The Fish Wrapper

Tangled Up

For the last six months or so, I’ve been working with a committee here at UMW that is charged with researching ePortfolio systems. The push for this system comes on a number of fronts:

1. An interest in a system for tracking institutional assessment learning outcomes (on program-, departmental-, and the University-level) and reporting on these otucomes.
2. A space for meta-cognitive reflection by students on their learning, perhaps as part of a larger look at how we advise students.
3. A desire to provide students with a “leg-up” by giving them a robust platform for showcasing their intellectual and professional work and development.
4. A need (specifically in the College of Education) to track student outcomes BEYOND graduation. New laws are requiring us to demonstrate the effectiveness of our students as teachers after they’ve graduated (for a indeterminate amount of time)

It’s worth mentioning that another possibility with a system like this would be to have the ePortfolio become a transcendent presence throughout a student’s time at UMW — a place where they store work, track and share their learning progress, reflect upon their ideas and experiences, and, ultimately, build an online identity for themselves that represents their intellectual self. However, I believe that to do this really effectively we need some kind of programmatic commitment. The ePortfolio would have to be “baked in” to the way we teach from first year seminars to senior thesis. That kind of programming would, potentially, require a much bigger conversation about our curriculum, requirements, and teaching methodologies. I’m not sure that’s going to happen anytime soon here, so, for now, the four needs outlined above are guiding our process more specifically.

I will admit that the first goal (institutional assessment) is incredibly murky for me. I’m lucky in my position to be fairly removed from conversations about academic assessment. I say “lucky” because, frankly, whenever I am in conversations about this topic it feels like the cart is driving the horse. Rather that starting with a conversation about students and what we want them to experience and how we want them to change during their time here, we start at the top — what are our reporting needs and how to we build down from there? The entire institutional assessment process, for me, is sort of a black hole and I can never seem to have a conversation with anyone that sheds any light on it.

The second goal (a space for student reflection) is, by far, the piece of this that intrigues me most. It’s really the starting place for a conversation that could result in programmatic change, and, to me, that’s interesting.

The third goal (a professional online space for post-graduation) is sort of the practical flip side to the second. Theoretically if we do #2 right, I think #3 should happen naturally.

The fourth goal (a space for post-graduation tracking) is the newest for me, and pretty interesting. I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that the College of Education had this requirement. I’m not entirely sure how they’re supposed to realistically achieve it, and I worry if we can build or buy a system that can really answer this need.

Complicating the landscape for this project is our current existing systems which, in some cases, are already meeting some of these needs:

• UMW Blogs, our open source WordPress-based publishing platform, allows any student to create a site, upload content, and, generally, do whatever they want. Students have already started to use it as place to host online portfolios on their own, and some faculty have had students doing ePortfolio-like things in this space.
• Canvas, our new CMS (which also went open source earlier this year), is the space where students and faculty do your standard online course managementy types of activity: submitting assignments (or “artifacts as the ePortfolio crowd seems to like to say”) and grading said assignments. Canvas allows us to create institutional learning outcomes and rubrics which can be used at the course level, but it’s not clear that we can use it to actually do the kind of data gathering and assessment we need.
• TracDat is our institutional data tool into which faculty can submit assessment data and results.

Last spring, three faculty members at UMW (Steve Greenlaw, Anand Rao, and Krystyn Moon) all piloted WordPress as a space for doing different kinds of ePortfolios. Steve used them as a space for freshman advising. Anand had his students build personal portfolios based on their work in a visual rhetoric class. Krystyn and I worked on integrating a Google spreadsheet into a WordPress template to do online assessment of student work.

The projects were as much to understand the questions that we needed to answer as they were to provide the final solution.

This year, we’re hoping to pilot a few systems (both open source and commercial) to see if we can find one that meets our needs (or most of them?). However, we’re running into some challenges:

• Among the systems that are out there, many seems to do one piece of what we’re trying to do well. On the other requirements, they either don’t do it as well or don’t do it at all.
• Many of the systems seem to duplicate the functionality we already have in existing platforms.
• It’s difficult to imagine how yet another system would fit into this landscape. If faculty and students are already happy using UMW Blogs and Canvas to teach and learn, why are we going to thrust yet another system on them (that duplicates some of what UMW Blogs and Canvas already do)? I can imagine many of them just balking at the notion and not using the new system at all.

We’re beginning to wonder if there is another way forward. Is it worth trying to develop something on top of what we already have? Or, is it possible to build something on top of a new system we buy that would gracefully integrate them into what we already have?

I’m interested in talking to people at other institutions about this project. In my mind, we’re not the only ones facing these questions or looking for these solutions. We should be working together to share information about what systems work well (and work well together) and/or what we could build together.

