Tips and Sips: the first ePortfolio Happy Hour!

Tips and Sips: the first ePortfolio Happy Hour!

Around 3:30, faculty and staff started entering the Poolside Café for an afternoon of presentations on ePortfolio. Instead of encountering the standard LaGuardia event with cookies and coffee, the faculty and staff encountered a room buzzing with pleasant conversations, a bar stocked with bottles of red and white wine, and amazing guacamole (that was only a small part of the impressive spread.)

When the ePortfolio Happy Hour started twenty minutes later, people were directed to one of two large screens and were introduced to the incredible work of faculty that use ePortfolio in their courses and programs. At one end of the café, Dr. Thomas Onorato of Natural Science showed his clever use of the Comments feature to create an advice column “Dear E. Coli” where students researched diseases.

Dr. Joni Schwartz then displayed her use of the technology for deep reflection in her course. On the other side, Dr. Clarence Chan exemplified how ePortfolio has become an integral part of his program, while Dr. Mercedes del Rosario introduced the audience to the course management system features of Digication. The finale consisted of Dr. Dominique Zino and me featuring the conversation feature in peer review and quiz creation respectively.

Throughout the semester, faculty is reminded to deposit artifacts for assessment, instinctively connecting Digication with assessment. The ePortfolio “Tips and Sips” event opened the attendees’ mind to expand their view of ePortfolio as a technology that enhanced their pedagogy.

The happy hour also captured the fun, collegial atmosphere at LaGuardia Community College where we all work together to discover and share new ways to engage students with various forms of knowledge.15285745339_7300268b7a_z_okada