Founded as an outreach arm of the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Making Connections National Resource Center's mission is to strengthen our work around reflective learning and to develop mechanisms for more systematic exchanges within higher education by working with LaGuardia faculty and students in advancing our own practice, and, by broadening engagement with educators from colleges and universities from around the world.
The
Making Connections National Resource Center has emerged as a leader in the
field, due in part to LaGuardia’s sustained achievement in improving student
learning with ePortfolio. From
2007-2010, with FIPSE support, LaGuardia ran the Making Connections Seminar,
working with 30 NYC-area colleges and helping them pilot ePortfolio on their
campuses. Now LaGuardia and Making
Connections will join forces with AAEEBL, a global ePortfolio network of more
than 100 member campuses active with ePortfolio. Selected AAEEBL and Making Connections
campuses are joining together in a sustained collaboration that will improve
campus practice and generate resources for the field.
In 2010-11, grants from FIPSE and Title V will enable us to launch two new programs: Connect to Learning and Making Transfer Connections.
Connect
to Learning
Connect to Learning is a three-year, FIPSE-funded
collaboration designed to strengthen reflective ePortfolio practice on multiple
campuses and generate a national developmental model of best practice in the
field. Hosted at LaGuardia Community
College (CUNY), the project links campuses active in two networks: member campuses of the Association for
Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL); and campuses
active with LaGuardia’s Making Connections National Resource Center.
Connect
to Learning takes place on two inter-connected
levels: national conversation and
campus-based implementation. The program
employs on-line seminars and face-to-face meetings to advance innovative and
effective ePortfolio practice. Campus
leadership teams are committed to a 3-year distributive learning process that
includes:
- Sharing
best practices and learning from each other;
- Designing
and implementing plans for strengthening their campus ePortfolio
initiatives; and
- Testing
out new approaches and documenting their outcomes.
Contributing
to a structured matrix model of ePortfolio development, with dimensions ranging
from learning and engagement to assessment and institutional support, campuses
develop and test the strategies needed to measurably improve student learning
outcomes.
The
kickoff seminar will take place in San Francisco, CA, in conjunction with AAC&U’s 2011 national
conference on Thursday afternoon, January 27, 2011; and all day Friday, January
28th, 2011.
Project
leadership includes: Bret Eynon and Judit Török of LaGuardia; Trent Batson of
AAEEBL; Randy Bass from Georgetown University and Helen Chen from Stanford.
For
more information about this project, please contact Judit Török at jtorok@lagcc.cuny.edu; or visit our blog at www.connections-community.org
Making
Transfer Connections
The Making
Transfer Connections is a five-year, $3.7 million program funded by Title
V. Through this project LaGuardia will strengthen transfer partnerships linking
five CUNY campuses, all of which are Hispanic-serving and have built
substantial and successful ePortfolio initiatives: two senior colleges--Queens College and
Lehman College--and three community colleges--Queensborough, Bronx and
LaGuardia Community Colleges. Integrating ePortfolio into instruction,
advisement and assessment, these partnerships aim to create a pervasive culture
of transfer that helps speed student progress towards the bachelor’s
degree.
Three
interlocking tasks take place on each campus: a) using faculty development
around ePortfolio to strengthen instruction and student success, both before
and after transfer; b) developing advisement structures and processes that
employ ePortfolio to improve transfer success; and c) using ePortfolio to
strengthen General Education assessment, opening the way for greater
cross-campus alignment, improved articulation and simplified transfer
processes.