The four stages of action research according to Mertler (2016, p. 35) are planning, acting, developing, and reflecting. Each of these stages represents an iterative process by which change can be implemented. For most, this change process occurs in the classroom as a cycle where teachers create a plan, act upon that plan, observe the results of the actions, and then reflect upon and make adjustments based on that those observations as part of continual evidence-based improvement.
The focus is a bit different in my situation since I’m not in a classroom with students, but the process is essentially still the same. My innovation plan involves providing access to ePortfolios to undergraduate students at Baylor University. One of the ways that I’ll be doing this is by helping faculty incorporate the use of ePortfolios into their courses. Specifically, I want to see faculty in Baylor’s New Student Experience (NSE) program use ePortfolios with the incoming freshmen or transfer students who are taking one of the NSE courses.
Throughout the DLL program, this plan has slowly evolved from simply a general idea about providing access to ePortfolios to identifying vital behaviors and measures as part of my Influencer Strategy and 4DX plan. The next phase of this process is to develop an action research plan to measure the effectiveness of my innovation plan.
Action Research Outline
In order to effectively conduct action research, it is important to organize your thoughts by answering a few key questions. This process helps ensure that my action research plan is focused and related to my Innovation Plan for providing access to ePortfolios to undergraduate students at Baylor University. The answers to these basic questions resulted in my Action Research Outline.
Literature Review
My action research plan will investigate to what extent students who use an ePortfolio as part of an NSE course continue using their ePortfolio beyond NSE course assignments. To help justify this plan, I have written the following Literature Review analyzing the benefits, trends, and ownership of ePortfolios.
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Open in new tab Action Research Plan
The following action research plan will span the entire 2020-2021 academic year due to the on-going COVID-19 crisis impacting all of higher education. This plan would normally last only through the fall semester, but the upcoming semester is no longer a traditional semester and could be interrupted before it ever begins. In addition, funding at our university has been severely cut, so expanding our WordPress instances during the fall semester may not be possible. However, assuming that funding is available and Baylor offers NSE courses during the fall semester, the following represents my detailed action research plan and implementation timeline.
Topic of Action Research Plan
My innovation plan involves providing access to ePortfolios to undergraduate students at Baylor University. One of the ways that I’ll be doing this is by helping faculty incorporate the use of ePortfolios into their courses. Specifically, I want to see faculty in Baylor’s New Student Experience (NSE) program use ePortfolios with the incoming freshmen or transfer students who are taking one of the NSE courses. The topic of this study is the use of ePortfolios by undergraduate students enrolled in NSE courses at Baylor University.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to determine if the use of ePortfolios in NSE courses helps students take ownership of their own learning while building digital fluency skills, reflecting on what they have learned, and showcasing their work in other courses. The inspiration for my innovation plan and this action research plan came from the following statement in the 2018 Horizon Report:
“Of the 55-million jobs that must be filled by 2020, 5-million requiring postsecondary credentials are estimated to go unfilled due to new job creation and Baby Boomers leaving the workforce. Although this may suggest a gap between qualified graduates and workplace needs, some instead posit a communications gap in learners’ abilities to articulate what they have learned and connect it to workforce needs” (Becker et al., 2018, p. 18).
The use of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) within the learning environment could serve as a way to help close this communication gap by helping students improve their digital fluency and provide an avenue for students to articulate and demonstrate what they have learned during the course of their education. Expanding our institution’s options for ePortfolios through my innovation plan could open the door for our students to take ownership of and showcase their work in an entirely new way. Using ePortfolios provides a gateway into significant learning environments for students and faculty to create content and demonstrate their learning. By creating opportunities for students to take ownership of their own learning, we also give them the opportunity to develop a growth mindset. ePortfolios as part of a significant learning environment builds upon my Connected Constructivism learning philosophy.
Fundamental Research Question
After narrowing down the focus of my innovation plan related to the primary purpose of my research, my action research plan will attempt to answer the following question:
To what extent do students who use an ePortfolio as part of an NSE course continue using their ePortfolio beyond NSE course assignments?
