D. Technology and Commentary

	School	Software used	General Comments	Opinions	Caveats
	Allegheny College		Anecdotal student response has been positive. In its first year, many juniors and seniors indicated that they would have appreciated a similar process to assist them with making choices. The students in the first cohort to go through the program are now in their junior year. In conversation, most identify one or more aspects of the planning process that were very helpful to them and other aspects that they did not find to be helpful. However, the assignment that one student found most helpful often turns out to be the same one that the next found to be least helpful. Once we have completed a more systematic assessment, we may consider how we might better match assignments to student needs.	Initially, faculty opinion was mixed at best. My sense is that faculty attitudes have improved markedly as we gained experience with the process, began to reap the benefits as advisers, and heard more from the students about its positive outcomes. We intend to more systematically address the faculty's response to the planning process in our assessment.
	California State University, Monterey Bay	Relies heavily on David Kolb's learning styles model for student and faculty activities. Students write about three primary pieces: reflection, guiding principles, and an action plan based on the reflection and guiding principals. Lists of "probing questions" get students started thinking about those 3 content areas. The main software programs are Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver.	Salary surveys and testimonials from students, faculty, and employers are very positive. Employers love to look at the portfolios as part of job interviews, especially those involved in technology. Faculty rarely talk about grades--focus is on improving student performance.	Very pleased with the results. Starting salary for new grads is well above average, and we attribute that to the portfolio process.	Very labor intensive. Requires a great deal of collaboration among colleagues. Students often ask for faculty to read portfolio entries before they are given to the "grading" faculty member or an employer.
	California State University, Sacramento	TOO SOON TO RESPOND TO THIS. WE WILL BEGIN USING IT IN OUR PLANNING PROCESS IN THE UPCOMING ACADEMIC YEAR			See also individual department portfolios at http://www.csus.edu/portfolio/program.htm
	Dartmouth College	Kerberos/SideCar. Portfolio security tied to student e-mail account	Students report better preparation in completing applications, cover letter writing and interviewing. Students also report identifying competencies needing development.	Very pleased with making it available to students, given the pace of the college environment and the lack of self-assessment and senior preparedness	Though developed to be accessible any time of day/night, students saying they don't have time to complete it.
	EFA (Amsterdam Faculty of Education)	The students use Frontpage to make pages, more advanced students use other editors. There is also a password protected informationsite with examples which is www accessible	General results: On our website (http://portfolioinfo.efa.nl )you can see some examples of first year students (our website--which is still under construction--is in Dutch as well as in English). The infosite contains some manuals which tell you more about our ideas about the portfolio and the way to handle it.
	Elmhurst College	Students start with paper documents, then convert them to web pages using Netscape Composer or Adobe Page Mill	See examples on web site. The examples are from a simple exercise with chemistry students.		This may be a bit ambitious. Perhaps make it 1/4 credit per year, not per term. We are still trying to decide how to institutionalize the program.
	Elon University	Frontpage	Students, employers, and faculty like having resumes online. Many faculty are looking forward to using the reflective aspect win their courses		Students need help creating effective reflection
	Florida State University		Since development has taken much longer than anticipated, pilot testing is still underway. Results of initial user trials are very positive; students are excited about it and want to use it.
	Gateway Community College	No specific software used, but we do provide an instruction booklet to students		Students like knowing they have storage space, but they aren't using it again. Faculty opinion is mixed. They think it's a good idea, but don't take time to introduce it into their classes. Institutional opinion: the administration is supportive of it because they see how it could help with institutional assessment, but I don't think it is a priority	I wish I could get the faculty to require this of their students and I wish it was more user-friendly so students could easily sign on. Right now, it's a multi-step process (logging on as a different user, using an assigned id, dropping assignments into folders, and logging back on to the computer station)
	Georgia State University		Please see the web site http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwupp/ for in-depth information		Institutional documents, eg Strategic Plan, Annual Action Plans, Departmental Self Studies, etc.
	Hobart and William Smith Colleges	PortfolioAcademy.com, LLC's PortfolioAcademy System
	Illinois State University	The system runs from a central server that handles multiple universities with multiple departments and multiple faculty members. Each institution appears as if it is the only one using the system, but assignments and activities can be shared among institutions. The first version of the system appeared on the Web in early 1995.
	Indiana University		My portfolio is so new that I have yet to see any results. The best aspect of it so far is that it provided me a forum for reflecting and engaging my teaching in a way I never would have without the discipline of the portfolio. Colleagues and students have looked at it, but I have not yet received any critical feedback of the project. I continue to hope that those interested in teaching will read my portfolio and respond with thoughtful criticism		The one thing I wish I had done differently would be to plan assessment techniques into my class before writing the portfolio. I didn't decide to put the portfolio together until I had already finished teaching the class. The result was that I had no classroom assessments to refer to in my portfolio. When I revise the portfolio after teaching the class again, I should be able to refer to some CATs that I will incorporate into the course.
	IUPUI School of Liberal Arts		We have been working at this for more than three years, but it always reached a plateau prior to actual pilot and implementation. This year it looks set to go for the pilot.	Faculty have many concerns. They generally applaud the notion of student portfolios maintained by students. However, they have many concerns about using them for assessment of curriculum, teaching, and even learning. How will entries be validated and not later changed by students, for example? How is the institution protected from inappropriate entries in the portfolio? How are faculty's rights protected? Students' rights? Etc. Institutional opinion: the administration sees value for students, faculty, the institution, and community stakeholders in these portfolios.	As the incoming chair of this committee, I would play down what the administration wants and let faculty ideas, concerns, and questions play a stronger role earlier on. I am doing that now, but it has taken some backtracking to achieve that. Finding the balance between institutional needs and faculty needs has been the main challenge.
	Kalamazoo College	Students create web pages using Netscape Composer (not a great program, but it's free and cross-platform) and store them in their personal web/email account. Each student gets 5mb of space, which is more than enough, since few students add sound or video.		The first class required to make portfolios hates them. This doesn't surprise us much--we implemented the program so quickly, we were rather disorganized in how we presented it to students (and advisors, for that matter). Subsequent classes of students are much more receptive. Some advisors think the Portfolio is the best thing since language was invented, and some think it's too "touchy-feely." We are in the process of reviewing the program to see what changes we might make to address the chief complaints about the portfolio: vague goals, uncertainty about what to do with the "Five Dimensions," and the amount of time it takes advisors.	We assumed the portfolio would change the structure of advising naturally. We should have made efforts to reform advising first (moving from "scheduling classes" to "helping students make good educational choices"), then introduced the portfolio. We are also unclear how effective the Five Dimensions (Lifelong Learning, Intercultural Understanding, Social Responsibility, Leadership, Career Readiness) will be as a long-term organizing structure. They might just need more time to be worked into campus culture.
	Longwood College	FrontPage 2000		Too early to tell. Students are just being informed about this program. The institution is requiring that all departments provide a portfolio to students.	There has been some resistance from faculty/staff to develop this program due to time constraints, limited budget, amount of staff time to maintain program, etc. The Career Center also has the same constraints.
	Lynn University	A portfolio manual was printed for all freshmen level students. A web-page LUDP site in now in the process of being developed.

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