Some years ago, when I was teaching at a different CUNY school, a colleague and I were having students work on multimedia projects (in two different kinds of classes).  We thought we noticed that these projects deepened student learning in interesting ways, and we collaborated on a project to investigate how this was working and why.  (If you’re interested, you can see some of the progress of that investigation on the website we created, “Looking at Learning: Looking Together“).

There’s really just one part of that project that I want to emphasize for this unit, though.  In our investigation, my colleague and I found that we both shared a strong belief, really an assumption, that when students became aware of their own learning, it made that learning stronger and more permanent.  We both believed that it was a good thing to push students to reflect on what they learned in class or through a specific project.  We liked to have them look at their work, while they were doing it, and after they were finished, and write about what they were learning or what they had learned from that work.  We wanted them to look in the mirror by looking at their work, and see how that looking changed them.  In fact, we felt this so strongly that we even used the same principle in our own work, our own teaching.  We not only taught, but we talked and wrote about our teaching, and we believed, and we found, that that reflecting made our teaching better.  It deepened our understanding of what we were doing and it led us to make more conscious choices about how we were teaching.

This kind of reflecting is called “meta-learning.”  It’s learning (or thinking) about learning.  And “going meta” is an important part of what many teachers are beginning to value.  This is critical thinking, in some ways–but for students it’s sometimes not required or requested, even though they may do it anyway.  In this course, certainly, we’re doing plenty of it.  It’s sort of the theme of the course, learning about learning.  But how often do you do this in your other classes? How often do you take a moment (or more) to reflect, to think about what and how you’ve learned (or whether you’ve learned).  And do you share that reflection? Maybe with friends informally?

In most classes you’re probably asked to fill out an evaluation at the end of the course–and research shows that for most students if you ask them to fill out the evaluation after the first five minutes, or after the whole semester, the results are really pretty much the same.  Most students take that evaluation as a chance to say whether or not they liked the professor and the course, and many times that decision is already made very early in the class (a sobering thought for us professors on the first day of class!).

There’s nothing really wrong with that, in my view.  But I do wonder what we could get from a deeper evaluation, a more reflective evaluation, which students do by themselves, for themselves, and about themselves.  That might or might not be an effective tool for assessing the course or the professor.  But it might be a stellar tool for helping the student to direct and understand and deepen her own learning.  Possibly?

You are all working in this course in Macaulay’s eportfolio system.  And some of you also already have eportfolios of your own. And in fact, the concept of eportfolios is one that fits very nicely into this course and into this unit.  We use eportfolios at Macaulay in a lot of different ways–sometimes as blogs, sometimes as travel journals, sometimes as course websites, sometimes as complete learning management systems (like in this course).  There may be as many types of eportfolios as there are types of students and types of learning activities that students can engage in.

But there is a traditional view of an eportfolio–and a view (a different one, slightly) that connects to reflection, to going meta, to directing and understanding your own learning.  To learning to learn.

A portfolio is a collection of artifacts, a collection of objects, which demonstrate your skill or learning in a particular subject or over a particular period of time.  An artist has a portfolio, and in education, we started using the term for a kind of writing assessment.  During a writing class, students would take their best pieces of writing, polish them nicely, improve them through re-writing, and put those best pieces, with the earlier drafts, and a cover letter or some reflective piece, in a nice folder which they could submit at the end of the class.  It would give a bigger, better, picture of the student’s work and learning than just one exam or term paper could ever give.

An “eportfolio” (sometimes it’s “e-portfolio” or “ePortfolio” or even “digital portfolio” or “d-portfolio”) was an electronic, online version of that folder.  The concept then expanded to include more than just one class, or more than just one type of assignment.  Think of the box of your old school papers and report cards and drawings and clay birds that your mother might have in a closet or a basement or a cupboard.  You could go look through that box, and show it to other people, and pull out the best work, and explain what it showed about you and your learning.  And the “e” version of that just makes it easier to show and explain and organize and reorganize.

