{"id":20670,"date":"2018-01-22T08:49:19","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T13:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=20670"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:09:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:09:14","slug":"cuportfolio-opening-doors-learning-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2018\/cuportfolio-opening-doors-learning-assessment\/","title":{"rendered":"cuPortfolio opening doors for both learning and assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emily Cook, TLS staff writer<\/em><\/p>\n

In his fourth-year engineering course,<\/em> Professor Jeffrey Erochko says cuPortfolio is not only changing the way students learn, but also the way they are assessed.<\/p>\n

Erochko is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at 杏吧原创. His course, High Performance Building Design<\/em>, consists of an interdisciplinary capstone project that has professors and students from three different departments come together to design a building. But with so many students from different disciplines working on a group project, Erochko says assessment is a big challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be creative how we assess individual students for their work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, Erochko says giving full consideration to students\u2019 work was difficult because they only had used 15 minutes in an oral assessment to determine the scope and quality of their work.<\/p>\n

When they heard about cuPortfolio and its capabilities, the team of professors decided to use the tool to simplify and enhance their assessment process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw immediately that [cuPortfolio] would be a really great opportunity to be able to allow the students to show, in a more complete sense, what the work they\u2019ve done is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The student portfolios themselves aren\u2019t graded, Erochko says, but are used as a tool for students to prove their mastery of the material.<\/p>\n

After a set deadline, the professors review the portfolios and formulate feedback before the students present their work. This allows the professors to use the oral assessment time to clarify aspects of the work discussed in the portfolio and ask specific questions instead of having to cover everything. At the oral assessment, rather than bringing in physical artifacts, students can now use a tablet to show their work.<\/p>\n

Another benefit to cuPortfolio that Erochko says he and his team found is that they could structure the tool around their rubric, so students know exactly what\u2019s expected.<\/p>\n

Erochko says students quickly catch on to how cuPortfolio benefits them, not only in the course itself, but for its potential to be shared with future employers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of them put quite a lot of effort into making something, not only that contains the artifacts, but also that looks nice,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s obvious to them that it helps to showcase their work, and they\u2019re interested in showcasing their work because they want to be recognized for their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In future, Erochko says cuPortfolio has potential to be used for program-level assessment so students could graduate with evidence of skills they\u2019ve learned throughout their degree.<\/p>\n

For now, he says even having this portfolio to take from the course is a huge benefit.<\/p>\n

To find out more about Erochko\u2019s experience with cuPortfolio, watch the full interview below. You can also watch interviews with other instructors on the\u00a0cuPortfolio instructor peer support site<\/a>.<\/p>\n