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So the composition class might have a portfolio.
We're now, and I think many of the campuses that are involved
in this work are looking for ways to take a more
circumscribed portfolio experience for students and
extend it through their undergraduate years, so it
really is a vehicle for pulling things together.
Again, all different shapes and sizes but sort of most
basically, the portfolios contain samples of student work
in multiple multi-media, given that they're electronic now,
and very importantly, reflections on what's in
the portfolio, what does it add up to.
And that's really the key element in my view.
Creating a space, a container, a context for students to
step back from this, that, and the other thing, and ask
what it's adding up to in terms of their academic
and personal development.
One of the important findings from this work is that
when you give students ownership of these portfolios,
which is not to say you don't have some structure around
them, it makes all the difference.
I put e-portfolios maybe, sort of, around New York, though
they are being explored very broadly right now.
The CUNY system has a project underway with a bunch of the
CUNY campuses, but also Rutgers and St. Johns and a number of
other campuses sort of in that area, it's just an instance of
sort of the momentum here.
There's also an international coalition for portfolio research
looking at scholarship of teaching and learning questions.
How, for instance, does reflection actually
work for students.
And finally, just to complete the circle, AAC&U has recently
developed rubrics around their essential learning outcomes
and those rubrics are being brought to bear on portfolios,
keeping portfolios from being just a dumping ground which
no one can make sense of, but using the rubric to look at the
porfolios and make some judgements about the kind of
learning that's occurring.
Are there questions about any of these, or comments, additions?
Okay, and...there you are, in the middle of it, and a
few comments I was able to glean from some materials
Mildred sent me.
"We already have strength in this area", I do believe
this was a comment from the president.
"We just want to be more intentional about it and take
the amount and quality of these programs to the next level,"
the notion of an ambition about being best in the nation and
integrating the academic and the personal.
And a comment from a faculty member.
"It is a risk when you make changes and try new things.
What I've tried to do is let students in on it."
That will really be one of my central themes this afternoon,
how you can bring students into these efforts and let them into
the kinds of things we've been talking about here.
Challenges--we'll just go quickly over these because
I'm sure they're familiar, making this a reality for
all students, not just a special project here and there.
The fact that we operate in silos.
Traditions, especially among faculty members, of autonomy
and independance, and following from that, classrooms as
pretty private spaces.
I think that's changed a lot, but I can remember even just
10 years ago going to campuses to do, actually workshops
on portfolios and asking faculty--these were faculty
portfolios--asking faculty to bring along a syllabus and
to spend a little time talking with the person sitting
next to them about the syllabus.
And many said they had never shown another faculty member
their syllabus.
As I say, I think that has really changed, but the
tradition that this is kind of private stuff continues,
so integrative learning is asking for collaboration,
communication, openness, and that is a challenge.
Faculty roles and rewards-- on many campuses and in
graduate education, what is rewarded is largely individual,
highly specialized work.
Building committment and understanding about this,
comme ça et comme ça, very important, and then back to
institutional capacity building.
So here I want to just put out a list of sort of
agendas, questions, for you.
We'll just look through them quickly, I'll show you a little
framework for thinking about them, and then I'm going to
turn you loose again at your tables, and if you're almost
by yourself you may want to join a larger group.
So, what will it take?
The campus community cares about, understands, and
embraces integrative learning.
Kind of obvious but very, very hard to get everybody on
message, really understanding what we're talking about.
Again, my experience in my own office with a small group
of people committed to this where we were dizzy trying to
figure out what we meant by these words.
Faculty need opportunities to work across disciplines
as teachers, of course, in curricular development projects
and scholarship of teaching and learning, but also as scholars.
We don't want faculty having to teach to a kind of work that
they don't have a chance to engage in themselves.
Academic and student affairs folks need to not just talk to
each other but really collaborate around learning
agendas, learning and development agendas.
We need to think about reward and perhaps award systems
that recognize this work-- that should say recognize
work toward integrative learning...forward is good too.
You need to think about institutional assessment,
this is the knowledge-building part of capacity building.
Institutional assessment, I believe Mildred is going to
North Central--what do they call themselves now--
higher ed commission.
Everybody has got to do assessment, how does that
lay on top of this, institutional research,
program review, and so forth.
How do those take in your interest in and your progress
around integrative learning?
Budgeting and planning.
And administrative leaders talk to one another about
this stuff, so that's what we're going to do.
Here's a little framework which is only meant to be suggestive,
I don't want anybody getting stuck in it.
You can't quite see the bottom there, it says "Adapted from an
American Council on Education project on leadership and
institutional transformation."
You kind of get the quick grid here.
Change can be pretty local-- it's just in this department
and that department--or it can be widespread
across the institution.
It can be--I was looking for a term that wasn't negative here.
I don't want to call it superficial, but it
isn't deep yet.
It's kind of trying something out but the work hasn't taken
deep root, which is what you get in the fourth quadrant.
So you can have work that's just in the econ department that's
not yet deep, or deep--well, you can play this out.
My point, my larger point in putting this forward is to think
about how you get from special projects, programs, and
innovations--which is where everybody starts--to something
that might begin to look like institutional transformation.
So that's sort of the big question here.
So I'm going to go back to the questions I just put before you.
There's the little grid down in the bottom to remind you,
if that's useful.
And let me now, we have about a half-hour left, invite you at
your tables to dive into these questions, start where you wish.
I think I will ask for comments about each of them, so I hope
that among you, you get through a good number of them, but start
where you wish, as I say.
And if you're at a table with just a couple people and
you're of a mind to--it's very hard to get people to move--
please feel free.
Clear enough?
Okay, go at it, I'll roam around and we'll then hear from you.
Okay, let me just give you a minute or so to
finish up your discussions.
Here's what I'd like to do, all of these things overlap.
Let's end by inviting each table to put on the table,
put on the floor, something that you think would be a
positive step forward.
In many ways, as I've gone around the room listening,
all of them have to do with number one, which is
sort of the uber item.
So wherever you want to enter the conversation is fine, but
I'd like to hear from each table, something forward moving
that could happen that you think would advance this agenda.
So a couple minutes just to finish up and
organize yourselves for that.