This is part one of a two-part episode featuring Dr. Lynn Meade, teaching assistant professor in the University of Arkansas' Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. In this episode, Camie and Alex speak with Dr. Meade about the practice, implementation, benefits, and drawbacks of ePortfolios as a high-impact learning practice. Dr. Meade teaches a professional ePortfolio course at the U of A and has developed an open-education resource textbook for ePortfolios. 

UARK ePortfolio site 

UARK ePortfolio OER Textbook 

UARK OER Library site 

International Journal of ePortfolio from the Association of American Colleges and Universities 

High Impact Practices at the University of Arkansas 

As a teacher.

Grading student assignments. It occurred to me somewhere that it was a little unfair, a student wrote this. This five page paper or 10 page paper, and they put all this work into it, and I was the only recipient of their knowledge.

I used to think well, that's just seems like such a shame that we have them work so hard for projects that sometimes only we get to see or just a few other students, maybe in their small group gets to see. And so one of the things I like about portfolios is that larger audience.

Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. In this episode, which will be part one of two, we're continuing the topic of high impact practices, focusing on the concept and implementation of E portfolios. Help guide our conversation. Tammy and Alex chat with Doctor Lynn Meade, a teaching assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Here at the University of Arkansas.

Alright, Lynn, welcome. Good to have you here.

Before we get diving into the topic.

Today of E portfolios you.

Just want to take a few moments to tell us a little bit more about who you.

Are and what you do at EU of A?

Thank you. As you said, I'm a teaching assistant professor for Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and that's where I design courses to help students bridge the gap between their academic selves and their professional selves. I teach professionally portfolio, professional storytelling and a wayfinding course for sophomores.

I've been on campus for over 20 years now, teaching communication courses and doing faculty develop.

Everything I do, I seek real world applications. I always try to find ways to help students integrate with their learning in the classroom.

To something that.

Will help them thrive outside of the university and that's why I think E portfolios are so important, woman says. You love that.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. It's so cool the amount of.

Like story and self discovery that the classes you you seen just by the names of them alone. Like I'm curious what can you speak a little more on the wayfinding course? That's that sounds just by the name alone. I'm like, I want to hear more about that. What is what is that about?

So excited when I.

Heard that too.

It's a. It's a wayfinding class because we realized that the sophomore slump is real and that students are often struggling with who.

Am I? Do I really fit into the university? What am I supposed to do? My parents tell?

Me to do.

This, my friends, are doing this. I thought I wanted to major in this, but there's a class that's in my way, or I'm finding out I don't like it as much or I like this much more and so that class is really about developing their interpersonal skills.

How can I communicate better there intrapersonal skills? Who am I and what are my strengths and how can I leverage them regardless of my major? And then it's also about connecting with the university and the community so they learn about leadership. They.

About things on campus in that particular class, they also do a scavenger hunt where they have to go to several places in the community because we know that students who are integrated into the Community are more likely to be happy with college and successful in college that way. And.

Then our final exam exam is a networking event and then we have different student success individuals. They come in into a room and we cater it and their goal is to spend 45 minutes in long term conversation with professionals so it's not the elevator pitch.

It's just. Can I have a conversation with others? Can I sustain conversation and the act of doing that helps them in their other classes?

To make friends.

To talk to teachers, and to then eventually talk to.

Players but the E portfolio class does versions.

Of that as well, yeah.

Absolutely. I I can see similarities and patterns in that, but I I love just hearing about that more so bonus on top of documenting portfolios, getting to hear about other awesome student success outcomes that are happening on campus is I think it was, it was cool I think at first maybe it was just the goal of the course to potentially just figure out what track are you going to go down major.

Wise and career wise, but it's that's probably part of it, but it just sounds like your your ultimate goal and that type of course is setting students up for future success regardless of the ultimate track. They run down understanding their their skills that are in a regardless.

Of what?

Degree or path, they're they're working in and that's again E portfolios are going to help touch on exposing that and showing that to everyone when students have that tool in their.

I mean.

