The ePortfolio planning project will be a collaborative effort among five  CIEL institutions to more fully conceptualize (e.g. develop a sequence of actions that tie our investments to our intended results) and plan the comparative study refining and using the following objectives:

• Organize portfolios around the progressive mission of each institution utilizing  learning outcomes or courses such as the PC “competencies,” AC “abilities,”  or the Daemen College (DC) “learning matrix” and informed by the VALUE rubric project.
• Share current practices between institutions and learn from each other to enhance student learning and institutional success
• Share practices that allow CIEL institutions to have better accountability to multiple stake holders (e.g. campus leaders, professional and regional accrediting agencies, parents)
• Improve students’ ability to track formative self-assessment and summative assessment for deeper learning
• Develop and deploy rubrics to improve self-reflection and self-assessment practices for students and faculty to track progress, measure learning at appropriate benchmarks, demonstrate learning, build exemplars for later employment, etc., of uploaded artifacts
• Explore consistency of use within CIEL institutions (shared measureable outcomes such as integrated learning) in order the do comparable data sharing and conduct comparable research
• Research, join and track current national conversation – AAC&U and AAEEBL (AAC&U ePortfolio workshops and AAEEBL meeting in Jan or Feb.)
• Document CEIL experiences and preliminary conclusions to propel the discussion forward for all CEIL and other institutions already engaged in ePortfolio use.
• Explore methods of faculty development and evaluation through the use of ePortfolios
• Create exemplars for assessment strategies for both institutional review and student learning including alternatives to using traditional grades
• Create best practices specifically for progressive institutions that have a limited use of letter grades, use narrative transcripts, and document integrative and experiential learning through an authentic capstone experience or other performance/project based assessment
• Present and disseminate results at national conferences

Project partners have surveyed current practices, including the extent to which ePortfolio use has been incorporated at their institutions, as well as associated issues and goals within each institutional setting.  The participating institutions have shared their concerns and challenges and three institutions attended the ePortfolio forum at the 2012 AAC&U meeting.  The planning grant from the Teagle Foundation will bring faculty members and institutional researchers together to plan a multi-year project that combines research by faculty from partner schools with a comparative study of the very distinct pedagogical and reflective practices that define CIEL schools. One product of the study will be the identification of strategies for the integration of ePortfolios into pedagogy for other non-CIEL schools and the dissemination of these strategies through the CIEL website, national presentations and other publications.