FLC Reflection and Final Project Report

Photo credits for Pacific octopus (blue) and camouflaged octopus: Public Domain by NOAA’s National Ocean Service

Project Overview The focus of my project work for our faculty learning community (FLC) has been to gain a better understanding and application of integrative social pedagogy in high-impact ePortfolio practice. According to researchers Bret Eynon and Laura Gambino, authors of High-Impact ePortfolio Practice, integrative learning includes the key component of “reflecting in community” (38), meaning ePortfolio reflection is enriched by visible and interactive practices. Just as learners find deeper meaning when they are engaged and active in their learning, reflection in community offers a vehicle to gain feedback and suggestions as learners are assessing progress and revising, not just at the end of a project. As ePortfolio becomes a dynamic and self-constructed space for students, the process of learning becomes as meaningful as the final project, and peer feedback becomes a valued step toward the completion of the project. Revision gets built into the process. Integrative social pedagogical practice can also move beyond the content of courses and into design of the ePortfolio as students view others’ ePortfolios and are encouraged to consciously link materials through pages, posts, and categories.

Like the small arm movements of an octopus, I moved our ePortfolio initiative forward by encouraging professors to include an element of reflection in community.

Unlike some of the other FLC projects that were housed in a course or program, my project was to offer suggestions and feedback to encourage integrative ePortfolio pedagogy at a variety of levels. Like an octopus, I observe from an unobtrusive spot and then propel forward, moving with the current of professor’s project goals. With small arm movements, I moved our ePortfolio initiative forward by encouraging professors to include an element of reflection in community. Although octopus arms may be moving in different directions, they are often working together. I hope to provide a structure for student ePortfolio use that includes repeated practices that will help propel them toward their goals regardless of their fields of study. This practice worked well for our FLC group. By reflecting in community, we learned, shared, revised, and grew together over the past year as we encouraged our students to do the same.

Throughout the FLC, I have looked for opportunities to widen the students’ and faculty’s use of the authentic audience. Most faculty who use ePortfolio now include reflective practices, but many view the reflection as an individual contemplation. Although the reflection is shared in ePortfolio, it is often viewed only by the professor. To take advantage of the authentic audience, we must ask something of our audience, and we must be willing to offer something in return. The more we practice this give and take, the more we see the value of it.

Thank you to Marc Ebenfield and Karl Carrigan at UNE’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for giving us the opportunity to participate in an FLC!

Background Some of the most meaningful learning that I have done as a professor centered on developing a better process of teaching peer review. I wanted to take some of my expertise and match strategies and activities to helping students build their ePortfolio knowledge as well as developing their abilities to offer and accept constructive feedback to improve their work. In a writing class, this constructive feedback would come from both peers and the professor as the student is drafting. One of the challenges of meaningful peer review is that students are not yet experts and may be reluctant to offer meaningful suggestions or critical feedback. Teaching students to apply writing concepts becomes easier when they are expected to apply those concepts to others’ work with the goal of helping classmates improve. The same could be said of professors as they navigate new technological tools as well as new pedagogical approaches.

Beginning Steps Offering support and help to professors is key to making this possible since many are novice users. Having a variety of ways to make peer-to-peer interactions more meaningful and targeted toward specific goals is important. A beginning step, such as viewing or learning about a peer’s project, is a step toward social integrative pedagogy. One example of such a project was in a Nursing course, where the professor asked me to make it easier for her students to view each other’s work by creating a collection. Rather than just adding hyperlinks to students’ projects, I created a visually interesting gallery of projects. Students are not required to comment on each other’s work in this case, but they may be more motivated to take a look since they get a preview of the project.

Collection of pamphlets and posters for an advanced Nursing course

Activity 1: Peer-to-Peer Feedback about ePortfolio Design I have looked for opportunities for students to better use their authentic audience and reflect in community, moving the “job” of feedback and suggestions into the realm of peer-to-peer feedback in addition to feedback offered by an expert.

