An Electronic Portfolio Project

By

Ken Grodjesk, Ed.D.

Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL

The purpose of this project was to implement a portfolio experience for Monmouth students. The primary goal was to have students create a web based portfolio. A secondary goal was to give students experience creating and developing a portfolio. Later that experience could be used fro creating a portfolio to gain employment as a teacher or in their own classrooms when they become teachers.

Dr. Bill Wallace of the Communications and Theatre Arts Department at Monmouth College took responsibility for the technical side of this project. He planned and created the website for my Middle School Class of 30 students (http://department.monm.edu/portfolio/educ_339.htm). Dr. Wallace also gave students the initial instruction on how the sites were set up and where students should begin their work. All through the project, Dr. Wallace and a senior student, Vicky Kunz, was available to help students with the web pages.

 Students received basic instruction on the types of portfolios and how they could be used. This was done via a power point slide presentation (Electronic Portfolio Lesson attached) that I developed. Then students were shown the basic framework of the portfolio project (slides 12-17). In addition students were given a handout that had each page of the portfolio on a piece of paper. Students were then to sketch out the parts of each page. This step saved time as students had their information in mind before going to the computer.

 With their “sketch book/handout” in hand, we met in the computer lab to begin the project. Students would be constructing their web pages with the program Front Page since this was already on the college system. Some students had worked with Front Page in other classes, some had not. Dr. Wallace stopped in for each of our class meetings to offer his assistance. Also, Daryl Carr, Director of Information Services and Marcie Beintema, also in the Information Services Department were very helpful with resolving and technical and software issues.

 In retrospect, I was pleasantly surprised that students arrived to class early and stayed after class to work on their projects. This project enable students to begin a portfolio and explore the possibility of using them for employment or in their own classes. Consequently, students began to think in ways that were out of the ordinary. The work with web pages helps students to think of new ways of designing classroom work and assessment.

 Electronic Portfolio PowerPoint Presentation