NIU one of 10 schools selected to join
National Electronic Portfolio Coalition

NIU has been selected as one of 10 colleges and universities nationwide to become a member of the newly formed National Electronic Portfolio Learning Coalition.

English Professors Michael Day and Bradley Peters wrote the proposal for membership.

The American Association of Higher Education Research Forum and Clemson University’s Pearce Center are coordinating the coalition. It will bring together representatives from each university twice a year during the summer to design, share and extend their research on the learning that takes place inside of and around digital portfolios.

The participants will collect information about electronic-portfolio learning initiatives at their home institutions and together develop research questions that will help all members better document the learning that takes place when students “collect, select and reflect” on their own work in electronic portfolios.

“NIU has an exciting opportunity to join with cutting-edge researchers at respected campuses across the country to investigate how electronic portfolios can improve the learning and assessment climate for students, faculty and administrators,” Day said. “We have a chance to become national leaders in this area.”

“On the local level,” Peters added, “NIU faculty in every college and department stand to benefit, because we will be able to tap into national resources that focus on valid and reliable assessment of writing – a topic that is of perennial concern not only to faculty, but to taxpayers, legislators and employers. In other words, this opportunity provides us a way to sustain NIU’s ongoing response to The Illinois Commitment (initiative) in times when the support for better writing assessment in higher education is vital.”

This innovative approach allows for the assessment of student work at individual, class, program and university levels. It assumes that electronic-portfolio initiatives can change the climate of learning at institutions across the country.

NIU will join Alverno College, Bowling Green University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, LaGuardia Community College, Mississippi State University, Portland State University, Stanford University, Virginia Tech University and the University of Washington as inaugural members of the three-year coalition project.

The schools will collaborate to present their findings at national American Association of Higher Education conferences each year.

Day, director of First-Year Composition, and Peters, director of the University Writing Center and coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum, will be joined in the NIU project team by Eric Hoffman, coordinator of Networked Writing and Research in the English Department.

The Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of English are supporting NIU’s involvement in the project.

4-5-04