In Project 1, I worked directly with students in a Accelerated Nursing course (ABSN) to have them complete a peer review activity to build their knowledge of the tools of ePortfolio customization (themes, widgets) and organization (pages, menus, categories). This short activity was done in the summer of 2020 and had the added benefit of encouraging stronger connections between peers at a time when COVID had prevented most classes from meeting in person. Since students were asked to review each other’s About page, they were able to see or read about their classmate’s goals and interests. This cohort of students had started their ePortfolios six months prior, so I had instructed them in the past. I had also worked with Professor Goran in the past, and with her help, I had planned this activity to include small peer groups. She created break out rooms ahead of time. As a courtesy, I also contacted a few students in the class a few days prior to get their permission to display and discuss their ePortfolio. Although most sites are public, I ask for permission before displaying a site.

At the beginning of the activity, I verbally provided a quick overview of key terms and gave a virtual “tour” of a few class members’ ePortfolios, pointing out theme features. Since themes are very customizable, I noted the capabilities and the terminology associated with design (headers, tag lines, backgrounds, etc.). In small peer groups, students then commented on one another’s sites via a shared Google Doc. Each Doc was shared with me, their professor, and their partner(s). Some students did not complete the activity as we had only about 20 minutes (the activity was planned for 30 minutes but the previous guest speaker ran longer than anticipated). Most were able to offer at least a little feedback to a peer.

Themes and Organization ePortfolio Peer Review Activity

Outcome: Students checked on the organization and offered feedback for improvement, many praised design choices, and some noted the multimodal writing elements, such as selection of photos to highlight text content. Several students also encouraged one another and offered feedback that was taken by their classmates. Because of the shortened time to complete the activity, I reviewed each Doc and offered feedback to students whose partners had not gotten past the first section of the review. I later went back to the Docs and added comments. For some students, I thanked and acknowledged the peer reviewer, but for others I was able to build on the reviewer’s comments by linking resources or explaining a processes for correcting some of the identified organizational problems. I sometimes agreed with suggestions or offered other ideas. Through this 20-minute Zoom-delivered activity, we strengthened the social integrative interactions not only peer-to-peer but also as part of the authentic audience outside of the class members (in this case, me).

Peer Review Feedback and Suggestions

Relating to Customization and Design Choices
- “The color scheme is appealing and the pictures match the content well. The pictures pick up on subtle themes within the writing”
- “The theme picture works well with the text and color theme of the webpage”
- “The site is wonderfully customized! I like how I can get a good sense of [her] from her photos and her about page”
Offering Encouragement & Feedback on Organization
- “Nice job with your blog!! We will make improvements on it together in future courses! I think one thing that can improve both of our blogs is to know how to put our posts under the pages we’ve made for the class.”
- “Only suggestion would be to put the pages/posts in the drop down menu on the home page for easy access.”
Revisions
- “The only suggestion I have is when you click on a post (nursing module posts) it has a blank spot where a picture is supposed to be.”
  [When I reviewed the student’s page a few days after the activity, I discovered that he had chosen a new theme and taken other suggestions from his peer for elaborating on his About page.]
- “Maybe implement widgets on the side bar for easier navigation”
  [When I reviewed the student’s page a week after the activity, the student had taken her peer’s advice. I left this comment: “T., O. took your advice and made this change if you want to take a look. I also see that O. has widgets on the bottom of the page. O, I like your choice to prioritize some widgets over others. Thanks for your feedback and participation, T.!”]

Assessment and Future Steps: I have begun working with Nursing faculty to map out the courses that will include ePortfolio content and instruction, and to continue to encourage the use of reflection in community. For this activity, I plan to propose dedicating 30 minutes to it in a 300-level course as students will have enough content to need to revisit organization and theme choices. In my mind, the activity would work best when students have used ePortfolio for three courses. This may not happen with all individuals in a cohort at once, but for traditional BSN students, this would likely include an English 110 course. At that point, students would be familiar with the software and may be more likely to see transfer of skills as I tweak the activity to include a focus on categorizing posts for skills, not just content.

