ePortfolios for Leadership Identity Development with OSP:

Some Very Preliminary Findings

Darren Cambridge

George Mason University

dcambrid@gmu.edu

Lives We Lead

• Three-year project at George Mason University

• Co-curricular leadership portfolio development using Open Source Portfolio

• Research as part of the third cohort of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research

I/NCEPR

• Institutional research teams examining the impact of electronic portfolio practice on learning

• 46 institutions in four cohorts • Third cohort focuses on student affairs -academic

affairs collaboration• US, Canada, England, Scotland, Netherlands • Book to be published by Stylus in 2008

Methodology

• Design research – Intervention design informed by theory – Evaluated for effectiveness and contributes to

further development of theory

• Grounded theory– Collaborative coding of portfolio, video, and

interview data by inter-disciplinary team – Theoretical sampling

Leadership theory

• Leadership Identity Development – Based on research on undergraduate student leaders at the

University of Maryland– From positional leadership to multi-dimensional perspective

• Identity • Relationships • Community

• Evidence in leadership portfolios– Leadership portfolios in Ohio high schools – Products, reproductions, attestations

Theories of Reflection

• Kolb’s stages of reflection – Description– Analysis– Judgment– Planning

• Yancey’s types of reflection – constructive reflection – reflection-in-presentation

Program Design

• Semester-long, co-curricular portfolio keeping experience• Three face-to-face, day-long meetings • Faculty, staff, and peer mentors • Students who self-identify as leaders and students who

don’t, first-year to graduate student• Sequenced use OSP tools with r-smart CLE

– Hierarchical wizards– Matrixes– Portfolios

Beginning of Semester

• Expanding thinking about evidence

• Reflective writing in response to selections from a large number of prompts

• Organized around identity, relationships, community

• Hierarchical matrix

Mid-semester

• Reconceptualizing as leadership

• Organizing evidence and reflections in relationship to shared conceptual framework – Matrix thinking

• Matrix

End of Semester

• Presentation portfolio for an audience of their choice

• Identity, relationships, community, future directions

• Portfolio using template

Very Preliminary Findings

• First iteration ended in May 2007 • Analyzed so far

– Evaluation surveys – Selected final portfolios

• Coding of additional portfolios, video data, and conducting interviews with students through December 2007

• Key themes in student leadership identity, rather than impact of portfolio process

Evidence, Audience, and Mentoring

• Despite honorarium, significant lack of retention (From 33 to 16)

• Broader conception of and new value placed in evidence in relationship to leadership-related activities

• Strong sense of pride in final product • Peer mentoring invaluable

– Mirrors research as LaGuardia and other I/NCEPR campuses

Strong Perceived Impact

Strengthened ability to connect learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom

73%

Stronger sense of self as a leader 87%

Stronger awareness of my leadership potential 88%

Enhanced awareness of how to present ideas to different audiences

75%

More confident in ability to use reflective practice for self-discovery and learning

82%

More confident in my ability to use electronic environments for my learning

87%

Greater awareness of how to select evidence that demonstrates my learning

100%

From Position to Integration

• Students see their identities to be inseparable from multiple kinds of relationships and community memberships – Family relationships, friendships, academic and professional

community membership – Navigation between cultures and putting them into conversations– Portfolios as a sight of integration

• Shift from positional definition of leadership to grounding in this integrated network

• Mirrors findings of research in eFolio Minnesota and LaGuardia

Academics as Test of Self

• We intended for curricular content to be an central source of evidence and ideas and strategies, but it didn’t show up this way

• Class work functioned as– A demonstration of character virtues– An experience – A goal putting aspiration towards those virtues in action

Steadfastness

• Consistency of commitment over time seen as a central leadership virtue– Tenacity, perseverance, patience, follow through– Standing up to opposition and peer pressure– Essential to ability to create change

• Much more prominent than persuasiveness • Spirituality and family key arenas for

demonstrating steadfastness

Change

• While steadfastness is central, so is change • Leadership requires growth • Students universally embraced change as

both a personally and societal goal • Local and global, but very little in between

Evidence

• Primarily reproductions and attestations • Symbolic rather than persuasive • Heuristics for reflection

Buncencia Seabreeze’s Portfolio

Questions Moving Forward

• How do students who self-identify leaders and those who don’t differ?

• Why is course content not see as relevant, and how might we change that?

• Do the ways students use evidence match the expectations of their intended audiences?

• In terms of developing leadership competence, how important is self-identification? Does it matter when we call it leadership?

• How well do the different OSP tools support the development process?