The Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research (INCEPR) is a non-profit organization, based in the United States but with international partners and operations, dedicated to conducting research on the impact [1] of eportfolios on student learning and educational outcomes. [2]
The INCEPR conducts eportfolio research through a series of staggered and overlapping cohorts serving three-year terms. Each cohort is formed, through an application process, by select faculty, staff, and administrators from approximately ten colleges or universities either in the US or abroad. Each cohort has its own research agenda, and each member institution proposes an appropriate study, provides updates on their progress, and reports findings to the other members of the cohort throughout the term. There have been six Cohorts thus far.
Four of the six INCEPR cohorts have had research agendas that were focused in a particular area. Cohort I and Cohort II focused on reflection in eportfolios, Cohort III focused on integrative learning and student/academic affairs, Cohort IV focused on the relationship between personal development plans and eportfolios, and Cohort VI focused on assessment. [3]
Steven J. Corbett, a member of Cohort I with the University of Washington, reported on his team's findings for Inside Higher Ed :
In short, our findings suggest: most students take to writing with technology quite well, and those who do not usually benefit from the practice and explicit instruction; instructors and administrators sometimes need just as much help learning about technological choices and options (let alone teaching them) as students; and online writing environments do not magically produce better student writing — or better teaching practices — but can allow for practice with different composing and teaching skills, which can lead to better writing, teaching, and administering depending on the form (for example awareness of audio, visual, and design considerations). [4]
The coalition works with partner organizations, including the Center for Recording Achievement and the Higher Education Academy in the UK. The third cohort was sponsored by NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
The coalition is listed among the "Relevant Organizations" to electronic portfolio research by the National Council of Teachers of English. [5]
The INCEPR was founded in 2003 by Barbara Cambridge and Kathleen Blake Yancey. Since 2009 Barbara Cambridge, Darren Cambridge, and Kathi Yancey have been co-directors of the coalition. [6]
The following is a list of cohorts, their years of operation, and their member institutions.
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money to establish a college of science, technology, and agriculture in his name. The first classes were held on September 16, 1874, with six instructors and 39 students. It has been ranked as among the best public universities in the United States by major institutional rankings, and is renowned for its engineering program.
Instructional scaffolding is the support given to a student by an instructor throughout the learning process. This support is specifically tailored to each student; this instructional approach allows students to experience student-centered learning, which tends to facilitate more efficient learning than teacher-centered learning. This learning process promotes a deeper level of learning than many other common teaching strategies.
Old Dominion University is a public research university in Norfolk, Virginia. It was established in 1930 as the Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary and is now one of the largest universities in Virginia with an enrollment of 24,286 students for the 2021 academic year. Old Dominion University also enrolls over 700 international students from 89 countries. Its main campus covers 251 acres (1.02 km2) straddling the city neighborhoods of Larchmont, Highland Park, and Lambert's Point, approximately five miles (8.0 km) from Downtown Norfolk.
An electronic portfolio is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web. Such electronic evidence may include input text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks. E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user's abilities and platforms for self-expression. If they are online, users can maintain them dynamically over time.
The Doctor of Education is a research or professional doctoral degree that focuses on the field of education. It prepares the holder for academic, research, administrative, clinical, or professional positions in educational, civil, private organizations, or public institutions.
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Electronic assessment, also known as digital assessment, e-assessment, online assessment or computer-based assessment, is the use of information technology in assessment such as educational assessment, health assessment, psychiatric assessment, and psychological assessment. This covers a wide range of activity ranging from the use of a word processor for assignments to on-screen testing. Specific types of e-assessment include multiple choice, online/electronic submission, computerized adaptive testing such as the Frankfurt Adaptive Concentration Test, and computerized classification testing.
The University of Wolverhampton is a public university located on four campuses across the West Midlands, Shropshire and Staffordshire in England. The roots of the university lie in the Wolverhampton Tradesmen's and Mechanics' Institute founded in 1827 and the 19th-century growth of the Wolverhampton Free Library (1870), which developed technical, scientific, commercial and general classes. This merged in 1969 with the Municipal School of Art, originally founded in 1851, to form the Wolverhampton Polytechnic.
Martin Charles Jischke (JIS-key) is a prominent American higher-education administrator and advocate, and was the tenth president of Purdue University.
Educational technology is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it is often referring to the industry of companies that create educational technology.
Homeschooling in the United States of America constitutes the education of about 3.4% of U.S. students as of 2012. The number of homeschoolers in the United States has increased steadily over the past few decades since the end of the 20th century. In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that parents have a fundamental right to direct the education of their children. The right to homeschool is not frequently questioned in court, but the amount of state regulation and help that can or should be expected continues to be subject to legal debate.
A learning community is a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education. This may be based on an advanced kind of educational or 'pedagogical' design.
First-year composition is an introductory core curriculum writing course in US colleges and universities. This course focuses on improving students' abilities to write in a university setting and introduces students to writing practices in the disciplines and professions. These courses are traditionally required of incoming students, thus the previous name, "Freshman Composition." Scholars working within the field of composition studies often have teaching first-year composition (FYC) courses as the practical focus of their scholarly work.
Renu Khator is the fifth chancellor of the University of Houston System and the thirteenth president of the University of Houston. In 2008, she became the first female chancellor in the state of Texas and the first Indian immigrant to lead a comprehensive research university in the U.S.
Richard Arum is an American sociologist of education and stratification, best known for his research on student learning, school discipline, race, and inequality in K-12 and higher education.
A digital studio provides both a technology-equipped space and technological/rhetorical support to students working individually or in groups on a variety of digital projects, such as designing a website, developing an electronic portfolio for a class, creating a blog, making edits, selecting images for a visual essay, or writing a script for a podcast.
The Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL) is a research lab at The University of Texas at Austin, United States, dedicated to the identification and promotion of twenty-first-century literacies. These literacies range from navigating online newsfeeds and participating in social networking sites to composing multimedia texts that require producing, sampling, and/or remixing media content.
Writing assessment refers to an area of study that contains theories and practices that guide the evaluation of a writer's performance or potential through a writing task. Writing assessment can be considered a combination of scholarship from composition studies and measurement theory within educational assessment. Writing assessment can also refer to the technologies and practices used to evaluate student writing and learning.
Kathleen Blake Yancey is the Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English at Florida State University in the rhetoric and composition program. Her research interests include composition studies, writing knowledge, creative non-fiction, and writing assessment.
Writing center assessment refers to a set of practices used to evaluate writing center spaces. Writing center assessment builds on the larger theories of writing assessment methods and applications by focusing on how those processes can be applied to writing center contexts. In many cases, writing center assessment and any assessment of academic support structures in university settings builds on programmatic assessment principles as well. As a result, writing center assessment can be considered a branch of programmatic assessment, and the methods and approaches used here can be applied to a range of academic support structures, such as digital studio spaces.