Poster Session

Assessment: How Surveys and ePortfolios Make a Difference in University Settings

  Martin Sandler, Assistant Director, Assessment
  Paul E. Fisher Jr. Director
  Mary Zedeck , Instructional Designer, TLTC, Seton Hall University

Assessment Provides Useful Data for Campus Technology Initiatives:

• Effective planning for teaching and learning with technology requires a firm grasp of academic enterprise practice, curriculum design for integrated learning outcomes, and managerial decision-making based on assessment initiatives that include ePortfolio deployment, rubric assessment, and survey research.
  
• By means of coordinated measurement, outcomes research provides evidence of ongoing process improvements that instructional designers, academic, and student affairs professionals can put to work in building a community of engaged learners.
• Two projects are examined whereby assessment, ePortfolios, rubric development, and survey research provide actionable data to chart outcomes for improved practice and integrative learning.
  

Teaching and Learning with Technology Survey:
A spring 2008 survey explored student use, attitudes, preferences, satisfaction, and perceived benefits of information technology in part based on principles of undergraduate practice of Chickering & Gamson (1999). Principal Components Factor Analysis was conducted. Ten scores with Cronbach reliability coefficients between .68 and .89 were computed. Structural Equation Modeling will follow. I/NCEPR - International/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research: This project explores the deployment of ePortfolios to a university wide cohort of freshman that included a subgroup of at-risk and lower academically prepared learners.

For the Student well structured freshman ePortfolios can provide a “place” to reflect on University experiences. For the University ePortfolios provide a source of information to explore student success and stem student attrition (Sandler, Easterling & Zedeck, 2008). A structural equation model is featured explaining persistence/retention with a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or lower.