Call for Proposals -- AAEEBL 2012 Annual Conference
ePortfolios as a Catalyst for Connections:
Celebrating the Curious, Creative and Capable Learner
July 16-19, 2012
Boston, MA
New submission deadline: February 20, 2012
The AAEEBL2012 Program Committee invites you to submit a proposal for a session on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, July 16-19, 2012 in Boston, MA. All session and poster presenters must register for the full AAEEBL conference.
All proposals will be submitted online. Be certain that all information is correct because part of what you submit will go verbatim into the printed program. Spell names correctly, and identify affiliations accurately and in full: Names and academic affiliations will appear in the program the exact way they were submitted online. Make sure to include all session leaders along with correct email addresses. Since email will be used for conference communication, it is essential to be accurate.
All proposals must be submitted by midnight US (Eastern time) on February 20, 2012. When you submit your proposal, email notification will inform you that your proposal has been received. Accepted speakers will be invited by email to present by March 26, 2012. All email correspondence will take place with the primary presenter. In some cases, we may find your proposal desirable but needing some clarification. We will notify you if this is necessary.
Conference registration will open shortly after the program is finalized so you can register and reserve your hotel room.
3 Session Options:
- 25 minute Snapshot Session -- 15 minute presentation; 10 minute Q&A; 5 minutes for transition to next session leader. There will be 2 Snapshot Sessions per 60-minute time slot. The 2 sessions can be proposed separately.
- 60 or 120-minute workshop (or similar) session -- 120 minute workshops will straddle two time slots and will therefore have a break between the first and second halves.
- Poster Session -- We are highlighting poster sessions this year in the program. These will have their own time slot. (We expect to include about 30 poster sessions.)
The program committee may, in some cases, coordinate with you to change the session type that you propose. The AAEEBL 2012 Program Committee will make all decisions to ensure a quality program. Proposals will be accepted on the quality of the proposal and the perceived interest and value.
Your proposal will consist of two parts:
- A 50-word maximum program text that will serve as the description of your program to conference participants. Please make sure that this description is exactly the way you want your session to appear in the printed program.
- The 150-word maximum session description that the Program Committee will read to accept your proposal. Do not use the same wording as in your program text. Instead tell us:
- Why attendees will be interested in this session.
- How you will engage attendees during the session
- What your learning objectives or goals are for the session.
- How this session will add to our understanding of eportfolio practices or implementations.
Session Tracks and Theme
Select one of the following four tracks in the form below. Use the bulleted topics listed under the tracks below as ideas for your session. In most cases, the track you choose will be your track if your proposal is accepted. The Conference Committee may change track assignments if the proposal warrants such a change.
Track Introduction
For the AAEEBL2012 Conference, the following tracks will serve as lenses through which participants and presenters alike can view the curious, creative, and capable learner. These tracks are initially intended to aid the conference committee as proposals are reviewed for inclusion in the 2012 event. They will also serve participants as they plan and navigate through their AAEEBL conference experience. While designed for these purposes, the tracks listed below are not intended to limit the eportfolio discussion, and a broad range of proposals associated with the broader eportfolio narrative are invited. As examples, proposals regarding faculty development, technology management, policy, and other topics are encouraged; however, during the submission process, authors are asked to select the most relevant track below within which to submit their proposal.
Track 1: Documenting Learning
In our changing world, the ability of learners to document what they know, understand, and are able to do and how they know what they know is becoming increasingly important. Documenting learning in an eportfolio is a way for learners to explore and reflect on their knowledge by asking critical questions about where and how their knowledge was derived. They also provide learners with an opportunity to make connections between their learning experiences, and to decide what to learn next. This track invites you to share the ways that students are documenting learning and how instructors are promoting this practice in your context. eportfolio tools which have proven to be particularly useful for these practices may also be addressed.
Topics proposed under this track may include but are not limited to the use of eportfolios as a tool for:
- Documenting student learning (including in contexts outside the traditional academic course, program, institution) in authentic and creative ways.
- Designing highly effective teaching methods/practices.
- Providing time and space for reflection on learning experiences.
- Creating spaces for knowledge transfer and deep learning.
- Incorporating a variety of feedback and assessment methods.
- Designing faculty development programming to support documenting learning.
- Documenting learning to demonstrate capabilities or competencies and the different types of evidence that support such documentation.
- Supporting and providing evidence of program and/or institutional outcomes.
- Change or transformation of learning and/or teaching through documentation.
Track 2: Assessing Learning
How do we know our students are learning? Educational institutions from kindergarten through higher education are trying to figure out the best ways to answer this question. What is missing for many institutions is the assessment of the standards (outcomes) and competencies that have become the framework of teaching and learning. ePortfolios are being used to evaluate students’ knowledge, skills and abilities acquired through both formal and non-formal instruction. Do we have evidence that eportfolios help construct more capable learners? This track invites you to share your strategies and innovative approaches regarding eportfolio use to assess learning.
Topics proposed under this track may include but are not limited to:
- Strategies employed at your institution for generating, gathering and analyzing evidence for the ways eportfolios strengthen outcomes and assessment.
- Best practices in assessing the effects of eportfolios on student learning
- Learning-centered assessment practices associated with eportfolios
- Evidence-based assessment practices associated with eportfolios
- Best practices in assessing Gen Ed competencies associated with eportfolios
- The long term impact of eportfolios as a tool for student success (from their first year experience through a capstone experience)
- Assessing the impact of the “e” in eportfolio use
- The impact of various types of feedback (formative, summative, peer) in the eportfolio
- Faculty development activities that support accurate evaluation of student work (e.g. inter-rater reliability, use of a common set of rubrics)?
