Overview | Background | Portfolio Structure | Portfolio
Assessment | Models | Infrastructure
Considerations | Challenges |
References
Developing a University-Wide Electronic Portfolio System for
Teacher Education
Laurie Mullen, William I. Bauer, W. Webster Newbold
Abstract
This document describes the collaborative process we have utilized
in conceptualizing a electronic portfolio requirement for all teacher
education majors. We outline the philosophical, logistical, and
infrastructure considerations that have been part of the process
along with the portfolio structure we have adopted; we demonstrate
several examples of potential portfolio types and approaches; and we
discuss the assessment timeline for portfolio evaluation.
Overview
Throughout the country, three conditions
or external forces guide how schools of education approach the integration of technology
into teacher education programs.
- University faculty and students need the tools, environments,
and on-going professional development to integrate technology into
the teacher education curriculum.
- New national accreditation standards are requiring schools of
education to prepare new teachers and administrators who can
integrate technology into their curricula.
- Licensure and certification are now requiring proficiency in
technology integration for new teachers and administrators.
These national, state, and local imperatives are the foundation of
our institutional reform goals.
As our institution plans for the implementation of such issues,
the electronic portfolio has emerged as one tool that we envision
enabling us to assess students' competencies. We also believe that
engaging in the electronic portfolio process will help students,
faculty, and administrators to develop technology-related knowledge
and skills.
In this article, we provide background related to the
collaborative process we have utilized and the story behind our
construction of the infrastructure to support it. We discuss the
philosophical, pedagogical, and logistical considerations that have been
part of the process; describe the portfolio model we have developed;
and provide a list of resources for other institutions who may be
considering a similar path.
Background
Instigated by a new statute of the state's Professional Standards our
university is mandated to have a performance-based Unit Assessment
Plan (UAS) approved by the state Professional Standards Board in
place by June 2002. In other words, we will need to
completely restructure teacher education and licensure. In the past,
progress toward degrees and certification was determined by course completion, grades and test scores, and student
teaching outcomes. The new performance-based licensure program requires demonstrated competence in particular standards rather than paper/pencil tests.
The national trend toward performance assessment encourages
national and state standards bodies to require institutions who
prepare teachers to depart radically from traditional curricula and
assessment means to achieve more authentic, "real world" ways of
verifying the preparedness of education graduates. This shift in
assessment began in the mid-1980's as a response to the nature of
"paper testing" for a teaching license. Performance assessment in
teacher education challenges the relationship between testing for
licensure and actual teaching performance. The essence of performance
assessment is to evaluate more accurately what teachers must know and
do to be effective in the classroom.
Performance Assessment
"Performance assessment" is a broad term, encompassing many of the
characteristics of both authentic assessment and alternative
assessment:
performance assessments provide students with
opportunities to demonstrate their understanding and to
thoughtfully apply knowledge, skills, and habits of mind in a
variety of structured and unstructured situations. These
assessments often occur over time and result in a tangible product
or observable performance. (Coalition
of Essential Schools)
Many performance assessments include real-life tasks that call for
higher-order thinking. When students are asked to perform a complex
task or create a product, they are assessed on both the process and
end result of their work. Direct, systematic observation of an actual
student performance (or examples of student performances), and rating
of that performance according to pre-established performance
criteria, reflects that students' abilities more realistically and
accurately than indirect measures such as tests or course grades.
This departure from traditional assessment practices has led to
questions about how political movements determine educational
practices
and to struggle with how current curricula which in the case of
teacher education programs are highly complex can be incorporate
performance assessment
practices.
At Ball
State, these difficult issues have centered around the unit
assessment plan, where the performance "rubber" meets the curricular
"road" in teacher education reform.
In general, our projected UAS has multiple "Decision Points" (four main stages) where
students need to satisfactorily exhibit performances as the progress,
notably at the completion of their first year,
completion of their second year, admission to student teaching, and
graduation/licensure. The judgment on student competency is to be
based on sets of standards, framed conceptually by the INTASC
(Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) Core, the
Indiana Developmental and Content
Standards, and NETS (National
Educational Technology Standards).
For two years, a campus-wide group called the Teacher Education
Performance Assessment Steering Committee (TEPASC) has worked on
creating procedures for reaching this goal. In regard to the
knowledge, disposition, and performances for teaching majors (the
three dimensions of each INTASC standard), TEPASC has recommended
that: (a) licensure areas provide multiple opportunities for each
student in the program to demonstrate and to document an
understanding of the state P-12 proficiencies, and (b) students
demonstrate and document successful experiences in planning and
executing lessons directly related to relevant P-12 proficiencies.
Within this complex assessment plan, we have identified student
electronic portfolios as one potentially powerful performance
assessment instrument that can allow students to demonstrate multiple
competencies.
The in-depth development of our portfolio initiative commenced
under the auspices of a U.S. Department of Education PT3
grant, (Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology), which
is being co-administered by Laurie Mullen in Ball State's
Department of Educational Studies in Teacher's College (BSU
PT3 site). A team of university faculty (including Mullen and
co-authors William Bauer and Web Newbold) met weekly beginning in Fall
2000 to develop the concept base and practical format for the
portfolio. In addition, a series of experts from other universities
and corporations such as Apple computer were brought to campus to
provide their insights regarding conceptual frameworks, technological
infrastructure, and portfolio logistics. These sessions, which were
open to all of the university community, stimulated discussion about
the shape and form of our portfolio system. We sought out and
examined other teacher education institutions attempting to implement
similar initiatives as well as individual faculty across the country
working in this area.
As the university began to discuss a campus-wide portfolio model
for teacher education, it was recognized that our cross-disciplinary
expertise could be tapped, and that a consensus needed to emerge as
to the type of portfolio best suited for teacher education. The
decision to recommend a electronic portfolio over a paper-based
portfolio emerged in part as a result of parallel initiatives to
infuse computer technologies in teacher education and other
curricula. The interactive, non-linear attributes of electronic
media, which may include audio, video, text, numerical data and
graphics, have potential to bring a depth and richness to student
work and understanding and offer efficient storage and access as
well.
Portfolio Purpose
In recent years, a number of portfolio types have been used on our
campus by faculty from a variety of disciplines. The media of these
portfolios have included paper, PowerPoint, and the World Wide Web.
Likewise, the specific purpose of the portfolios has varied according
to the needs of the discipline and the preferences of the faculty
member teaching the course. Types include process portfolios, reading
portfolios, showcase portfolios, and exit portfolios (see Katz
& Johnson-Kuby, 1996).
The portfolio structure we envision responds to a variety of needs personal, pedagogical, and program related. While the overall goal
for the digital portfolio is to meet the learning and competency
objectives of the teacher education program, our special aim is to
maintain the emphasis on reflection and to highlight the
developmental process of portfolio construction. Thus, the primary
purpose of our student digital portfolio is a cumulative and on-going
reflection of their progress and readiness in learning to teach. The
portfolio as a whole must reflect the students' entire certification
program. That is, students are expected to draw on as many of their
courses and experiences as possible. Klenowski
(1998) writes that portfolios provide a structure for documenting and
reflecting on teaching and learning practice. (See Barrett
(2000).) The portfolio allows for the collection of a range of tasks
and information about teaching over time in different settings.
Consequently, a richer portrayal of teaching practice is possible.
Portfolio projects and publications in English studies have
especially stressed the benefits of portfolios for encouraging
metacognitive thinking and allowing for authentic assessment of the
deep skills of literacy, and as such have inspired our reflective
aim. (See Hamp-Lyons and Condon (2000) and
Burch (1997).)
Given the longitudinal nature of the student portfolio, we hope
that student reflection will become more rich and complex as they
continue in the program providing quality information that can be
used to examine growth and progress over time. Wolf,
Whinery & Hagerty (1995) indicate that
by engaging teachers-in-development in the practice of
documenting and reflecting on their teaching, and in holding
regular and focused conversations with their colleagues about
their practice, we are building individual dispositions and a
professional culture that values reflective, collaborative
practice (p. 37).
The portfolios our students develop will serve many purposes.
