May
2 , 2003 MHC
Students and Faculty Test Electronic Portfolio
|
A
page from senior Christina Karoczkai's e-Portfolio. |
By
the time dance majors Lee Singh, Rebecca Vernon, and Kaitlyn Wild
graduate in 2006, they and their adviser will not only be proud
of what the students have learned, but will be confident about
the next steps the three will take. For this, they can thank the
e-Portfolio, a new software program that helps students organize,
assess, and integrate their experiences, and (at a student's
discretion) makes that information accessible to readers online.
Associate Professor
of Dance Rose Flachs will also be grateful. The program, which
she and her students are currently helping to pilot at MHC, will
help her avoid a last-minute scramble to identify students'
interests and skills or match their experiences with job possibilities
and graduate programs. By the time her advisees are handed their
diplomas, Flachs will have made several years' worth of
informed recommendations about their futures.
"The e-Portfolio gives me a greater picture of my students'
interests and helps with advising not only curricularly, but with
suggesting research options, grant and fellowship opportunities,
and strategies for long-term planning and goals," said Flachs,
one of five faculty members who began testing the e-Portfolio
in January, when Mount Holyoke's Career Development Center
(CDC) launched a pilot study in collaboration with the software's
developer, Connecticut College, as well as Dartmouth and Union
Colleges.
Professor Paul Dobosh is also testing the e-Portfolio with his
students Kyla Bryant '06 and Colleen Swanson '06.
"I scrutinize it the same way anyone else does," says
Dobosh, who teaches computer science. "If it's difficult
to use, I say, 'Why bother?' but this has been easy
to use—just click click click. And it's nice for me
to be able to see all information about a student in one place
without having to look through many different files and papers.
You run across interesting hobbies and activities they might not
bother to mention."
"I think that one of the most exciting things about the
e-Portfolio," said Christine Karoczkai '03, who is
testing the e-Portfolio as an administrative fellow with the CDC,
"is that a career counselor
or faculty adviser could go to my e-Portfolio, look at my self-assessment
exercises, internship reports, or résumé, and then,
during our next meeting, help me make a connection about my job
search or postgraduate plans that I had never considered."
In addition to enhancing
faculty and staff interactions with advisees, the e-Portfolio
is a powerful tool for students struggling to analyze their own
experiences. "The portfolio is a very powerful way for any
student to more effectively explore the perennial questions 'What
do I want to do? How can I take all of the lessons that I have
learned, in and out of class, on and off campus, and apply them
in the future? How do I get from point A to point B?',"
says CDC director Scott Brown. "Many students struggle to
find language to articulate their values and interests and what
knowledge, skills, and qualities they have gained from their aggregate
MHC experience," says Brown. "The portfolio allows
them to reflect in the broadest sense to find their own path and
become more effective and focused candidates in the future."
Eighty-six first-year,
sophomore, and Frances Perkins students nominated by campus administrators
are participating in the pilot. They have used the e-Portfolio's
forms and checklists to create personal profiles and are now experimenting
with all the ways the software can quickly manipulate the data
they have entered, from identifying areas of career interest to
compiling master or targeted résumés. Of students
who participated in the first nine training sessions on the e-Portfolio,
almost 80 percent said the e-Portfolio exceeded their expectations.
"The e-Portfolio is a great way to continously organize
and integrate all Mount Holyoke experiences," says Nicole
Spieler '03, a CDC administrative fellow who has assisted
with training. "It allows students to gain a better understanding
of themselves and apply this knowledge in their academic and career
decisons."
"My only complaint about this tool is that I didn't
have it my first year," says Karoczkai. At the height of
her job search last fall, Karoczkai had at least six different
résumés floating around in her computer. One targeted
a job as a research analyst with a marketing consulting firm.
Another emphasized experiences and coursework related to organizational
behavior. Still another focused on her communications skills and
internships. Each had taken many hours to compile and design.
With the e-Portfolio, Karoczkai can create a polished, job-specific
resume in just a few minutes.
With a few clicks of the mouse, the e-Portfolio can even group
a cover letter, résumé, and audiovisual clip as
a "presentation portfolio," create a Web link to that
portfolio, and send an email message inviting an employer to review
it online.
"My students appreciate that the cumulative effect will
be worth the effort of entering data," says Dobosh, "and
I think they'll find it particularly useful for sharing
their experiences with people away from the College, such as potential
employers and graduate programs."
"The ability to send audiovisual clips, as well as publicity
and reviews, will be extremely important for performance students,"
says Flachs. "Showing the best of their work in a clear,
concise manner, with letters of support, press releases, and reviews,
is key to obtaining fellowships and future support. The e-Portfolio
allows them to organize and catalog their work in such a way that
when it is time to apply for, say, a cultural council grant, all
they have to do is pick and choose from their portfolio. This
is the goal—an easy, accessible way in which the students
can demonstrate their talents and research to both the academic
world and professional world of dance. I think the portfolio is
a wonderful tool for this."
The e-Portfolio pilot is scheduled to continue through January
2005, when the pilot's advisory group will decide whether
to adopt the software. The group's members are Judith Allen,
director of experiential learning; Monica Augustin, registrar
and director of enrollment systems; Scott Brown; Leah Glasser,
dean of first-year students and lecturer in English; Cynthia Legare,
assistant director of Library, Information, and Technology Services
(LITS); Sally Sutherland, associate dean of faculty and lecturer
in English; and Daniel Wilga, LITS Web technology specialist.
For more information about the e-Portfolio, contact Judith Allen
at x2745 or jeallen@mtholyoke.edu.
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