I’d love to hear from people about their ideas. Specifically, here are a few questions I have:

• Do the four goals I outlined above align with any of your institution’s goals? What have I left off that is driving your own interest or research?
• Do you think it’s even possible for one system to meet all of these goals?
• If you’re already implementing a system for ePortfolios how are you handling integration with your existing systems (on both a technical and cultural level)?
• Would you be interested in talking with a group of others about collaborating on this research (and potentially, development)?
• What have I not mentioned here that I should be thinking about?

I’ve been meaning to blog for a while on the “soft” launch this fall of a new look for UMW Blogs. It had been two years since we last redesigned the home page for the site, and in those years several pieces of the page had broken (due to outdated plugins).

This summer, I spent some time building a new theme more or less from scratch for the site and it allowed me to improve some features as well as learn a few new things. Continue reading →

Over the weekend, I stumbled across this gem on the NY Times. According to the article, the latest trend in corporatizing higher education is the “sponsored” move-in. An example they focused on quite a bit was American Eagle Outfitter’s sponsorship of this fall’s freshman move-in at UNC. The clothing company hired upperclassman to sport AE tee-shirts and hats and distribute schwag while helping freshmen move into their new dorms. These students (whose activities continue beyond move-in) even have official titles:  “brand ambassadors” or “campus evangelists.”

Oy.

Further down, the Times actually interviews administrators at UNC and discovers that they were unaware of the sponsorship. Naturally, the administrator they spoke too Winston B. Crisp (vice chancellor for student affairs and @vicecripsy on Twitter) expressed concern about turning move-in into a day-long corporate commercial event:

“They are not supposed to be using the opportunity to help people move in as a way of forwarding commercial ventures,” he said, standing near the cash registers at Target that evening, as upperclassmen handed out free VitaminWater, Combos and packages of macaroni and cheese. He added: “So it’s a bit of a dilemma.”

Wait. Huh?

Oh! It seems Mr. Crisp is mostly upset because UNC had been arranging its own sponsored events around freshman move-in with Target since 2007! So, “using the opportunity to help people move in as a way of forwarding commercial ventures” is a problem EXCEPT when it’s been officially arranged by the office of student affairs. (And it involves VitaminWater and Combos.)

In his explanation of why UNC set up a midnight shopping trip for freshman at Target, Crisp explains that “It’s an opportunity for us to gather them together on a Saturday night in a healthy, safe environment while allowing another major corporate entity to further invade the space of higher education and create new, life-long customers who will promote their ‘brand’ and spend lots and lots of money. Really, it’s a teachable moment.” Okay, I lied. He didn’t actually say that last part.

Further down, there’s a money quote from UNC student Kiley Pontrelli:

“When you know that the company is not just there to get your money, they’re actually willing to, like, help you as an individual in whatever way possible, it makes you respect them a lot more,” Ms. Pontrelli says. “I’m definitely going to give American Eagle, like, a second thought when I go by next time.”

Once again, corporate America is helping educational institutions and students out of the goodness of their heart! They want to HELP students! As INDIVIDUALS! In WHATEVER WAY POSSIBLE! As long as said students can “engag[e] in real activities to move the needle on major brands.” That last quote is from Matt Britton, chief executive of Mr. Youth, a marketing agency who seems to consult with these companies that are looking for ways to help students . . .as individuals. . . in whatever way possible. . .oh, never mind.

(I didn’t actually know what “move the needle on major brands” meant. You know, because I’m a human being and not a marketer. So I Googled it. Here’s a site I found that actually explains this stupid cliche.)

I can’t decide what annoys me most: The companies that are creating “brand ambassadors” on college campuses because they know the power of peer pressure when it comes to getting young people to purchase stuff. The students who fall for this bullshit and think that these companies actually “care” about them. Or the colleges who are INVITING these businesses to become a part of students’ experiences because it allows them to provide “safe, healthy” student events.

Actually, the last one is the one that annoys me most.

Last Tuesday, a group of about 12 people met in DTLT’s office to discuss an online learning initiative that has been underway at UMW for the last several months. I’ve only recently been pulled into this conversation due to some staffing turnover, but I’ve been following it through conversations with Steve Greenlaw (who has played an integral role in planning and imagining it) and Jim Groom (who has represented DTLT in many of the meetings and conversations).

Generally, the goal of the initiative is to explore online learning within a liberal arts context — with an emphasis on thinking about how the values of the liberal arts can be explored. I think it’s an admirable goal, and I’ve been more intrigued by it than many other conversations about online learning that I’ve been part of in the past because its attempting to address online teaching and learning at a more fundamental level than just the use the Web as a delivery mechanism (more on this below).

The goal of last Tuesday’s meeting was to discuss the review of online courses that a few faculty members have signed up to teach next spring and summer. Part of the project has always included a process wherein colleagues from within UMW and from other institutions would be asked to review the course plans based on some set of criteria. This meeting was to further discuss what that criteria would be.

In preparation for the meeting, I spent some time reviewing three other review mechanisms — specifically rubrics developed by the Illinois Online Network, California State University, Chico,  and the Monterey Institute. All three of these had been suggested to Steve by colleagues at other institutions who had offered advice and feedback on the initiative.

