The simplest definition of disruptive innovation is from Clayton Christensen when he stated, “you transform something that used to be complicated and expensive so that only a few people had access to it, and now you make it so affordable and accessible that a whole new population of people now have access” (Clayton Christensen Institute, 2014). One of the most noticeable opportunities for innovation in my organization is probably related to electronic portfolios (ePortfolios). Currently, our institution does not provide access to ePortfolios other than the portfolio available in our LMS which is limited in features and not capable of traveling with the students beyond their time in our organization.
Higher education and technology play important roles in the creation of jobs in a modern, 21st century marketplace. Measuring learning and verifying skills are critically significant needs in order to help fill these new jobs. The 2018 Horizon Report states the following:
Of the 55 million jobs that must be filled by 2020, 5 million requiring postsecondary credential 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. In addition, implementing various ePortfolio solutions can help the institution support faculty who are engaging in blended learning activities or are looking for more authentic ways to measure student learning.
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. My professional learning plan is focused on faculty teaching these NSE courses at Baylor. My goal is to help these faculty members adopt and use ePortfolios with their first-year undergraduate students.
Call to Action
As Tom Asacker acknowledged in his TEDx presentation about why TED Talks don’t actually change our behavior, he stated that desire is what moves us, and desire is ignited by our identity (TEDx Talks, 2014). He states, “who we think we are is why we do what we do” (2014). By understanding this message, I hope to create a professional learning environment where faculty actively engage with each other to discover the benefits of using ePortfolios with their undergraduate students at Baylor. I want to spark the desire for faculty to engage in this process collectively and individually by supporting them along their journey.
Each of the elements for this presentation were specifically selected to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. By connecting with the viewer through a compelling story with clean graphics, minimal text, and a subtle soundtrack, I hoped to create a presentation that inspires viewers to take action. Duarte (2009) suggests that good presentations should help an audience see what I’m saying without necessarily using words to do so. In this presentation, the still and moving images helped build suspense through a carefully orchestrated sequence but primarily acted as digital scenery to accompany my story.
Professional Learning Blueprint
I’ve always been a big fan of Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The second habit is “begin with the end in mind”(Covey, 1990). According to Covey:
“It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint” (FranklinCovey, n.d., p. 2).
Covey frames his habit around a specific mindset and not letting others control your destiny. In a more literal sense, he is talking about backwards design principles. In this case, for our online courses, we are thinking about our Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and how everything that goes into our course is for the sole purpose of achieving that goal. Any good plan needs to first begin with a solid outline. The same is true for my Professional Learning Plan which is currently being developed.
This outline is also based around the BHAG and 3-column table related to my Innovation Plan.
In my situation, I am not in a classroom and do not teach in an online, blended, or face-to-face format. Instead, I am the Assistant Director of Learning Systems which is a group of system administrators that provides access to, and manages the resources of, Baylor’s various instructional technology systems. My professional learning plan is focused on faculty teaching courses in the New Student Experience (NSE) program at Baylor. This is the target audience for my overall innovation plan in 5305, and it is a natural extension of what I began developing as an online course in 5318. My goal is to help these faculty members adopt and use ePortfolios with their first-year undergraduate students.
By knowing the needs of these faculty as they interact with their own students, I created the following learning goals:
Faculty (learners) will analyze the various uses of ePortfolios that can assist in meeting their course objectives while promoting digital literacy with their students.
Learners will analyze and demonstrate functional uses of ePortfolios to create student-centered learning environments.
Learners will evaluate and select appropriate software and ePortfolio solutions for the development of projects.
Learners will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each type of ePortfolios (e.g. developmental, showcase, assessment).
Learners will locate and evaluate additional resources which can be used by undergraduate students to promote digital literacy.
Fostering Collaboration
My hope is that by participating in this professional learning opportunity, the faculty in my institution will gain a greater understanding of the benefits and possibilities associated with ePortfolios. To help accomplish this, faculty will need to interact with each other as engaged learners just as they hope to have their students interact in the classroom. Much of this engagement can occur during the built-in large and small group discussions, faculty will also be given multiple opportunities to model their own ePortfolios and share with their own peers and colleagues about way they plan to incorporate (or have) incorporate these ideas into their own undergraduate courses. By engaging in discipline specific discussion groups, faculty with similar interests can determine best how to adapt and enhance the authentic assessments that ePortfolios make available to faculty.
