Portfolio Conference

Speakers

Gary Baker, Northern Illinois University

Gary Baker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Illinois University. Although hired as a protein chemist, Gary now focuses on developing web portal solutions for teacher education at NIU. He is responsible for introducing a new portal technology into the NIU network that uses SharePoint services by Microsoft. As a portal administrator, Gary is using SharePoint to develop a teacher education portal for hosting electronic portfolios, aggregating assessment data, enabling information discovery, and promoting online collaboration. His talk will illustrate some of these SharePoint features.

Steven Builta, Northern Illinois University

Steven Builta is the Information Systems Manager in the College of Education at Northern Illinois University. In this position, Steve has served as a key support and technical contact for a variety of initiatives within the college. For the past 5 years Steve has served as co-developer and co-instructor for a course designed for faculty entitled Integrating Technology into the Curriculum. For the past eleven years, he has taught courses in technology use and integration for both graduate and undergraduate students in the department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment. Steve’s involvement with the use of portfolios began during these teaching experiences. Currently, Steve is heavily involved in the technical training, support and implementation of LiveText within the College of Education.

Rebecca Butler, Northern Illinois University

Rebecca P. Butler is an Associate Professor in Educational Technology, Research and Assessment at Northern Illinois University, where she teaches masters and doctoral students. She is the author of Copyright for Teachers and Librarians (2004) and is also a columnist in issues of social responsibility for Knowledge Quest, the journal of the American Association of School Librarians. Additionally, she researches and publishes in the area of intellectual freedom, focusing most recently on privacy and homeland security. At NIU, she also works with her students in the areas of standards and portfolios.

Michael Day, Northern Illinois University

Michael Day is Associate Professor of English at Northern Illinois University, where he directs the First-Year Composition program and teaches composition pedagogy, technical writing, and writing for electronic media. Day is a chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication and former chair of the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly on Computers in English. In May 1999, he hosted the Fifteenth Computers and Writing Conference in Rapid City, South Dakota. He has presented and published widely on topics ranging from intercultural rhetoric to Internet communication and teaching. Currently, Day is piloting an electronic portfolio project in Northern Illinois University's First-Year Composition program and is a member of NIU's National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Learning team.

Susan Callahan, Northern Illinois University

Susan Callahan is Associate Professor of English at Northern Illinois University, where she teaches courses in advanced composition and English Education. In addition to using portfolios in her own teaching, she designed the English Certification Portfolio system currently used to meet state performance standards for beginning English teachers and has led several portfolio workshops for faculty through NIU Assessment Services. She is currently engaged in a long term study of the Kentucky K-12 portfolio assessment and is the past chair of the National Council of Teachers of English Standing Committee on Testing and Evaluation.

Lawrence Carroll, Elmhurst College

Lawrence Carroll, Executive director of the Center for Professional Excellence and Professor of Business Administration, has worked with the portfolio program at Elmhurst College for the past seven years. Dr. Carroll focuses on assisting students in using their portfolio as a tool for employment or as they apply for graduate school.

Elisa Fredericks, Northern Illinois University

Elisa Fredericks is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northern Illinois University. She currently serves on the Portfolio Committee where student and faculty outcomes are assessed based on eight learning objectives jointly agreed upon by the department. She is also a member of the Curriculum and Scholarship Committees where the primary goal is to enrich student learning through ongoing interface with the business community.

Her teaching and research interest includes virtual new product development, team collaboration and communication, and business-to-business marketing. Dr. Fredericks is an active member of The American Marketing Association, The Marketing Science Institute, and The Product Development and Management Association. Her research has appeared in numerous marketing journals and conference proceedings. She earned her B.S. and MBA from New York University and her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Gary Greenberg, Northwestern University

Gary Greenberg is Director of the Collaboratory Project, a Northwestern University initiative funded by State of Illinois, federal and foundation grants, which is helping educators use the Collaboratory, a web-based collaborative learning environment, to improve K-12 student learning and achievement. Students with a Collaboratory account have a personal ePortfolio where they can create, share and discuss work organized in binders and folders created by their teachers. The ePortfolio provides learning spaces where student work is created using well-designed web document templates that support private comments, threaded discussions, polling and reflection. Dr. Greenberg is also Executive Director for Teaching and Research Initiatives for Information Technology at Northwestern University.

Sharon Hamilton, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

Sharon Hamilton, Associate Dean of the Faculties, Chancellor’s Professor, and Professor of English, is currently Director of the Indiana University Faculty Colloquium for Excellence in Teaching (FACET) and Director of The Office for Integrating Learning at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She has recently completed a three-year term as Campus Director (and creator) of the IUPUI institutional portfolio as part of a Pew-funded, AAHE sponsored project developing the first generation of urban institutional electronic portfolios. She now directs the project team developing the conceptual design and implementation process for student electronic portfolios that document both improvement and achievement in student learning. For the past several years, Sharon has played a leadership role on campus for the assessment of teaching and learning, and for faculty development related to both the improvement of teaching and learning and the assessment of teaching and learning.

