Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Blackboard's Dream

Blackboard is coming out with a new Assessment/Accreditation tool. Currently called “Caliper” this may have an interesting impact on the current e-portfolio tools available.

There are some e-portfolio tools that are simply a way to let students share ‘stuff’ online. This is Blackboard’s current model. Then there are the custom-made tools such as Connecticut’s ePortfolio tool which is goal-centered. The two bigger commercial ventures, stand-alone portfolio systems including TaskStream and LiveText, offer assessment and accreditation support.


Students first.
Let’s not mince words. ePortfolios are first and foremost a way for students to share their work. It’s also a way to organize and save their work.

ePortfolios can also be a way for instructors to view the students’ work. This may or may not include assessment (grading).

Lastly, it’s a way for institutions to collect data – for assessment and accreditation purposes.

Is this a be-all end-all or an e-portfolio system? What's at the: Student level; Faculty level; Institutional level?

Other vendor notes: I'm hearing lots of talk about elgg, which is being used w/ WebCT module, Moodle's module, and some campuses talking about Oracle - heard only six campuses nationwide have that.

No comments: