By Bianca Chan, TLS staff writer
You may be seeing a lot more of Carleton’s electronic portfolio system being used in courses this year. After its three-year pilot period, cuPortfolio is now fully supported campus-wide.
If you’re not yet familiar with the tool, cuPortfolio is a student-centered learning tool that provides a venue for students to collect and showcase pieces of their work electronically over the length of their program or course. Students can also reflect on their work and their learning, which helps to make connections between their work, experiences and accomplishments.
While many professors have adopted the tool at the undergraduate level, one professor at Carleton has been using it solely for her master’s- and PhD-level courses. Sarah Todd, a professor and graduate supervisor in Carleton’s School of Social Work, is proving that cuPortfolio is just as valuable for graduate students.
“I really like the way that students can use the tool to address their interests, while at the same time, providing us with content that helps with program evaluation,” Todd says. “When a tool is able to align institutional and student interests, it is interesting for me.”
Todd works primarily with graduate students who have the prospect – and burden – of looking for a job after graduation. She says that cuPortfolio is “a good tool to facilitate students doing their own thinking of how what they are learning in class is relevant to their career.” Since graduate students are quite serious about linking their education to their careers, she says, cuPortfolio is an ideal tool for them especially.
The graduate professor who teaches practice skills and advance theory in social work uses the application in two distinct ways in the master’s program. One, she says, “is to use it as a tool to have students craft themselves as theory-informed practitioners.”
The other is at the PhD level where the portfolio acts as a platform for the students to develop a framework to collect artifacts of their teaching, research and general professional development.
“At the end of their degree, they are well positioned to apply for academic jobs,” she says.
And from the students’ perspective? Generally, Todd says her students have really appreciated her use of the tool. It has helped them focus on the ways in which their education can be made relevant for the job market, she says, and has helped them in the job search process as well.
To learn more about cuPortfolio and hear other instructors’ perspectives on how it can enhance the student learning experience, visit the cuPortfolio instructor peer support site.