Indeed, a primary goal of the digital portfolio will be to provide a
vehicle for students to demonstrate they have met the learning and
competency objectives of the teacher education program. But before
they can present themselves as teachers and models, education
students should themselves master the communicative tools that
underlie every subject and support every learning method: reading and
writing. Portfolio assessment of literacy skills provides a more
authentic and reliable way to judge how students are using language
over time, and how they are growing in ability and effectiveness.
Another important objective will be to emphasize pedagogical
reflection and to highlight the pre-service teacher's developmental
process. Students will be expected to draw on as many of their
courses and experiences as possible. Given the longitudinal nature of
the portfolio, we hope that students' reflections will become more
rich and complex as they progress in the program, providing quality
information that can be used to examine growth and progress over
time. Finally, students will need to continue to document their
development as teachers via a portfolio during the "induction" phase
(first two years) of their professional career in Indiana. The
portfolio students develop throughout their undergraduate curriculum
will continue to evolve during their initial years as full time
teachers.
Portfolio Structure
A Web-based medium has been chosen for our electronic portfolios.
The Web is advantageous for several reasons. First, it is
cross-platform; persons creating and viewing the portfolio can use
the computer of their choice. Second, many media types can be
utilized on the Web including text, graphics, sound, and video.
Multimedia will allow for rich representations of student learning
and development. Third, HTML is not a proprietary format. As it is an
international standard, with each new version slated to maintain
compatibility with previous versions, it will endure. Fourth, Web
files are easily transportable and can be displayed either online or
distributed through other media such as CD-ROM. Finally, a Web-based
portfolio can be more easily accessed for asynchronous assessment by
all stakeholders (teacher education faculty, content area
specialists, and P-12 teachers).
Requirements for documenting student competencies in numerous
state and national standards compelled us to frame the structure of
the portfolio on a more holistic and broad level. To do this, we
returned to our institution's conceptual framework based on the
INTASC Standards. Students will reflect
on and document their development as teachers in relation to each of
the ten INTASC standards. Appropriate artifacts supporting their
development in each standard will be hyperlinked within the
portfolio.
The categories of artifacts that can be used for sources of
evidence are mandated by the state and may include:
- Classroom Performance - Video
- Lesson Artifacts ( e.g., lesson/unit planning, handouts,
slides, assessment documents)
- Paper/Pencil Tests of Knowledge
- On-Demand Tasks (e.g., simulations, case studies,
problem-based scenarios)
- Interviews of Candidates
- Testimonials (e.g., cooperating teachers, university
supervisors, students)
- Products Reflecting Learning of Candidates' Students (e.g.,
student artifacts)
- Other Assessments (e.g., self-reports, special projects)
Portfolio Assessment
As previously mentioned, we have chosen four
main stages for the portfolio development process, within which
students build toward "decision points" in their teacher training. At
each of these decision points, assessment of the portfolio will
occur. In addition, selected artifacts of the portfolio will be
developed and assessed as part of courses in the students'
curriculum. Artifacts may be submitted and assessed at different
stages of a student's progress, from admission to graduation. Early
assessment will be more formative in nature, attempting to guide
If you're interested in additional perspectives, check this piece out. | students in relation to their learning practices and overall career
goals; later assessment will judge performance more directly,
applying the range of standards in an increasingly summative way.
Obviously, this aspect of the larger portfolio program is crucial
to its success. While a detailed assessment plan is still being
formulated, many if not most course teachers will need to be
involved, both in the core education courses and the various
licensure areas. The need to fit portfolio assessment into
departmental programs, as well as into faculty members' personal
plans and preferences, presents perhaps the major challenge to our
teacher education portfolio effort.
Models
Our Portfolio Task Force has examined three approaches to
electronic portfolios that have come in some cases from our
collective experiences with smaller scale development efforts with
e-portfolios in disciplinary courses. These represent three possible
points of approach that highlight strengths which could be
incorporated into a general teacher education assessment process, but
which also need further refinement and testing in program and course
contexts. Testing will proceed across licensure areas in Fall
2001.
