Educational Technology Blog » Digication

Teaching Talks and Teaching Tech Talks scheduled for Spring 2013

Amod Lele — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:51:47 +0000

CEIT has now posted its list of Teaching Talks and Teaching Tech Talks scheduled throughout the Spring 2013 semester. The talks are scheduled on various dates and times to make it possible for faculty to explore some talks whatever their schedule. Some scheduled talks with an emphasis on new technologies include:

Databases for non-majors (Jan. 10)
The top 5 things faculty need to know about Blackboard Learn (Jan. 10)
Read & Write Gold (Feb. 6)
Flipped classroom and Echo360 (Feb. 13)
Collaboration tools in Blackboard Learn (Feb. 20)
iPad applications in the classroom (Feb. 25)
Google Apps in your classroom (Feb. 25)
Increasing instructional interactivity with clickers (Mar. 19)
Virtual student exchanges (Apr. 3)
High-tech cheating (Apr. 3)
How to use ePortfolios (Apr. 5)
Making grading easier and more transparent with rubrics in Blackboard Learn (Apr. 11)
Dimensions of online courses and student perceptions (Apr. 17)

The CEIT site has a complete list of talks. If you’re interested, please sign up and reserve a space!

New featured ePortfolio from CAS Writing Program

Amod Lele — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:56:32 +0000

At the top of the e-Portfolios page in Digication, you’ll find a row of boxes labelled “Featured e-Portfolios”. These are portfolios we have selected as strong and effective examples of what ePortfolios can do. As well as the portfolio about portfolios, they have so far included a professional portfolio from a Sargent College student, an interdisciplinary portfolio from a CGS student, and portfolios for teaching purposes from SED’s Colby Young and the School of Public Health’s James Wolff.

Today, we’re adding a newly featured portfolio from Winnie Hsieh, created for a CAS Writing Program course. Many courses in the Writing Program use ePortfolios to allow students to view their writing over the course of the semester and reflect on it. Hsieh’s course section involved writing three papers and scaffolding the working process of writing each paper. In her illustrated portfolio you can find her reflecting on the process of becoming a successful writer.

International health professor documents learning in unique ways

Robert W Schadt — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:14:28 +0000

One of the greatest challenges facing educators is to document and assess the learning that takes place in and outside the classroom. For several years Professor James Wolff at the School of Public Health has found Digication e-portfolios to be an exciting and innovative way of reflecting on the learning experience, documenting the competencies and skills acquired during a course, making learning visible by creating a permanent record of classroom activities, and assessing the progress and competence of students.

Wolffy, as he is known by colleagues and students, teaches several courses for master’s students in the School of Public Health, all of which have successfully integrated e-portfolios. His first experience with e-portfolio was in IH 790, Leading Organizations to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals. In this course students reflected on the leadership skills they are acquiring and the e-portfolio was used for both formative and summative evaluations.

In IH 744, Program Design for International Health, taught with Monita Baba-Djara and Cristin Morona, students used e-portfolio to collect and present evidence of the specific program design skills they were learning in the classroom and reflect on the team process in which they were engaged. Subsequently they modeled this type of reflection by providing their own reflections of what is taking place in each class on a class e-portfolio linked to the students own individual e-portfolios.

In IH 887, Developing and Managing Maternal and Child Health Programs, students were not required to keep their own e-portfolios, rather the e-portfolio was used to document course activities and present the work done by student teams. The 2012 e-portfolio for IH 887 currently under development by the 2012 IH 887 class includes a student generated on-line textbook and a student-faculty collaboration on a Facilitators Guide for an MCH Training Program: Planning and Managing Child and Maternal Health Programs in Low Resource Settings.

Most recently, in IH 743 Implementing Health Programs in Developing Countries: Making Programs Work, taught with Associate Professor Malcolm Bryant, students created their own e-portfolios to record bi-weekly reflections. Students link their individual e-portfolios to the course e-portfolio where the professors collect and present their own reflections of the class in multiple formats including texts, photos, and videos. The class e-portfolio is also the home for the four consultant team e-portfolios where the course teams chronicle and display the work that they are doing for their clients.

For Wolffy keys to success have been to introduce e-portfolio on the first day of class, to dedicate time for each student to create their own e-portfolio and to create regular assignments requiring students to reflect on what they are learning in the class. He is careful to provide a structure for student reflections linking assignments to key issues covered in class, but not to be too prescriptive. He has successfully encouraged widespread use of e-portfolio in the International Health Department and its use throughout BUSPH continues to grow.

Portfolio about portfolios

Amod Lele — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:43:37 +0000

If you’re curious about ePortfolios and would like to learn more about the uses they can have in your classrooms, or you’d just like to get some hands-on tips about how to put them together, then check out our brand-new resource: the portfolio about portfolios. This site is an ePortfolio just like the ones you can create, but full of helpful information about why ePortfolios can help your classes and how you can put portfolios together. It also includes detailed help on the Digication system’s newer and more advanced features, like the Organizer and Courses. Have a look!

Interdisciplinary ePortfolios at CGS

Amod Lele — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:56:17 +0000

Across BU, many professors have adopted Digication ePortfolios to make student learning visible. With the help of a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation, the College of General Studies (CGS) has taken the further step of integrating ePortfolios across its entire curriculum, for both freshmen and sophomores. CGS provides students with a two-year interdisciplinary general-education core curriculum from which they may continue into any of BU’s other undergraduate programs. Students’ ePortfolios include work from each of their CGS classes in different academic disciplines. This makes it easier for them to integrate their learning and create the interdisciplinary reflections that put their work together across different fields.

CGS’s ePortfolio program also facilitates assessment at the program level. CGS uses ePortfolios to assess students according to a rubric, based on models developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The College assesses its students’ progress in seven areas: (1) written and oral communication, (2) analysis and documentation of sources, (3) awareness of historic and cultural contexts, (4) understanding of rhetorical and aesthetic conventions, (5) critical thinking and perspective-taking, (6) quantitative skills, and (7) integrative and applied learning. The portfolio-based assessment process provides both quantitative and qualitative data, offering richer and more nuanced pictures of student progress than standardized tests could.

View some sample CGS student portfolios: Kristen Visakay, Gunita Singh.