In full disclosure, the word rubric is one that generally leaves me cold. The adoption of rubrics as a way to assess education (both student work, and in this case, faculty work), seems to have emerged out of the increasing presence of instructional designers at our schools and the increasing interest in generating institutional data with which to clobber our accrediting agencies during reaffirmation.

(Now for a short side note about “instructional design”: When I was getting my graduate degree in instructional technology ten years ago, I looked at generally two kinds of programs: ones with a heavy emphasis on instructional design and ones without. I ended up going to one of the latter because there was something about the various instructional design systems that left me cold. Now, to be fair, I’m not an expert on these systems (what with the not going to a school that taught them). But what little I do know about them seems to suggest such a formulaic approach to teaching that it seems to suck the life and art out of the practice. )

I don’t have any particular problem with professional staff being hired to partner with faculty to think about ways to teach that are innovative and creative (hey! that sounds like what I do!). So, if that’s what an “instructional designer” is, fine. I also don’t have any particular problem with institutions being interested in thinking carefully and closely about what they do — and even using that process to imagine ways to evolve and change. If that’s what “institutional data” is for, fine.

But, really, that’s not what I’m seeing. Instead, I see more and more institutions relying on the perspectives of instructional designers and institutional data offices to determine strategic goals.

All of this was weighing on my mind fairly heavily as I gathered the materials for our meeting. I spent sometime reviewing the various rubrics as well as the notes on liberal arts education that the committee had developed earlier this summer. I suggested to Steve that we break the rubrics down into their component parts and then offer these pieces up to the committee to consider as they discussed how UMW should review online courses. In my mind, I was imagining that we would juggle and group the rubric components, finding some that we’d like to look at further for our own purposes, and some that we would eliminate entirely.

I literally printed a card for each rubric component, with the different rubrics each assigned a separate color or paper so that we could keep track of what was what. Last Tuesday, we all sat down at the table in DTLT with piles of colored paper and brief handouts that provided an overview of each rubric.

We started talking.

And then the earth shook. Literally. An earthquake hit Virginia, and, here in Fredericksburg, the walls of duPont rumbled dramatically. The meeting was adjourned.

And ever since then I’ve been joking that the earthquake was some higher power’s sign to us that we needed to treat rubrics with CAUTION!!

In all seriousness, in preparation for the make-up meeting (which, as it happens will be this afternoon), I’ve been doing additional thinking and soul-searching about this project. Here are a couple of thoughts I’ve had, loosely organized, in no particular order.

1. Let’s make Online Learning about Learning Online.
It seems to me that a lot of online learning conversations operate under the assumption that the “online” component is merely the technical component that allows a faculty to deliver a course to students who are not physically co-located. Online simply becomes a mechanism that a faculty member employs for practical reasons. I would like to suggest that we need to start thinking about Online Learning as a practice that considers in a holistic way how learning can happen within a networked, open culture. DS106 is a great example of a course that not only relies on online environments to communicate with students and provide access to content and ideas but also places students within the open Web where their success depends upon learning how to navigate these online spaces, develop networks of support, and contribute their own knowledge and creative practices back to open Web culture.

What if we conceived of our online courses this way? What if faculty were asked to consider how they could incorporate the open Web into their curriculum and students were expected to engage in these spaces as part of their coursework.

2. Let’s Start Over
It seems to me that most online courses grown out of existing face-to-face courses, where a faculty member works (sometimes in conjunction with others) to “transform” or translate the F2F experience to the online course environment (usually an LMS). It’s digital facelifts all the way down. What if we decided to build online courses from scratch? Instead of simply translating a F2F class, how about if every online coure is a NEW course. Perhaps it’s built out of something that has been taught F2F, but it’s given a chance to exist, natively within an online context. Faculty could use online courses to explore those aspects of their discipline that lend themselves to being taught within a Web-based network.

3. Let’s Make (Teaching) Art
I don’t have a particular problem with courses being reviewed by other faculty members, nor (as I stated above) do I have a problem with University’s having people on staff whose job is to partner with faculty to think about new ways of teaching. What I DO have a problem with is taking the review of online courses so far that it sucks the creativity and art out of teaching. Honestly, the rubrics that I reviewed for our meeting were filled with criteria that seemed  over-the-top. We have never subjected faculty to this kind of review for F2F classes. Why do we assume that when they teach online, they’re incapable of making smart choices about how they teach? Can’t our “review” of courses focus more on developing creative partnerships among faculty and their supporting colleagues — partnerships that focus on thinking through the possibilites of a course, bouncing ideas off each other, exploring new technologies or approaches? These partnerships would be a breading ground for discussing the two points I raised above — how to teach a liberal arts discipline within an open, networked Web and how to build natively, online courses within those disciplines.

Okay, that was a LONG post. But when I blog, I don’t just make some crappy animated gifs. I BLOG.   Would love to hear feedback and/or pushback on any of this.

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