ePortfolios for Leadership Identity Development with OSP:
Some Very Preliminary Findings
Darren Cambridge
George Mason University
Lives We Lead
• Three-year project at George Mason University
• Co-curricular leadership portfolio development using Open Source Portfolio
• Research as part of the third cohort of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research
I/NCEPR
• Institutional research teams examining the impact of electronic portfolio practice on learning
• 46 institutions in four cohorts • Third cohort focuses on student affairs -academic
affairs collaboration• US, Canada, England, Scotland, Netherlands • Book to be published by Stylus in 2008
Methodology
• Design research – Intervention design informed by theory – Evaluated for effectiveness and contributes to
further development of theory
• Grounded theory– Collaborative coding of portfolio, video, and
interview data by inter-disciplinary team – Theoretical sampling
Leadership theory
• Leadership Identity Development – Based on research on undergraduate student leaders at the
University of Maryland– From positional leadership to multi-dimensional perspective
• Identity • Relationships • Community
• Evidence in leadership portfolios– Leadership portfolios in Ohio high schools – Products, reproductions, attestations
Theories of Reflection
• Kolb’s stages of reflection – Description– Analysis– Judgment– Planning
• Yancey’s types of reflection – constructive reflection – reflection-in-presentation
Program Design
• Semester-long, co-curricular portfolio keeping experience• Three face-to-face, day-long meetings • Faculty, staff, and peer mentors • Students who self-identify as leaders and students who
don’t, first-year to graduate student• Sequenced use OSP tools with r-smart CLE
– Hierarchical wizards– Matrixes– Portfolios
Beginning of Semester
• Expanding thinking about evidence
• Reflective writing in response to selections from a large number of prompts
• Organized around identity, relationships, community
• Hierarchical matrix
Mid-semester
• Reconceptualizing as leadership
• Organizing evidence and reflections in relationship to shared conceptual framework – Matrix thinking
• Matrix
End of Semester
• Presentation portfolio for an audience of their choice
• Identity, relationships, community, future directions
• Portfolio using template
Very Preliminary Findings
• First iteration ended in May 2007 • Analyzed so far
– Evaluation surveys – Selected final portfolios
• Coding of additional portfolios, video data, and conducting interviews with students through December 2007
• Key themes in student leadership identity, rather than impact of portfolio process
Evidence, Audience, and Mentoring
• Despite honorarium, significant lack of retention (From 33 to 16)
• Broader conception of and new value placed in evidence in relationship to leadership-related activities
• Strong sense of pride in final product • Peer mentoring invaluable
– Mirrors research as LaGuardia and other I/NCEPR campuses
Strong Perceived Impact
Strengthened ability to connect learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom
73%
Stronger sense of self as a leader 87%
Stronger awareness of my leadership potential 88%
Enhanced awareness of how to present ideas to different audiences
75%
More confident in ability to use reflective practice for self-discovery and learning
82%
More confident in my ability to use electronic environments for my learning
87%
Greater awareness of how to select evidence that demonstrates my learning
100%
From Position to Integration
• Students see their identities to be inseparable from multiple kinds of relationships and community memberships – Family relationships, friendships, academic and professional
community membership – Navigation between cultures and putting them into conversations– Portfolios as a sight of integration
• Shift from positional definition of leadership to grounding in this integrated network
• Mirrors findings of research in eFolio Minnesota and LaGuardia
Academics as Test of Self
• We intended for curricular content to be an central source of evidence and ideas and strategies, but it didn’t show up this way
• Class work functioned as– A demonstration of character virtues– An experience – A goal putting aspiration towards those virtues in action
Steadfastness
• Consistency of commitment over time seen as a central leadership virtue– Tenacity, perseverance, patience, follow through– Standing up to opposition and peer pressure– Essential to ability to create change
• Much more prominent than persuasiveness • Spirituality and family key arenas for
demonstrating steadfastness
Change
• While steadfastness is central, so is change • Leadership requires growth • Students universally embraced change as
both a personally and societal goal • Local and global, but very little in between
Evidence
• Primarily reproductions and attestations • Symbolic rather than persuasive • Heuristics for reflection
Questions Moving Forward
• How do students who self-identify leaders and those who don’t differ?
• Why is course content not see as relevant, and how might we change that?
• Do the ways students use evidence match the expectations of their intended audiences?
• In terms of developing leadership competence, how important is self-identification? Does it matter when we call it leadership?
• How well do the different OSP tools support the development process?