Reflection as Integrative, Social Pedagogy
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Practice Title: Helping Students Realize the Dream: Polishing ePortfolios in the Capstone | |
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Description:
Our capstone ePortfolio development at LaGuardia has been a rich and productive source of moving our ePortfolio project ahead as, for the first time, we have been able to focus on helping students to make connections across semesters, across courses, and across disciplines. This was always part of the LaGuardia ePortfolio plan, so the ability to drill down on capstone courses and help faculty to think about their courses in this way has been very rewarding for both faculty and students.
We would refer readers to our previous write up of Capstone work here, as it is a fully narrative discussion of the Capstone Practices. Below, we are adding additional information not covered in our previous description. | |
Where is the practice used?:
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Each major program of study has a designated capstone course. Each capstone has an ePortfolio component; capstone students ePortfolios are assessed to fulfill the college's "Technological Literacy" competency. | |
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Reflection as Integrative: Students’ ePortfolio reflections are designed to help them…
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Many capstone courses are naturally interdisciplinary (like the LIB200: Humanism, Science, and Technology liberal arts capstone). As students explore the interrelationship between humanism, science, and tech (see student eP screenshot examples below), they are making connections within this multidisciplinary course that prompt them to make further cross-disciplinary connections from academic, co-curricular, and/or lived experiences. | |
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Reflection as systematic & disciplined: Students’ ePortfolio reflection processes embody…
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Capstone work requires that students reflect on their performance in college-wide core competencies. Since our ePortfolio platform allows students to house a great deal of hypermedia, capstone ePortfolios fulfill the college's technological literacy competency and allow students to effectively reflect on their growth in areas like oral communication by archiving audio or video clips. | |
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Reflection as Social Pedagogy: Students use ePortfolio to share/peer review/ discuss/collaborate, connecting around course work, reflections, plans, goals, stories, etc.
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Reflection as a process of guiding personal change: Students use ePortfolio for educational and career development, identity formation, by …
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Refer to Capstone Course - Example # 1: Liberal Arts and Capstone Course - Example # 2: Accounting for two of the many successful assignments generated in this faculty development seminar that aim to facilitate "reflection as a social pedagogy" and "reflection as a process of guiding personal change." | |
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Professional Development: Faculty and staff using this practice engage in the following ePortfolio-related professional development:
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We are currently documenting our capstone practices in an ePortfolio. In keeping with LaGuardia's philosophy about faculty development, however, this is a closed ePortfolio. Click HERE to view some screen shots to give you a sense of the digital environment that supports the face to face monthly meetings. | |
Are Peer Mentors involved with this practice?:
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We use a studio hour with many (not all) of our capstone courses. This is an additional non-credit, one hour studio attached to the capstone course. These studio hours are facilitated by ePortfolio consultants who work in consultation with faculty about the content of the Studio Hour.
Sample Studio Hour Syllabi:
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Professional Guidance: The Center for Teaching and Learning develops and guides professional development related to this practice:
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Yes. Faculty work with both faculty and staff from the Center for Teaching and Learning in the year-long seminar. Additionally, faculty in the current seminar are supported by faculty mentors from the previous year's cohort (capstone fellows).
Faculty are also supported by ePortfolio consultants (recent LaGuardia graduates), who teach the capstone studio hour. The dynamic of an experienced capstone fellow, a new capstone instructor, and an ePortfolio consultant forms a unique and productive network of support.
During the seminar, faculty create, workshop, and revise assigments, conduct a rigorous syllabus peer-review exercise, and focus on incorporating college-wide core competencies into capstone work to help students synthesize and reflect upon their work across semesters at LaGuardia. Faculty also rehearse ways to convey concepts associated with capstone learning to their students. See how pne current capstone seminar participant does this by scrolling down to "expanded course description" on this capstone syllabus.
LaGuardia's Rethinking the Capstone seminar, like many other seminars in the Center for Teaching & Learning, is a year-long faculty development venture based on an inquiry model. We begin by examining best practices in capstone courses. A key text for the seminar, though older, is Gardner & Van der Veer's The Senior Year Experience: Facilitating Integration, Reflection, Closure, and Transition. We also look at examples of course descriptions, syllabi, ePortfolios, and other capstone practices implemented at colleges and universities nationwide. In this seminar, which is largely focused on the ePortfolio's role in the Capstone course, we consider the role of integration, reflection, transition, and closure as key elements of the capstone course. | |
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Here are some examples of the work faculty are sharing about their capstone work at LaGuardia.
Rodriguez, Max - LIB200 ePortfolio showcase assignment - Spring I 2011.pdf
Greenberg, Naomi, & Sherrell Powell - NYSOTA presentation on capstones - 5.11.10.pdf
Delcham, Hendrick - MAE291 ePortfolio reflection assignment - Spring I 2010.pdf
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Supporting Materials: Ramirez, Kimberly - LIB200 Course Syllabus (multimedia) - includes rubrics for individual capstone course assignments and a video trailer for the course. This syllabus was created, workshoped and revised in response to peer feedback in the Capstone faculty development seminar. | |
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Evidence: The following evidence associated with this and other similar practices has been collected:
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As noted elsewhere, LaGuardia's Center for Teaching and Learning, in conjunction with the college's Office of Institutional Research, routinely collects enrollment, completion, pass and retention rates for all targeted courses.
Capstone courses pose a particular problem for this procedure, however, because of a limited number of sections offered and a minimal pool of comparison courses--if any exist at all. For example, in the Accounting program, all faculty who teach the capstone have received identical professional development training, so there is no available control group against which to compare course data. Moreover, because capstone students are theoretically at the end of the sequence in their major, the retention rate (the percentage of students who reenrolled the following semester) of these classes is even harder to contextualize.
However, when course data is considered alongside positive student survey data, one can reasonably assume an overall degree of success. For example, students in targeted capstone classes averaged 3.09 on a 4-point Likert scale when asked, "During the current school year, how much has your coursework at this college emphasized synthesizing and organizing ideas, information, or experiences in new ways," compared with a national average of 2.80 (from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement). | |
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Student work/ePortfolio examples:
Click HERE to view a close-up of the image at the left plus 2 additional screenshots from student portfolios from a section of the multidisciplinary LIB200 Capstone course (Humanism, Science, and Technology) taught by current Capstone faculty development seminar participant Dr. Kimberly Ramirez. The portfolios incorporate hypermedia content (student-produced videos, graphics, oral presentations, and writing) helping students demonstrate, self-assess, peer-review, and archive their progress in satisfying the college's "core competencies" (oral communication, technological literacy, quantitative reasoning, critical literacy, research and information literacy) as they synthesize what they have done during their LaGuardia career to prepare for graduation and/or transfer. | |
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Next steps: | |
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Additional Information: | |
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Yes. We have previously reported on our assessment here and here. | |
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Yes. We specifically chose our current platform to support multi-media displays to accommodate multi-modal composing across the curriculum. This is especially significant as capstone students are reflecting on their performance in core areas like oral communication. Students can upload, exchange, critique, and revise audio or video files to refine their presentation skills before graduation and/or transfer. | |
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This is part of a larger campus initiative, a five year Title V grant focused on ePortfolio & Capstone Curriculum. This initiative has greatly supported our ePortfolio program because it has allowed us to fully realize our ePortfolio structure and goals within specific programs such as Nursing, Fine Arts, Physical Therapy, Business, etc. |
