Alma Blount, Director, Hart Leadership Program, Sanford Institute of Public Policy

Project Description

The Hart Leadership Program, directed by Alma Blount, is exploring different methods of assessment for their program.  The goals of this exploration include the following:

•    overall student work (yielded by improved and standardized assessment methods using rubrics and assessment technologies)
•    student engagement (measured by assessment technologies and past student ratings)
•    student and program exposure via eportfolio publishing and public press

Currently, program faculty and staff have chosen to use eportfolios as a means towards creating a standardized programmatic assessment by generating standard rubrics to assess writing samples (reflective pieces and full papers), along with a completed eportfolio presentation (public webpages generated by the students’ work).  The program has decided to use Chalk&Wire’s ePortfolio2 product to meet the aforementioned goals.

Project Started: Dec 2007
Funding: $4300

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Susan Thorne, Associate Professor, History, Arts & Sciences

Students in the new course “Preparing the Portfolio for Preliminary Certification” author and publish web based electronic portfolios. This course supports an innovation in the history department’s approach to preliminary certification of PhD candidates. In place of the conventional written or oral exam, students are required to submit portfolios of work that display the student’s engagement with their three or four fields of specialization as well as their teaching expertise; the portfolio is modeled on the tenure dossier. This course is optional in this, its first year, but it will be required of all graduate students in either their second or third year. The objectives for the course are for students to:

• learn how to write a dissertation prospectus and/or grant proposal
• learn how to revise papers produced in classes and independent studies for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
• learn how to display their work in a web-based portfolio format

A CIT consultant worked closely with Thorne to develop a portfolio template and to provide training for students in web authoring.

Project start date: 5/10/2006
Funding awarded: $5,000

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