SUNY Stony Brook University (SBU) has uniquely tapped into the use of not just on-campus publications and presentations but social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to showcase the student ePortfolios and support the incredible success of their ePortfolio program that officially started this September.

Each day the school selects an ePortfolio to feature on Facebook, Twitter, Campus Announcements, the SBU ePortfolio Newsletter, and the Scala television screens around campus. SBU Spotlight ePortfolio students will receive a certificate and letter of recognition and become and present their ePortfolios at the “Innovations in Education Spring Colloquium” attended by colleges and universities throughout the greater New York City area.

Join Stony Brook’s ePortfolio Facebook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stony-Brook-ePortfolio/167766053245155 or search for Stony Brook ePortfolio on Facebook. To get the latest updates regarding SBU e-Portfolios on Twitter follow http://www.twitter.com/sbueportfolio and http://www.twitter.com/facultycenter . The SBU newsletters can be found here: http://stonybrook.digication.com/sbu_eportfolio_news

In order for student to have their ePortfolio considered for feature in the SBU ePortfolio Spotlight the ePortfolio must meet certain criteria clearly defined by the school, http://stonybrook.digication.com/sbu_eportfolio_news/What_makes_it_model. These criteria aid the students in perfecting their presentations of work completed for courses as well as personal learning experiences taking place outside the traditional classroom.

Nancy Wozniak, SBU’s ePortfolio Program Manager, felt that is was key to make the focus of the ePortfolio Program on the students…. “Authentic learning through the use of eportfolios must be student-driven on campus.  Our students respond to recognition and awards.  It’s vital that the students understand the process of metacognition and learning for life.  When we hold a training session for faculty and students, we spend a good portion of the time on reflection.  We make it fun with catch phrases like ‘Have you metacognated today?’  It’s not an eportfolio without the reflection and students take ownership of their eportfolio and learning when they understand and include reflection.  Digication provides a clear and easy format for students to add their reflections with multimedia.”

Stony Brook University utilizes the Digication e-Portfolio and Assessment Management System. Kelly Driscoll, co-founder and President of Digication, Inc., expressed great enthusiasm for SBU’s variety of approaches to celebrating the student’s work and ePortfolios. “When I heard the news of SBU’s ePortfolio Facebook Fan page, I just had to become a fan myself. I personally enjoy seeing the latest featured e-Portfolios and have no doubt that students will be incredibly motivated to create great ePortfolios with such clear support of the SBU faculty, students, and ePortfolio consultants at the school.”

For more information about SBU visit their website: www.stonybrook.edu

Today is The City University of New York (CUNY) Annual IT Conference at John Jay College.  The first session at the conference is focused on e-Portfolios – here is a description of the session:

ePortfolios across CUNY: Aggregating and Integrating Information
Members of the Committee on Academic Technology ePortfolio Subcommittee will present cross-campus collaborative work that selects, collects, communicates, and analyzes information on the planning, piloting, implementation, and assessment of ePortfolios across CUNY. The analysis brings into focus “universal concerns.” The presentation will include a tour of interconnected discussion forums, RSS feeds, blogs, and wikis for public and private ePortfolio groups on the Academic Commons.

Sarah Morgano, Academic Operations Assistant, CUNY School of Professional Studies
Joseph Ugoretz, Associate Dean of Teaching, Learning and Technology, Macaulay Honors College
Howard Wach, Director of Instructional Technology, Bronx Community College
Barbara Walters, Professor, Kingsborough Community College and CUNY Online Baccalaureate

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Howard Wach, Director of the Office of Instructional Technology of Bronx Community College (BCC), will be on the panel speaking about e-Portfolios with a specific focus on faculty development. Wach has developed a wiki page to present the information he will be discussing as part of his participation on the panel.  We thought this would be a great resource to share with our community: http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wiki/index.php/EPortfolio_Faculty_Development

Here are some BCC faculty examples shared within the wiki page. They illustrate some of the many instructional objectives and strategies emerging from BCC’s campus ePortfolio practice:

Modeling a local history project: Kate Culkin’s HIS 20 American History Project ePortfolio
A collaborative education resource site: Steve Powers’s EDU 10 Family Literacy Project
A Gen Ed course ePortfolio: Matthew Crick’s Fundamentals of Communication (CMS 11)
A world history project portfolio: Jordi Getman-Eraso’s “Global Contamination” HIS 11 project
The capstone course: Lisa Amowitz’s ART 91 Graphic Design Seminar ePortfolio

(Thanks for sharing this resource with us Howard!)

An excellent article, Cultural Shift at a Community College: E-Portfolios Go Campuswide, highlights the cultural shift taking place at Tunxis Community College, a two-year college using the Digication e-Portfolio and Assessment Management System, was published in Campus Technology yesterday.  Learn about their student focused approach, the faculty support network they are forming, and the implementation strategies the e-portfolio project leader, Laura Gambino, is putting into action.

Read the full article here: http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2010/08/12/ePortfolios-Go-Campuswide.aspx?Page=1

Here’s an extract:

“In fall 2008, Gambino pulled a committee together to develop a list of criteria about what the college wanted in an e-portfolio product. “We wanted it to be easy to use. We wanted students to have the freedom and creativity to express themselves. We wanted a strong assessment management system that went along with that,” she said. Keeping budget in mind, the committee examined a lot of products, including open source options. But, she explained, “you have to have the tech staff to support and maintain and administer [open source software]. We really didn’t have anybody we could dedicate to a project like that.”

Then the committee tried out Digication. “We did a Webinar with Jeff Yan, the CEO of the company. Everyone in the room agreed. There were smiles all around. We looked no further,” Gambino said. Tunxis did a pilot in spring 2009 and migrated last summer to start the fall 2009 semester with the new product.”