Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll.
In this episode, you'll hear part one of my conversation with Abby Crew, Assistant
Dean of Academic Planning, Assessment and Improvement, Curriculum Review, and
Innovation at Colorado Mountain College.
More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on
YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Kelly Driscoll.
And today I am so pleased to introduce Abbey Crewe.
Abbey Crewe is Assistant Dean of Academic Planning, Assessment and
Improvement at Colorado Mountain College Curriculum Review and Innovation.
Welcome Abbey.
Thank you.
Did I get that all right?
You did.
It took me one year of reading my email signatures to memorize my title.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today.
Um, I thought it would be fun to just kind of kick things off, um, for our
listeners and learning a little bit about what your role at, uh, CMC entails.
Well, my eight word title, um, has been tagged onto as well.
So I am also the project manager for our COMPASS Initiative and our
COMPASS Initiative Digication is our strategic alignment between
academic affairs and student affairs.
And what's really exciting about Digication and our partnership, uh,
with Digication is that we were looking at, uh, first year experience and
realized that we have 11 different campuses, we're a dual mission
institution, a third of our scholars are dual enrollment, uh, so they're high
school concurrent enrollment students.
About a third of our learners are also multi lingual learners, so we were really
struggling to find a first year experience that met everyone's needs because we
don't have a one size fits all clientele.
And so we couldn't.
Uh, craft a one size fits all first year experience either.
Um, so Digication gave us this opportunity to capture the CMC
experience through ePortfolio.
So we are weaving that into our holistic advising efforts, um, and really helping
students see themselves within their scholarship and see their journey.
Both within and beyond the classroom into job placement and Digication has
been really influential in that endeavor.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
And I know your school is pretty new in its use of ePortfolios.
Are you still kind of considering where you are in kind of that pilot
phase or have you expanded from that initial kind of endeavor?
Let us know kind of where, where your school is in that implementation.
We are in year two of our pilot program, and we were able to extend
the pilot another year because of the Quora launch, and so we're really
excited to pilot the assessment on the back end of the Quora build.
with our brand new Institutional Student Learning Outcomes.
So our Student Learning Assessment Committee, uh, will be able to utilize
the AAC& U rubrics that align with our Institutional Student Learning
Outcomes as they apply to the student artifacts within the ePortfolio.
So that's what we will be piloting this year specifically.
Nice.
And I, I love having institutions that are kind of newer in these ePortfolio pursuit.
Pursuits come and speak to us about the experience because it's so fresh, kind
of where you are in the beginning stages.
And I would love to just hear a little bit about, you know, how did this all begin?
What kind of spurred the interest?
I know your institution's been working Really diligently and
incorporating more high impact practices into various classrooms.
How did ePortfolio really become part of the discussion?
It's a great question because our journey began with the High Impact
Practice Institute with AAC& U.
And as I alluded to earlier, we went in doubling down on our first year
experience as our high impact practice and then quickly pivoted, um, to
ePortfolio to capture that CMC experience.
So, our journey began, uh, with high impact practice investigation and the
ways in which ePortfolio can really capture that for, Uh, the myriad,
uh, experiences from certificate to bachelors that our students
pursue at Colorado Mountain College.
We have subsequently, uh, attended the AAC& U ePortfolio Institute
that is a year long pursuit.
Uh, we also attended the ALHE assessment conference last year where LaGuardia
Community College were celebrating their work and, you know, all signs pointed to
Digication, so we had to give it a go.
Well, we always love to hear that, but tell us a little bit about the
AAC&U ePortfolio Institute experience.
Um, because I know there, there, there may be some listeners that
are taking part in it right now.
Um, there may be some listeners that have been thinking about it.
And I think that there's probably some listeners like, uh, yourselves that.
participated in it and are now in this kind of pilot phase or
getting things off the ground.
So tell us a little bit about what that experience was like for your institution.
So what's, what's remarkable is that you get to ideate with colleagues
who are in the same morass.
And so I really appreciate AAC&U creating the space for us all to explore.
And strive and fail and explore some more.
Um, and so we, we got, we were invited to present at the AAEEBL Conference.
Yeah.
And part of that preparation was creating a journey map.
And I was like, well, we hadn't really done that much.