- Should reflection be evaluated?
- What does it mean today to be a competent learner? What skills are essential now that were not essential a decade ago?
Track 3: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
As strategies, pedagogies, approaches, and practices associated with eportfolio become more widely adopted, there is a significant need for the verification of such practices through research. AAEEBL encourages engagement in such inquiry and is specifically seeking presentations that provide evidence of the efficacy of current and emerging practices associated with eportfolio. While focus groups, surveys, and rubrics are often used in eportfolio research, a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies are welcomed. Those who submit proposals via this track category should include a description of the methodology employed in their research. Data analysis techniques, results, and a conclusion describing the importance and relevance of the findings should be included as well.
Topics proposed under this track may include but are not limited to research into the following topic areas:
- Learning gains associated with eportfolio usage
- Longitudinal studies considering student growth associated with eportfolio usages
- Learner self-efficacy associated with eportfolio engagement
- Rubric development and scoring methodologies
- The impact of feedback in eportfolio settings
- The efficacy of reflection in eportfolio settings
- Workforce expectations regarding eportfolio
- The value the private sector places on eportfolios during the hiring process
- Under what conditions are eportfolios effective to foster critical thinking, integrative learning, etc.?
- Evidence-based best practices associated with eportfolio management and adoption
- Explications of research practices associated with eportfolio research
Track 4: Life-Long and Life-Wide Learning
Many electronic portfolio initiatives seek to create or strengthen connections between different stages of learning: K12 to postsecondary education, associate to baccalaureate, baccalaureate to graduate, high-school or college to employment, specialized training back to formal schooling, and individual pursuit of professional and personal interests. Similarly, eportfolios can help learners of all ages connect the concurrent as well as continuing aspects of their learning: a student’s curricular to co- and extra-curricular learning, an employee’s training to educational preparation, professional learning to the learning derived from pursuing avocational interests and service. How can we work with employers, professional bodies, and other educators to create environments and inculcate practices that will help strengthen the connections in important transitions? We invite proposals for sessions to engage conference participants in exploring specific ways to realize that potential.
Topics proposed under this track may include but are not limited to:
- Enabling learners to identify connections among different sources of their own learning
- Educational transitions from high school to college, associate to baccalaureate, undergraduate to graduate formal education
- Vocational transitions from high school to work force, postsecondary to career and professional identity, and back
- Using eportfolios for prior learning assessment
- Working with employers and professional bodies to craft eportfolio structures useful to them as well as to students
- ePortfolio roles in fostering creativity by expanding learning horizons
- ePortfolio practices that not only demonstrate capability but also develop it (such as learning how to develop and grow a professional identity)
- How eportfolios themselves might change as learners move through various transition points
- How eportfolio development differs from, or might connect with, the use of social-media profiles
- Policy questions of ownership (does the eportfolio belong to the learner, to the institution or company, or to a commercial provider of the environment? who “owns” what content? where do FERPA and HIPAA become issues? what about faculty intellectual property?)
Other relevant information:
1. All session and poster presenters must register for the full AAEEBL conference.
2. Presentation set up:
- We will develop a program that includes presentations in 8 rooms and poster sessions near the registration area with roughly 30 poster presenters.
- Poster presentations will be a prominent feature at the conference, and attendance will be encouraged by a nearby refreshment/break set-up. About one-third of accepted proposals will be included as poster sessions. The poster location will be prominent, times will be included in the printed program, and plenary sessions will open with reminders about the poster sessions.
- All session rooms have a video projector, microphone(s), and wireless Internet access. Presenters will need to supply their own laptop. Plan accordingly. If you plan to have your workshop attendees (60 min-long session) logging into the wireless Internet, please specify that clearly in your proposal so we can add an access point in the room you are assigned to.
3. We are also continuing the trend toward more informal, interactive sessions:
- Most rooms will be set up in the round or with tables to enable high-impact conversational sessions.
- Presentation displays on the screen will help to focus discussion, not to support lecture. Design your slides accordingly. Presentation slides should , for example, prominently feature discussion questions rather than points to be read aloud.
- All sessions, even 25-minute sessions, must be planned to allow close to 50% of the time for open Q&A.
- 60 min workshops should be designed for maximum interaction and be consistent with a workshop atmosphere.
4. For the purpose of consistency in the printed program, we are standardizing the use of the word eportfolio.
In sentence case, the whole word is lower-cased: eportfolio. In title case, the P is capitalized: ePortfolio. Please adhere to this convention. (Note: We do not purport to have the "right answer" for universally standardizing the word, but we do need consistency for program editing.)
5. International Journal of ePortfolio (IJeP)
Similar to the process last year, we invite you to submit a paper to IJeP (www.theijep.com ) related to your proposed session. IJeP is double-blind, peer-reviewed and scholarly. Acceptance of your paper for publication does not guarantee acceptance to the program, of course, but can serve your professional purposes and may help you get funding locally to attend AAEEBL. Also, acceptance to our program does not guarantee acceptance of your paper to IJeP.
Proposal Deadline: February 17, 2012.
Questions? Contact Judy Williamson Batson.
(11/15/11 JWB)
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