Category: ePortfolio

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ePortfolio System Consulting

During the spring and summer of 2009, I served as a consultant to the LaGuardia Community College Center for Teaching and Learning in the area of ePortfolio Systems selection. I assisted the members of  LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning and IT department in choosing the new ePortfolio platform to accommodate growth and to replace the aging Concord system that I helped to select years ago when I served as LaGuardia’s first Director of ePortfolio. I was asked by Dean Bret Eynon to review the leading commercial and open source systems and help select three platforms to evaluate for final consideration. Because ePortfolio is a critical component in many of LaGuardia’s strategic goals, not the least of which is Institutional Assessment, helping to choose the correct platform was of vital importance to the college. Due to my extensive knowledge of technology, and my experience in selecting and negotiating the contract for the first system nearly seven years ago, I was asked to work with the current Director, Mercedes Del Rosario, and her staff to assist where needed. I provided the following assistance during this project:

  • Helped to select which systems we should investigate
  • Selected the hosting company to host the open source solutions
  • Evaluated all of the proprietary and open source solutions
  • Provided recommendations on software and hardware for the project
  • Served as a technical resource on all issues related to hosting, networking, programming, and coordinating a project of this magnitude

In the final analysis, LaGuardia decided upon the system from Digication as a the new platform to support the ongoing eportfolio objectives of the college.

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Publication Seminar

Path Seminar

Today I attended a workshop at LaGuardia designed to help junior faculty, like myself, identify greater opportunities to publish. The workshop was led by Dr. Jane Johansen of the University of Southern Indiana. Dr. Johansen is a very dynamic speaker and covered a impressive amount of material during the day long session.

The seminar today was the first of a series of workshops  being held over the course of the semester. This first workshop was extremely helpful because I was made aware of a few new journals that apply to my field. The other benefit was that I came away with some great concepts for the new articles that I am planning to write.

 

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Old memories

In searching through some old disks I came across this old Quicktime multimedia project that I did when I was back in graduate school. The piece was designed as a letter to my daughter. The purpose of the project was to document all of the feelings resulting from the event of her birth. I thought that it might be cool to record some of my emotions in order to give her some insight on her family history for when she was older. It was on of the first digital stories that I had created and, in many ways, was a precursor to my interest in ePortfolios.

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Presentation: The 4th Annual CUNY Gen-Ed Conference

Yesterday I presented at the 4th Annual CUNY Gen-Ed Conference as part of a group of faculty focusing on ways in which cross campus communication can be improved between community colleges and senior institutions. As part of the year long seminar with colleagues from LaGuardia and Baruch, we decided to share our research and discussions by presenting at the Gen-Ed Conference. I have previous discussed this faculty seminar in one of my earlier posts. The conference presentation was memorable for me in that it was the first time in which my wife and I were able to present together.

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ePortfolio Conference: Day Two

The second day of the ePortfolio conference was pretty much the same, just shorter. I had only one breakout session to cover, and it was a repeat of one of the sessions that I gave yesterday on the topic of ePortfolio system selection. This was a good thing because presentation partner, Susan Lambert, and I had a chance to work out the timing and presentation flow during our first run. As a result the second time through was a little easier. I was pleased that the turnout for the session, an early Saturday morning session, was so strong. We had a full room and the participants were very interactive. This is always a good sign because it means that they are at least interested in what you have to say. Nothing is worse than a quiet and unresponsive room. Luckily this wasn’t the case. The only negative was that I couldn’t stop thinking about my 25th high school reunion that was scheduled to take place later in the day.

The  presentations slides from my breakout sessions at the Making Connections Conference on ePortfolios (4/10/2008) can be found below:

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ePortfolio Conference: Day One

ePortfolio Systems Presentation

The first day of the LaGuardia ePortfolio conference went off without a hitch. I was amazed at the turnout and how smoothly things progressed. I have been to many conferences but I’d have to say that this was one of the best organized events I have seen. Bret Eynon and his team from the Center for Teaching and Learning put together an impressive lineup of sessions throughout the day. We had conference speakers and attendees from as far away as England and Nova Scotia. The breakout sessions covered a wide range of topics central to the subject of electronic portfolios.
Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference: Day One”

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ePortfolio Conference Planning

ePortfolio Conference Planning

I am starting to stress out just a little bit. You see over the next couple of days I have a series of presentations that I am giving at a major national conference LaGuardia is hosting. The conference, “Making Connections: ePortfolios, Integrative Learning and Assessment“, is on the topic of ePortfolios and how they can be utilized to assess student and institutional growth. Continue reading “ePortfolio Conference Planning”

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LaGuardia & Bard Writing Workshop

Bard Writing Workshop

As a benefit of my participation in the LaGuardia and Baruch WID faculty colloquium I was able to attend an all day workshop on the process of defining “Academic writing”. The workshop was developed by English professors from Yale and Bard. A number of my colleagues in the WID workshop had attended a similar workshop last year and raved about it. LaGuardia was hosting a version of the same workshop for members of the English department. The leaders of the WID colloquium thought it would benefit the rest of us to have the same experience, so they acquired the funds to enable us to attend.

The workshop was both enlightening and a bit intimidating for me because I was out my academic discipline and the sole professor from outside of the English department. Now while I was an undergraduate Continue reading “LaGuardia & Bard Writing Workshop”

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CIS and ePortfolio

CIS ePortfolio Cohort

Today was the first meeting of the CIS ePortfolio cohort that is being sponsored by LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning. The main purpose of the faculty group is to research the best ways in which the CIS department can integrate ePortfolio into the Introduction to Computers course (CIS 100). The CIS 100 course is a required course for many of the academic programs at LaGuardia, and as a result, is a perfect class in which to reinforce the technical principles of ePortfolio.

I was asked to participate in this ongoing seminar because, I had taken a lead in researching ways in which digital portfolios can be used to enhance the performance of students in technical disciplines. Continue reading “CIS and ePortfolio”