(247b) Student Electronic Portfolios for Professional Development Using Google Apps

The primary goal of our undergraduate program is to produce engineers who are one step ahead of their peers, who have begun to prepare themselves for more than just their entry-level jobs. In order to accomplish this, we seek improvements to the educational process outside the classroom and ways to encourage students to have a more direct role in their own personal development. For this purpose, we present here the Notre Dame Electronic Portfolio (NDeP) project, which is designed to help us meet this goal.

An electronic portfolio is a collection of electronic files that is created and maintained by a user as evidence of professional development. In particular, we hope to achieve four fundamental objectives with our NDeP project: 1) engage students in their learning and allow students to play a more direct role in their personal development, 2) enable students to link together diverse parts of their learning, including the formal and informal curriculum, and allow for reflection and awareness of learning strategies and needs, 3) encourage students to create a professional portfolio of their achievements, both from the classroom and beyond, with the ability to publicize their achievements as evidence towards future employers, etc. and 4) offer the academic department (in this case the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department) a meaningful mechanism for accessing and organizing evidence of student learning.

To achieve the goals for this project, we chose to implement a Google Apps ePortfolio using the entire Google Apps suite. This includes gDocs, gSpreadsheets, Picasa, Google Video, Blogger, and the like for evidence collection. For student presentation, reflection, and electronic documentation, we are planning to use gSites.

The e-portfolio also serves as a tool to make communication between students and advisers more efficient, and to help students formulate short- and long-term plans for their own career development. As a portion of the academic advising experience, NDeP includes a set of surveys designed to help students consider their academic coursework, in which we also have students assess their own progress in the program. The survey addresses the six main tools every engineer in our program should have: analytical and problem solving skills, comprehension of engineering concepts, understanding of technical problems, communication skills, creativity and independence, and organizational skills. For each tool, students are asked to consider what deliverable proof exists that demonstrates their current proficiency. These artifacts can be electronically archived on their own NDeP site. The surveys also have the ability to be compiled for use in ABET accreditation and other department assessments of student learning, interests, and achievements.

Therefore, we present here the current progress and future goals of the NDeP project, including information from the pilot group of students and plans to make the process more interactive for both students and faculty.