From Baby Steps to Center-Wide Initiatives: A Progress Report from a Non-Traditional College - Empire State College, SUNY

Empire State College Progress Report:

From Baby Steps to Center-wide Initiatives

Marnie Evans, Director of Academic ReviewCathy Leaker, Associate Professor, Cultural Studies

April 30, 2010

2010 Making Connections Mini ConferenceShifting the Paradigm:  ePortfolio, Learning and Change

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Empire State College, the non-traditional college of the State University of New York, serves 19,000+ students at 35 locations across New York State and on-line

Students work with faculty mentors to create a curriculum that meets their educational goals and incorporates their prior college credits and experiential learning

The Metropolitan Center, with locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, is the largest regional center, with more than 1900 students

The ePortfolio pilot, initiated in Manhattan in 2009, will expand to Brooklyn and Staten Island in 2010-2011

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Degree Planning: Degree Planning at Empire State College:

• Each student takes 4-8 credits of Educational

Planning, as Independent Study or in a group, usually

with the primary mentor, during which the student

creates a Portfolio to support the Degree Program

• The Portfolio becomes the student’s curriculum

• The student designs a Degree Program and writes a

Degree Program Rationale describing how the Degree

Program meets SUNY and Empire State College

requirements, and explaining the degree, especially

the title and design of the Concentration

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Metropolitan Center

Degree Planning: Degree Planning continued:

• As part of Portfolio Development, the student reflects on and identifies areas for Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) and writes a PLA Request for each topic

• A subject matter expert uses the PLA Portfolio and an interview to evaluate the student’s learning and writes a credit recommendation to the faculty

• When the evaluator report(s) are submitted, the complete portfolio is reviewed by a faculty committee; the student’s transfer and PLA credits are awarded when the portfolio is approved by the faculty

Metropolitan Center

Metropolitan Center

Degree Planning: Empire State College’s Core Values: An Explicit Institutional Commitment to Education that…..

• treats students as active partners in their education;• transcends the boundaries of time, place and ways of

learning;• integrates and engages students with their past, present

and future creative and intellectual lives;• emphasizes dialogue and collaborative approaches to study • develops and sustains life-long curiosity and critical inquiry

for all students.

Degree Planning: Core Commitments Core Skills:

Successful ESC Students Typically Demonstrate

Some or All of the Following:

• Motivation and/or Goal Orientation• Self Direction

• Active Engagement with Learning• Intellectual Curiosity

• Confident, Informed Decision Making• Strong Research and Writing Skills

• Reflective and Integrative Meta-Cognition

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Degree Planning: Scaffolded Values, Scaffolded Skills: Critical Agency through EPortfolio-ing

Our Hypothesis:

Deliberate and scaffolded integration of eportfolios and “folio thinking” (Chen, 31 ) in Empire State College studies will help students develop the graduated learning skills and

reflective habits of mind that will in turn allow them to more successfully and more intentionally design and complete

their degrees.

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Degree Planning: The ESC ePortfolio Pilot Project 2009-2010: 3 Linked

Studies • ESC 101: Introduction to College Learning and Preparation

for Degree Planning (4 credit transition to college study group initiated in Manhattan, 2009; expanding to Brooklyn, SI in Fall 2010)

• Crafting the Prior Learning Essay (2-credit study group to help students assess/articulate experiential learning; initiated in Manhattan 2010; expanding to Brooklyn, SI in Fall 2010) )

• Career Building through ePortfolio (4 credit study students learn to design, publish and maintain an ePortfolio for personal or career purposes; initiated in Manhattan in 2009)

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Metropolitan Center

ESC 101: Introduction to College Study & Preparation for Degree Planning

• 4-credit study group for new students

• Blended learning: 12 classes + ANGEL

• Academic Skills, Introduction to Degree

Planning and basic ePortfolio building

• Readings/ Theme: Liberal Education

• Gen Ed Competencies: Critical Thinking

and Information Management

• Iterative assignments with reflections

• Team-teaching → student agency

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By the end of ESC 101, students will

• have acquired basic college study skills and ESC

survival skills (MyESC, ANGEL, basic ePortfolio)

• understand ideas of Liberal Education and will have

practiced critical thinking and information management

• understand basic academic and career expectations

and steps in degree planning/ portfolio development

• know their own academic strengths and weaknesses

and have learned strategies for developing their skills

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By the end of ESC 101, students will (continued)

• have been practiced college-level academic skills:

in-class and on-line discussions, writing exercises,

essays, research and reflections

• have written and revised their goal statements,

researched academic and career areas and

expectations, summarized their prior learning and

researched possible concentrations

• have set up a basic ePortfolio with drafts of two

essays, their academic self-assessments, goal

statements and reflections on each assignment

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Prompts for Reflections:• Write a 5-sentence reflection on what you learned from

doing and updating the Skills Assessment. It might be something like: When I started at ESC my academic skills... when I first did this assessment I... When I did the update I found that... Overall my learning in the skills listed... or whatever seems to reflect your learning and experience with doing a skills assessment and updating it at mid-term. Post your reflection the Description box in your ePortfolio.

