This was the presentation given at Jasig-Sakai 2012 for accepting the 2012 Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award for Virginia Tech's First-Year Experience Portfolios.
1. Marc Zaldivar, Director
Teggin Summers, Asst. Director
ePortfolio Initiatives, Learning
Technologies
Mary Ann Lewis, Director,
First-Year Experiences (and many others!)
June 10-15, 2012
Growing Community;
Growing Possibilities 2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 1
2. History of eP & FYE
Tool setup and variety
◦ Matrix range
◦ Template range
◦ Assessment setup(s)
Looking to the future
2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 2
3. Comprehensive, Research I Institution
Land grant
60+ bachelor's degree programs
140 master's and doctoral degree programs
~28,000 total FTE
~1,700 full-time
teaching faculty
3
4. SACS
Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools
QEP
Quality Enhancement Plan
FYE
First Year Experience – Pathways to Success
4
5. Ground in AAC&U Essential Learning
Outcomes
Develop Student Centered Paradigms
Design and Use Multi-faceted Assessment
Strategies
Base in Disciplines
Include Existing and Proposed Institutional
Commitments
Incorporate Technology to Enhance
Learning and Assessment -> ePortfolios
5
7. Design Thinking: Defying Preconceptions
Architecture & Design Programs
Hokie Horizons
University Studies (undecided)
Introduction to a Research University
Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
• Life Sciences Foundations
Biological Sciences
Zip-Line to Success
College of Science Transfer Students
7
8. 1. Agriculture and Life Sciences (2)
2. Architecture and Urban Studies (2)
3. Engineering (1)
4. Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (1)
5. Natural Resources and Environment (1)
6. Pamplin College of Business (1)
7. Science (3)
8. University Studies (1)
Complex, Yes Comprehensive, Yes
8
9. Design
ZipLine Thinking
CEED Hokie Psychology
Horizons
CLAHS CNRE
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
Business
Physics
Biochemistry
Building Construction
X-axis is matrix use, from low (left) to high (right)
Y-axis is presentation use, from low (down) to high (up).
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10. Evaluators
perform
assessment
Data is
communicated
Students submit
openly to
artifacts and
facilitate
write reflections
programmatic
improvement
2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 10
11. Galleries of images
Iteration
Process
Slowly
incorporating
reflection
Share Day
2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 11
12. Expansion of Developing tool
programs requires complexity
more new questions ◦ Reporting of matrix-
of scale based data in Summer
2012
Needs analysis for
◦ Blogging initiative
ePortfolios: ◦ Incorporating more
◦ FYE – Connect-to- cloud-based
Learning technologies alongside
◦ ePortfolio Innovation Sakai-based tools.
Committee
Focus on long-term
◦ Learning Technologies’
on-going assessment growth and evolution
of portfolio programs
2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 12
13. Many partners Faculty of the FYE
involved... programs
◦ First-Year Experiences Students
◦ ePortfolio Initiatives (LT)
◦ Office of Assessment and
Evaluation
and…
◦ CIDER (CTL)
◦ VP of Undergraduate Thanks to Sakai
Education Foundation and the
OSP community!
2012 Jasig Sakai Conference 13
Notas do Editor
For quick history:Our current first year experience program is the focus of our current Quality Enhancement Plan for our most recent university accreditation from SACS. We recognized several institutional priorities in this project:Making the existing first year experiences more consistent and focusedIncreasing the presence of student affairs within the academic settingIncreasing the use of the common book across first year studentsIncreasing interdisciplinary and intercollegiate learning opportunities for students, potentially leading to more undergraduate research.And yes, increasing the use of ePortfolios as a tool for learning and assessment.
After several years of deliberation, we realized we weren’t going to create a single course that all first-year students took. Instead, we chose to focus on central learning outcomes that would take a new, increased focus in the first-year.We began working with AAC&U’s VALUE project and looking for ways to assess certain identifiable learning outcomes, but still allow those experiences to be based in disciplinary learning.Each college is able to decide how best to work with their first-year and transfer students while still bringing in the focus on the student-centered learning outcomes identified as part of the FYE.
At first, because of other institutional language in the mission statement and strategic plan, our primary focus was on lifelong learning. However, realizing the challenges of measuring lifelong learning over a student’s first-year in college, we began breaking that down into other components that we felt would help to support a long-term goal of lifelong learning.We settled on three: problem-solving, inquiry, and integration. We ask that any proposed FYE project find innovative ways to incorporate and assess these three central learning outcomes.
In the first year, which was 2010-2011, we had five projects step forward as guinea pigs.Each of these was very different, but we aimed for 25% of our entering class, which was obtained. Design thinking is a studio-based program focused on increasing students’ abilities to think in new ways. (~30 students)Hokie Horizons is a program to help students think through and work towards professional goals. (~300 students)IRU is a college-based course focused on increasing students’ undergraduate research across liberal arts and human sciences.Life Sciences Foundations is a course meant to expose students to a variety of career options within the life sciences and to help them set and achieve career goals.Zip-Line to Success is for transfer students within the College of Science and is focused on introducing the transfers to the culture of Virginia Tech and “warp speeding” them into career planning and research.
In year 2, we expanded to 12 programs altogether. This shows how many programs are in each of the eight colleges of the university. We are covering approximately 50% of the incoming first year and transfer students this Fall.It is a complex, comprehensive system grounded on a set of common features. One of those is, of course, the ePortfolio.