This document discusses building a team through training and capacity building for ePortfolios at the institutional level. It recommends defining learning outcomes, understanding stakeholders, designing learning activities, providing examples and feedback, and ensuring the pedagogical meaningfulness of ePortfolios. Technical assistance should be provided to faculty, staff, and students, and conditions for success include an ePortfolio-based curriculum and promotion of ePortfolio value by faculty.

1. BUILDING A TEAM
Training and Capacity Building in
Faculty, Staff, & Students

2. Overview: Training in its many forms
• Institutional effort: large-scale communication of
information and understanding of pedagogy
• Faculty / staff / students
– Pedagogy
• Best practices
• Examples
– Nuts & bolts
Communication of information

3. Training & Capacity Building:
Institutional Effort
• Understanding “What is an ePortfolio”
• At VT, several ways to address and
communicate:
– ePortfolio Inquiry Committee (EPIC)
– Faculty Development Institute
– Grass roots/top down messages
– Student groups
– Local conferences

4. 8 Issues Central to Implementation
(Chen & Light, 2010)
1. Defining learning 5. Including multiple forms of
outcomes evidence
2. Understanding your 6. Using rubrics to evaluate
learners ePortfolios
3. Identifying stakeholders 7. Anticipating external uses
4. Designing learning of evidence
activities 8. Evaluating the impact of
ePortfolios

5. Conditions for Success
(Knight, Hakel, & Gromko, 2008)
• eP-based curriculum
• Feedback
• Include engagement and personalization
• Examples
• Time for development
• Faculty promote value of eP
• Technical assistance

6. Technical Assistance: Faculty
• Knowledge of best practices
• How eP fits into existing curriculum
• How eP fits within larger curriculum
• Conditions for Success
• Integrating class activities with programmatic
assessment
• Ability to help students push buttons (or have
someone else on hand to do technical training)

7. Technical Assistance: Staff
• Can be helpful to have staff in early
discussions and also very important to get lots
of staff feedback
• Staff we have worked with at VT
– Often do laborious data entry
– Often large quantities of uploads
– The people that actually use some of the more
tedious tools – good to get feedback and plenty of
training to make sure they are comfortable with
the technology

8. Technical Assistance: Students
• Peer Mentors! (get involved early and often)
• Lots of examples
• User guides
• Video tutorials
• In-class trainings
• Follow-up in-person meetings
• Open office hours
• Other offices on campus (i.e., Innovation Space)

9. Most Important Thing to Remember
with the Students:
• It’s not as much about the technology, it’s
about understanding a clear purpose behind
the ePortfolio…
• It needs to be *pedagogically meaningful*
• If you build a pedagogically meaningful eP
experience, the rest will fall into place

10. Some helpful VT links
• https://eportfolio.vt.edu/index.html
• https://eportfolio.vt.edu/training.html
• https://eportfolio.vt.edu/videoTutorials.html
• https://eportfolio.vt.edu/gallery/Gallery_Pres
entation/presentationgallery.html

11. Points to Ponder
• Where are you in terms of your eP
implementation?
• What are the current institutional efforts
within your organization? How might you
leverage them?
• What are current training options and how
might you leverage them?
• What sorts of training efforts do you still
need? (institution, faculty/staff/students, etc)

12. Contact Information
• Teggin Summers
• teggin@vt.edu
• 540-231-0982