getting evidence for impact

Seeking Evidence for Impact: Lessons from the Inter/National Coalition for

Electronic Portfolio Research

Darren Cambridge ELI WebinarJuly 11, 2011

Overview

• Conceptual foundations of approach • Structure of the Inter/National Coalition for

Electronic Portfolio Research • Findings about three types of learning• Contributing factors

The Importance of Having ProblemsIn scholarship and research, having a "problem" is at the heart of the investigative process; it is the compound of the generative questions around which all creative and productive activity revolves. But in one’s teaching, a "problem" is something you don’t want to have, and if you have one, you probably want to fix it. … How might we make the problematization of teaching a matter of regular communal discourse? How might we think of teaching practice, and the evidence of student learning, as problems to be investigated, analyzed, represented, and debated? —Randy Bass

Three curricula

Kathleen Yancey, Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Research into the Swamp

“There is a high, hard ground where practitioners can make effective use of [traditional] research-based theory and techniques, and there is a swampy lowland where situations are confusing ‘messes’ incapable of technical solution. The difficulty is that the problems of the high ground, however great their technical interest, are often relatively unimportant to clients or to the larger society, while in the swamp are the problems of greatest human concern.” Donald Schön

Transactional Research• Practitioners generate research questions• Goal is to influence practice• Methodologies chosen based on knowledge

about learning, not exclusively current disciplinarily-accepted methodologies

• Agency for answering the questions resides in multiple constituents– practitioner researchers– learners– peer practitioner researchers

• Diversity provides robustness

discussion

Coalition structure

Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research

Coalition Exigency

• Rapid growth in use of electronic portfolios in the United States (and beyond)

• Wide diversity of models • Considerable potential to impact learning and

engagement• Evidence uneven and unintegrated


Coalition Structure

• Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research established in 2003

• Led by Barbara Cambridge (AAHE/NCTE), Kathleen Yancey (Clemson/FSU), Darren Cambridge (EDUCAUSE/GMU/AIR)

• Six cohorts of about ten campuses that work together for three years

Cohort 1 Alverno CollegeBowling Green State UniversityIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)LaGuardia Community CollegeNorthern Illinois UniversityPortland State UniversityStanford UniversityUniversity of WashingtonVirginia Tech University

Cohort 2 Clemson UniversityKapi’olani Community CollegeGeorge Mason UniversityThomas CollegeThe Ohio State UniversityUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of IllinoisUniversity of Nebraska OmahaWashington State University Arizona State University

Cohort 3California State UniversitiesFlorida State UniversityFramingham State UniversityGeorge Mason UniversityMinnesota State Colleges and UniversitiesPenn State UniversityUniversity of San DiegoSeton Hall UniversitySheffield Hallam UniversityUniversity of WaterlooUniversity ofWolverhampton

Cohort 4University of BradfordUniversity of CumbriaUniversity of GroningenLondon Metropolitan UniversityUniversity of Manchester Medical SchoolUniversity of MichiganUniversity of NorthumbriaUniversity of NottinghamUniversity of WolverhamptonQueen Margaret University College

Cohort 5 Kapi’olani Community CollegeLouisiana State UniversityUniversity of AkronUniversity of CincinnatiUniversity of DenverUniversity of North Carolina WilmingtonUniversity of OregonVirginia State UniversityVirginia Tech

Cohort 6Bowling Green State UniversityCurtin University of Technology (Australia)Goshen CollegeIndiana University Purdue University IndianapolisLamar UniversityNortheastern UniversityPortland State UniversityUniversity of GeorgiaUniversity of MichiganUniversity of MississippiVirginia Military InstituteWestminster College


Coalition Activities

• Individual questions and collaborative themes• Two meetings a year• Blog, newsletter, and Ning• Interaction between cohorts • Consultations with Coalition leadership• Coordinated dissemination


Intra-campus Practices

• Diverse team • Space for forming• Narrow but open question• Balance between intellectual and pragmatic

purposes


Diverse Team

• Both people who have research in their job title and those who don’t

• Reflective of the range of people involved in portfolio practice on the campus– Include administrators– Include students

• Portland State: Administrators, students, faculty from multiple disciplines


Space for Forming

• Need sufficient time and space to develop– Shared expectations– Shared conceptual framework– Personal relationships within team


Narrow but Open Question

• Well-focused research question• Openness to the data taking you elsewhere


Intellectual and Pragmatic Purposes

• Clear sense of audiences and purposes of research • Practitioner research doesn’t have to be just

evaluation • Balance between what you need to justify your work

and what’s intellectually meaningful• Practice as inquiry


Diversity and Balance

• Who might you ask to join your team you’ve not previously considered?