And then I went through the exercise of actually creating this journey
map and was like, oh my gosh, we have done so much in a year.
And this journey map has actually been celebrated and shared.
At board of trustees meetings and academic council and throughout the
institution because we have done a lot of work in a short amount of time with
an expert coach who has also made a lot of mistakes and we learned from those
and it sets us ahead five years and in collaboration with other institutions.
Who have similar stumbling blocks, and so we kind of pick each other up and say this
worked at our institution, this didn't work, so don't try that, or maybe try
that, but no, this might be, you know, an impediment that's coming, so we really,
we just, we get to collaborate and ideate on Um, Innovative strategies that are
truly change makers in the institution of higher ed and that's exciting.
It's, it's empowering and it's energizing and sometimes change can
be defeating and we all know that.
So we get to pick each other back up.
Yeah.
And you're really, you know.
Starting to get this off off the ground, I think at a time where a lot
of institutions would say, Oh, you know, our faculty are just exhausted.
How could we ask them to do something different right now?
So how do you feel like it's been positioned in such a way, your
institution, where it does feel like it's more of an exciting opportunity
for faculty versus something that It's just kind of one more thing that
they have to learn in the midst of everything else going on in their lives.
Sure.
And I think faculty fatigue and initiative burnout and all the other,
um, COVID has changed everything.
Um, it's a coalition of the willing.
So certainly there is no top down mandate that faculty need to embed ePortfolio.
Um, we were really actually hoping that the change agents themselves were
students, uh, celebrating their work, um, and championing this practice at CMC.
It's really a gift that we're able to offer students, both in terms of the
artifact that they can take into their job interviews, but also the folio
thinking that it cultivates in a scholar.
To be able to connect what they're learning in a math class and
articulate in an interview how that sets them apart as a candidate.
Um, so that folio thinking really is a gift.
And, and so again, faculty have the opportunity to opt in.
We embed a tutor in any class that has Digication for some technical assistance.
We actually have some student scholars who are going to help us
as well, uh, student work study.
Uh, we have, last year was our first, our inaugural student symposium to showcase
the work of students in ePortfolio and that was remarkably well received.
Um, and finally we, we started the change making through a four question, short
form reflective assessment practice that asks our faculty to connect, um, what
they are, learn, what they're seeing from their student artifacts, how they
connect to our institutional student learning outcomes, and then reflecting
on how successful or not the case may be and what supports they may need.
So we've.
We've had a couple of different nodal points in this culture shift,
beginning with the four question short form, kind of moving away from box
checking assessment to more authentic assessment, and then connecting our new
institutional student learning outcomes.
to that authentic assessment through ePortfolio.
So it's kind of like win, win, win.
We also have holistic advisors who are championing this work.
Um, they, we can invite students to, um, share who they are, why they're coming
to our institution, uh, what they hope to get out of our institution prior to
even meeting, uh, an advisor and then reflecting on the work that they were able
to demonstrate in their first semester.
Um, and then in subsequent semesters in this e portfolio, this kind of
living transcript, if you will.
Oh, I love this.
And I hope some folks that might be considering doing a pilot are madly
taking some notes on this because you've clearly learned some really wonderful.
Best practices, you know, from having it something where faculty members can
opt in versus it being something that's mandated or top down, having tutors
that are inserted into the classrooms already that just automatically
removes hurdles for faculty members that may not feel like they're ready
to demonstrate the actual technology, the use of the student mentor...
All of this is just, um, clearly been beneficial for your students.
I mean, when you look at the quality of the ePortfolios that are already
starting to be created two years in at your institution, um, you can
tell that there you've got real.
faculty engagement and commitment to, to the cause.
So thank you for, for sharing that.
Um, as the faculty members are kind of opting into this experience,
what kind of resources are they given to kind of prepare for
integrating this type of pedagogy or technology into their practice.
I love that you started with some reflective questions that they're
responding to because it sounds like in terms of You know, assessment
and maybe choosing what kinds of artifacts or student experiences their
students might add to the portfolio.
They're starting with something that, you know, they're already doing, right?
They're doing the work in their classrooms already.
It's just about capturing that.
How do you kind of take them from those initial reflective questions
to then kind of putting it into that day to day practice that
they're having in their classroom?
We have a number of different resources.
