Making Connections: ePortfolio Mini-Grant & Seminar Program, 2009
General Education, Fine Arts, and Allied Health & Science Programs
** Application Deadline: Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 **
LaGuardia Community College (CUNY)
The Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), US Department of Education

Download the Application (pdf)

Summary
ePortfolios have emerged as a valuable tool for supporting enriched student learning and new approaches to assessment and accreditation. Nationwide, more than 250 campuses now use ePortfolio. LaGuardia Community College is widely recognized as a leader in this growing field. Building on this momentum and seeking to secure its benefits for students in urban higher education, LaGuardia is pleased to offer Making Connections: An ePortfolio MiniGrant & Seminar Program, designed to help NYC metropolitan educators to advance their use of ePortfolio for learning, assessment and transfer.

ePortfolio as a Tool for Learning and Assessment
ePortfolios are a rich educational resource with potential to benefit both students and faculty. As students build ePortfolios, they collect classwork and reflect on their learning processes. Examining their learning and manifesting their growth in rich, web-based presentations, students spotlight their academic progress and personal change. ePortfolio is also a tool for enriched faculty learning. As students share longitudinal learning histories, they generate rich evidence that gives educators new ways of understanding and assessing the learning process.

A National Discourse
Currently working with more than 8,000 ePortfolio students, LaGuardia is a founding member of the Inter/National Coalition for ePortfolio Research, along with Stanford and Clemson. For the past three years, members of this network (now up to 40 universities) have studied the use of ePortfolio on their campuses. LaGuardia’s findings will be highlighted in a forthcoming Coalition collection, Electronic Portfolios: Emergent Findings about Learning and Engagement. LaGuardia’s 2008 ePortfolio conference drew 600 educators (from 30 states and 5 different countries) and launched a National Resource Center on ePortfolio and integrative learning. For more information, see http://www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/conference/index.html.

Making Connections: An ePortfolio Mini-Grant & Seminar Program draws on LaGuardia’s experience and a growing body of literature to help colleges and universities in the metropolitan NYC area advance their use of ePortfolio to support enhanced engagement, learning, and assessment. The Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) has provided three years of funding to Making Connections, supporting faculty and programs at higher education institutions (community colleges through research universities) to move forward with ePortfolio implementation.

The first year of Making Connections was highly successful. Ten colleges (from Norwalk Community College to Queens College and St. John’s University) benefited from the program’s resources. Now NYC area colleges are invited to apply to join the second cohort, scheduled to begin meeting in February 2009.

A Year-Long Seminar Program
The Making Connections program offers participating schools a mini-grant and a year-long seminar designed to advance understanding and use of ePortfolio. Building a dialogue that joins two- and four-year schools, the seminar highlights new ways to enhance student learning and address issues of transfer, articulation, and assessment. Issues to be explored include:

• What is the state of the literature on ePortfolio? What are the key questions? Who is leading the field? What do we know from case studies? What findings and evidence have shaped the emerging discourse?
• How can ePortfolio be used to enrich and transform student learning? What kinds of pedagogies are most effective in using ePortfolio as a learning tool? How can ePortfolio support integrative learning strategies? What is the role of reflection? What do we know about the impact of ePortfolio on student engagement? On student learning outcomes?
• How can ePortfolio be used to support new approaches to assessment? Can ePortfolio be an effective tool to help colleges and programs meet the demands of outcomes assessment, accountability, and accreditation? What are the challenges related to this usage? What are examples of good practice in this area?
• What are the possibilities of student use of ePortfolio for transfer? What would colleges need to do to be able to recognize and use an ePortfolio in the transfer process? How can colleges begin to facilitate this usage of ePortfolio?
• What technology tools are available for ePortfolio? What tools and systems are most user friendly? Most effective for enhanced learning? For assessment? What are the costs involved? What are the possibilities for use of new Open Source technologies?
• How can an institution move forward in implementing ePortfolios? What are the key questions? What kinds of resources are required? What models and strategies have proven to be effective?

Led by an experienced ePortfolio faculty/staff team from LaGuardia, the Making Connections Seminar engages teams of educators in a collective inquiry process. The program's second cohort will meet monthly, from February--December 2009, drawing on questions, insights and experiences from participating campuses and the growing national literature. Participants will use their learning to advance the ePortfolio work taking place in their classrooms and campuses: setting their own goals, documenting their innovations, and evaluating progress at year's end.

Mini Grants
In addition to the collaborative support provided by the seminar process, Making Connections provides each participating college with a mini-grant of $5,000 to be used to advance their work with ePortfolio during the first year of participation. Members of participating faculty/staff team receive an additional $1,000 individual stipend in the first year to recognize their participation and campus leadership role. (Limit of three per college.) Teams that successfully complete the first year are eligible to apply for a second year of participation and support. (A mini-grant of $2,500 will be provided to teams during their second year of participation in the seminar.)

Applications
Please use the attached form to prepare an application for the 2009 Making Connections program. For questions and assistance, please contact LaGuardia's Making Connections coordinator, Susan Lambert slambert@lagcc.cuny.edu or 718-482-5419.

Application Deadline: Thursday, November 20, 5:00 PM

Download the Application (pdf)