I’ve been attending this year’s IUPUI Assessment Institute and had the pleasure of attending Kathleen Yancy’s keynote about ePortfolios. Several tidbits that I hurriedly scribbled down have had this nog prattling, including this big whopper:
Learners’ reflection on their collection of artifacts — and the relationship among those artifacts (versus the artifacts as atomistic indicators of learning outcomes) — help our learners become scholars of their own learning.
And I thought:
Scholars of their own learning …
Scholars of their own learning!!!
Scholar’s Desk at Yu Garden, Shanghai – thanks to amy_mcgill on Flickr for making this image available!
HEY WAIT — THIS IS WHAT PRIOR LEARNING ASSESSMENT DOES!
(We just haven’t ever called it that!)
In PLA, students reflect on the collection of their learning experiences as well as evidence of these experiences (their collection of artifacts), as well as how these experiences and artifacts collectively and holistically their attainment of the learning outcomes of a course for which they are trying to earn credit. And during this process, they take perspective on their learning; they examine it; they question it; and they make new meaning from it. They become scholars of it!
And ya ya, they can earn credit too. And save money. And decrease their time to degree completion. And all that.
BUT what’s important is that they become scholars of their own learning!
Yancy also spoke of the three main activities in higher education:
- Curricular activities
- Co-curricular activities
- Extracurricular activities
And I thought there was one missing: lived-and-living curricular activities. You know — the stuff that has happened (or is happening) to us and our students external to our institutions. As Lindemann (1961) pointed out, “Experience is the adult learner’s living textbook.” Oh yes it is! (And of course this isn’t limited to adults; younger students have lived-and-living curriculums too.)
I don’t know why I never had this lightbulb moment before, but listen to our students and you’ll hear this over and over! They have become scholars of their own learning.
How. Awesome. Is. That?
