Steve Kerby
OMDE 608: 9040
December 8, 2003
1,996 words sans title and references

A Digital Portfolio Initiative as Key Strategy for Improvement of Online Learner Support Services for Santa Fe Community College

INTRODUCTION

Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) of Gainesville, Florida offers enough online classes for a student to get an Associate of Arts (AA) degree completely online in all five academic departments: Creative Arts, English, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Fox, Hartge, Kerby, Ramirez-Wales, and Staut (2003) report that the overall retention rate for students in AA programs is 62%. Although there are no public statistics for retention rates for students who take only online courses, it is expected that the percentage is even lower. Further, as the institution continues to grow in its online offerings (and thus, more and more students do not come to campus), it is becoming increasingly difficult to offer online students support and/or a sense of SFCC community.

This paper will suggest a major learner support initiative aimed at students working on an AA degree online. This support initiative, an Online Digital Portfolio Program (ODPP), is designed not only to increase retention rates by promoting community among the students and continuity among the classes, but also to (a) build learner-centered assessment/learning options and (b) provide the support culture of SFCC the opportunity to manage (monitor) the progress of its online students, so as to support them on an as-needed basis.

ELEMENTS OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM

SFCC offers its campus-based students a full array of traditional support services, including academic advising, library, special services, tutoring, and a comprehensive guidance and counseling program. However, these traditional services are designed primarily for the campus-based student and not easily accessible via Open Campus, their online Portal (Fox et al., 2003).

Currently, there is no institution-wide portfolio program.

ELEMENTS OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

The Basics:

1. SFCC should institute a Digital Portfolio requirement to each AA degree taken online.
2. Student Support Services should "own" the process of managing the infrastructure, building the support community and providing assistance (guidance, counseling) as necessary.
3. Departments and/or individual classes should "own" the process of assessing content and direct the support staff to provide instructional (tutoring) assistance as necessary.
4. Each department should determine its own set of standards around which students must build their portfolios. These standards could be discipline specific, or could be structured around the department's mission and/or goals.
5. A digital portfolio component should be added to all online classes in the concentration. Ideally, these components should be learner-centered, project-based assignments and coordinate with other classes as much as possible.

The Support Classes:

1. Each department would have its own separate, online, self-paced (but monitored) non-credit, but required, Online Digital Portfolio Support Class (ODPS), with three primary goals: (a) to support the digital portfolio process, (b) to support student learning, and (c) to build a sense of community among all online students in the department.
2. The ODPSC would include all online students in the department (an online student should be defined as any student taking more than half of his/her classes online in any one given semester) and be monitored by student services representatives and a rotating group of faculty.
3. These classes would offer technical help and instructions, as well as digital portfolio strategies and examples.
4. One key objective of the classes would be to nurture student independence in a cooperative/collaborative community of learners.
5. The classes would be a side-by-side component to the student's entire time of study in the program, lasting from two to four years. The student would remain a member of the class until at least five semesters in a row have passed without her/him registering for an online course.

Additional Details:

1. SFCC should license or purchase an ePortfolio Web-based authoring and hosting program, so that all students, regardless of technical ability, will have the opportunity to present their portfolios to the SFCC community via a simple point and clink content management system. This will solve most of the technical problems of building folders, FTPing, and learning HTML.
2. All online students should automatically have an online digital portfolio shell on the student Intranet. It would be up to the student to upload the content as the semesters progress and/or as classes require them.
3. Students should have the ability to "turn on" or "turn off" the portfolios availability beyond the SFCC community (i.e. make available to www).
4. The support classes would also include a series of Discussion Boards and Online Chat rooms, where students could ask questions, get advice and guidance, not only on the development and presentation of online portfolios, but also on any matter regarding online learning.
5. When a student is having trouble, faculty should notify appropriate counseling, mentoring, and/or tutoring staff. The portfolio would provide the context for the support staff to help the student.
6. Some policy of enforcement should be instituted. It is suggested that no student can get a degree with more than 30 hours online without presenting a final digital portfolio. The portfolios can be assessed on pass/fail basis, similar to a writing proficiency policy.