You can read more about how we at Macaulay wanted to expand this idea even further–by thinking of the eportfolio as a cabinet of curiosities or the “museum of me” (I mean you).  I won’t repeat that here–read it on the main eportfolio site, if you haven’t yet. Your eportfolio (and it’s OK if you haven’t built it yet–or you started it and then took a long pause–it’s a process, and it continues from whenever and wherever you start, without ever being really “finished”) is a museum of you, and you can continue to add to it, and show it to other people, and walk through it yourself, as long as you’re a Macaulay student and (we hope) even longer than that.  An eportfolio is a place to collect the artifacts (maybe not the right word, but it’s better than “evidence,” which is the term that is often used for eportfolios.  “Artifacts” are things that you make, “evidence” is something that you leave behind–and it makes me feel like you’re a criminal) of your learning.  You collect them as you create them.  And you reflect on them–you explain to yourself or others, what they mean and show about you and what you’re learning.  And you present them to other people: your grandmother, your graduate school admissions committee, your prospective employer.

Have you got your eportfolio started yet? Maybe this is a good time to give some thought to how you plan to build it.  Or maybe it’s just going to grow, when the time comes, without a plan.  Sometimes the best museums might just grow that way.

Like Sharon and Jacquie, I’ve also grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family. My mother was raised Modern Orthodox, and my father with no religion at all, and both eventually turned to the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle instead. Because of that, I was raised in an environment where I was always comfortable asking any sort of questions and with a tolerance for irreverence, and I was therefore sent to schools with the same ideals.

The school where I spent third grade through twelfth grade was the one large ultra-religious, all-girls school in my neighborhood, so they had no choice but to accept all kinds of students. I don’t know how much any of you know about Orthodox Jewry, but there are many divided sects that come into conflict elsewhere, and they all came together in my school. There was no real judgment there, not when we’d all grown up together. We had a strict uniform in school, but no one really minded when we were younger, and by the time high school came around, we’d all found ways to express ourselves through accessories and makeup (which was against the rules, but that stopped no one). I never really cared much, and it actually took me a long time to adjust to being in schools where I had to have a new outfit every day.

In elementary school, we had a double curriculum, in which we learned Jewish subjects (we called them “Hebrew classes”) and normal, secular subjects. In the mornings, we studied things like the Hebrew language, Bible classes, and Jewish laws. After lunch, we covered math, science, grammar, history, and all the other standard subjects. I developed a healthy love for all of it, whether Hebrew or English.

In junior high, things changed quite a bit. While before then, we’d only had two teachers- one for Hebrew classes, one for English- now, we were departmentalized with different teachers for different subjects. While before then, the teachers were viewed as distant authorities, no matter how “nice” they were, now we were encouraged to build relationships with our teachers. We joked around with them in class as we reached our teenage years; I guess that it was because we had decided that we were old enough now to carry on mature conversation with our teachers. Classes went more in depth and questions and philosophical discussion were as common as simple text-based lectures. We also put together many presentations and activities based on what we’d learned.

High school took this a step further. Most of my teachers were respected members of the community, and many took on a “mentor” role for students. There was a potpourri of teaching styles, as is common in any school, but we were generally encouraged to ask questions and we were given satisfactory answers. One thing my school did lack, though, was many options for English classes. We took the requirements and there were few classes beyond those, not including Advanced Placement courses. We were encouraged to go to college, but they wanted us to get through it as quickly as possible, so only non-Regents courses through which we could get college credit were offered. (I understand that the new principal has changed that, though, and there are now many other courses offered, but that was after my time.) I was fortunate- the principals encouraged me to skip several English classes and take all my twelfth grade courses a year early, so by the time that I was a senior, I was able to take only Advanced Placement courses, and permitted to take several extra ones on my own.

After high school, I spent a year abroad in Israel, in a Hebrew studies program that really emphasized introspection and individuality above academics, even though we did have a six-day week with more class time than ever before. That year really was about understanding myself and where I wanted to go with my life, and I probably learned more then than I did during any other school year.

Now, I’ve been in Brooklyn College for almost two years, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I love the variety of classes in particular- I’ve been able to take classes on everything from Japanese to counseling to Harry Potter! I do miss the Hebrew subjects, though, and I’ve encouraged my family to engage in absurd Bible trivia games at the Sabbath table so I can still enjoy them.

Interestingly, I think my enjoyment of certain subjects faded once I took them in school and turned fun into work. Now that I no longer study physics, the Bible, philosophy, or even math, I love discussing them and reading books about them during my downtime. Although there are some classes that have increased my interest in subjects (for example, I didn’t like philosophy or Harry Potter until I took class on them), I’m generally happiest when I’m learning on my own, via the internet or even a debate with my brother. And when I’m happy, I learn best.