Tool belt. I totally would have loved the way Finder class because I was the student who after two years still had no idea what I was going to major in.

And then I chose.

Early childhood and special education, because they were together back then in 1° and.

Then I got to my first education class and.

Thought Oh no, I've made a terrible mistake. And now, of course I did end up going into education, but I majored in political science because I went right back to my first advisor, who happened to be the chair of the Political science department and did that. But I majored in that cause. I like the classes.

Career goals in mind, not just this major.

And that's not uncommon, and in fact a lot of the curriculum that we use is developed on Stanford Design Your Life program, which the big goal is not to say, what do I want to do with my life, but what kind of person do I want to be?

Because if I decide that I want to be a leader or someone who helps others, then that very much fits into any career and pathway. And I think that you see that transitioning into the portfolio course.

That I teach because we spend a whole section of like, what are some strengths that I have that would apply to any sort of major if I'm if I'm, if I have good communication skills. If I have good leadership skills that doesn't designate me for a particular.

Career field or job?

Right, right. So seguing with that then?

How would you explain to somebody who hasn't heard of the concept before or?

The the practice.

The idea of a portfolio, what's your kind of elevator pitch to to someone about that and.

What it is?

Absolutely insured and E portfolio is a personal website.

Right and it.

Includes the things that you've learned.

And it includes what we call artifacts and artifact is proof of something.

That shows that.

You have learned and that could be.

A project it.

Could be proof.

Of volunteer experiences, it could be photos from your internship, with reflections about the things that you did in your internship or your study abroad or personal assessment.

And we're we're teaching students to do things like collect, collect things from their college experience that is meaningful. And oftentimes they don't realize what's meaningful and and even when I work with my students, a lot of them are like, oh, I never really thought about how writing and rewriting and rewriting an English paper.

Would be helpful in something that I could pitch as a career related skills, so it's actually helping them to do those reflections on why these things are meaningful so they collect them.

They select what's important to tell a story. So I think all.

All the assignments, at least we hope, are important. But if you're going to tell your particular story about somebody who's detail oriented.

Or who can persevere? Or?

Whatever it happens to be picking the right artifacts for the right thing is going to be important, and then the most important thing of portfolios is to reflect. It's really about reflecting on what you've learned, what it means and.

How you can apply?

It to your life and my slogan, I use.

Is it's a place for students.

To show what they know.

They need to show the things that they know and they need to reflect on what they've learned and what meaning it has for them and even for their potential futures. And there's three different types of portfolios and I think it's it's tricky sometimes when we have these conversations because because they're so different. But there are learning portfolios and so.

That would be used as a.

So in other.

Words in this class. Maybe a teacher has an assignment where at the end of the semester they're putting the things that they've learned and what they mean and how they tie together as an assessment for that particular course. Another type of E portfolio is a program assessment. You see these in like, educational tech programs. You see them in.

Nursing sometimes and engineering sort of programs.

In other words, this.

Is everything I've learned in this program that relates to the learning outcomes of that program and then you're proving that you have that particular skill by showing that.

Things. And then what I do is professional portfolios where they're putting things that they have experienced in college and artifacts from their college experience that could be related in some way to.

The career field.

So it's all about the focus of what the goal of the portfolio is in the audience.

Is exposition.

To to welcome people into it and I.

Resonate so much with the definitions, because I all I came through the educational technology masters here at EU of A and part of the culmination of that degree program is a program assessment E portfolio. Now what I think is cool about the use of E portfolios is they they have some malleability to them, maybe not.

So much the the learning portfolios alone, since those can tend to sometimes being capsulated in a single course. But the program assessment one that I completed for my.

Degree very easily segued into a professional portfolio. When I started enter into the job market, they work so well across several modalities where you better say something.

Yeah, I think that's right.

In fact, as soon as you said that, then I looked at Alex because.

That's I was thinking about him because I knew he had come.

To that master's.

Program. I'm kind of wondering though, so these sound really great for students.

But what should instructors know about E portfolios and how is it beneficial, maybe even to an instructor?

