The Project As Originally Conceived

Given the interdisciplinary nature of University Studies, the fact that it extends from the freshman through the senior year, and that a large number of students enter the curriculum at different points, providing a structure and occasions for integration is critical to student learning. A significant part of increasing the integrative learning in University Studies is an expansion of the student e-portfolio. To carry the expansion beyond the freshman year, we understood that we needed a generally accessible system that can work over time and for transfer students. Initially, first year students created website-based e-portfolios. There was no system that allowed students to continue their e-portfolios past that first, yearlong course. We were also interested in asking students, as they progressed in their education, to demonstrate their learning in the goals of general education as it appeared in work and experiences from other parts of the curriculum as well as from life and from extra-curricular activities. In other words, we were trying to create a system that would allow students to integrate their learning from their lives both inside and outside of the classroom and among the courses they took for general education, with their major and as their electives.

Project Timeline—and Confounding Events

During the two years preceding the formal conception of this project in 2004, several groups of faculty, mentors and students had worked on proposals to improve integrative learning in the middle portion of University Studies. The ideas that came out of those groups went to the University Studies Committee (the policy and curriculum committee for the program) for discussion and revision. The ILP plan was then presented and discussed at the University Studies Fall Retreat at the beginning of the 2004-2005 academic year and expansion of our use of e-portfolios got underway. At the same time another discussion was initiated by the Acting Provost, Michael Reardon. The ideas he presented in a white paper on undergraduate education were discussed in various units across the university. This discussion resulted in the appointment of a University Studies Review Committee that worked during the 2005-2006 academic year and issued a formal report in April 2006 that contained a number of suggested reforms, several of them far-reaching in their implications for the Program. Among the recommendations was creation of a Faculty Senate committee, the University Studies Council, to take over oversight. The Council will begin its work in fall 2006. The future and specific nature of the e-portfolio project awaits the deliberations of the Council.