History of ePortfolio @ LaGuardia: The History of a Learning Project

Over the past three years, LaGuardia Community College has emerged as a national leader in the fast-growing field of electronic student portfolios, or “ePortfolios.”  Linking innovative pedagogy with digital technology and new thinking about assessment, LaGuardia’s ePortfolio initiative is led by academic faculty, working in collaboration with staff from Academic Affairs, Information Technology, and Enrollment Management and Student Development.  Coordinated by the Center for Teaching and Learning and identified as a key priority in the Collegewide Strategic Plan, LaGuardia’s work with ePortfolio has drawn acclaim across CUNY and from such groups as the Association of American Colleges & Universities and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The ePortfolio provides LaGuardia students with a tool for collecting their academic work and their reflections on their learning, and for sharing their portfolios on the World Wide Web.  In 2005-6, more than 4,000 LaGuardia students advanced their ePortfolios, making LaGuardia’s ePortfolio project one of the largest of any college in the country. 

Many LaGuardia students begin depositing work in the ePortfolio in their first semesters at the college and continually refine their presentations as they move forward, each time looking to reflect on and understand the process of growth and improvement. Personal essays encourage students to explore their changing sense of themselves. Designed to help students connect classroom, career, and personal goals and experiences, the ePortfolio moves students toward not only integrated learning, but also more integrated lives.

Initially funded by the Title V program of the US Department of Education, the LaGuardia ePortfolio is a multifaceted project. It prompts students to take more responsibility for their learning while also providing faculty with snapshots of student growth that can help them better understand individual students and the broader process of learning and teaching. Meanwhile, at the institutional level, the ePortfolio will also support a more holistic program assessment process where faculty examine student work as a way of identifying ways to improve our classes and majors.

As chronicled in the timeline (below), the LaGuardia ePortfolio effort has grown steadily over three years, and is engaging almost half of LaGuardia’s academic students in 2005-6.  Students have integrated essays, poetry, original paintings, drawings, oral interviews, family photographs, annotated resumes, and a range of projects that represent who they are as students and emerging scholars.  The international diversity of LaGuardia students makes their ePortfolios particularly meaningful, providing students with tools to tell important stories about their experiences in the complex global society of the 21st century.

Feedback shows that students are enthusiastic about this opportunity to learn new technology skills, and are particularly interested in using it to connect classroom and lived experience.  “My ePortfolio helped me realize important things about who I want to be and how I can accomplish my goals,” explains Sandra Rios a student born in Colombia who used her ePortfolio in crafting her successful application to City College of NY.  Moreover, preliminary data gathered using the nationally-acclaimed Community College Survey of Student Engagement shows that ePortfolio helps build student engagement in key areas of academic achievement, including writing, collaboration, and critical thinking.

LaGuardia’s faculty ePortfolio leaders, including Profs. Max Rodriguez, Maureen Doyle, Nancy Gross and J. Elizabeth Clark, are collaborating with educators around the country on ePortfolio research projects.  LaGuardia is a founding member of the national ePortfolio Research Coalition, together with institutions such as Stanford, Portland State, and Clemson Universities.  “ePortfolio is a learning project,” explains Rodriguez.  “We’ve already learned a lot, but we’ll learn even more in the years to come.”

2001-2002:
The college began its ePortfolio initiative with rigorous research and planning. In December 2001, Dean Paul Arcario convened a college-wide ePortfolio Planning Committee to study the issues related to the ePortfolio and plan the pilot program for Fall 2002.  A Faculty Research Team chaired by Prof. Maureen Doyle and Dr. Bret Eynon, Director of the LaGuardia Center for Teaching & Learning, did extensive study of best practices around the country.   Visiting campuses, attending conferences, and bringing speakers to LaGuardia helped build a foundation for planning.  Meanwhile, the Senate Sub-Committee on Assessment held meetings with every department to discuss ways that student work collected through the ePortfolio system could be used for faculty-led program assessment.  By the end of the year the Faculty Research Team had issued a working paper, with recommendations for implementing ePortfolio, and the Senate had unanimously approved an Assessment Plan that incorporated the use of student work gathered through ePortfolio.

