This document outlines a pilot project to implement eportfolios across a justice center program to improve assessment of program outcomes. The goals are to make outcomes more measurable, coherent across courses, and visible to students. Research shows eportfolios provide evidence of student learning over time through demonstrations of work. The project will develop appropriate outcomes, integrate them into coursework through assignments, and collect artifacts in a justice program eportfolio template. Challenges include getting student and faculty contributions and demonstrating learning across courses over time.

1. Program Learning Outcomes
Eportfolio Pilot Project
Justice Center
Ronald S. Everett
Deborah K. Periman

2. Project Goals
• Use Evidence-Based Practices to:
– Improve Justice Center Program Assessment
– Improve Coherence and Measurability of Program
Outcomes
– Improve Program Coherence and Content: Engage
Faculty in Linking Outcomes to Course Content and
Student Assignments
– Make Program Outcomes More Visible to Students:
Increase Student Engagement in Learning

3. Research Supporting Eportfolios
• Accountability in university education increasingly rests not on what an
institution offers students, but on convincing evidence that students are learning.
• “Assessment goals and objectives should focus on ‘what students will be able to
demonstrate that they know, believe, and can do . . ..’” (N. Buzzetto-More, The E-
Portfolio Paradigm: Informing, Educating, Assessing, and Managing with E-
Portfolios, 208 (2010).
• Eportfolios provide immediate access to content/capacity to include audio/video
demonstrations of student work/activities. Id.
• Eportfolios are “especially effective when they are part of an ongoing assessment
process from the time students enter a program until they complete their
studies.” Id.
• Implementing eportfolios in multiple courses in a program provides a highly
visible indicator of whether the curriculum is complete/cohesive or whether
there are gaps or redundancies that should be addressed.

4. The Heart of the Eportfolio
Developing Appropriate Integration of SLOs into Core
Outcomes Curriculum
• Keyed to Program • Faculty identify SLOs when
Mission and Content developing course content
• Measurable • Link course assignments to
• Develop SLO’s measures specific SLOs
across multiple courses • Develop multiple measures
within courses

5. Developing Outcomes-Based Assignments
• Gaining faculty buy-in
• Assignment coordination
• Assignment assessment
• Artifact collection
• Student permissions
• Artifact retention

6. Considerations in Platform Selection
General Considerations Platforms Evaluated
• Faculty Learning Curve • Maraha
• University Support • Adobe
• Student Learning Curve • PowerPoint
• Student Access • (LiveText at Brandman
• Portability University)

7. Justice Program Assessment Portfolio

8. Justice Portfolio Content
• Program History and Mission
• Program Outcomes
• Outcome Measures
– Student Portfolio
– Graduate Survey
– Graduate Exit Exam
– Course Artifacts
• Assignments and Evaluation Rubrics
• Student course work
– Graduate Focus Groups

9. Paralegal Studies:
Portfolios within Portfolios
• Program
Assessment
Eportfolio
• Student Outcomes
Eportfolios as
Artifacts of
Program Eportfolio

10. UAA Legal Studies Program
Assessment Portfolio

14. Student Outcomes Portfolios

18. Template or No Template?
• Considerations
– Faculty burden: easier to
design or write clear
instructions
– Student frustration vs.
creativity
– Locked format vs.
flexibility in format
– Instructional Goals:
Paralegal soft skills

19. Faculty Reflections: Benefits
• Program/Faculty • Student Benefits:
Benefits – Outcomes visible at outset
– Highlights gaps or – Link coursework to
personal/academic development
redundancies in program
– Prepared to discuss strengths in
– Provides focal points for graduate or employment
developing assignments interview
– Allows insights into – Skills artifacts collected/readily
displayed or submitted with
student integration of
applications
instruction

20. Faculty Reflections: Challenges
• Student Contribution • Faculty Contribution
– Accumulating artifacts – Thinking about SLOs
across courses and over when designing courses
time – Developing specific
– Identifying courses and measures of SLOs
specific SLOs – Making SLOs explicit to
– Demonstrating learning students

21. Eportfolio Resources
• Links from Dr. Helen Barrett: • The Association for
Alternative Assessment & Electronic Authentic, Experiential and
Portfolios Evidence-Based
– http://electronicportfolios.org/portfolios/book
marks.html Learning, http://www.aaeebl.org
– links to student career portfolios
http://amby.com/kimeldorf/portfolio/
– portfolio use for assessment
http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuid
es/admuses.html
– Truman state analysis of senior portfolios --
http://assessment.truman.edu/components/p
ortfolio/CH14_2008.pdf [good!]
– Kansas state eportfolio resources
http://www.joandominick.com/pocketeportfoli
o/intro.html