Faculty need the opportunity to customize their own learning experience, choose which sessions they wanted to attend, and collaborate with colleagues at other schools who may be in very similar or very different situations from their own. By promoting these type of constructivist elements and helping them engage in truly effective collaboration, the faculty participants will learn so much more than they might in a traditional technology training session.
Fostering Self-Directed Learning
In the Peter Gray video (Camp Stomping Ground, 2015), the speaker indicated that when students believe that someone else is responsible for their education, they tend not to take ownership of, or become actively engaged in, their own learning. This is also why the flipped model discussed in the video from Rutgers University (Flipped Teacher Training, 2015) is so important. By providing the shortened instructional video up-front on the skill or information being taught, and then allowing the learner time to explore the concept and practice in a real-world situation, the students are able to take ownership of the learning and end up mastering the concepts in a much more authentic way.
In this professional learning activity, faculty will be creating and curating their own ePortfolios – partly to serve as a model for their own students, but also to provide the choice and ownership of the building process. Each aspect of this plan, from faculty selecting their own platform to exploring examples from students at other institutions, fosters a sense of personal direction and motivation. When the faculty create their own posts and publish them publicly on their own ePortfolios, they are selecting the own topics and choosing their own tools from the wide variety of resources available to them.
Professional Learning Instructors
My role at Baylor is to oversee the management and operations of the learning systems – the infrastructure behind the teaching and learning that occurs at Baylor. My team and I are not necessarily the best equipped to work directly with faculty on pedagogical uses of the technology. For that reason, my professional learning plan involves two other primary teams at Baylor university who will be partner with us to lead faculty through this professional learning experience.
Learning Systems (LS) Team – The Learning Systems unit of Library and Academic Technology Services, provides a broad range of services in support of Baylor University’s mission of establishing an environment where learning can flourish. Our services include support for online courses in the Canvas learning management system, WordPress-based web sites of a personal and academic nature, and web conferencing solutions. We also support some desktop software applications specifically geared toward online learning, grading, and test creation. In addition to hosting technology workshops and technology-related events, we provide consulting services to help faculty explore the use of the latest academic technologies.
Academy for Teaching and Learning (ATL) – This small organization of three people at Baylor serves as a primary resource for faculty professional development. While their focus is entirely pedagogical in nature rather than on technology, my department (LATS) and their department have a very close relationship. Each year, they provide innovative teaching grants to faculty willing to try something new, lead course makeover workshops, and host a summer faculty institute where faculty come together weekly for two months to discuss best practices and new ideas. In addition, they are one of the primary offices for designing the curriculum for the NSE program courses. By getting the ATL involved, faculty from across campus will see and learn about ways to use ePortfolios with their undergraduate students.
Learning Design (LD) Team – The Learning Design team provides instructional design support and services for Baylor faculty to teach online and flipped courses through technology. Through group workshops, individual consultations, and other events, our instructional designers help faculty and graduate students develop content for fully online and hybrid courses in keeping with sound pedagogical practice.
Together, each of our three groups will host the part of each session that we are most equipped to handle. ATL will be responsible for the campus-wide communication and planning. In addition, they will be responsible for the session on authentic assessment. The LD team will facilitate the sessions related to the use of ePortfolios, types of ePortfolios, providing on-going support for faculty in the process. My team, LS, will be responsible for the sections related to evaluating and choosing ePortfolio platforms and expanding the use of ePortfolios through themes, plugins, and other outside resources.
5 Key Principles of Effective Professional Learning
To help faculty in Baylor’s New Student Experience program begin to use ePortfolios with their students, I would help facilitate an ongoing professional learning community among these faculty using the 5 key principles of Professional Learning.
Duration – This learning community would officially last for the first six weeks of the semester, but it would continue well beyond this duration. One day sessions are fine for packing in a lot of information at once, but faculty who will effectively adopt ePortfolios need on-going support to effectively adopt ePortfolios.
Support – While the faculty are learning about ePortfolios and implementing them with their NSE courses for the first time, my team, and a small group of instructional designers at Baylor will be alongside the faculty to support them along their journey.
Active and Engaging – Part of any successful professional learning program is to make it active and engaging for the participants. Naturally, faculty participants in this program will be responsible for creating their own ePortfolios rather than simply learning how to use them with students. By taking ownership of their own learning and creating their own ePortfolio, faculty will be able to appreciate the students’ experience as they create theirs.
Modeling – Learning a new concept or skill is so much easier if one can actually see for themselves what it looks like. Faculty will be able to access and view my own ePortfolio during the duration of this learning experience.
