Connect to Learning News

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Connect to Learning Post-San Francisco Update

February 17, 2011 -- AAC&U’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco was the site for Connect to Learning’s (C2L) kick-off institute where 22 campuses from around the United States gathered to address eportfolio implementation.  The campuses represented many stages in the implementation process from those that were moving from paper portfolios to electronic portfolios to campuses where eportfolios are already used campus-wide.  Regardless of the stage at which campuses found themselves, many common concerns were shared.

Among shared concerns that surfaced during discussions were identifying, addressing and engaging stakeholders; keeping the student at the center of learning; prioritizing teaching and learning over the technology represented in electronic portfolios; developing an eportfolio culture on campus; finding ways to prove that eportfolio use makes a difference in student outcomes; and generating support for eportfolio initiatives across campuses that is both deep and broad. 

The concerns expressed also helped present a baseline for the project in that all teams sought collaboration and solidarity through the project as well as ways to enrich their own practice.   Not any one team had all the answers, and the sessions were not even so much about finding answers at this stage as they were about asking the right questions.  

The two days of C2L team meetings book-ended the Saturday ePortfolio Forum sponsored by AAC&U and AAEEBL.  Many C2L participants presented at this Forum while all benefitted from the session line-up that was inspirational as well as practical.  LaGuardia Community College’s Making Connections National Resource Center project was featured in “Making Connections: Lessons Learned from a Multi-Campus ePortfolio Collaboration” at which Bret Eynon and Judit Torok discussed the project that preceded C2L, Making Connections, which supported 30 New York City area colleges as they initiated eportfolio programs.  During this session participants were able to meet in small groups and ask questions in addition to discussing steps to build eportfolio programs. 

Small groups also played an important part in the overall strategy for helping individuals and their campuses to move forward during the two days that C2L met as an institute.  These groups enabled rich conversations among campuses that were very different from each other as well as campuses that were similar to each other.  The groups also gave participants a time and space to talk about actual project first steps for them to accomplish once back on campus. 

In between group meeting times, project leaders presented information about research and evaluation and also about a matrix model that underscores the project’s scholarship.  The Project Strategies Matrix offers a grid with three strategies – reflection strategies, institutional change strategies, strategies for documenting evidence related to eportfolio -- and four dimensions – engagement and integrative learning, outcomes and assessment, career and transfer, institutional support.  The matrix provides a scaffold upon which project senior scholars, Randy Bass of Georgetown University and Helen Chen of Stanford University, will develop viable models for eportfolio implementation. 

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December 7, 2010 -- We are pleased to announce that "Connect to Learning: ePortfolio, Engagement, and Student Success," a nationwide educational innovation project, has finalized the selection of participating campuses.  Funded by FIPSE, the US Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, Connect to Learning will bring together ePortfolio leadership teams from campuses across the country, selected through a competitive application process, to explore and strengthen best practices in ePortfolio pedagogy.

Connect to Learning will be coordinated by the Making Connections National Resource Center of LaGuardia Community College (CUNY), a national ePortfolio leader, working with the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-based Learning (AAEEBL), an emerging international professional association focused on ePortfolio practice.   A Call for Proposals issued this fall by Making Connections and AAEEBL attracted applications from a wide range of colleges and universities, including national leaders in ePortfolio pedagogy.  Nearly twice as many applications were received as there were FIPSE-funded slots.  In the end, 22 campuses were selected:

• Boston University
• University of Delaware
• Hunter College, CUNY
• Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
• Johnson & Wales University
• LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
• Lehman College, CUNY
• Long Island University
• Manhattanville College
• Northwest Connecticut Community College
• Norwalk Community College
• Pace University
• Queensborough Community College, CUNY
• Rutgers University
• Salt Lake Community College
• San Francisco State University
• School of Professional Studies, CUNY
• St. John’s University
• SUNY Empire State
• Three Rivers Community College
• Tunxis Community College
• Virginia Tech

Building a nationwide network that links community colleges, private colleges and research universities, the Connect to Learning project will kick off at a January national ePortfolio Forum, held in San Francisco, co-sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and AAEEBL. Over the next three years, participating campuses will use a structured matrix model of ePortfolio development to plan and implement campus-based innovations and evaluate the impact of ePortfolio implementation on student learning.  Over the course of the three year project, Connect to Learning will advance the practice of hundreds of faculty, benefit 20-25,000 students, and generate evidence-based national models of ePortfolio implementation.

This project provides project participants with an opportunity to collaborate with and learn from other institutions in addition to exciting educational leaders from across the country. Dr. Judit Torok of LaGuardia Community College will co-ordinate the national project, working with AAEEBL’s Dr. Trent Batson and Making Connections founder Dr.  Bret Eynon.  Dr. Randy Bass of Georgetown University and Dr. Helen Chen of Stanford University will serve as the project's senior research scholars.  

For more information, contact Judit Torok at JTorok@lagcc.cuny.edu .

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FIPSE Proposal Deadline for C2L is 11/8/10

LaGuardia Community College invites proposals for participation in Connect to Learning (C2L), a FIPSE-funded 3-year project led by LaGuardia's Making Connections National Resource Center in collaboration with AAEEBL. The national project will offer online seminars, face-to-face gatherings, and $20,000 mini-grants to support campus projects focused on the use of reflective ePortfolio pedagogy to improve student learning. Our goal is to describe ways that reflection can effectively be elicited, can be varied at different points in a project process, can be longitudinally useful and can serve assessment and employability needs. Randy Bass of Georgetown University and Helen Chen of Stanford University will work with the project and campus leaders to generate a national developmental model of best practices.

Bret Eynon, project director, explains, "The project's first semester (Spring 2011) will be primarily a planning period. Building on their existing ePortfolio projects, leadership teams from each participating campus will share best practices and discuss plans for advancing their own campus initiatives, addressing the topic of reflection and themes identified in the Project Strategies Matrix, such as Engagement & Integrative Learning, Outcomes & Assessment, and Career & Transfer. (See Call for detail.) In Fall 2011, campuses will launch their plans for strengthening their campus initiatives."

Connect to Learning will serve up to 16 campuses nationwide, selected through a competitive application process. The Call for Proposals and an application is available at Connect to Learning. The project invites participation by experienced AAEEBL member campuses at one of two levels: as core or affiliated campuses (explained in the Call). The deadline for proposals is November 8 at 5 p.m. EST.