First I want to mention that at the University of Arkansas, we have general education learning outcomes. In other words, we have things that we want all students who graduate from the University of Arkansas to know to learn and so on.

Goal number six is to gain the ability to synthesize.

Integrate and apply knowledge developed throughout the undergraduate years.

And so one of the goals of the university is for us to find ways for the students to do that. And E portfolio is one really clear way to achieve that particular goal.

I feel like the E portfolio actually needs several jellos, which is what we call the general education learning outcomes GE LOL for the record.

My first encounter with E portfolios actually came when I went to a Lily Conference on education, so it's a conference for teachers to learn more about teaching. And so with that conference, there was a presentation on E portfolios and I went.

And they were showing teachers how to create portfolios to show the things that they were teaching and for their own personal assessment.

Motion and how to create them in different ways to do that, and I was fascinated enough with what I learned there that I went back home and I built one.

Mostly to see how it.

Worked. I had to figure.

It out and see what it would.

Do and. I was so impressed.

With the sorts of things that were happening with it.

And I think.

It's exciting, at least here at the University of Arkansas for faculty who are going up for promotion, we have to show several evidences of teaching effectiveness.

And that can be from.

Student reviews. It can be from peer observations.

But one of the things is.

Teaching portfolios and so I think it's beneficial for instructors for their own purposes to create one and the process was really profound in in thinking about like, why do I teach what I do, what are the outcomes and how have I grown as a teacher. So first I think instructors.

To know how.

To do it for themselves.

I I do want to break down the E portfolio into two parts, the E and the portfolio, but I want to start with the portfolio because it really is about the portfolio, not about the electronics and with the portfolio you think about creating a a curation, if you will. You are a museum curator and you are not.

Uh, right?

Taking everything that you know.

You're picking pieces of what you know back to that collect, select, reflect. You're taking pieces of what you.

Know to tell a story about you.

And I think one of the most important parts of that story is not that you have done an English paper, done a statistical report, given a speech, it's what have you learned the process and how have you grown as a person and how is that part of your larger story of the education means something?

And I think whether you're writing about the process you learned to do your research project or the meaning behind a service learning experience, or I've taken students abroad. It's not just about being in the culture, it's about what did I learn about myself and society and cultural norms.

Reflection always, always should be at the center.

Of a portfolio.

And I think for instructors who are thinking about making them as assignments or programs looking at doing those larger pieces that it's always about what is important that we have students think about and reflect on.

To allow that deep learning to happen, one of the ways that we do this is to tell students.

To ask what, So what? Now what?

What? What? What was the assignment that I did? What was the project that I did? What was the volunteer experience I had? So what? What did it mean? Why did it matter? What did I learn? What skills did I develop?

Now what? Now that I have this skill now that I have this experience, what can I do moving forward? And I think again reflection is a key.

In the portfolio process, so portfolios first, the second part is E electronic, it's taking the work that you have and putting it in an electronic format. So in the old days, you think of architects and artists having a bag or notebook that contained.

The work now we're just putting them out on the the worldwide web. We're putting them electronically and I think for instructors that can be one of the fears that they have as I.

Know how to do the.

Technology and for the most part, it's not ever about the technology.

It's about the work, and if both the instructors and the students can keep that in mind I.

Think we go a lot further.

We do have to help them navigate a little bit and I think if anything, just demystify some of the electronics, but again, it's about letting them show what they know. But the other thing, and I think it's important for instructors.

To think it's not just that.

Students can show what?

They know it feels really, really good.

That we get to show them.

That we've taught them something and they get it.

Right. And we get to see that?

They get it.

That is the greatest feeling ever.

Yeah, it can be a real tool too for that evaluation and assessment of the learning that's happened in your class.

It just also emphasizes things that we talked about here a lot. The the need for intentionality from the instructor standpoint of backward design and being outcome and objective focus.

You have to start at the end and if that portfolio is accumulation of these objectives that you want students to reflect on and know you're going to have to have that clear from the start. If you're gonna implement this from the beginning, you don't want to start. Just say I'm going to use the portfolio at beginning of class and at the end figure out how does the pieces all fall together? That's you're going to miss probably a lot of the.

