Integrating ePortfolios and Social Software for Reflective Learning

1. ePortfolios and Social Software Margaret Price and Darren Cambridge WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

2. Recommendation: Reflect on assumptions about what “Net Gen” students can do or wish to do. “The first time I came on [to Facebook], it seemed a benefit to Americans, just because it seemed like a way to connect to high school friends and stuff. But [being from Trinidad] I wasn’t a part of that culture, so I didn’t have anybody to connect to. So that’s why I came off. And then I came back on because if you walk into a computer lab, everybody’s checking their Facebook page. … So I was like what is all the fuss? So I went back on, and I did talk to friends or whatever. But I think these places, that whole idea of uniting is very superficial in terms of, if I really wanted to keep in touch with you, I would.” —Colette Hosten WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

3. Recommendation: Reflect on assumptions about what “Net Gen” students can do or wish to do. “MySpace, I tried that, but the whole building the page thing was just too much work. … I felt like I didn’t know how, like the pages I’ve seen, it seems so technical. And I don’t know who these everyday people are who can do this, and for such superficial reasons, you know.” —Colette Hosten WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

4. Recommendation: Reflect on your own or others’ responses to names of social software. Veta: “As I think about their final eFolios, an issue for a couple of them [was that they] had a real kind of MySpace kind of feel to them.” Margaret: “That was an issue for them, or …” Veta: “For me in looking, in evaluating.” Margaret: “What was the MySpaceness like?” Veta: “That it seemed less contemplative and more, more cluttered. It seemed more about ‘me’ than about ‘my contemplative experience’ … pictures of me and my friends, and this kind of thing, and ‘All About Me’ and biography and stuff … in comparison to some of the others, where there’s a real sense of stillness and calm that was different than these.” WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

5. Opportunities Purposes Identified by Students (Social Software) Purposes Identified by Faculty & Administration (Academic Projects) • Constant stream of communication. • Sharing with various audiences. • Ability to incorporate a sense of “self” into the composition. • Iterative process of feedback, reflection, and revision. • Increased rhetorical awareness of audience. • Sense of personal investment, engagement. WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

6. Two Faces of Integrative Learning WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

7. Contexts • Emergent findings of campuses involved in the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research • Interest in Computers & Writing community in both electronic portfolios and social software: How do they connect, or not? • Informal learning discussion on the blogs • Integrative learning as a key theme in discourse of higher education reform WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

8. Two Faces • What kinds of selves do our digital portfolios models invite from students? (Yancey 2004) • Two dimensions of integrative learning parallel two types of selves WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

9. Networked and Symphonic Selves • Network Self • Creating intentional connections • Symphonic Self • Achieving integrity of the whole WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

10. Distinctions • Symphonic most consonant to the tradition of portfolio pedagogy in the United States • Network most consonant to recent integrative learning discourse • Can’t be (and isn’t) either/or • Differ in values, activities, genre characteristics, technologies, and impacts WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

11. Play, emergence, entrepreneurialism, flexibility, agility Analysis Liberalism Student engagement Integrity, commitment, intellectual engagement, balance Creativity Humanism Personal engagement Values WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

12. Folio thinking Ease, speed, low cost integration Embedded in day-to-day Connection Aggregation, association Collection Reflection-in-action, constructive reflection Revision Continual learning Matrix thinking Time, effort, high cost integration (author, context, and audience) Stepping out of daily work Articulation, reframing Synthesis, symphony Selections, projection Reflection-in-presentation Iteration Moments of mastery, accomplishment, celebration Activities WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

13. Space Openings Relationships as end, heuristic, invention Relationships between things Atomized, aggregated Collection, list, link, datum, snapshot Text, composition Boundaries Relationships as organization Relationships between relationships Holistic, integral, systemic Theory, story, interpretation, map Genre Characteristics WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

14. Web 2.0 tools, social software, Identity 2.0 providers, PLEs and other aggregators, MyLifeBits. ELGG Atom, RSS, FOAF, Flikr API, Open ID, etc. ePortfolio systems Concept mapping systems IMS ePortfolio, Topic Maps, RDF Technologies WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

15. Low yield – incremental and by accretion Greater connectedness and intentionality Learning in the network High yield – occasional and intensive Synthesis, coherence, feeling of integrity Learning in the individual Impacts WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ

16. Living Both • Bi-stable equilibrium • Learning in layers WPA Assessment Institute | Tempe, AZ