This question guides the rest of this action research plan by centering the direction of the remaining sections. I feel like this question will help me keep focused on the topic described above and will ultimately contribute to our understanding of the ways students at Baylor may or may not use their ePortfolios outside of their NSE courses. This question also emphasizes the importance of using ePortfolios across the undergraduate experience as a way to connect with potential employers at the end of their college career rather than just at the beginning during the NSE courses.
Research Design and Methods
In this action research study, I plan to use an Explanatory Mixed-Methods Design. This is defined by Mertler as “the practitioner-researcher first collects quantitative data and then gathers additional qualitative data in order to help support, explain, or elaborate on the quantitative results” (2016, p. 107). This method will allow me to collect basic usage statistical data, and then understand that data based on student and faculty experiences.
Research discovered during the literature review phase of this project reinforced the decision to use both types of data (qualitative and quantitative). By combining both aspects together, I will be able to evaluate system-usage metrics and also incorporate student/faculty experiences to help paint a complete picture around these metrics. This research method, often referred to as “Sequential Explanatory” (Biddix, 2009) will enable me to use qualitative results to assist in explaining and interpreting the findings of my quantitative study.
Types of Data Collected
Mertler states that “often, action research necessitates the gathering of data that already exist” (Mertler, 2016, p. 138). This will be true for at least half of the data that I plan to collect for my action research plan. In order to collect the data needed for the Explanatory Mixed-Methods design, I will collect the following types of data:
- Quantitative: Usage statistics will allow me to determine how many new ePortfolio sites were created during the Fall semester. I would expect this to roughly correlate to the number of students enrolled in NSE courses during this term.
- Qualitative: Student surveys and faculty interviews would be used to collect qualitative data to determine exactly how student used their portfolios, and if that usage was confined to the NSE course or extended to other courses.
In addition, some of the data collection methods like student surveys would contain a mix of both quantitative closed-response questions, and open-ended qualitative questions. Together, this mix of both types of data should help paint a more complete picture of how students are using their ePortfolios which will help provide answers to my fundamental research question.
Data collected would be visualized using tools like PowerBI. This would be most useful with the quantitative data measures described below, but word clouds or other visualizations could also be developed for the qualitative data. Baylor already uses PowerBI to create effective data visualizations from our existing LMS data [see example below], so a similar approach would be used to create data visualizations using this research data.
Measurement Instruments Used
- WordPress Usage Statistics (Quantitative)
The benefit of using a campus-provided solution in the NSE courses at the beginning of the undergraduate students’ college career is that it provides a common, institutionally-provided platform which would be used by all students enrolled in the NSE courses. Although students would be free to migrate their ePortfolios to an outside or independent provider later on, the use of WordPress provided by CampusPress should allow me to collect basic usage data and analytics needed during for this study from the NSE courses.
- NSE Course Enrollment Counts (Quantitative)
At Baylor, all new undergraduate students are required to enroll into a New Student Experience (NSE) course. For most students, this is bundled into an existing freshman-level course within their declared academic major. For undeclared majors or transfer students who may already have credit for the freshman-level courses, they are required to enroll into a six-week BU1000 course which serves to fulfill their NSE requirement. Because NSE courses are required of every student at Baylor, this would be an excellent opportunity (crucial moment) to engage with these new undergraduate students to create their initial ePortfolio site. Enrollment data from these targeted NSE courses would be an obvious quantitative data source for my study.
- Student Surveys via Qualtrics (Quantitative and Qualitative)
I am fortunate at Baylor to have institutional access to Qualtrics for research surveys. By collecting survey data from students, I would be able to gather relevant quantitative data through simple closed-response questions and qualitative data through more open-ended questions. Sample questions may include:- Did you use an ePortfolio in your NSE course? (Quantitative)
- How often per month did you add to your ePortfolio? (Quantitative)
- Did you use your ePortfolio in other courses this semester? (Quantitative)
- How was your experience using your ePortfolio? (Qualitative)
- How to do plan to use your ePortfolio in future semesters? (Qualitative)
- Faculty Interviews via Email or Zoom (Qualitative)
Through the use of both structured and unstructured interviews, I will be able to collect qualitative data from faculty about their experiences using ePortfolios in their NSE courses. These simple interviews can be accomplished asynchronously using email or synchronously using web conferencing software like Zoom. Each interview would begin with an interview guide consisting of a specific set of predetermined questions which will be the same asked of all participants. In addition, especially during the synchronous interviews, unstructured or semistructured (Mertler, 2016, p. 134) questions would allow faculty to elaborate and share more anecdotal experiences based on the answers to the structured questions.