The key components of reflection of development of the the So what throughout it all, so emphasizing backward design and emphasize.

Being clear objectives and outcomes are going to be.

Vital in that.

And I know that we've talked about what's good for students and instructors here, but I do want to mention this seems to be a really great.

Evidence piece for programs who are going through those program reviews for accreditation.

Because if it's, especially if it's tied to our program goals and outcomes, then they've got ready pieces of evidence.

For those reviewers.

Absolutely. Absolutely, and I think.

Back to the fact of having the objective whether the objective is a course objective, whether it is the program objective.

Helping us have a visual way to solidify that objective, both in our minds, I think, helps us to drive towards that objective in a tighter and more intentional way, but it also gives outsiders an opportunity to look to see what we've done.

And I think the outsiders, I think we talked about teachers as outsiders of the learning, if you will, are looking in at the assessment we think about program review or department heads. But I think there's another component that we often don't talk about.

Mamas and daddies and uncles and grandmas, and I think.

We we laugh a little bit, but who's supporting our students through their college experience and who are they often?

Yeah, right. Right.

Wanting to.

To show off to.

Right.

And get validation from and and you would be amazed at how many times my students will put part of their portfolio together and then.

They send it.

To their mom. And they're like my mom loved.

What she was doing? She.

Sent it to all her friends and.

Then the parents feel good about what their their kids are learning at school.

And I just think it really helps the entire system and I think that's a larger part of the system.

And then oftentimes what we find is this family Members will forward that portfolio.

No to their boss or to other professionals, because now I think it also helps the parents see their child as professional, sometimes for the first.

Time it's A and it's a clearer indication of accomplishing the goals that they set out for.

In their collegiate experience and their families.

To that versus just a GPA or a letter grade, it's that tangible focus on it. And I I did want to ask again the, the, the MOMMAS and the dad is in the the aunts and uncles.

The other kind of extension of that is how for from the professional portfolio standpoint, what is the reception and the perception of those that you've understood from the the professional world for all these different disciplines that these students are going into like is there a demand for, hey, we need your E portfolio send me your E portfolio whenever your.

Applying, you know, versus the traditional resume where I'm sure it varies a lot.

But what's? What's that been like in your experience?

Like you said, it absolutely varies right and and there's some advantages and disadvantages. So some companies will not allow you to submit anything that has a picture because of the potential bias.

OK.

And so a portfolio by its very nature has pictures of you or pictures of you at work. And so we talk about at least in my class we talk about when it's appropriate to send it and when it's not and how you have to understand the employers that you're sending it to to decide whether it's going to be an advantage or disadvantage.

When I was doing some of the research, I thought it was interesting that.

That there was like the secondary thing that happened, so maybe a student would apply to a job, they would send their portfolio, the person wouldn't hire that student. Maybe there was somebody else, but they really liked the student and they liked their work and the ability to take that link and send it on to other companies that they knew to say, hey.

I I had this person, they applied that you should take a look at them. And so oftentimes it would lead to that secondary employment or the secondary interview. And that was a little different than in the tradition.

Additional interview and and application setting. I also thought it was interesting in one of the studies I looked at, they were asking.

Employers, did you?

Look at the portfolio. What did you look at and how did you look at it and how much influence to you and several of the the employer said things like, I really liked the fact that they were well indexed.

I could look down and see what I needed to know that mattered most to me and what technical skills they were in when they were well indexed and they were able to go and say, OK, look at this part, I may not.

Look at it all.

But I will look at this part and it.

Allowed them to pick and choose what they learned.

About the candidate, which was fascinating to me.

Yeah, yeah.

And I want to go back a little and touch base on something that you mentioned earlier about how students were sending these to their communities of support. That's something that we actually talked about.

You know, somewhat consistently on the podcast, just that those communities of support are so important for engagement on the students part with their academic and for their academic success.

Yes, that anything that we can do that they can use to, you know kind of excite their communities of support is also ultimately supporting their success because those communities of support are where students succeed. And it's not just our course communities.

