Using Electronic Portfolios as a Pedagogical Practice to Enhance Student Learning

Real learning transcends barriers of time and place. It can also provide a bag of tools one can take on the journey through life. Some students, unfortunately, leave college with empty toolkits, or ones they do not know how to open. Engaging students in the process of salient, transformative learning is a challenge, but one worth taking. Tagg (2004) speaks eloquently in a recent About Campus article about the need for faculty to use practices in the classroom that improve the quality of learning, and calls for faculty to help students claim their learning and engage in what Kegan (1995) describes as a “developmental transformation, “the process by which the whole (‘how I am’) becomes gradually a part (‘how I was’) of a new whole (‘how I am now’)” (p. 43). Kegan (1995) argues that this process is necessary as one becomes an adult and needs to develop new ways of thinking about oneself and one’s relationship to others and the world. Ideally, faculty in higher education are striving to help students learn beyond their individual courses and create the toolkit needed for success throughout life. Increasingly, the use of student portfolios has been seen as one way to help students engage in this type of learning (Cambridge and Williams, 1997). With technological advances, interest in and use of electronic student portfolios (eportfolios) in higher education has also grown in the last several years (Cambridge, 2001). Portfolios, and especially eportfolios, are seen as a more authentic representation of student learning and are increasingly being used for course, program, and institutional assessment of student learning (e.g., Cambridge, 2001)

Exploring the Impact of Interpersonal Trust on Health Outcomes in Rapidly Gentrifying Neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon

Social determinants have been recognized to be significant factors contributing to the overall health outcomes of individuals. However, there is limited research on how these factors have directly impacted the mental and physical wellness of people in neighborhoods who are experiencing rapid gentrification. The objective of this study is to determine whether the level of interpersonal trust present between individuals in neighborhoods is associated with the mental and physical health outcomes among its residents. This quantitative study uses the Albina-Rockwood Neighborhood Promise Survey, which uses data from a random sample of families living in two rapidly gentrified neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon. We will explore the relationship between neighborhoods using self-related mental and physical health questions. We hypothesize that trust will positively be related to better overall health results. Residents with a higher degree of trust, will have greater physical and mental health outcomes. We will also look at the impacts of trust on different demographics and across class strata. These findings suggest that future studies should examine how race and social class can affect the magnitude of trust in a neighborhood

Knowing our Students: Creating a Web-Based Prior Learning Assessment

Students in higher education are more diverse than ever before in history. Understanding students\u27 backgrounds, experiences and attitudes early can help faculty better serve this diverse population. This a case study that outlines the development and implementation of a web-based prior learning assessment. It also describes how faculty and administrators have used the results

Panel: What does general education look like elsewhere?

This is a panel presentation on General Education plans at three universities that are known for their leadership in undergraduate education. We will hear brief presentations from Yves Labissiere of Portland State University, Alison Essary of Arizona State University and Stephen Biscotte of Virginia Tech. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss what they have learned and to ask questions

South Florida\u27s Immigrant Youth and Civic Engagement: Major Engagement: Minor Differences

Although most immigrants are adults, their foreign and U.S.-born children are the fastest-growing component of the U.S. population. How these children integrate into U.S. society and the ways that they civically engage will greatly determine the nature of civil society in the United States over the next few decades. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this study compares the patterns of civic engagement of immigrant and nonimmigrant youth in Miami, Florida, a region of the United States with the highest proportion of immigrants. By almost all measures, immigrant civic engagement is statistically similar to that of nonimmigrants. Because immigrants engage more in civic actions that benefit their ethnic group, they are often missed by traditional civic engagement measures. Those of immigrant extraction, for example, devote considerable activity to using their bilingual skills and helping other immigrants. Like native minorities, immigrants also become heavily engaged in politically related activities in response to discrimination

Panel: What does general education look like elsewhere?

