Learning2Share & Sharing2Learn
with ePortfolios
Duncan White, Terri-Lynn Brown &
David O’Hagan
About The Calgary Board of Education
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100,000 students
9300 staff
218 schools
K-12, Continuing
Education &
Professional
Development
• 6 years as a selfhosted Desire2Learn
client
• 75,000 unique users
last year
Background
• 6th years as a self-hosted Desire2Learn client
• 75,000 unique users last year
Total Monthly D2L Login Attempts For All Users
900000
800000
700000
2004/2005
Logins
600000
2005/2006
500000
2006/2007
400000
2007/2008
2008/2009
300000
2009/2010
200000
100000
0
Month
Personalization
Adapted from Jeremy Hiebert
Why Desire2Learn ePortfolio?
• Support for both formative and
summative assessment
• User centric
• Flexible organization
• Variety of applications
• Support for social learning
• Familiar and intuitive interface
• Integration with the learning
environment
Timeline
Support
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Online Course
Tutorials within D2L
Learning Leaders
Helpdesk
Training
• Train the Trainer w/D2L
( Thanks David and Rafi  )
• 5 groups, 2 half-day
sessions each, 100 learning
leaders in total
Train the Trainer Sessions
Day 1: Using the eP
• What is an eP?
• Creating artifacts,
reflections,
collections and
presentations
• Adding tags and
tag management
Day 2: Sharing and
Managing eP in the
classroom
• Overview of
sharing possibilities
• Sharing with
individuals and
permission profiles
• Overview of forms
What is an ePortfolio?
What they are:
• carefully selected items that help
a student reflect upon and
possibly demonstrate an
understanding of his or her
learning
• a powerful means of
personalization
• a powerful means for supporting
universal design for learning
• an authentic means of
assessment
a tool controlled by the student
• a collection of student-selected
artifacts and presentations
• an opportunity for students to
reflect on their progress as
learners
• ongoing
What they are not:
• a repository for everything a
student has completed over the
school year or over their K-12
school career
• a teacher managed tool
• a website
• always a final polished product
• PowerPoint or Dreamweaver
• the answer to everything
• new
• created for the sake of creating
an ePortfolio
Shift in Assessment Practice
• learning & assessment are part of
the same process
• student agency is engaged towards
– assessing their own talents and aspirations
– planning a pathway towards meaningful
purposes
– working cooperatively with others on
challenging tasks
– maintaining a record of their explorations
and feedback
– demonstrating their learning against clear
standards in a wide variety of media
all with the close support of adult mentors
and guides
Shift in Teacher Thinking
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Social Learning
Peer and self-assessment
Shift in assessment practices
Incorporation of UDL
principles
• Planning for eP – integration
with D2L… or not
• Personalization – helping
students reflect in their own
ways
Personalization for Students
• tasks & challenges that mirror the adult work of the
discipline & address the outcomes of the Programs of Study
• requires the reorganization of
Student
information into patterns that yield
understandings which are both
Task
personally meaningful and authentic
to disciplinary ways of knowing,
Assessment
doing, and being
Teacher
Content
• requires students to generate,
evaluate, justify and revise cognitive
models and skills
Selecting the Right Tool
• What are the learning outcomes for
your students?
• How will students demonstrate that
they have met these outcomes?
• How are these outcomes to be
authentically assessed?
• How will your students have an
opportunity to engage in
metacognition? Why is this important?
• How will the assignments and
technology you choose enhance
student understanding?
Elementary eP Strategies
• Rubrics – used as criteria for success
• Plenty of opportunity
for modeling in
asynchronous
discussions
• Social Learning –
F2F, online, peer to
peer
• Teacher, peer &
self-assessment
• Photographs – require reflection
Elementary – Promising Practice
Middle School - Workflow
In Class
In D2L & other digital
spaces
In ePortfolio
Student debate
Teacher incites debate in a
D2L discussion
Digital sample that represent
perspective with required
reflection
Role taking  protest march
Students “brew” controversy
in asynchronous discussion:
What is fair?
Recent political event: create
artifact that shows a clash of
perspectives – BP Oil spill
Digital rubrics, readings,
current events in content
areas
Permission profiles expedites
peer assessment process
Group lockers allow for
debate teams to gather
evidence
Middle School – Promising Practice
High School
• Formative Assessment:
– Regular feedback from teachers, peers,
and self
– Encourages goal setting, self-assessment
and learning strategies to meet goals
• Leverage strengths, interests,
questions and ideas to make learning
meaningful
• Students value anytime, anywhere
access as well as the flexibility of the
digital environment
• Students appreciate the
opportunities to attend to their
learning in many ways personalization
Supporting a Reflective Process
Student seeks out evidence
to support position
Student begins to organize
evidence in preparation for
final project (Artifact /
Presentation)
Student includes sample of
source as an artifact
Students use feedback to
assist in making position
stronger
Student justifies strength of
evidence (Reflection)
Peers critique source and
provide justification
Teacher’s generate, evaluate, justify and revise instructional practice.
High School Promising Practice
Artifact
Peer Assessment
Student Learning Plans
– Promotes reflection and
self-direction
– Engages parents,
teachers, mentors,
coaches
– Informs conversation
Professional ePortfolios
Successes
• Train the Trainer Sessions
• Multiple opportunities for
support
• Cascading system support
models (learning leaders)
• Changing thinking &
conversations around
assessment & feedback
Challenges
• The name
• Changing assessment
practices
• Shift to student ownership
• Storage
• File types/sizes/conversion
• Privacy/security/digital
citizenship
Where to from here?
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Continued support
Increased storage
Learning Leader follow-up
Build exemplars and promising
practices
• Mobile access
Questions?
Duncan White
[email protected]