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Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s leadership role in adapting electronic E-portfolios to sharpen its educational mission, broaden students' skills, improve graduates' job-placement rates, and give the institution better ammunition for proving its worth to accreditors is being highlighted in this week’s issue of
The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s top publication for higher education information.
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Teaching Professional Skills: James Hanson, assistant professor of civil engineering, is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education as one Rose-Hulman professor who has incorporated those professional skills into existing courses. He asked students in his structural mechanics class to consider ways of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. |
Senior Reporter Paul Basken points out that Rose-Hulman is one of a small but growing number of institutions using an old idea — the long-term compilation of student classwork — in a new computerized format that lets the college directly score student performance campuswide on a list of specific skills.
And now, as the Bush administration and Congress press colleges to do more to prove their worth,
many
institutions
are
following
Rose-Hulman's
lead as a way to provide quantitative proof of how they help students learn while keeping the right to define their own missions.
"Electronic portfolios are a way to generate learning as well as document learning," said Barbara Cambridge, a co-director of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research, which organizes case studies by participating institutions, told
The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Rose-Hulman's
e-portfolio
program
is
coordinated
by
Julia
Williams,
executive
director
of
the
Office
of
Institutional
Research,
Planning
and
Assessment
and
professor
of
English.
Hundreds of colleges use some type of electronic system for assembling and storing student work. But a few dozen,
The Chronicle of Education points out, acting without federal direction and with little other outside coordination, have developed more sophisticated versions that guide assessment and curriculum development.
Rose-Hulman, Basken reports, was one of the nation's earliest adopters of electronic portfolios and one of their most fervent advocates. The institute has designed three different versions of its own RosE Portfolio system over the past decade for its students to submit and store their class work and materials electronically.
“Rose-Hulman's 1,800 students learn traditional technical skills in such subjects as chemistry, civil engineering, mathematics, and physics,” Basken writes in the national publication. “The college has also established a series of ‘professional skills’ it wants students to master in areas that include leadership, teamwork, communication, and ethics.”
James Hanson, assistant professor of civil engineering, was featured as one Rose-Hulman professor who has incorporated those professional skills into existing courses. He asked students in his structural mechanics class to consider ways of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“But rather than calculate the optimal design for a new levee system, Mr. Hanson wanted his students to evaluate how various repair options might affect culture, economics, and public opinion in the storm-ravaged city,” Basken reported.
The Rose-Hulman administrators gather faculty members who volunteer to work in two-person teams to review students' electronic portfolios and determine how well the college did in each of 25 separate criteria that define the desired professional skills. The RosE Portfolio system allows academic department and faculty members to pursue a unified campuswide vision of what a Rose-Hulman education means, according to Arthur Western, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty.
The Chronicle of Higher Education points out that getting colleges to establish more systematic ways of setting goals and measuring their progress has been a key objective of U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. The secretary, in response to recommendations from her Commission on the Future of Higher Education, last year suggested a specific set of tests and other measures to judge and compare colleges. Under pressure from colleges, she later made clear that she believed each institution should define its own mission, as long as it developed clear methods for measuring that success.
Electronic portfolios give colleges that very opportunity, Cambridge stated in the article.
Joel
Anderson,
a
2007
civil
engineering
graduate,
was
originally
skeptical
about
the
effectiveness
of
the
e-portfolio
system.
However,
now
that
he
has
entered
the
job
market,
Anderson
told
The Chronicle of Higher Education
that he understands that Rose-Hulman was trying to promote qualities such as leadership, teamwork and ethical decision making that can help with his career.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
counts nearly 80,000 academics as subscribers and boasts a total readership of 350,000. The story is available for review at http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=xNks6bDkrnbmszrm5x6cMsJswtGtnQNb.
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