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For students, faculty and administrators at the College of General Studies, Boston University
For students, faculty and administrators at the College of General Studies, Boston University
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*Students can see their work accumulating and developing
*From brief reading responses
*To drafts of longer papers
*To longer papers that bring together readings and reflections from two or more courses
*To the final group-written, 50-page Capstone project
*
*The rubric gives students the critical apparatus they need to think analytically about their work and to make their development visible to them
*It provides a critical framework for professors’ assessment of students as well
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• And to see interdisciplinary connections they may not have noticed otherwise.
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*A study at Tunxis Community College shows an increase in retention rate of nearly 20% among students with 3 or more eportfolio classes
*52.7% retention rate for non-eportfolio students
*71.4% for students with 3 or more classes using eportfolios (Connect to Learning forum).
*
*Weekly reading responses provide a “window into” students’ reactions to readings and stimulate discussion (Stefanakis)
*Reading responses often reveal a better quality of student writing and can be expanded into longer papers
*Eportfolios reveal the individual’s participation in group work
*Faculty can see students’ progress (for grading, letters of rec., etc.)
*
*Using 100 randomly selected eportfolios *And the rubric *And an assessment sheet we’ve developed
(below) *And a team of faculty getting summer stipends
to do the assessment, thanks to the Davis Educational Foundation
*We can analyze qualitative and quantitative data on our students’ learning at CGS
*
*We can determine which competency areas students improve in most and least
*And the % of improvement
*And correlations between these scores and gpas and SATs
*Plus the students’ and faculty’s qualitative comments
*All of which enables us to determine areas for improvement in curriculum and pedagogy in order
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*Thank you to the Davis Educational Foundation for faculty stipends and travel money!
*For more information, visit our website:
www.bu.edu/cgs/center-for-interdisciplinary-teaching-learning