Your classmates and instructors, you do need your personal communities of support, either because they tap into the different level.

Rules of engagement that we need with effective and behavioral and cognitive engagement on all those pieces. And so I love that students are able to send these to their families, to their community leaders back home and and not just network from them. They are which build an even larger community of support.

That they're able to engage that way because when you can tie those things together, it just builds more support for their success. And that is really the goal of all of these things.

In the course that I teach, because it's a professional portfolio, I have them build it and then they have to meet with me and we go over it with a fine tooth comb and then they have to send it out to two professionals.

That they don't know really well and they have to get feedback and then that feedback comes both to me and to the student. And that was amazing.

To hear the sorts.

Of things that they.

Were saying that it was really good interpersonally for.

My students, because they would.

Say look, this is so professional.

You love the leadership skills that you have.

And they.

Build them up, which I think was really good for my students to be built up and they were asked to give them really good feedback. And so there would be times they would say you need more of or you need less of or if you want to go into this field, that would be helpful if you developed this.

Part. And so some students would say, oh, I already have this skill. And so they.

Would add to their.

Portfolio and then in other cases I'd say.

Oh, that's a good point. I need to take a class in this where if their advisor tells them it may not have that impact. But when the employer told them that they needed that, it had a lot more impact.

So they had that employer feedback, but then they also would say well, is it OK if I send it to my uncle? Like when I say can I send it to my?

Uncle, I really want him to see what I'm doing.

And so they really wanted to send it to those family members who again were invested in their education.

And I liked the fact that they had such a strong sense of pride.

In their work.

And they wanted others to be proud of them.

And I think that motivated them to.

Do some of their best work.

Because they weren't doing it for.

Me and I wasn't doing it for the grade.

They were doing it.

Because they felt like it mattered. And I think that's one of the advantages of portfolios.

Yeah, they see the.

The greater benefit that it plays not just in their initial immediate learning outcome of.

Taking this class completing this grade but.

They see the benefit of, I think it's.

It's hitting both the.

The long term professional opportunities that it could open up doors, but.

It also just satisfies that that urine, I think we all have of of the validation of look, I'm I'm learning this and.

It's cool and.

I want to share that we we share best what we're most excited about. And so it just taps into that human experience really well and it makes it more real for the student.

Which is fantastic when they can link the subject matter expertise, they're gaining whatever discipline, whether it's.

With the Fulbright College, you're working mostly with those two are in the Arts and Sciences, so you're going to work in a variety of courses and and majors, but they can link that subject matter expertise to all those interpersonal skills in that interpersonal reflection, which is really fantastic, and that's an important skill to have. That soft skill development, so.

Yeah, I advocate for them. You're done because.

They they hit so many.

Yeah, I mean, that's something we kind of talk about too of what the podcast is that you aren't just teaching students your subject matter expertise. You're also teaching them the skills they need to present those. The subject matter expertise that you're teaching them so.

This is a great.

Tool again to do that with.

So I do want to to maybe stir the pot a little bit there. We've talked about a lot of the benefits, a lot of the exciting components. You did mention the E obviously. And so I could see that being one of the things that maybe holds some instructors back from wanting to implement them into their courses or into.

Their programs at that higher.

Level, so maybe address that part first. What levels of?

Digital literacy or expertise with a student or an instructor need to begin implementing or being working with any portfolio, and maybe what are any other obstacles that could potentially hold instructors back from implementing them or students back from from really getting the most out of them.

We participated in an E.

Leo institute. It was a one year institute where a team bus from the University of Arkansas worked to pick the best platform and some of the best ways to administer E portfolios on our campus. They picked WordPress because it was one of the leaders in web building.

And they wanted students to not only be.

Able to do.

A portfolio, but if they wanted some of those skills would transfer to other areas. This is an area where in business, oftentimes you build a website.

So they chose it and they decided to support it. And what I mean by that is on our campus.