• A teacher may ask you to reflect on your work. This means you need to think about why you have selected this work, what you have learned by doing this work and how this work connects to other things you are studying or thinking about, academically, professionally or personally. (LaGuardia CC, FAQs)

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Student reflections• Writing the second essay I felt a lot more

comfortable. Although my writing skills need more work I felt I have progressed a lot more than writing the first essays. This was one of the first assignments that I had to do in APA style which helped me with my research papers in my other study groups.

• Thanks to ESC 101, I had to learn to navigate the Internet for the first time in my life. I suffered, but at the same time it was exhilarating to enter the technology world.

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Student reflections continued:

• I have progressed tremendously in various fields. Although I could use more practice I am better than when I first started ESC-101. What I have learned will help me throughout college.

• Without ESC 101, I would be in a bit of a panic right now (with the college web site, Angel, and citations etc). I really think your class should be mandatory for all new students . . .

• This class should be a prerequisite for anyone returning to college.

Example of an ePortfolio-in-progress from ESC 101

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Crafting the Prior Learning Essay• 2-credit study group for students beyond

their first term, many of whom have

gotten “stuck” in the system;

• Macro: Explores the often political

relationship between formal education

and experiential learning;

• Micro: Uses process pedagogy,

rhetorical concepts and guided reflection

to help students identify and describe

“college level learning”;

• Objective is for each student to

complete one polished PLA essay

Crafting the Prior Learning Essay 1.0 (Spring 2010): The Role of Eportfolio

• Instructor publishes assignments, worksheets and sample texts in her eportfolio; updated every week and shared with group

• Students add iterative assignments as artifacts to Angel; publish and share eportfolio periodically; opportunity to comment on each other’s developing PLA drafts

• Students publish a final eportfolio including all written work and a final assigned reflection

• All assignments print based; privileges alphabetic and essayistic literacy

Metropolitan Center

Metropolitan Center

Crafting the Prior Learning Essay: The Students

• “Rick”: I’ve performed on stage, playing bass & singing in no less than 70 performances. Although I considered myself an “everyman” when performing, I suppose I did develop some sense of stagecraft.

• “Miguel": I also can add different projects I was part of such as: ASPIRA's Project A.W.A.R.E. With ASPIRA, I taught teenagers with social problems in public schools, and tried to integrate them into society through dance.

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Crafting the Prior Learning Essay: The Students

“Dan”

Over my career in the theatre and film I have appeared in over 150 plays and musicals…

During the multi-year stint in Cabaret, I began to work on a script for a one man theatre piece with music. …I

learned new skills as a writer, performer, and producer….

Tourette’s Syndrome has been my greatest challenge and very possibly, a gift. It is very difficult to live with, but I have learned more from having it than almost

anything I have done thus far.

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Crafting the Prior Learning Essay: The PLA Requests

Rick: Songwriting; Musical Performance: Band

Miguel: Dance Company Directorship; Teacher Training in Graham Technique;

Marketing and Promoting the Arts

Dan: Musical Theatre Performance; Storytelling and Monologue; Music and Lyrics: Writing for Musical

Theatre; Living w. Tourette’s Syndrome

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Crafting the Prior Learning Essay 2.0 (Fall 2010):

From Storage Space to Learning Space

Eportfolio’s value as a PLA heuristic might best be fostered through more effectively “E-possibilities” like:

• Multimodal Representations• Visible Reflections (Embedded Reflective

Prompts/Texts)• Re-embodied and “Re-mediated” (Bolter and Grusin)

Knowledge• Sequenced and Integrated Folio Thinking

Next Steps: Integration and Cultivation

• Integrate eportfolios across the “delivered curriculum” (beginning with volunteer faculty in specific areas of study)

• Integrate eportfolios at the outset of students’ experience and throughout the “extra-curriculum” (orientation, workshops, studio and lab models)

• Integrate eportfolios with the values, goals and processes of (selected) Educational Planning studies

• Recognize eportfolios as themselves an integrating force between “delivered, experienced and lived curricula”

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Next Steps: Cultivation and Integration

Cultivate Faculty Support for

• scaffolded, reflective, and integrative ePortfolio pedagogy in order to support and develop student agency

• participatory, creative experimentation with eportfolios , especially in the context of Educational Planning studies

• an ongoing, collective exploration of the relationship between eportfolio-ing and institutional values

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Next Steps: Cultivation and Integration

Cultivate Administrative/Infrastructural Support for• ePortfolio as primarily a pedagogical tool promoting

student refection, authority and agency• sustained, creative faculty development program to

implement portfolios• student and faculty experimentation with multimodality • faculty/administrative collaboration to select robust

ePortfolio platform that supports flexible, integrated, multi-modal, and “lifelong” ePortfolios

• ongoing, onsite and online technical support for students and faculty

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Next Steps: Cultivation and Integration

Cultivate Student Investment in

• Eportfolio as site of critical agency• Eportfolios as space for (multiple) self creation• Eportfolios as tool for knowledge making (i.e

through reflection and “remediation”)• “Eportolio-ing” as Lifelong Learning

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