Um, so we have, I was like a traveling library whenever I was
going to the different campuses and I was like, we have all these books.
Um, so we have that.
I also have a Canvas page that I can add.
So we use Canvas as our learning management system.
And I have added faculty to that Canvas page.
Um, and so they have access to all of the resources that I have created, and
those resources include, uh, onboarding checklists, like, you know, email the
serve our learning management systems specialist to have Digication added to
the tab, so it's single sign on, and, you know, then embed the tutor, and, you
know, step by step instructions there.
I've also actually, I, I added a transparency in teaching and learning
assignment for Digication that I shared and I just worked on one
for the advisors actually as well.
So, um, uh, making accessible all of the resources that have been created
so faculty can not start from scratch but kind of ideate from what is
already in existence and just being really intentional about connecting.
Like you said, what's already happening in our classroom with our institutional
student learning outcomes, which I will also add a line with our, um, Gen Ed
core curriculum, and those outcomes come straight down from, uh, the
Community Colleges of Colorado system that we, um, adhere to those agreements.
And so those Gen Ed outcomes.
are embedded in our institutional student learning outcomes.
So it's all, like, very intentionally nested.
So it's not additive, it's embedded.
And our job is to make, uh, transparent what all students are learning when
they create a final project, right?
Like, that's, that's what we're doing.
So...
I have transparency in teaching and learning, um, frameworks for the students,
but I'm doing a lot of that for our faculty as well, connecting those dots.
Okay, great.
And I was curious, so from the, maybe the initial goals that you had when
you were starting the pilot, what Some of those might've been, and with
this next, you know, phase that you're in, how have those evolved at all?
Or what maybe are some new goals now that you've gotten to the place where you are?
Great question.
I think that we started at the course level, uh, with our goals, and that was
just to get the pilot off the ground.
And I think our Our new goals are to move from course level, we have some
programs that are super excited, uh, and you probably saw some of those artifacts.
Uh, our outdoor leadership students are taking selfies of
themselves hanging off mountains.
And they're really excited about it.
Um, and again, this is program level assessment and the faculty are equally
excited about, um, you know, iterating what that assessment, um, cycle looks
like and leveraging digication here.
Um, to the institutional level assessment.
So that I think is what we're really focusing on in this, uh, second
year pilot, uh, moving from course level to program to institution.
Yeah.
And I also noticed, you know, and looking some at looking at some of the
student e portfolios in preparation for our, our conversation today, that
there's a number of really wonderful ePortfolios that are being created in.
More STEM oriented disciplines.
And I know sometimes in conversations with institutions, you know, we'll
hear from, um, you know, maybe the humanities, liberal arts, writing
programs that immediately see a good fit for ePortfolios, but.
There's sometimes other disciplines that feel like they don't have
a good fit for any reason.
And it seems like at your institution that those that are in STEM
related kinds of fields and study have just really grasped this.
Has there been anything about your conversation with faculty members
in those disciplines that you feel like may have shaped that?
Or is it just the culture of the institution that just seems so
prime for this kind of pedagogy?
It's certainly faculty driven.
I will say our program director for ecosystem science and stewardship
program is of Faculty champion in ePortfolio, and she's really
driven the portfolio engagement.
Um, I think probably those genetic students that you were
seeing, uh, in that project.
And our outdoor leadership studies faculty are also really excited.
And, and it speaks.
I had a lot of many conversations with our program director for outdoor leadership.
And he just shared, like, how an ePortfolio speaks to his students.
They don't want to write a paper about, you know, whatever they
were doing in the wilderness.
They want to take a picture of themselves.
And then they want to say, you know, in a caption.
The cool stuff that they were doing, like that just speaks to,
to their, um, heart and mind.
Yeah.
More.
And so it's really exciting to be able to, to capture this
learning in a, um, multimodal way.
Yeah.
They wanna be outside.
Mm-Hmm.
they wanna be in the field and, you know, really capturing
those things in, in the moment.
So, uh, that makes a lot of sense.
So, uh, for those listening, I warned Abby that I did spend some time looking
at her own personal portfolio, uh, before hopping on, uh, this podcast with me.
And there was an area of the portfolio that I.
I really, I mean, I enjoyed reading the whole thing, but I did want to highlight
some of the goals that you outlined there.