Reviewing the Literature
In order to effectively use ePortfolios in a higher education environment, it is necessary to consider how they are to be used. As McWhorter et al. (2013) state, “the student data revealed that students (both undergraduate and graduate) saw their ePortfolio as a gateway to their professional endeavors” (p. 273). Research suggests that they can be used simply as digital storehouses of educational artifacts which can be used to show potential future employers in order to convey more meaning about the students’ educational experiences.
Finding ways to close the communication gap between graduates and employers was a common theme found in this research. ePortfolios can also be used effectively as course or program-based assessments. Many schools have implemented course-based or program-based education portfolios to help determine whether or not students have met the academic objectives of the course or program. Used in this manner, ePortfolios are also good tools to encourage student reflection on the learning process. As an assessment tool, faculty can evaluate students’ performance and understanding of material across a longer timespan rather than in specific, fixed points of time.
Finally, ePortfolios are often used as a part of a blended learning instructional method. Students are no longer confined to physical classrooms for learning, but many students now learn both online and in-person. By leveraging ePortfolios in the online portion of blended learning programs, students build their higher-order thinking skills and problem-solving skills. In an online environment, ePortfolios can help students highlight their professional competencies and as a method of creating their own significant learning environment to share their learning with multiple audiences. As Dommett states, “for psychological ownership, practitioners should recognize that the decisions they make may impact on how much of a sense of ownership learners develop” (2018, p. 84).
While many peer-reviewed articles exist that describe the benefits of ePortfolios, there were fewer than expected that discussed trends in ePortfolio usage. Of those that did discuss trends, the publication dates were often old enough to question whether the conclusions were still valid and applicable in 2020. In most cases, the topic of “trends” primarily discussed the various types-of or uses-of ePortfolios. I was unable to find any research that discussed trends-over-time comparing ePortfolio usage from the 2000’s to the 2010’s or 2020. The topic of student ownership of ePortfolios was also sparse. Most of the peer reviewed articles discussing ownership either talked about physical ownership of the ePortfolios (who owns the system on which they are hosted), or on the psychological aspect of ownership and the personal motivation to use an ePortfolio beyond specific course assignments. This seems to be an area in which more research would be needed as the existing research ages.
Implementation and Timeline
As indicated previously, my innovation plan and action research plan will span the entire 2020-2021 academic year due to the on-going COVID-19 crisis impacting all of higher education. The action phase of this plan would normally last only through the fall semester, but the upcoming semester is no longer a traditional semester and could be interrupted before it ever begins. With the understanding that the schedule and timeline is subject to change, my plan will loosely be broken down into the following four phases:
- Planning Stage (August 2020 – September 2020)
- Finalize Innovation Plan – August 2020
- Obtain Approval – August 2020
- Solicit NSE Instructors – August 2020
- Provide Training – September 2020
- Acting Stage (September 2020 – March 2021)
- Enable Access to WordPress – September 2020
- Support Students – September 2020
- Observe Usage – December 2020
- Provide Second Training – January 2020
- Developing Stage (March 2021 – April 2021)
- Obtain WordPress Analytics – March 2021
- Send Student Surveys – April 2021
- Collect Survey Responses – April 2021
- Faculty Interviews – April 2021
- Reflecting Stage (May 2021 – July 2021)
- Organization Data Table – May 2021
- Prepare Data Visualization – May 2021
- Share and Communicate Results – June 2021
- Reflect on Changes for Next Year – July 2021
At the conclusion of this process, the results will be analyzed and shared with university leadership in Academic Technology Services and with the NSE planning team. The hope would be that the visualizations produced in PowerBI tell a complete story about how undergraduate students are engaging with their ePortfolios as a way to prepare themselves for a successful entry into the global marketplace. This data, if positive, would be used to justify the expansion of the ePortfolio initiative beyond just the NSE courses to all undergraduate students at Baylor University.
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