Abstract:
So-called High-Impact Practices (HIPs) are high-impact only when planned and executed thoughtfully, with attention to the relevant literature and the wisdom of experienced practitioners. After decades of experience with most HIPs, and national recognition for several, in 2016, IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) undertook to create a series of HIP taxonomies describing the features needed to ensure that a given HIP experience will be truly high-impact. In 2018-2019, a committee of IUPUI HIPs and ePortfolio practitioners and experts convened to develop a similar taxonomy for ePortfolio, the most recently recognized HIP and one with which IUPUI already had nearly two decades of experience. In this Occasional Paper, we discuss the history of ePortfolio at IUPUI and what we came to understand about effective ePortfolio practice; the purposes of the taxonomies and of the ePortfolio taxonomy in particular; the development process for the taxonomy; our use of the ePortfolio taxonomy for professional development; and the attributes of high-impact ePortfolio practice that we identified, based on the growing literature on ePortfolio and on our campus and individual experiences. In the taxonomy and this paper, we emphasize the need for ePortfolio to be central to curricular design; embedded in pedagogies that support integrative learning and identity development; developed in concert with explicit instruction on “ePortfolio making”; and assessed holistically and in alignment with desired learning outcomes and experiences. The paper concludes with a case study from IUPUI’s Philanthropic Studies B.A. program, which discovered through its own ePortfolio work many of the same principles and practices reflected in the taxonomy and the literature.