You're probably, you know, trying to think what you said there, but, um,
you said, uh, that your goal is to ensure higher education is welcoming
and equitable for all students and that you're striving to inspire innovation
and passion for learning and improvement among your colleagues and students.
And I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate on that a little bit and talk
more about, because you're doing so many things at the college right now.
Um, you know, you know, from looking at your portfolio and looking
at all of the things that you're doing, I get a sense of this.
Kind of incredible passion that you have for education and also for your
students and their futures and I would love to hear a little bit about how some
of the things that you're doing at the college are kind of meeting those goals
or you feel like you're helping you start to get to achieving those goals.
I had 17 eager learners in my sociology of diversity class
yesterday and it was energizing.
Um, so it was our first class of the fall semester, so that was exciting.
Um, and so I think how I'm, I'm really a champion for high impact
practices across the institution and, and being able to move the needle
there, uh, has been very meaningful.
We have.
We know that high impact practices work.
We also know that they work at CMC, and that's what's really exciting for us.
We have some robust internal data about increased persistence
rates for our students who are exposed to high impact practices.
Um, so Making sure that faculty are feeling supported, uh, that
they have the information that they need, that they have the support
to embed a high impact practice in their class is really important.
And the more that we're able to champion this work and celebrate
this work and support this work.
The more our students thrive, and like, that's what's so very important for me.
The other kind of few fire that fuels my belly is, um, around the institutional
student learning outcomes that we, Just updated, uh, and, and really making
relevant and transparent the, what we call outcomes, competencies, and skills
that our students get from certificate programs to bachelor's programs.
So, we don't have a distinction at our institution from career
and technical education, are only expected to demonstrate hands on
skills in our four year bachelor's programs engaging critical thinking.
Like, we don't believe in that.
We believe that every learner at Colorado Mountain College can demonstrate
knowledge, involvement, and application upon graduation from any program.
And I think that that really kind of democratizes higher education.
It also makes relevant.
higher education from our welders to our bachelors in sustainability and
more kind of theoretical programs.
And, and it makes for a workforce that has skills for the future that I
really think are imperative, um, from critical thinking to oral communication.
to being able to work with a diverse population.
And so, um, you know, from the 17 students in my class to the faculty champions
to the systems in place, you know, we kind of can scale out how impactful
higher education is and how important.
The work that we are doing and the articulation of that work we are doing,
um, keeps me coming back every day.
I love it.
And it seems like whenever you're kind of setting out to do something
that you have a real, um, kind of mind for, and you know, I'm sure this is in
collaboration with others often as well, but a real mind for kind of developing.
Um, kind of a scaffold or a very clear kind of strategic plan for, you know, step
by step, you know, what various stages are and how they can happen and what the
various goals are at each of those stages.
Stages.
And I enjoyed seeing some of the presentations that you shared within
your personal ePortfolio that were housed under a particular tab called
Knowledge, Involvement, and Application.
And it sounds like that is a kind of common language that's
used throughout the institution.
And are those Knowledge, Involvement, and Application kind of categories,
something that students are working towards demonstrating as well?
Yes, those are our institutional student learning outcomes.
And then embedded within those outcomes are competencies and skills
and then the AAC& U dimensions that we use to measure them.
So being consistent with those outcomes, um, we even had a conversation about
our Employee evaluations aligning with knowledge involvement in applications,
so it's just woven into the fabric of what we do, um, and not an external box
to check assessment, which is kind of historically what it had been, um, and I
do have an amazing team, including a new, uh, assessment director, which really, uh,
we collaborated to, to drive a lot of this change that we're seeing in action now.
Wonderful.
And I had a question for you too.
So I know many institutions kind of wrestle with, um, you know, how, how
structured the, maybe the prompts or templates that students are given need
to be in order for them to kind of be able to see demonstration of their
Um, Outcomes in, in various courses or learning experiences that they've had.
And how does, um, you know, how are some of your kind of champion faculty
members there approaching that?
Have you seen them kind of try some?
Different, different structures or approaches to kind of pulling that
information out of their students and what that process has been like.
Yes, students always want a model.
And so many of our faculty champions have gone in and made their own e
portfolio to share a model of what this can look like and also to.
sort of stumble through the technology and learn a new platform.
