the idea

of physical portfolios and/or custom web-based portfolios

• On education…– In portfolio design, what is good for assessment is not necessarily

good for learning

• On design…– A socio-technical systems perspective hold promise for describing

the design of portfolio assignments for learning environments…

Revisiting the talk…

• Portfolios – What and Why

• Portfolios examples from my work

• Delving deeper into two research studies

• Some reflections

designing portfolios

Documents

argumenta portfolio

usability portfolios

artifacts word documents

artifact annotations

communication design

artifact i

course learning objectives2

teaching syllabi