Making Connections Community

Co-Directors:

Dr. Howard Wach, Director of Instructional Technology; Department of History

Dr. Jordi Getman-Eraso, Co-Director, Honors Program; Department of History

Faculty and Administrative Participants:

Dr. Stephen Powers, Department of Education and Reading

Prof. Jeanine Kelley-Williams, Department of Art and Music

Prof. Lisa Amowitz, Department of Art and Music

Dr. Nancy Ritze, Associate Dean, Office of Institutional Research

Dr. Giulia Guarnieri, Department of Modern Languages

We are entering our third semester of e-portfolio practice with approximately 800 student users. Our focus remains largely in the areas indicated above, but we also have promising initiatives underway with the Office of Student Life, which should bring the benefits of e-portfolios to student clubs and the Student Government Association. We are also working with the General Education Committee to organize an assessment initiative, utilizing e-portfolios, that will make academic sense as well as satisfy accreditors. Our biggest challenges now are keeping up with the demand for support that a growing program generates, whether that means student tutors, IT procedures, or faculty assistance. We are also puzzling through possible strategies to keep students who have created portfolios, but who may not currently have instructors who use them, engaged with the program. It's all a moving target, and so we keep moving...

Our second faculty cohort is just beginning its first semester of work, and we are eager to bring representatives from Cohort 1 into the mix to "learn them their experience" (Y. Berra).

Program or administrative concerns are one thing. Student learning is another. We continue to see examples of great portfolios which show how aspiration, identity, and reflection can merge into academic work. We fully expect that among the 300-plus new portfolio users whose accounts we just activated, we will see more of the same.

Wach and Getman-Eraso, "A New Path to Online Learning: E-Portfolios at Bronx Community College," 15th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning, Orlando, Florida, October 30, 2009. See the resource area for a pdf file of this presentation.

Marnie Evans, Director of Academic Review

Cathy Leaker, Associate Professor and Mentor (Cultural Studies)

Gohar Marikyan, Assistant Professor and Mentor (Science, Mathematics and Technology)

In 2010, we will be incorporating e-portfolios into three studies specifically designed to further the college’s mission of supporting nontraditional learners: ESC 101: Introduction to Individualized Study; Writing, Learning and Experience: The Prior Learning Essay and Career Building through E-Portfolio.  These sequenced courses offer a strategic “entrance to exit” use of e-portfolios and will lay the foundation for broader eportfolio implementation across the college that reflects our commitment to supporting students’ lifelong learning.

The Making Connections ePortfolio Seminar Leadership Team:

Dr. Bret Eynon - Center for Teaching and Learning

Dr. Max Rodriguez - Education and Language Acquisition Department

Dr. Clarence Chan - Health Sciences Department

Dr. Judit Torok - Center for Teaching and Learning

Jiyeon Lee - Center for Teaching and Learning

Carolyn Henner-Stanchina - Center for Teaching and Learning

Mikhail Valentin - Center for Teaching and Learning

LaGuardia’s ePortfolio project helps students examine and reflect on their learning and career goals, smoothing the transition from LaGuardia Community College to the worlds of work and further education. The ePortfolio encourages students to think about their learning in a broad context of family, career, culture and experience. It provides a record of where a student has been, where a student is, and where a student would like to go.

LaGuardia Community College’s successful ePortfolio project helps thousands of students to engage more deeply with learning.  The LaGuardia ePortfolio is a web-based platform where students collect and reflect on examples of their coursework, creatively representing themselves and their learning.  While supporting our college-wide outcomes assessment processes, ePortfolio also directly benefits students.  The ePortfolio is a tool for students who wish to use it for employment and transfer. And data gathered by IR shows that the ePortfolio process itself, when implemented with thoughtful, integrative pedagogy, benefits students as learners.

More detailed discussion on LaGuardia Portfolios can be found at:

http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/eportfolio-learning-and-change

See our Making Connections Website for list of publications and presentations by the leadership team.

Natalie Linton, Education and Language Acquisition

Carolyn Sterling-Deer, Education and Language Acquisition

Our project intended to integrate ePortfolio into the Teacher Education major, with a goal of using portfolio presentations for graduation requirement.