RATIONALE FOR THE INITIATIVE

1. Community and Cooperative Learning.

Research suggests that the existence of learning communities not only increases students' persistence in courses (Bruffee, 1993; Dede, 1996), but also can significantly contribute to the learning experience and promote more positive attitudes toward learning (Wellman, 1999). Johnson, Johnson, and Smith (1998) provide an overview of the research and rich theoretical base of cooperative learning and make a compelling case for its implementation in college instruction.

The point of putting portfolios online is to make a student's individual work available to the learning community. This availability not only provides a context for advising and help, it also makes a major contribution to the learning community and encourages students to do higher quality work.

2. Learner Independence and Scaffolding.

One key strategy for encouraging and supporting student independence has been the methodology known as scaffolding. Pressley, Hogan, Wharton-McDonald, and Mistretta (1996) define scaffolding as "providing assistance to students on an as-needed basis with fading of assistance as their competence increases" (p. 138). Traditionally, this methodology has been used in the classroom setting. McLoughlin (2002), however, has written extensively on scaffolding in the online environment, offering design guidelines that support learning and foster independence. These guidelines include orientation, coaching, task support, problem definition, reflective thinking, and feedback from peers and mentors.

"The most important point about scaffolding," McLoughlin and Marshall (2000) claim, "is that it engages the learner actively at his/her current level of understanding until the point where the support is no longer required (para. 9). A Digital Portfolio initiative can do just that--not just encourage students to analyze, synthesize and reflect on their own learning, but do so in a community of support, where faculty, mentors, and peers have a window into their performance and an opportunity to interact and provide support on an as-needed basis.

A Digital Portfolio initiative as outlined above not only can implement the kind of guidelines McLoughlin describes, but also can add coherence and continuity to the entire program, integrating the classes and functioning even more effectively as a "scaffold."

3. Learning Styles and Constructivism.

Garrison (1993) and Tam (2000) both offer research overviews and balanced perspectives on constructivism in the context of distance learning. Both argue that it is no longer sufficient to provide distance learners with pre-packaged instructional materials, but, rather, we should focus more on student choice on how they want to learn.

By placing students more in charge of their assessment and performance, a digital portfolio initiative would be a methodology of instruction that supports a variety of individual learning styles and a constructivist approach to learning.

It is hoped that a by product of a digital portfolio support initiative would be to encourage faculty teaching online classes to offer more varied types of learner-centered assignments and to implement course-based portfolio assessments.

4. Know Your Learners.

Granger and Benke (1998) state that the "overarching lesson for every aspect of distance learner support is: Know your learners (p.2).

A Digital Portfolio initiative would make students' work available for review to the campus instructional and support community. What better way could an institution of instruction and support "know" its students than to have digital access to their work and progress?

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY & SUGGESTED TIMELINE

A portfolio initiative could not be implemented without first going through the Faculty Senate (see Fox, 2003). The basic strategy would be to petition the Faculty Senate to appoint an ad hoc committee to research, plan, and implement a one year digital portfolio pilot program for one of the five AA departments. Once the pilot program is under way, it should evaluated, revised as necessary, and, if appropriate, implemented more broadly among the other four departments.

It is strongly suggested that the pilot project be conducted by the English Department, since the Composition program supports writing as process and since there is a long history of portfolio assessment in College English programs.

January 2004	Propose to the Faculty Senate that the Executive Council appoint an nine member Ad Hoc Committee--called Digital Portfolio Review Committee (DPRC)--to be composed of two faculty from the English Department, two faculty from other departments, two representatives from Student Support, one liaison member from the Budget committee, one liaison member from the curriculum committee, and one instructional designer.
February-March.	The committee should: (a) examine existing digital portfolio programs at other colleges, (b) examine Web-based ePortfolio authoring/hosting systems, and (c) determine costs. Note: Since SFCC is currently reconsidering its online learning platform, this committee should consult with the officials making those decisions, since both Desire2Learn and Blackboard systems offer ePortfolio authoring solutions.
April	Request to the budget committee the necessary budget line for one support personnel in Guidance and Counseling (with technical skills and an educational assessment background), and, if necessary, the budget line for an ePortfolio authoring program (such as Chalk and Wire)
May-June	Search and hire the support personnel Acquire the software, if necessary Give heads up to System Administrator for rostering and ePortfolio building needed in August English faculty begin syllabus review, so that each class in the department offer one assignment designed specifically for the portfolio
July-August	New hire build the support class English Dept. build the templates (structured around appropriate standards) System Administrator set ePortfolio software (or database scripts if necessary) to create portfolio shells for all students taking online classes in fall '04 System Administrator set database scripts to roster all online English AA students in a support class
September	Begin the adventure
September, 2004- May 2005	The committee should monitor the progress and conduct formal evaluations via student surveys and focus group meetings