Uh, there's always a learning curve there.
So, um, that has certainly driven a lot of this work as well.
That's great.
So, it sounds like, um, when they approach it with their students,
they've, they've got some personal knowledge of the, of the platform.
Um, you mentioned that they've got tutors that come in and may
be available to provide some initial training for the students.
How are the students then supported when they start creating their own ePortfolios?
Is it something that faculty are really doing within there?
Classrooms.
Are there other kinds of resources?
Other than the embedded tutors, we don't have a ton of other resources.
I'm hoping that our student, uh, employees actually will create some
videos, some how to prompts, um, and tutorials for the students.
Right now, our prompts are very open ended, um, upload an artifact of your
work that demonstrates an alignment, or demonstrates a dimension, um, and a
competency, and articulate how and why that exists, and, and that's the extent
of our instruction right now, so, so what is consistent are the outcomes,
uh, the competencies and the skills, and then, and The instructions are really
quite open ended and we'll see how that goes and so far so good Certainly
we can improve and iterate with each Uh, student feedback we get as well.
Yeah.
Well, and I was going to say too, so far so good because it seems like the
students have been able to embrace that kind of open ended question and approach
that and respond in very creative.
Ways, um, they're all choosing very different types of artifacts and
presenting it in different ways.
They're beautifully designed ePortfolios the ones that I saw it included a lot of
media and Alongside the reflections that they were writing towards the outcomes.
So they seem quite quite comfortable in that environment.
And I know in your role that a lot of your, um, kinds of focus, and maybe
this goes back to some of your early, um, kind of studies in, um, gender
politics and gender studies, that there seems to be this thread of interest.
And it's something that's very near and dear to our hearts at Digication
too, around, you know, this kind of.
Kind of theme around belonging for the students and finding their place within
the kind of institutional fabric, finding their community at the same time that
they're starting to discover who they are.
And, um, learn about, you know, all of their strengths and
skills and growth along the way.
Um, I was curious in, in the work that you do, are there conversations
about using the ePortfolios?
In, in that way, um, you know, how are they maybe being
coached or guided in that?
Yes, you know, we're interested in seeing your demonstration of learning
outcomes, but, you know, how might this be something that's of value to them,
you know, beyond demonstrating that at an institutional level, how might it
really benefit them as an individual?
Yeah, we share with students that they can, it's like a living transcript
and so they are able to take who they are, how they're growing, what
they're working on and bring it home and share with their family.
Um, and that's really important.
And also in, as a job placement, um, skill and artifact that they can bring
in, um, and link on their profile and then share with potential employers too.
So certainly beyond the realm of the classroom.
When you were talking, I was also thinking about how we really
emphasize, um, equity in assessment.
And so our multimodal authentic assessment is imperative in a classroom where
the written word is not the only way.
To demonstrate an understanding or kind of Freirian banking model,
like, we don't believe in that.
It does not resonate with our learners.
We're trying to, in, in some spaces, decolonize, um, higher ed, and so I
think Digication give us a, a platform to do that and to celebrate that and to
enhance many ways of knowing and being, and especially at a institution with a
third of our population as multilingual learners, to allow our, our students to,
to think in their native language and to celebrate and ideate and demonstrate their
understanding in their native language.
Digication can do that.
And it's, it's really remarkable.
We're grateful for that.
Yeah.
Can you think of some examples where you've kind of seen that come
to light in some of the student portfolios that have been created?
We tried really hard with some of our, um, ESL instructors to
integrate, uh, the ePortfolio.
And it was not as successful.
And actually, we've had some conversations about offering instructions in Spanish.
And I think that would go a long way.
So when that happens, let us know.
Cause we really will be early adopters there.
Um, so Jeff and I've talked about that.
Good, good.
Um, that would, that would.
Go really far in helping, um, celebrate and champion the work of our multilingual
learners in an e portfolio and Right now, some of our earlier classes, it,
the technology feels a little daunting, and in our later classes, our students,
um, can celebrate their, their myriad, um, identities in their ePortfolio.
But, you know, there's, there's some, some technology navigation
that is required as well.
This concludes part one of our conversation.
To hear part two, be sure to subscribe to Digication Scholars
Conversations on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.
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