The Catalyst E-Portfolio: Using Assessment to Shape Enterprise-Wide, Learner-Centered Technologies
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- Presentations and Seminars
- Author(s) and Contributors:
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Author(s): Tom Lewis Scott Macklin
- Source(s) and Collection(s):
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Presentation(s): ELI Meetings
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Abstract
In 1998, the University of Washington decided to commit significant resources to the Catalyst Initiative, a university-wide, scalable program to help all UW instructors integrate technology into their teaching. The initiative includes a suite of 10 online tools developed in-house and an informational Web site to support the use of these tools, all created through extensive and iterative consultation with UW faculty and students. In 2000, UW founded the Program for Educational Transformation Through Technology (PETTT) to investigate the use of educational technology and its effect on learning. PETTT initiated several projects to evaluate the impact of Catalyst Web Tools on student learning, including:
- Campus-wide surveys and focus groups of instructors and students to assess technology use and determine future needs.
- An experimental study of a large lecture class using Catalyst Web Tools.
- Assessment of the use of tools in instructors' courses and their impact on student learning.
The goal is to create a coordinated campus-wide approach to assessing teaching, learning, and technology to transform the development of Catalyst Web Tools, the support for teaching with these tools, and, ultimately, the way students learn. These efforts have led to the Catalyst Portfolio, an online tool that allows students to collect, annotate, arrange and display a variety of digital "artifacts" that illustrate their accomplishments throughout their university careers. Catalyst Portfolio also enables UW instructors, advisers, and career counselors to lead students through a process of reflection on their experiences and to help them choose the artifacts that show their best work. This session will describe our research and assessment methodologies and the results of our evaluation projects, and how these fed the iterative development process behind Catalyst Portfolio. We will also share preliminary results from a new study of more than 3200 freshmen to see how Catalyst Portfolio can be best used to transform student learning.