E-portfolio Assessment System for an Outcome-Based Information Technology Curriculum

Currently colleges and universities are facing a number of problems, including ill designed curricula that do not address demands from the job market. There is also tremendous pressure from society on academic institutions to provide an education that results in guaranteed employment, especially given the soaring price of higher education. Currently, a number of academic institutions are facing the problem of grade inflation, which has resulted in the grade point average (GPA) model losing its value (Mansfield, 2001). Therefore, academic educational institutions are looking for alternative ways to provide an education that attracts students in a highly competitive world. Several US academic institutions have adopted the outcome based educational model to move away from the GPA driven model. Furthermore, accreditations organizations (such as North Central Association of Colleges and Schools) are requiring academic institutions to present a method to assess students' learning outcomes, particularly in the general education courses. The purpose of this study is to report on lessons learned from the early stages of implementing an e-portfolio assessment system using an outcome-based information technology curriculum. As a college requirement, students need to develop an e-portfolio to showcase significant work and demonstrate progress toward achieving college learning outcomes. The student e-portfolio includes a variety of digital artifacts such as projects, term papers, or case studies. The e-portfolio assessment system was developed to facilitate the assessment of student work. This system includes a repository of student work, faculty assessment criteria, and course specific learning outcomes, and allows faculty to post comments on student work. Students can then review their work and decide whether to include it in their e-portfolios. The College developed an alignment model to map all learning outcomes into courses of the curriculum. In this model, significant assignments are embedded in IT courses and are used to measure the achievement level of a particular outcome(s). In their final year, senior students present the latest version of their eportfolios to a faculty panel and explain their choice of each piece of evidence and how it links to one or more college learning outcomes. It is anticipated that with time, student e-portfolios will become an important source of information for the College to evaluate the effectiveness of learning outcomes across the curriculum.