Faculty members (usually with student representatives) have regular meetings to share student learning outcomes data. Examples include (1) the annual Faculty Retreat, (2) the annual Chairs’ and Deans’ Workshop, (3) the annual General Education Faculty Workshop, (4) monthly University Faculty Assembly meetings, (5) periodic ePortfolio faculty meetings, (6) twice-per-semester departmental ePortfolio meetings, and (7) periodic meetings of the Institutional Improvement and Student Learning Committee. Student learning outcomes are presented in the periodic publication, ORU Assessment Newsletter , and through a number of other venues. ORU’s annual Assessment Catalog provides a record of all assessment efforts at the University, grouped by academic and service departments. The catalog fosters a cross-flow of assessment ideas between and among departments and schools. Departments can learn from what others are doing and can replicate or adapt assessment techniques. The Assessment Catalog iden...

Each academic department at Oral Roberts University has a designated faculty member to coordinate its ePortfolio processes, called a Subadministrator. The Subadministrator enters departmental outcomes, rubrics, and demographic survey questions into ePortfolio; runs reports; aggregates, disaggregates, and analyzes the performance data; informs the department and school about student progress related to learning outcomes; conducts research; and exports raw or filtered data into a database for further analysis. When interpreting the data, departments often confer with ORU’s ePortfolio Administrator or the Institutional Improvement and Student Learning Committee, which has general oversight of assessment issues. In addition to using ePortfolio to document student learning, some departments utilize major field tests and/or gather data on student success on professional or licensure exams. The University also conducts the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) Test for second s...

As part of the process to use outcomes for improvement, ORU regularly incorporates information about success with student learning outcomes in discussions and decision-making processes at all levels. At least twice during most semesters, faculty members who serve as course coordinators meet to discuss student learning outcomes. They revise course assessment rubrics to better measure student learning, determine which assignments should be designated as ePortfolio artifacts for data analysis, and ensure that student learning outcomes further the mission of the department, school, and University. Student learning outcome results are integral to the ORU program review process. Faculty members from each major and program compile a self-study document, incorporating variables such as student learning results harvested from ePortfolio and other sources. The program review process also includes surveying students, faculty, alumni, employers, and graduate faculty of alumni who pursue graduate d...

The last blog posting had a broken link. Thanks to Debbie George, I was able to restore it, so that you can read the Excellence Magazine article about ORU's ePortfolio program. Here it is: http://alumni.oru.edu/excell/fall04/pages/department/campus-currents4.asp or click_here. Also, it is always better to click the link at the bottom of this email and go to the blog itself, rather than trying to read it in email format. Did you know that you can also post to this blog? Go ahead--it is open to anyone. Have a happy day!

All ORU alumni are apprised of the ePortfolio process and assessment results of student learning through periodic mailings. One key alumni source for information about the University is Excellence magazine, published quarterly by the ORU Alumni Association. That magazine includes articles about ORU’s success with student learning, especially as it relates to ePortfolio. For an example from the Fall 2004, edition, entitled “From Snapshot to Surround Sound,” click_here . University Business magazine has also featured ORU’s ePortfolio system in a positive way. The Public Relations Department conveys to the general public ORU’s strong emphasis on student learning. A press release dated April 13, 2004, introduced the ORU University-wide comprehensive assessment ePortfolio system. It quoted Geoff Irvine, president of Chalk & Wire as saying,” Oral Roberts University is the first higher education institution in the world to use ePortfolio and RubricMarker to collect performance data across...

NCATE, the Oklahoma State Board of Education, and ABET have praised ORU’s approach to assessing student learning outcomes. Additional self-studies in process for site visits will inform other accrediting agencies of evidence of the success of individual majors and programs in achieving student learning outcomes. The School of Nursing completed a self-study with ePortfolio data as a main source for documenting student progress and program improvement. The School of Theology and Missions has completed a two-year process of examining the school’s learning outcomes and converting their tracking process to ePortfolio in preparation for the start of their next re-accreditation visit, as have the music and social work programs. The School of Business is using ePortfolio to demonstrate its success in measuring and increasing student learning as well as in identifying program weaknesses in its current study to achieve initial accreditation through the Association of Collegiate Business School...

ORU educators interact with professional colleagues regarding the use of ePortfolio to trace and document achievement of learning objectives. They inform the larger academy of institutional progress, share lessons learned during the implementation and maintenance processes, and obtain peer input to improve ePortfolio. ORU’s Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs supports, promotes, and encourages ORU faculty, staff, and administrators in their efforts to share ePortfolio experiences. Faculty and staff members have presented at over 40 regional and national conferences, offered 6 regional workshops, authored numerous publications, and consulted with other institutions that are considering a similar approach to assessing student learning outcomes. An article outlining ORU’s ePortfolio in the May 11, 2005, issue of Education Week quoted the dean of the ORU School of Education as saying, “Now, all [evidence needed to qualify for graduation] is available online and can quickly be ga...

Oral Roberts University routinely provides students and the public with information about its student learning outcomes and ePortfolio, both of which have become integral parts of the ORU experience and culture over the past three years. Students and faculty members work with them daily. Members of the ORU faculty, administration, and staff have shared the ORU ePortfolio process through 41 publications, presentations, and workshops. Many of these were at the national level and addressed a wide range of constituencies, including (1) students, (2) professional colleagues, (3) accrediting agencies, (4) alumni, and (5) the general public. All ORU students are trained in the operation of ePortfolio and required to submit approximately 50 artifacts over the course of their undergraduate careers and 15 during their graduate careers. With each submission, a student is reminded of how each learning outcome links to ORU’s mission. From faculty feedback, students see their progress and learn whic...

Hey, gang. You can read about us in the March 2007 issue of Campus Technology Magazine: http://campustechnology.com/articles/45245/ Have a happy day!