COSTS

The DPRC should determine how to address costs. It is likely that most of the infrastructure required could be paid for in existing budget lines (i.e. a Desire2Learn or Blackboard Enterprise package.)

It is expected that the Guidance and Counseling arm of Student Support Services would need to hire at least one additional person per department. This person would, essentially, manage the support class and oversee the department's portfolio process.

Faculty time can be handled by a course release formula (i.e. one semester's release for two semesters class monitoring).

CONCLUSION

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there is far more to student support services in Online and Distance Learning institutions than admissions, registration, counseling, career services, and a good library. Robinson (1995) suggests that we need a theory of learner support that includes curriculum, course design, and interaction. Rumble (2000) argues that we should rethink the whole structure of the university and put the learner at the very center of all support services. Granger and Benke (1998) argue that academic institutions must discover students' needs and take them into account in course design and delivery.

Santa Fe Community College has an opportunity to build a new generation of learner support, one that will not only build community, increase retention, and provide support services with a "management window" into student achievement, but also one that is centered around instruction, involves course design and student interaction, and one that puts student learning at the very center of the support process.

REFERENCES

Bruffee, K. A. (1993). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Dede, C. (1996). The evolution of distance education: Emerging technologies and distributed learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 10(2), 4-36.

Fox, B., Hartge, B., Kerby, S., Ramirez-Wales, D., and Staut, J. (2003). Case study: Santa fe community college. Unpublished manuscript.

Garrison, D. (1993). A cognitive constructionist view of distance education: An analysis of teaching-learning assumptions. Distance Education, 14(2), 199-211.

Granger, D., & Benke, M. (1998). Supporting learners at a distance from inquiry through completion. In C. C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education (pp. 127-137). Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing.

Johnson, D., Johnson, R. & Smith, K. (1998). Cooperative learning returns to college. Change Magazine, 30(4), 26-35.

Pressley, M., Hogan, K., Wharton-McDonald, R., & Mistretta, J. (1996). The challenges of instructional scaffolding: The challenges of instruction that supports student thinking. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, (11)3, 138-146.

McLoughlin, C. (2002). Learner support in distance and networked learning environments: Ten dimensions for successful design. Distance Education, (23)2, 149-162.

McLoughlin, C., and Marshall, L.  (2000).  Scaffolding:  A model for learner support in an online teaching environment.  In A. Herrmann and M.M. Kulski (Eds.), Flexible Futures in Tertiary Teaching.  Proceedings of the 9th Annual Teaching Learning Forum, 2-4 February, 2000.  Perth:  Curtin University of Technology. 22 paragraphs. Retrieved October 28, 2003 from http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/confs/tlf/tlf2000/mcloughlin.html

Robinson, B. (1995). Research and pragmatism in learner support. In F. Lockwood (Ed.), Open and distance learning today (pp. 221-231). London: Routledge.

Rumble, G. (2000). Student support in distance education in the 21st century: Learning from service management. Distance Education, 21(2), 216-235.

Tam, M., (2000). Constructivism, instructional design, and technology: Implications for transforming distance learning. Educational Technology & Society, (3)2, 72 paragraphs. Retrieved on October 27, 2003 from http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_2_2000/tam.html

Wellman, B. (1999). The network community: An introduction to networks in the global village. In Wellman, B. (Ed.), Networks in the Global Village (pp. 1-48). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.