Catalyst Portfolio Tool

http://catalyst.washington.eduhttp://portfolio.washington.edu

Copyright Tom Lewis, 2003. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Where did we get the idea?

My Action Plan (Portfolio) Group• Introduced the idea for a tool to guide

students through the University• Discussed an online portfolio tool• Sketched out a quick schematic on a

whiteboardCatalyst group sought support and ideas

from students, faculty, and administrators

How did we build it?

• Asked everyone on campus who has ever uttered, or is likely to utter the word “Portfolio”

• Looked at other universities’ tools and commercial products

• Read scholarly articles on the uses of portfolios in education

• Conducted focus groups and usability tests with instructors and students

Collaborative effort• Catalyst Initiative – part of Educational

Partnerships & Learning Technologies• Student Technology Fee committee • Program for Educational Transformation

through Technology • Computing & Communications• Office of Undergraduate Education• Freshman Interest Group program

Project Assumptions

• Tool cannot be built without input from students, instructors, academic and career advisers

• Tool should be flexible—students should be able to use it for classes, extra-curricular activities, job searches, or personal reflection

• Tool should be useful for students in all colleges and schools

“Big” Questions

• What is a portfolio? One view or many?• Are portfolios student-controlled or

institutionally controlled?• Does the tool work like an “assignment

tool” – with due dates and other restrictions?

• Who gets to see student work and when?

Decisions:

• Students should be able to collect anything they wish and to have exclusive control over their collections

• Students should be able to publish many different portfolios of their work on the Web

• Instructors and advisors should be able to easily lead students through the process of building certain types of portfolios, but students still own these portfolios

Portfolio – student sideCollect: collect and store digital artifacts

(files) that represent work – 500 MB storage for students

Reflect: write about your work, experiences, or interests and reflect on the examples of your work

Present: publish portfolios to the Web with the click of a button and share online portfolios with others

Portfolio Project Builder – instructor/advisor side

• Guide students through the creating a portfolio

• Provide and collect course assignments

• Submit portfolio to instructor

• Instructor provide feedback through Portfolio

Joe Student’s Home Screen

Joe Student’s Artifacts

Joe’s Unpublished Page with Comments

Joe’s Published Page

Joe Instructor’s Home Screen

Joe Instructor’s Portfolio Project

Who’s using Portfolio?

• Approx. 80% incoming freshmen in FIGs over the last 2 years

• School of Medicine, School of Law, and the Graduate School, College of Education

• Undergraduate Advising, the Career Center

• Diverse faculty

• 9,284 students have created 20,979 portfolios with 79,687 pages.

• Students have uploaded 63,299 artifacts and published 8961 portfolios for the world to see.

• 690 instructors or advisors have created 1533 portfolio projects.

Numbers

Questions?

catalysthelp@u.washington.edu

http://catalyst.washington.edu/tools/ppp.html

tomlewis@u.washington.edu