Using external accreditation criteria as benchmarks, ORU’s School of Education and Engineering Department serve as examples that the institution has begun documenting whether actual achievement levels of students are acceptable given the mission, student population, and resources available. Some majors and programs are in earlier stages of documentation, but making progress. To cite a specific example related to critical thinking, each student in the Principles of Chemistry lab course writes a 250-300 word abstract for a meat analysis lab exercise. The student’s hypothesis as to which of four types of meat is the healthiest and most cost-effective is then tested by analyzing the results of the lab experiment. The abstract is submitted electronically to a faculty member via ePortfolio under the Intellectually Alert outcome and Critical Thinking proficiency. The faculty member assesses the abstract using the Critical Thinking rubric criteria, which include a clearly identified purpose a...

A report from the Association of American Colleges and Universities states that a “purposeful educational program starts at the endpoint, with the desired characteristics of an institution’s graduates, and asks the faculty to reason backwards from outcomes to the implementation of an intentionally designed curriculum to cultivate the desired qualities.” This statement characterizes ORU’s process to articulate the University’s student learning outcomes with their accompanying proficiencies/capacities, as well as the development of the ePortfolio process. ORU’s School of Education has been collecting ePortfolio data since 2002. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has heralded the ORU School of Education’s ePortfolio system as an example for all member institutions. The Oklahoma State Board of Education has done likewise. It serves as a model for other ORU programs to determine whether student learning outcomes have been achieved. Undergraduate faculty in ...

ORU determines and communicates what counts as evidence that outcomes have been achieved. Each rubric informs students in advance of the expected performance criteria. After a faculty member evaluates an artifact using an online rubric, the student immediately receives feedback and knows the extent to which the assignment-specific outcomes were achieved. For example, the general education rubric for critical thinking artifacts includes such criteria as purpose/goal, hypothesis, evidence, conceptual understanding, assumptions, and inferences. Each rubric explains the levels of performance for each criterion. ORU regularly collects and interprets evidence of outcomes. Rubric results are aggregated for each specific criterion. This process indicates which criteria are and are not being acceptably met by the majority of students, as well as how different segments of the student population are performing (i.e., minorities, international students, females, home-schooled students, older stud...

ORU’s School of Education pioneered ePortfolio in 2002. The general education ePortfolio is required of all freshmen, sophomores, and juniors (seniors will be included in fall, 2007). In addition, all of ORU’s 63 undergraduate majors and programs, 15 masters programs, and 2 doctoral programs require the major ePortfolio for all students. At the beginning of each semester, ORU’s Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs orients new students to the ePortfolio program. He emphasizes the rationale, what is expected of each student, and how to use ePortfolio to track individual progress throughout the student’s experience at ORU. All new students are required to take the Career Direct Assessment and write and upload a reflection paper on the results, thus beginning their college careers “with the end in mind.” Each student receives professional feedback on the reflection paper. ORU has publicly committed to these specific student learning outcomes by making the ePortfolio a requirement ...

“The Lion, the Alice, and the ePortfolio” By Prof Lori Kanitz Department of English Oral Roberts University Once upon a time there was an English Department with fourteen faculty members. This is the story of something that happened to one of them when he was sent to his office during the assessment raids to work on ePortfolio. He was a not-so-old professor, Professor Mark Hall they called him, whose hair was not yet white and who lived in two offices, three floors apart, in a labyrinthine building on a university campus. In one of the offices (the one on the third floor that was really the first floor, mind you) were stacks of papers, piles of books, and mounds of folders, but behind all of these was, what to you and me, would look like an ordinary computer. This computer was far from ordinary, however. It was the portal to another world. One day, Professor Hall sat down at the computer to take care of an ordinary day’s work—three speeches before...

Since 2004, Oral Roberts University has employed a comprehensive rubric-evaluated University-wide ePortfolio system to assess its mission-focused learning outcomes as indicators of student progress. Students track their progress, while documenting that their educational experiences encompass more than academics. Data from student artifacts (essays, lab reports, video clips, reflection on co-curricular activities, etc.) are aggregated and disaggregated to measure student success and to make informed decisions for improvement of student learning through curricular and pedagogical refinements. Faculty members intentionally interact with students to inform them regarding their learning progress. Faculty members also regularly meet together to share ideas for improving assessment processes. Since 2002, Oral Roberts University (ORU) has fostered a learning-centered paradigm emphasizing engaged learning with closer interaction between students and mentor-teachers. ORU analyzed its student lea...

Here is Computerworld's analysis of what they claim is the best of four available: ThinkFree Office Online ThinkFree has three main components -- Write (a word processor), Calc (a spreadsheet), and Show (presentation software) -- all of which are listed on the site's My Office page, along with your most recently edited files. If you're concerned about document compatibility with Microsoft Office, you want ThinkFree. There's simply no contest. ThinkFree's opening page shows your most recently used files. Right from the start, you know things are different. ThinkFree Write offers two modes of operation when you open a file and see a preview screen. Quick Edit mode offers a minimal interface -- a few toolbar buttons for simple editing, reminding you more of WordPad than Word. Power Edit looks more like a full application: menus, a rich toolbar, a ruler bar and even a drawing toolbar similar to Word's for inserting elements such as AutoShapes, text boxes, clip ar...

Oral Roberts University (ORU) is a private, doctoral-granting university in Oklahoma. It has focused on student learning outcomes through a variety of means, including a university-wide electronic portfolio system that documents how well students fulfill the five learning outcomes that are identified in the university mission statement. Graduates are expected to demonstrate that they are spiritually alive, intellectually alert, physically disciplined, socially adept and professionally competent. Students are required to maintain portfolios in general education as well as major or program. Faculty evaluates the evidence contained in the portfolios to measure student success.