Dr. Hamilton has written extensively about writing across the curriculum, collaborative learning, literacy, and portfolios.

Penny L. Hirsch, Northwestern University

Penny L. Hirsch is Associate Director of the Writing Program in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, where she has taught expository writing, advanced composition, and engineering communication for over 20 years. She also holds a joint appointment in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, where she is a Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Design and Engineering Applications (IDEA). Hirsch has used portfolio assessment in many of her writing courses and is currently co-teaching a new course, with Dr. Ann McKenna, that helps IDEA students earning a design certificate to prepare their capstone portfolio. In their session Hirsch and McKenna will describe this course, Engineering Design Portfolio and Presentation, and discuss the benefits of a portfolio approach. Hirsch earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her M.A. and Ph.D.from Northwestern University.

Abigail Hoit, Elmhurst College

Abigail Hoit is Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Elmhurst College, teaching courses at all levels of undergraduate mathematics. She has participated as a mentor in the Elmhurst College electronic portfolio program for five years. Currently she is the Coordinator of the program. The program is open to students in all disciplines. In addition to teaching the students to prepare an electronic documentation of their abilities, the goals of the program include encouraging the students to reflect deeply on their personal skills, dimensions, and goals and how these fit into their career plans.

Eugene Losey, Elmhurst College

Eugene Losey is chair of the Chemistry Department at Elmhurst College. He began working with faculty writing teaching portfolios, including developing a program where adjunct college faculty wrote single-course teaching portfolios. In 1998, the Department of Chemistry

began having students write reflective material and resumes that were put into an electronic portfolio format. For the past five years, Dr. Losey has been involved in helping students across the Elmhurst campus create electronic portfolios. The Elmhurst program now includes three terms in the sequence which culminates in students preparing for their first job search.

Lara Luetkehans, Northern Illinois University

Lara Luetkehans is Associate Professor of Instructional Technology and Assistant Chair of the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment (ETRA). Her primary areas of interest for teaching and scholarship focus on technology integration for pre-service and in-service teacher development, online learning and computer mediated communication. Dr. Luetkehans created and currently coordinates the Portfolio Capstone Experience for Master of Science in Education (MSEd) students in Instructional Technology.

In her session, Dr. Luetkehans will share the process the ETRA department used to develop the conceptual framework, as well as its continued development and implementation of the MSEd Portfolio Capstone Experience, including its redesign from a multimedia portfolio to a strictly ePortfolio. Finally, Dr. Luetkehans will share the next phase of redesign of the MSEd Portfolio Capstone Experience toward the use of LiveText for portfolio assessment within the MSEd program in Instructional Technology.

Ann McKenna, Northwestern University

Ann McKenna is the Director of Education Improvement in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. Dr. McKenna also holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. McKenna has developed and co-teaches a new course entitled Engineering Design Portfolio and Presentation and her session will describe details of the course, and the design portfolio process followed in the Institute for Design Engineering and Applications (IDEA) at Northwestern University. Dr. McKenna received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Science and Mathematics Education from the University of California at Berkeley.

Brad Peters, Northern Illinois University

Brad Peters is Associate Professor of English, Coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum, and developer of the University Writing Center at NIU. He teaches undergraduate courses in writing and graduate courses in rhetoric. Peters publishes on composition pedagogy, writing program administration, writing center theory, and medieval rhetoric. He was involved in large-scale writing assessment at California State University, Northridge and Texas Christian University. He has worked extensively with the School of Nursing at NIU to revise the SON portfolio program. He is a member of the NIU team in the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Learning.

Julie Robertson, Northern Illinois University

Julie Robertson is Professor of Community Health Nursing in the NIU School of Nursing. She is recognized as a driving force and leader for portfolio assessment in the SON since 1994. She was project director for the recent revision of the School’s undergraduate portfolio program, which involved a major shift in the definition of portfolio assessment in the SON. Dr. Robertson also co-developed the SON undergraduate assessment program in 1993. She is a past chair of the SON Curriculum and Evaluation Committee and the Portfolio Subcommittee. Dr. Robertson has published and presented nationally on portfolio and critical thinking assessment.

Joseph Scudder, Northern Illinois University

Joseph Scudder developed the senior portfolio course in the NIU Communication Department and has personally directed more than 500 capstone portfolios. As a capstone experience, the portfolios are assessed by core competencies developed by the department; and thus, these portfolios are summative rather than formative. They are used by students for employment purposes or to pursue further graduate work. Students produce a print version and a CD-ROM version.

Planning for change in the portfolio assessment process will be the underlying theme of his presentation for this conference. The constantly changing environment makes the portfolio process a constantly evolving one. Professor Scudder will discuss his experiences with some of the obstacles that he has faced. He intends to cover several topics with implications for portfolio assessment including: faculty turnover, transfer student preparation, availability of enhanced technology, diverse educational objectives across academic areas, faculty competence, and faculty motivation.