Content Specific – By giving the faculty ownership of what they are learning and allowing them to customize their ePortfolio for their own discipline, faculty will be better equipped to help students. A math instructor’s ePortfolio will likely look very different and contain unique content compared to an instructor in the humanities.
Timeline
This outline is divided into two main stages (Planning Stage and Implementation Stage) and consists of thirteen steps within the two stages. The Planning Stage is scheduled for the Fall 2020 semester to allow time to meet with the various constituents and to finalize the second stage as needed. During this stage, I will meet with the Assistant Vice President for Academic Technology, the Associate Vice President for Library and Academic Technology Services, the members of the Academy for Teaching and Learning, and finally the Learning Design team. We will develop a short interest survey that will be sent to determine the level of interest in prospective NSE faculty, and the call to action video will also be distributed in order to promote interest in the upcoming professional learning opportunities features in Stage 2.
The Implementation Stage is scheduled to begin in Spring 2021 which is typically a somewhat easier term for many faculty to participate in online professional learning activities. This semester will begin with an official launch of the online course materials and initial contact by the PL leaders as soon as faculty return to campus. Each week for the next five weeks, faculty will come together (likely virtually at this point) to participate together in synchronous sessions lead by the LS, ATL and LD teams based on the specific topics described in the previous outline. These will help the faculty participants engage with each other while they learn about the various uses of ePortfolios, type of ePortfolios, selection of their own ePortfolio platform, using ePortfolios for authentic assessments, and enhancing their personal ePortfolios.
Resources and Media
The following represents a brief description of the resources, media, materials, and objectives for each week of the five-week sessions which begin this professional learning experience:
Week 1:
Read articles, videos, and other resources on student-centered learning.
Read “Growing Focus on Measuring Learning” from the 2018 NMC Horizon Report.
Discussion with other faculty about the article “Growing Focus on Measuring Learning” in order to reflect on the need for ePortfolios in higher education. Use a prompt (What are employers looking for in students or job candidates that graduate from our university?) to hook the faculty and refocus from them learning how to use ePortfolios to be thinking about how ePortfolios can be used by their students.
Review current examples of student ePortfolios.
Week 2:
Review publicly available and institution-provided platforms for creating ePortfolios. Evaluate several ePortfolio platforms, and identify which ones are provided by our institution or are available publicly on the Internet for anyone to use.
Create a basic, personal ePortfolio using one of the platforms evaluated.
Publish a basic ePortfolio framework with two sample posts.
Week 3:
Review the types of ePortfolios described on the Eportfolio Resource Center web site.
Identify functional examples of the three main types of ePortfolios from students.
Write a blog post reflecting on the three main types of ePortfolios and provide a real-world example of each type.
Week 4:
Share models of ePortfolios that have been used to assess student understanding.
Reflect on how student success can be measured through real-world ePortfolio activities.
Discussion with faculty peers about how ePortfolios can be used as assessment mechanisms in their respective disciplines. Each learner should share a model of an assessment-focused ePortfolio that illustrates how a faculty member from another institution incorporated it into a course assignment.
Week 5:
Develop a blog category that will allow you to collect and share additional information about digital fluency and effective uses of ePortfolios in undergraduate courses.
Create blog category, tag, or other organizational mechanism framework established to collect and share posts and links with peers.
Locate additional resources online which could be used to enhance the layout, appearance, or functionality of your personal ePortfolio.
Conclude the lesson with a self-assessment reflection about their own willingness to embrace ePortfolios in their own undergraduate courses.
Summary
This plan is the basis for a professional learning experience for faculty which helped shape the following major course goal:
In order to prepare undergraduate students to successfully enter the global workforce, faculty (learners) will identify and demonstrate effective uses of ePortfolios to create authentic assessment opportunities, promote digital fluency, and provide avenues for undergraduate students to showcase what they have learned during the course of their education.
Through the activities, engaged collaboration, on-going support, and content-specific focus of this program, faculty will analyze the various uses of ePortfolios that can assist in meeting their course objectives while promoting digital literacy with their students. In addition, by the conclusion of this professional learning environment, faculty will have their own fully-developed ePortfolio which can be used as a model for their own students as they begin to use ePortfolios in their own NSE courses. 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.
Flipped Teacher Training. (2015, April 15). Modeling-based (flipped) professional development at Rutgers University [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBAmcveOnIM
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