Infrastructure Considerations
A new critical need is to integrate the portfolio with performance
assessment records. Parallel initiatives at Ball State involve the
development and implementation of large-scale Web-based databases
that support longitudinal portfolio construction and distribution as
a core service of our licensure program. The portfolio database will
be integrated into other Web-based representations of competence.
This is the systems and infrastructure that will support
large-scale, Web-enabled, relational databases that sustain and
promote the competency profiling, performance assessment, and
electronic portfolio initiatives. Teams are building an advanced data
engine to support the representation and development of performance
and competence. We are building upon established models for examining
the NCATE, ISTE and NETS, INTASC, IPSB and P-12 competencies and
standards and the ways they interface into the academic cycles of
teacher education majors. For the duration of their teacher education
experience, students, faculty, and cooperating teachers and
administrators will interact with the competency database for the
following services:
- Providing Web-based diagnostics in relation to INTASC, ISTE,
NETS, and content area standards and competencies.
- Evaluating progress towards competence.
- Represent performance for assessment and licensure.
- Maintaining student portfolio and coursework relevant to
licensure.
The database is still under development and will be tested
in Fall 2001.
Other infrastructure considerations under discussion include the
need for faculty professional development, computer lab
resources hardware, software, and staffing for support of portfolio
development among roughly 3,500 teacher education students, and a
university-wide plan to support and update technical resources in all
areas.
Challenges
Certainly infrastructure considerations mentioned above present
immediate challenges to our program. But just as significant are what
might be called "extrinsic challenges" related to changing our
approach to a central activity of the University. Those of us who
have adopted electronic portfolios can dream dreams and project
possibilities, but these must be enacted in departments and licensure
areas with very specific program needs and expectations; these are
usually complex and make large demands on faculty and staff.
Performance assessment represents a new way of evaluating students in
all programs, and will need to be accommodated as a major part of
language arts, or math, or life sciences teaching sequences. Faculty
from the content areas will have to be involved in some way with the
assessment of each student's competency in that area, based on the
performance artifacts of the digital portfolio. This process goes
beyond the normal course completion and grade indicators currently
standard in education generally; it will be difficult to train
teachers and also to compensate them when assessment activities go
beyond what can reasonably be expected of a full time professional.
Ultimately, the success of this major reform effort will depend on
the ability of teachers, staff, administrators, and students to work
together to achieve a better assessment regime in higher education.
Can the limits of course-based, grade-ranked educational practices be
overcome for the advantage of all concerned? This will be the
question we will need to consistently raise and to seek consensus
about. Our portfolio project is helping raise these issues and
offering viable ways to rethink and reorganize, and revitalize
assessment, using new media tools to show how this reform can be put
into action.
References
Barrett, H. (2000). Electronic portfolios =
multimedia development + portfolio development: The electronic
portfolio development process. Electronic Portfolios: Information
about Electronic Portfolio Development. <http://electronicportfolios.com/portfolios/aahe2000.html>
Burch, C. B. (1997). Finding out what's in their
heads: using teaching portfolios to assess English education students
and programs. In Yancey, K. B., and Weiser, I. eds., pp. 263-277.
Campbell, D.M., Cignetti, P.B., Melenyzer, B.J.,
Nettles, D.H., and Wyman, R.M. (1997). How to develop a
professional portfolio: A manual for teachers. Boston: Allyn
& Bacon.
Hamp-Lyons, L., and Condon, W. (2000).
Assessing the portfolio : principles for practice, theory &
research. Cresskill, N.J: Hampton Press.
Katz, C.A., Johnson-Kuby, S.A. (1996). Like
portfolios for assessment. Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy, v39(6), pp. 508-511.
Klenowski, V. (1998). Guidelines for portfolio
use in initial teacher education. Paper and Monograph Series in
Education. Centre for Research and International Collaboration. Hong
Kong Institute of Education.
Wolf, K., Whinery, B. & Hagerty, P. (1995).
Teaching portfolios and portfolio conversations for teacher educators
and teachers. Action in Teacher Education, 17 (1), Spring,
30-39.
Yancey, K. B., and Weiser, I. eds. (1997).
Situating portfolios: four perspectives. Logan, Utah : Utah
State University Press.
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