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 SESP's in-house web applications development team has just released Digital Portfolio 2.0 - "My Portfolio."
DP1 was developed with the goals of (1) directing student attention away from technology issues - e.g. learning Dreamweaver, learning how to transfer files - related to portfolio creation and toward the portfolio content creation, (2) establishing a simple, coherent scheme for the interactions between students and reviewers, (3) providing students with an electronic copy of their final work, (4) archiving all material, and (5) developing rudimentary reporting features for use in the MSED's accreditation review by the Illinois State Board of Education.
DP2 differs from DP1 primarily in its configurability. Whereas DP1 was designed specifically for use by the Master of Science in Education teacher certification; architected around the Conceptual Program distilled from NCATE standards; and defined by specific protocols for portfolio creation, content type and review process, DP2 allows customization of
- framework of principles
- checkpoint parameters
- artifact types
- review process
- relationship between reviewers and candidates
- notifications between participants
The MSED program, for example might configure DP2 to be mapped to NCATE Standards, require 18 Artifacts, a resumé, 1 video of student teaching, a statement of the student's philosophy and a summary narrative delivered over 2 years with 3 different checkpoints, and based on a simple Pass-Fail; the School of Music might require 5 surveys over 3 years with no relationship to standards; or the Chicago Public Schools might offer the Digital Portfolio to high school seniors for submission of a resumé, 10 artifacts, and a summary statement over a single academic year, all mapped to specific college-preparatory curricula.
Survey functionality, previously delegated to Quask, has also been incorporated into DP2. Given the ISBE accreditation team's encouragement of data consolidation, more thorough data mining and more comprehensive reporting tools it made sense to pull the series of surveys offered to candidates - Orientation, Student Teaching, Mentor, Exit, etc - into a common dataset; in this way a more comprehensive profile emerges of each candidate: their movement through the program is documented not only in the work they assemble for their portfolio, but also on their survey feedback. Because the portfolio artifacts are mapped to specific principles, and because the individual principles are mapped to specific courses, DP data can be parsed for patterns: if, for example, it is observed that artifacts submitted for Principle 1.5 ("A vision of learning that focuses on the use of technology to extend learning opportunities and thinking") require a significantly higher rate of re-submission than the norm, this lets program administrators know that modifications to technology-oriented curricula might be in order...and the examination of the individual artifacts/reflections can provide an extremely-detailed view of what students are taking away from these classes.
Upon completion of their digital portfolio and teacher certification process, students receive an archive of their portfolio as a stand-alone website.
DP extends the functionality of cmSESP,the content management system morphed from an earlier build ("SOCiety") created at the School of Communication. cmSESP is the "engine" behind the core SESP websites, the Faculty Annual Reporting system, the Virtual Showroom, the SESP News Center and the Digital Portfolio. It is an object-oriented, database-driven application, written in PHP, using the Smarty templating engine and an open source WYSIWYG, and running in an environment using Apache/Linux/MySQL. Our codebase is approaching the 150,000 line count benchmark after 4.5 years of development.
Project Credits
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Jim Webb
Director, Information Technology |
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Mark Swindle
Webmaster |
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Project Lead
Information Architect
C0-Designer |
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William Siegrist
Software Engineer
System Administrator |
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Developer
Co-Designer |
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MS in Learning & Organizational Change Information Session
Wednesday, July 23
6:15–8:15 p.m., 132 Annenberg Hall
Master of Science in Education Information Session
Thursday, July 24
5:30–7 p.m., G22 Annenberg Hall
Annual Summer Picnic for SESP Undergraduates
Wednesday, July 30
5 p.m., Garrett Patio
MS in Learning & Organizational Change Information Session
Wednesday, August 20
6:15–8:15 p.m., 132 Annenberg Hall
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