2002-2003: Piloting ePortfolio
Based on this planning process, in 2002 the ePortfolio initiative moved to its pilot phase. Twenty-two faculty members from across the college took part a year-long process of development and classroom testing of ePortfolio processes that provided significant information and insight for the College as a whole.  Using a provisional ePortfolio system created by Prof. James Richardson of the Computer and Information Systems Department, faculty tested the use of ePortfolios in key areas identified by the college's assessment plan, with a particular emphasis on possibilities in the Freshman Year courses.  Members of the pilot project developed curriculum tools, reported on their experiences, and helped the project staff revise and adapt the ePortfolio process, in preparation for the expansion of the process in the 2003-2004 academic year.  Just over 800 students created ePortfolios in this year.

While faculty moved ahead with the pilot, using the provisional system, Richardson reviewed commercial ePortfolio packages and helped the College select a system designed by a Blackboard partner, Concord Masterfile.  Concord began work on customizing their system to meet LaGuardia needs, with installation and launch planned for August 2003.

2003-2004:  ePortfolio in the First Year Academy
In the 2003-4 school year, the ePortfolio project focused on supporting LaGuardia’s effort to launch its First Year Academy program, designed to create learning communities that connect basic skills courses with the New Student Seminar and introductory courses in the major.  These courses, to be followed up in the second semester by a new pre-internship course in the Cooperative Education Department, Fundamentals of Professional Development, were designed to help students who need basic skills courses to move ahead to required courses in their majors, and to connect with a range of co-curricular events and services. ePortfolio would be an integral element in the Academies.  Twenty faculty designed learning community courses for students in the Business and Technology Academy.  A Studio Hour was added to provide tutorial support for students as they learned how to build their ePortfolios. 

Delays in the design and installation of the Concord system slowed the implementation of the ePortfolio in this year.   With Concord operative by March, the Academy seminar moved to implementation in Spring.  A total of 360 LaGuardia students built ePortfolios in this year.  Meanwhile, the Assessment Sub-Committee began to design the rubrics for the college’s core competencies.

2004-2005:  The ePortfolio Takes Root
The ePortfolio project gathered momentum as it moved into its third year of implementation.  The Business/ Technology Academy moved to its second year of implementation.  And the College launched the Liberal Arts Academy and the Allied Health and Science Academy, engaging faculty in planning and developing the courses in the Fall semester and piloting them in the Spring.  More than 40 took part in this effort.  Meanwhile, an additional 30 faculty took part in the ePortfolio Explorer seminar.  With the help of faculty and the ePortfolio Consultants, who staffed the ePortfolio Studio, more than 2,000 LaGuardia students built ePortfolios in 2004-5. Our first set of ePortfolio Scholars, students who have chosen to put extra work into their ePortfolios, began creating showcase ePortfolios in a range of disciplines and majors.  The Senate Assessment SubCommittee completed the rubric for Critical Literacy (Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking) and held workshops exploring the use of student work for program assessment. Data analysis showed the ePortfolio helped students deepen their engagement with key learning goals, such as critical thinking, writing, and synthesis of new knowledge.

2005-2006: Expanding the ePortfolio
Now in its fourth implementation year, the ePortfolio project has more than doubled in size, with more than 5,000 students building ePortfolios in the 2005-6 school year.  The Academy program continues to introduce students to ePortfolio in their first semester at LaGuardia.  And the Fundamentals of Professional Advancement course grew dramatically in Spring 2006, adding both depth and scope to students’ ePortfolio work.  A range of other ePortfolio-related efforts moved forward: an ePortfolio Leadership Colloquium provided opportunities for faculty to deepen their own work and engage in advanced discussion around ePortfolio;  rubrics were completed for Oral Communication and Information Literacy;  the Human Services Program and the Fine Arts Program decided to build ePortfolio into their requirements;  and the Accounting and Managerial Studies Department worked with the Assessment Sub-Committee to pilot-test the assessment of longitudinal bodies of student work collected through ePortfolio system.