The the technicians are trained for when you call in to say I have an E portfolio question and I'm using this platform. They specifically are trained for that. The other thing that we did was we wanted it to be plug and play and this is coming from video game language. I bought my kids a little video game system. You plug the cord in and it works instantly. One of those those.

Cheap little systems and so we want.

There to be an option for that for portfolio. So what we did was we took WordPress and we built templates. So basically you know you've got 5 pages and so any instructor can say open up this pre built web page and it has an about me section and so students can fill that in, talk about your assignment.

Section and they can fill that.

In so if you.

Want the really basic thing it exists.

And the WordPress folks on campus are willing to work with an instructor to build their own template, and then that way a student, all they do is they log onto the site they build, they add this template, there's boxes, they fill them in. There's a box that says, put your picture here and you fill.

It in.

And so for my students, I have the.

Plug and play version the templates if you.

Will and then.

I every class we show how to use the templates and then I'm like. But if you want to be creative.

Here's how you do more, and so we have the combination of both. And so over the summer, the the tech folks here on campus made videos individual.

Wheels on here's how to change colors. Here's how to do this. Here's how to do different aspects so that you've got the video support already available. You've got the platform already available and on campus there's some units that already have, like the engineer.

Bring team. They already have a platform that they use so it can be done on any platform and then if you don't want to use WordPress and you don't want to use your departments platform, there's a lot of free ones out there. Wix and Weebly and Google. That way you just if you pick one of those platforms, you have to be careful for who has ads and is there support. If I get stuck.

But yeah, it should never really be.

About the technology.

Yeah, Dr. main.

I think you're leaving out a resource that we have here on campus.

And that is your.

Ohh, your book that you wrote about.

E portfolios, right?

Absolutely. So when we started researching the project, we realized that there was not a student facing portfolio book. And so we decided to.

Write one and when.

We did so.

We got with the University of Arkansas.

Libraries and we created what is known as an OCR textbook open education resource, which basically means it is a free online textbook for any student at the University of Arkansas.

Or any student in the world for that matter. They can access it, and we built individual chapters that could be used by students in my class, but also students in any class. So for example, if an instructor wants to create a portfolio and they want to have students write about themselves, they can only pull that.

Chapter and put it into their blackboard course. Or if they want to have them reflect on an assignment using the what? So what now? What model? And they want to look at examples. Then they can pull in just that chapter. So the whole book was.

Designed to support any teacher in any format that they want to use the.

Portfolios. And so it's again.

It's student facing and the other thing that we did is because I also do faculty development and one of my other hats at the end of every chapter is is a small teachers manual, if you will, like. Oh hey, think about this assignment.

Or look at here this link to another university and how they're assigning this sort of thing. And instead of making it instead of making it a dedicated.

Teaching manual that only the teachers have.

Students can look at it too, so for that matter, if you are a student and you are not taking a class that has a portfolio and you are not in a program that has a portfolio and you want to build one, you can log on to the WordPress site.

And build your portfolio. You can have access to the book and you can build your portfolio. We want this to be accessible because we think it's that important.

Yes. And if you have trouble finding, you know your book, you can always reach out to our OCR librarian Christine Michabou at O ER at uark.edu.

It's a great, great plug on top of. Yeah, so many great resources. I'm I'm being. I'm being very, very serious with that. And I think it's just amazing that we, yeah, we don't want technology to be a limiting factor. If you can navigate a rich text editor, a text box online.

And upload an image you can work with the portfolios at that most basic level, but again like you said, if you want to get creative, if you want to, if you love that design space, pick the platform that works best for you and run with it. And if you are going to work.

With what we have here at the university.

There's a bevy of resources at your disposal, and we want both students to be encouraged by that and instructors to know if they are at all curious about how to begin implementing this at a course level and then maybe when they, if their program allows or is open to it at that program level.

Those those resources are already in place because this is something that has been in the works for for a long time now at this point, which is fantastic.

Joining us today on the Pedagogy toolkit feed into our next episode, which will be part two of our conversation with Doctor Meade. Be sure to check out our show notes for links we referenced throughout this episode, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get notifications for all future episodes.