1 / 20

ePortfolios for Leadership Identity Development with OSP: Some Very Preliminary Findings

This study explores the use of Open Source Portfolios for leadership identity development through co-curricular portfolio development. Preliminary findings reveal key themes in student leadership identity and the impact of portfolio processes.

alecg
Download Presentation

ePortfolios for Leadership Identity Development with OSP: Some Very Preliminary Findings

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. ePortfolios for Leadership Identity Development with OSP: Some Very Preliminary Findings Darren Cambridge George Mason University dcambrid@gmu.edu

  2. Lives We Lead • Three-year project at George Mason University • Co-curricular leadership portfolio development using Open Source Portfolio • Research as part of the third cohort of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research

  3. I/NCEPR • Institutional research teams examining the impact of electronic portfolio practice on learning • 46 institutions in four cohorts • Third cohort focuses on student affairs -academic affairs collaboration • US, Canada, England, Scotland, Netherlands • Book to be published by Stylus in 2008

  4. Methodology • Design research • Intervention design informed by theory • Evaluated for effectiveness and contributes to further development of theory • Grounded theory • Collaborative coding of portfolio, video, and interview data by inter-disciplinary team • Theoretical sampling

  5. Leadership theory • Leadership Identity Development • Based on research on undergraduate student leaders at the University of Maryland • From positional leadership to multi-dimensional perspective • Identity • Relationships • Community • Evidence in leadership portfolios • Leadership portfolios in Ohio high schools • Products, reproductions, attestations

  6. Theories of Reflection • Kolb’s stages of reflection • Description • Analysis • Judgment • Planning • Yancey’s types of reflection • constructive reflection • reflection-in-presentation

  7. Program Design • Semester-long, co-curricular portfolio keeping experience • Three face-to-face, day-long meetings • Faculty, staff, and peer mentors • Students who self-identify as leaders and students who don’t, first-year to graduate student • Sequenced use OSP tools with r-smart CLE • Hierarchical wizards • Matrixes • Portfolios

  8. Beginning of Semester • Expanding thinking about evidence • Reflective writing in response to selections from a large number of prompts • Organized around identity, relationships, community • Hierarchical matrix

  9. Mid-semester • Reconceptualizing as leadership • Organizing evidence and reflections in relationship to shared conceptual framework • Matrix thinking • Matrix

  10. End of Semester • Presentation portfolio for an audience of their choice • Identity, relationships, community, future directions • Portfolio using template

  11. Very Preliminary Findings • First iteration ended in May 2007 • Analyzed so far • Evaluation surveys • Selected final portfolios • Coding of additional portfolios, video data, and conducting interviews with students through December 2007 • Key themes in student leadership identity, rather than impact of portfolio process

  12. Evidence, Audience, and Mentoring • Despite honorarium, significant lack of retention (From 33 to 16) • Broader conception of and new value placed in evidence in relationship to leadership-related activities • Strong sense of pride in final product • Peer mentoring invaluable • Mirrors research as LaGuardia and other I/NCEPR campuses

  13. Strong Perceived Impact

  14. From Position to Integration • Students see their identities to be inseparable from multiple kinds of relationships and community memberships • Family relationships, friendships, academic and professional community membership • Navigation between cultures and putting them into conversations • Portfolios as a sight of integration • Shift from positional definition of leadership to grounding in this integrated network • Mirrors findings of research in eFolio Minnesota and LaGuardia

  15. Academics as Test of Self • We intended for curricular content to be an central source of evidence and ideas and strategies, but it didn’t show up this way • Class work functioned as • A demonstration of character virtues • An experience • A goal putting aspiration towards those virtues in action

  16. Steadfastness • Consistency of commitment over time seen as a central leadership virtue • Tenacity, perseverance, patience, follow through • Standing up to opposition and peer pressure • Essential to ability to create change • Much more prominent than persuasiveness • Spirituality and family key arenas for demonstrating steadfastness

  17. Change • While steadfastness is central, so is change • Leadership requires growth • Students universally embraced change as both a personally and societal goal • Local and global, but very little in between

  18. Evidence • Primarily reproductions and attestations • Symbolic rather than persuasive • Heuristics for reflection

  19. Buncencia Seabreeze’s Portfolio

  20. Questions Moving Forward • How do students who self-identify leaders and those who don’t differ? • Why is course content not see as relevant, and how might we change that? • Do the ways students use evidence match the expectations of their intended audiences? • In terms of developing leadership competence, how important is self-identification? Does it matter when we call it leadership? • How well do the different OSP tools support the development process?

More Related