Faculty Help for Teaching Portfolios

Decision Point 1    Decision Points Two & Three    Student Teaching Supervisors     Resources

The digital teaching portfolio is an integral part of the introduction to education course. As part of the common components that all intro courses share, the digital portfolio is introduced and the foundation for future development begins. Without a solid foundation, students often find developing effective reflections and rationales for each artifact difficult in following courses. By using common definitions for each of the terms in red in the previous sentence, we can help students to develop a common understanding of what we are asking them to write and create.

Reflections: what students believe the INTASC principles mean, often including knowledge, dispositions, and performances; usually one to three well-structured paragraphs; each student writes a reflection for each INTASC principle and dates the reflection within the portfolio page;

Rationales: the written statement students use to justify why an artifact is included in the portfolio; links the artifact to an INTASC principle and explains why the student believes the artifact fits with that principle; usually one to two well-written paragraphs;

Artifact: any item taken from your course that represents the student's best work; each is linked to at lease one INTASC principle, but may be linked to more than one INTASC principle, but a rationale supporting each INTASC selected must accompany the artifact;

Digital portfolios also share a somewhat common structure. Minimally, students create a home page, ten INTASC pages, and an artifact section. The current relational portfolio model, developed by students in cooperation with the CTE / iStudio, prepares students to better represent their understanding in a non-linear way. The picture below represents the structure we suggest students use. Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors may still use the non-relational model, but may choose to move to the relational portfolio model.

View a former student's relational model portfolio at decision point 4.
(This resource is located in the CTE site.)

To make teaching the portfolio easier for decision point one faculty the portfolio support staff (undergraduate and graduate students) will visit your classroom to teach the technology (RapidWeaver) to your students. Minimally, we suggest three classroom visits -

1. one to introduce the software and create a single entry page for all future websites,
2. the second to introduce the structure of the portfolio and begin working on those pages, and
3. finally a visit to finalize the reflections and artifact(s) for decision point 1.

In addition, we also offer one or two 10-15 minute question and answer sessions either at the beginning of the class time or near the end.

To make things flow as smoothly as possible, we strongly urge you to have your students download Rapidweaver and Fetch and to have set up their iWeb account prior to our first visit. This will enable the portfolio support staff to present several of the skills needed during the second and third visits within the first visit so that students can practice before the second visit.

In addition to the in-class support, the step-by-step instructions for each day's visit are contained within the "Start Creating Your Portfolio" section, linked to the home page of the portfolio site. Direct students who may be absent or who miss steps to this site and then refer them to TC 709 portfolio support staff.

Please contact Penny Craig, digital portfolio support manager, via email (pcraig) to schedule your classroom visits!

Decision Points Two, Three and Student Teaching Supervisors

For decision points two and three faculty, the portfolio support staff will also visit your classroom on the day(s) you work on portfolio development. Simply schedule your desired date and time with Penny. If your students are developing video artifacts and need support for those skills, contact Dr. Matthew Stuve (mjstuve) for help from the CTE iStudio staff.

For students who truly need a great deal of help or for transfer students who need to begin their portfolio, we suggest making individual half hour appointments with the portfolio support staff so that someone will be available during their preferred time. We do not schedule appointments during midterm week or the last three weeks of the semester.

Student Teaching supervisors can schedule all or a portion of any of the seminar days in TC 709. Portfolio staff will be available during your scheduled time to help your students with portfolio development. In addition, we offer evening hours specifically to support student teachers. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, portfolio staff are available until 7:30 PM for walk in support.

Step-by-step instructions for using RapidWeaver for student teaching portfolio development are included in the student teaching section of the portfolio support site. This area also includes explanations and examples of student teaching portfolio structures. Student teachers may also make individual appointments for portfolio help by contacting the portfolio staff via email (portfolio@bsu.edu).

In addition, the portfolio support staff offer two Saturday open lab times each semester. Use the link to "Workshops" below to view the dates and times for the workshops being offered this semester. We ask that student teachers register so that we can ensure that enough staff are avaialble to help those who attend. These are open lab times of which students may attend all or any part.

We also encourage faculty to make an appointment or drop into TC 709 to discuss changes to artifacts or portfolio structures or simply to explore possibilities. Email Penny Craig (pcraig) or the portfolio support staff (portfolio@bsu.edu) if you want to schedule a specific time.

Please contact Penny Craig, digital portfolio support manager, via email (pcraig) with questions or concerns.