Currently, ePortfolio is reintroduced in a 200-level course for students who began as first-years at UNE (as they have first-exposure in a required English Composition course) and in a 300-level course for Accelerated BSN students. My goal is to build in short activities to keep guiding students as they construct their ePortfolios but also to be as unobtrusive to the curriculum as possible. Some professors are electing to heavily integrate ePortfolio use. Once they are skilled, they will not need much guidance from me for technical issues, but I will continue to offer ideas that create high-impact ePortfolio practice. In our short time working together, several nursing faculty and I are already beginning to see transfer of knowledge across courses and stronger reflective practice as faculty begin to reconstruct activities for ePortfolio use (see Deb Kramlich’s FLC project work).

Project 1: Social Integrative Practice in a Writing Community If reflection in community is built into the revision process of a project, students are able to demonstrate learning and better appreciate the purpose of peer review. Students may begin to recognize each other and themselves as fledgling experts as they apply concepts and use correct terminology to analyze one another’s content and choices. To my delight, a major project that came out of our FLC incorporated not only reflection in community but a push into two new areas for ePortfolio at UNE: the use of the platform for a web-based project and the use of peer work as paratext for analysis.

In the fall of 2020, I worked with Professor Jennifer Tuttle, another FLC member, as she had her students create a digital annotated edition in a 300-level English course. Using either their own ePortfolio site or a new WordPress site, students designed a digital space to share their annotated edition. Students selected from a variety of literary work; some selected text that was discussed in class while others selected a different text often connecting their selection to their own interests. I offered some guidance about theme choice, structures, and use of menus during a class Zoom meeting in mid-November as students moved from researching to planning their site design.

Outcome and Assessment: Jennifer designed this project for our FLC, and we have seen the effects of the authentic audience and use of multimodal composing practices in many ways that would not have happened had the project been a traditional pen and paper essay or even a poster-style project. Jennifer and Research and Teaching Librarian Sonya Durnsey‘s excellent work will serve as the foundation for future development of guides to copyright, public domain sources, author permissions by students, and fair use for images in digital projects (see our FLC Resources page for a listing).

In addition to their reflection about the content knowledge that they gained through the construction of the project, students were explicitly asked to reflect upon their use of WordPress software and the experience of designing the site.

The outcomes were all I had hoped for and more. I was invited to attend student presentations via Zoom in the final weeks of the class. Peers commented on each other’s content but also on the design of the sites, the embedded materials (images, hyperlinks, videos, header pictures, background images and videos), choices about color selections, and the use of menus to navigate the sites. Site designers discussed some of their choices as well as their struggles as they learned to use the software while creating the project. Although some students had used WordPress to build their ePortfolio, even novices using WordPress for the first time this semester were able to customize and organize their sites to create a unique annotated digital edition, including multiple pages with an organizational structure, such as menus, categories and widgets.

Selected Samples of Student Reflections Related to Authentic Audience

“I believe using ePortfolio, rather than printing and stapling word documents, really helped to elevate this project. While our classmates are presenting their sites, I feel so much more engaged as an audience because there is a great visual component to the project. I am also having more fun creating my own site – it is so much more enjoyable to put all the pieces together on ePortfolio, rather than typing up a long paper. Going through my peer group’s sites was so exciting! Clicking on all the hyperlinks to see where they went was like opening a little present and it made it very easy to be an active reader.”
“ePortfolio gave the reader a better experience of reading the primary source and having the annotations be focused for that one element of the reading. It helped me to focus the annotations and to really think about what they mean, both in context of the script and in the way they help the reader. Overall, I am glad that we used ePortfolio, it changed the edition to a more thoughtful and meaningful piece.”
“I learned about ‘image credits’ and how difficult it is to find good images available for use in the public domain! I have not been asked to credit the source of my images since English 110 when I started with ePortfolio.”
“For my project in particular I was grateful that we were using ePortfolio. Since my primary source was a spoken slam poem, it was very important for me to be able to embed the link to the poem itself, since body language and phrasing are so important. I think ePortfolio was a great method for everybody since it made it easier to direct the route the reader took through the site. It was possible to place links to where you wanted the reader to go next.”
“I think that of all of the tools that we have access to as UNE students, ePortfolio was the best option for the ADE project. If this project was done on Prezi, Powerpoint, or even Docs for example, it would have lacked professionalism and depth. The interaction that can take place between the editor and the audience is very strong in ePortfolio. Working with this site also gives students real life experience with digital editing for publication…Interacting with a text by clicking around, seeing videos, and being directed to other sites, are all strengths that a hard copy couldn’t compete with.”

Selected Samples of Student Reflections Related to Transfer of Skills and Creative License

“I consider myself an experienced user, but I was able to enhance my skills through the conversations with Professor Gennaco and other peers. I was also able to create an entirely new ePortfolio site for this project and start from scratch, which I can see myself utilizing in other classes or even in my future teaching career (possibly as a class website).”
“Initially, I was just going to make the same image in various different tones. This would have been easy, and would have taken substantially less time. However, I quickly realized that the images should mirror Esther’s journey throughout the book. This was a simple choice any English major and proclaimed poet could have come to— paralleling narratives across two different creative mediums.” [Multimodal composition choices]
“I have never been a tech person therefore creating an entire forum made me want to pass out but wow! I had no idea how easy it is to get creative and make artistic choices online! To be frank, I thought that could only really be a photoshop thing but clearly I was wrong!”
“I am much more motivated to work on this assignment as its format gets me excited to explore my creative side; a side that usually gets pushed aside in my science classes.”
“I have never taken a course that required so much interaction with media, but I enjoyed the experience and think this has better rounded out my English portfolio and added a few new soft skills.”

Future Steps: Jennifer Tuttle and I have had frequent communication about redesign as well as preservation of some sites. As we consider the project as a whole, we have prioritized some of the elements that we want to try to reproduce when she implements a project of this type again. With student permission, we are planning to create a collection of sites for use in Jennifer’s scholarship and as models. We also recognize that her course design will likely change when hybrid is no longer required, so we have begun discussing ways to incorporate the project into a more traditional class model.

In a semester that has challenged students (and faculty) to stay meaningfully invested in their course work, these students engaged and stretched out of their comfort zones. We recognize the many benefits of this project, and it has been deeply gratifying to me to hear students’ pride of the work they have produced but also their recognition of the importance of building their digital skill set. In a semester that has challenged students (and faculty) to stay meaningfully invested in their course work, these students engaged and stretched out of their comfort zones.

Integrative social pedagogy creates an authentic audience for students and a supportive community, allowing them to practice before joining a professional community. Eventually their peers will become colleagues, and students will become professionals who will be expected to offer and accept feedback, revise processes, apply their knowledge and skills, and collaborate with colleagues to improve outcomes and meet goals. The more we provide our students and faculty with the opportunity to reflect not only on their own practice but in a community of reflection, the better prepared they will be to meet the challenges of their workplaces, but more importantly, to set, revise, and meet their personal and professional goals.

Perhaps the most rewarding part of this FLC for me has been to watch Enyon and Gambino’s C2L Proposition 3 take root: “ePortfolio practice done well catalyzes learning-centered institutional change. Focusing attention on student learning and promoting connection and cooperation across departments and divisions, ePortfolio initiatives can catalyze campus culture and structural change, helping colleges and universities evolve as learning organizations” (3).
From High-Impact e-Portfolio Practice (2017)

Like our students, our faculty learning community members collaborated, offered suggestions and encouragement, and helped each other to process new ideas through discussion. Perhaps the most rewarding part of this FLC for me has been to watch Enyon and Gambino’s C2L Proposition 3 take root: “ePortfolio practice done well catalyzes learning-centered institutional change. Focusing attention on student learning and promoting connection and cooperation across departments and divisions, ePortfolio initiatives can catalyze campus culture and structural change, helping colleges and universities evolve as learning organizations” (3). In our final FLC meeting, members shared that they will continue ePortfolio work and exploration. Most FLC members will continue to work professionally with another group member, some through co-leading an additional FLC and others through research and scholarship. I expect that our group will continue to apply high-impact ePortfolio practices in their own courses and programs as well as teaching colleagues. Most importantly, they will empower students to create a professional digital presence that inspires them to take ownership in their learning.

You May Also Like