• What aspects of your project can you expand or emphasize to balance intellectual and pragmatic value?


Inter-campus Practices

• Senior administrative support • Triangulation rather than replication • Collaborative exploration of

methodologies• Regular conversations with neutral

experts • Multiple genres of reporting out


Senior Administrative Support

• Three-year commitment of travel funding from institutional budget– Confirmation of commitment to portfolio practice

• Regular updates and notes of thanks• Ideally, member of the team


Triangulation

• Triangulation rather than replication • Enough structure to focus and connect, but not

restrict– No one strict definition of “research” – Shared themes but not a mandated research question

• Cohorts One and Two: Catalog and taxonomy of reflective artifacts

• Critical friends


Collaborative Exploration of Methodology

• Guided exploration of research methodologies and methods

• Both a way to plan the project and a way to develop shared understanding of research

• Breaking out of received notions of research through conversations– Across disciplines– Across campuses

October 10, 2006 Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research

Conversations with Experts

• Quarterly conference calls with a Coalition leader

• Periodic occasions for reviewing and asking questions

• The questioning is probably more important than the advice

October 10, 2006 Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research

Multiple Reporting Genres

• Variety of forms of reporting– One-pagers– Blue Skies questions– Thick descriptions of artifacts– Presentations of evidence – Chats

• Helps to stimulate creativity and accommodate multiple styles

Discussion

Emergent results

Dimensions of Learning

• Reflective Learning• Integrative Learning • Learning to Establish Identity

Reflective learning

• Eportfolios can document reflective ability• Eportfolios reveal a positive correlation

between the quality of reflection and evidence

• The relationship between reflection and evidence is more complex than previously considered

Semester Reflection Evidence

Fall 2004 2.76 3.31

Spring 2005 3.11 3.12

Fall 2005 3.55 3.70

Spring 2006 3.17 3.23

Northern Illinois University

Transactional Benefits

• Alverno– Beginning with faculty conceptual frameworks

leads to better integration into practice• Northern Illinois

– Teaching assistants as researchers leads to stronger investment in reflective practice

• George Mason– Student affairs educators as researchers leads to

expansion of knowledge in both domains

Integrative Learning

Eportfolio use correlates with increased student engagement.

LaGuardia CCSSE Results

How much has your coursework emphasized synthesizing & organizing ideas, information, or experiences in new ways? 1 = Very Little, 2 = Some, 3= Quite a Bit, 4 = Very Much

LaGuardia ePortfolio & Retention

Kapi’olani Community College


• LaGuardia– Multiple methodologies for different

constituencies– Students as co-inquirers essential to interpretation

• Kapi’olani– Impact and interpretation situated in cultural

context

Learning to Establish Identity

Eportfolios can help engender strong and complex professional identities.

University of Waterloo“Again, this is also describing the relationship between employees in audit engagements as well as school assignments. The only difference I noticed is that in school assignments, everyone has around the same educational and technical background, whereas during an audit engagement, there are different levels of employees (senior managers, managers, senior staff and junior staff) grouped together to provide a larger variety of mindset during the engagement. I believe that creating a group with different levels of employees is the most efficient method because junior staff will be learning from more experienced staff during the engagement, senior staff will be able to concentrate on the more difficult aspects of the audit while junior staff could complete the small, simple and tedious tasks, and finally the audit team can get a larger variety of ideas due to the diverse members.”

Clemson University

Virginia Tech


• Cross-disciplinary collaboration yields expanded methods for understanding profession

• Students serve as co-inquirers through reflective representation of their experience

Contributing factors

• Matrix thinking • Ownership and expressive range • Structure and support

Matrix Thinking

Freedom and Structure

• Expressive range– Visual design – Linking– Use of multiple media

• Structure and support– Levels of structure appropriate to student ability – Language tailored to discipline and profession– Peer mentoring and mentors as peers

Electronic Portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact

• Collection of 24 chapters detailing research from the first three years of the Coalition

• Published by Stylus in 2009

• More about the Coalition at ncepr.org

Eportfolios for Lifelong Learning and Assessment

• Connects the work of the Coalition to a broader theoretical framework and wider range of research

• Published by Jossey-Bass in 2010

• More about my work at ncepr.org/darren

getting evidence for impact

Education

years international

coalition leadership

students portland state

research questions goal

portfolio practice

use of electronic portfolios

teaching practice

generative questions