A new an improved ePortfolio TLPDC website.
The Website Editing Process
The Homepage
The first thing that I did was reorganize the arrangement of links on the node/ePortfolio homepage. I came in with the eye of a student and one of the first things I noticed was the first link available for anyone to see was the ePortfolio committee members link. This seemed very anti-pedagogical as it wasn’t giving the audience what they needed to learn.
Student Resources Page. I first edited the student resources section. The initial student resources page read like a page telling faculty what students needed to know. It was not speaking to the student.
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As I worked on this, the context of use was foregrounded in my mind. My thought was that the website was probably going to be assigned and would be mandatory for students to read and use as a resource. Nonetheless, they still needed to be invested in it. Students will invest in something if they understand how it benefits them in the real world (andragogy).
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One of my struggles was trying to give students what they needed and what I believed the institution thought they needed to know. As I stated earlier, much of the text on this page was not speaking to the student. I added a section on why ePortfolios were useful from the perspective of students and added links to posts speaking about other graduate’s experiences. I also emphasized the other ways students might create ePortfolios by listing 5 different kinds of free tools for creating ePortfolios as well as links to samples ofePortfolios that were created with those tools.
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While I understood that the Blackboard tool was the institutional focus, I also wanted students to be able to use tools they were already familiar with. Universal design learning values meant that I had to highlight more than one option for creating ePortfolios. However, I did add a section on the advantages of Blackboard. I did not however list the advantages of the other free tools as I thought they were obvious (and mostly to protect the school’s financial decision to use Blackboard). The chief advantage for other tools being that other tools are more aesthetically pleasing, and sharing is relatively easier as you can just provide a link that reflects your changes whenever you edit the portfolio (unlike blackboard).
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I also explained the components of an ePortfolio and why employers need to see those components, beyond just listing it (It was just listed before).
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I also added a video tutorials section so that the page could be more complete and focused on the student’s entire need.
In styling it, I used chunking design principles by creating sections, using bullet points, white space and jump/anchor links connected to a table of content that I added to the top of the page in order to facilitate easier webspace movement.
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Faculty Resources Page. Based on the text on this page, I immediately noticed that the faculty resource section was geared towards department heads and faculty. As a result, I decided to create a new page for department heads; the Departmental Considerationspage. I realized early on that part of the process was convincing department heads to use ePortfolios, and so I thought they needed something specifically for them.
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Overall, the page seemed very abstract when it came to providing actual resources for faculty. The name of the link promised to deliver faculty resources but fell short. I added some more articles to the page and created several subsections such as the faculty tutorials subsection. I also did some more research into the sources in order to add some information to explain further what each source was about.
I also added a video tutorials section so that the page could be more complete and focused on the instructor’s entire need.
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I also chose to use citations to refer to these texts (hyperlinks included as well of course) as opposed to just the title because faculty understand how citations work. If it were the student page, I would have just used the title of the articles.
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I co-opted texts from other pages using content management strategy centered around the following topics;
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What are ePortfolios?
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Advantages of ePortolios
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Articles about ePortofolios (Teachers like to read and write articles and would probably love to develop their own writings on this experience, hence the inclusion)
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Types of ePortfolios
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In styling it, I used chunking design principles by creating sections, using bullet points, white space and jump/anchor links connected to a table of content in order to facilitate easier movement. I also created an Other Linkssection at the end of the page so that faculty and departmental heads can traverse other pages easily.
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Office of Planning and Assessment Student ePortfolio page. This page represents a partnership between the Office of Planning and Assessment and the TLPDC. As a result, even though it repeated information about ePortfolios, I couldn’t remove it. Additionally, I couldn’t change the name much, so I chose to improve it. I edited it to instead say “Office of Planning and Assessment onStudent ePortfolios”.
Portfolio Assessment page. This page was initially just a list of links without hyperlinks in some cases, and no blurbs. This was also the case with the Practice and Pedagogy of Portfoliospage. I created a page with both pages consolidated and added a link in the departmental consideration and faculty resources page, named Practice, Pedagogy and Assessment of Portfolios. I also edited the pages to include blurb and links as necessary.
Additionally, on the main page, I changed the “e-learning and Academic Partnerships tool” link name to “TTU Blackboard support page” as it was essentially just that. It was the actual Blackboard support page. It repeated information that we will have under student resources, but I consider the TLPDC page to the page on ePortfolios. The links on the Blackboard support page are also old and outdated so it won’t be very much useful, but leaving it there will help support the idea that the TLPDC ePortfolio page is the node on all things ePortfolios.