The Transcript is not really for students or employers, but for the faculty, and the registrars as agents of the faculty, said Tom Black, Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs and University Registrar at Stanford University, during the presentation "Exploring the Challenges of Connecting Student ePortfolios to Meaningful Transfer Credit" at AACRAO's Annual Meeting. Citing telephone technology as an analogy, the basic function remains the same as it was a century ago, but the way we use it and how we interact with it is drastically different. Arguably, the traditional transcript is due for such a change.
Ken O’Donnell, Senior Director for Student Engagement and Academic Initiatives and Partnerships at the California State University Office of the Chancellor, talked about the Compass Project in California, where it should be so easy for students to transfer credit from community college on to the CSU or University of California system (even prior learning assessment is taken into account). But without an engaging modular platform on which to base it, it is hard to keep those students. It is, at the very least, one possible explanation for the lackluster performance, especially amongst first-generation students.
Helen Chen, the Director of ePortfolio Initiatives in the Office of the University Registrar at Stanford University, presented on the success of using ePortfolios for those transfer students to connect in more meanigful ways with the faculty and staff at Stanford. The holistic layout and interface has received a lot of positive feedback in its pilot phase: read more here.
Terrel Rhodes, Vice President for the Office of Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), has been working extensively with faculty to develop tools that are more useful to both students and employers; making the student’s work, not the amount of spent in class, the basis for their degree attainment. But he knows that registrars are influential in how such assessment would be implemented. ePortfolios provide a potential framework for recording and disseminating competency-based learning.
Terrel mentioned there are nine states engaged in the “Quality Collaboratives” project to determine a framework for the transfer of such assessed competencies. Keep an eye out for it on AAC&U’s website.
And they all agreed that an ePortfolio would make this easier on student and employer – they could look at the work they did as it pertains to the classes they took and immediately identify the skills and abilities that were developed. As an added benefit, with articulation benefits in place, students could be more engaged and thus more likely to transfer and finish.
Please Save the Date:
AACRAO’s Technology and Transfer Conference is the leading venue for charting the course towards student success in higher education. The Conference will take place July 6, 7 and 8 at the Marriot Harbor Beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.