This is a panel presentation on General Education plans at three universities that are known for their leadership in undergraduate education. We will hear brief presentations from Yves Labissiere of Portland State University, Alison Essary of Arizona State University and Stephen Biscotte of Virginia Tech. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss what they have learned and to ask questions

A Crash Course in Futures

Get a brief introduction to futures thinking and foresight practice from PSU Presidential Futures Fellow and School of Social Work Professor Laura Nissen. And hear from three PSU Futures Collaboratory fellows about their experiences learning, sharing and collaborating with peers across the PSU campus this past year.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/futures/1001/thumbnail.jp

Varying Realities of the Human Experience : University Studies Program at Portland State University

Like many institutions of higher education, Portland State University (PSU) has engaged in initiatives to promote a more equitable and democratic society, from curricular changes to institutional policy implementation. In the late 1980s, PSU required students to complete a certain number of “diversity” credits as part of its general education requirements. During the 1990s, PSU radically revised its approach to general education, creating the University Studies Program that places diversity awareness among its core goals. Most recently, current President Daniel O. Bernstine has instituted a comprehensive “Diversity Initiative” as part of a series of initiatives aimed at improving the quality of university life for students, faculty, and staff. This paper recounts the institutional context for the University Studies Program’s emphasis on diversity, provides an overview of the University Studies general education curriculum, which is designed as a series of interdisciplinary learning communities, and offers examples of teaching approaches that promote diversity awareness

Getting Proactive with Police Proactivity: the Benefits of Computer-Aided Dispatch for Directing Police Resources to Areas of Need

Sherman et al. [Sherman, L. W., Williams, S., Ariel, B., et al. (2014). ‘An Integrated Theory of Hot Spots Patrol Strategy Implementing Prevention by Scaling up and Feeding Back.’ Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 30(2): 95–122.] argue that crime reductions associated with hot spot policing can be maximized by carefully managing the dosage of supplemental resources delivered. Fully achieving this goal in prior studies has been difficult due to resistance by officers, the use of atypical strategies for directing patrols to target locations, and insufficient attention to the measurement of treatment dosages. This has led to calls for process research examining the implementation of hot spot policing in law enforcement agencies. The current study represents one such effort. The computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system for a large US police department was pre-programmed with 16,200 supplemental community engagement patrols that were communicated to officers similar to emergency calls for service generated by the public. An interdisciplinary team comprised sworn officers, crime analysts, and academics designed and evaluated the intervention using an experimental design. The team found that the vast majority of patrols were delivered as scheduled (n = 12,965; 80.0%) and that planned dosage ratios between treatment conditions were achieved. Advantages of using CAD for proactive policing initiatives and benefits of police–academic partnerships are discussed

Public Response to Community Engagement Patrols in High Crime Areas

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an experiment to improve residents’ opinions of the police in Portland, Oregon. Officers conducted community engagement patrols (CEPs) in 60 high-crime areas. The CEPs prioritized non-investigative contacts with community members to build trust and promote positive police–community interactions in designated high-crime locations. It is hypothesized that community members living in/near intervention sites would report greater exposure to officers, more positive interactions and feel more positively about police than residents in control areas. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 90 crime hot spots were identified using crime reports and calls for service. Locations were randomized into three groups: 2 CEPs/day (n=30), 4 CEPs/day (n=30), and control (i.e. no supplemental patrols, n=30). Officers were dispatched to treatment locations via the computer-aided dispatch system for 90 consecutive days, resulting in 16,200 scheduled CEPs. Surveys were mailed to 11,760 households immediately after the intervention ended and 1,537 were returned (13.1 percent). Findings: Residents from intervention areas reported a higher number of positive police contacts, whereas contacts that residents perceived as negative did not differ between the three conditions. Community attitudes, including perceived police legitimacy, were generally unaffected by CEP dosage. Originality/value: This paper documents the outcomes of a large-scale field experiment seeking to improve public attitudes toward police using directed CEPs in crime hot spots. Whereas the intervention succeeded in providing more opportunities for positive contact with police, attitude change may necessitate longer-term strategies