Next steps and new directions

Returning to ETS as a faculty fellow this summer has been a natural next step for me. Last summer I worked with an amazing group of designers and developers that included Brad Kozlek, Chris Stubbs, and others. We spent time contemplating the potential of blogs as e-portfolio, discussing and developing tools and templates to support the professional growth of learners while allowing for program assessment, and dreaming-up a mechanism to capture a "moment in time" in the e-portfolio space without interfering with users' work flow. There were a number of successes along the way, such as the adoption of the blogging platform as the primary e-portfolio tool at PSU and a pilot project with Schreyer Honors College students and their advisors. I undertook two pilot projects with education majors in 2008-09. My goal now is to synthesize what was learned from these initial efforts and to explore new problems of practice that were revealed along the way.