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University of Washington: Students Showcase Achievements Online
12/30/2002
Enrolled students gain access to the Portfolio Tool with a system-wide login called a UWNetID, which provides access to other UW tools and services, such as e-mail and Web publishing. The IDs are active for six months after graduation. After that time, alumni can enroll in the MyUW.net program that allows them to keep all of their services, including the Portfolio, as long as they pay a nominal monthly fee. If students choose not to continue with their subscription to MyUW.net, they can use the Portfolio tool at any time to download all of their published portfolios and collections of learning artifacts.
Instant Results
The Catalyst Portfolio Tool is the latest Web-based tool from the Catalyst Initiative,
an effort to improve teaching and learning at the UW through the use of technology.
The Catalyst Initiative relies on in-house staff, student workers, and existing
UW infrastructure to develop Web tools, without outside vendors or proprietary
software. Developing the Portfolio in-house permitted focus groups—made up of
students, faculty, and administrators—to provide immediate feedback so that
their needs would be met, allowing for instant implementation on campus.
One example of instant implementation of the Portfolio Tool is the Freshman Interest Group (FIG) program. FIGs are clusters of 20 to 25 freshman who enroll in the same classes and attend a general orientation class once a week, to help them negotiate life on campus of the UW. As part of the FIG program, the online system is providing more than 80 percent of the freshman class with the ability to reflect on their education and progress through their university experience. Currently, there are 3,200 FIG students using the Portfolio Tool to reflect on seven topic areas: transitioning from high school, embracing diversity, academic planning, working with faculty, social issues, an intellectual excursion, and an arts excursion.
"This will be a nice tool for students to think about their learning, their career path, and to get a better sense of what they did at the University of Washington," notes Farrelly.
For more information on Catalyst, visit http://catalyst.washington.edu/ or contact Mark Farrelly at mfarrell@u.washington.edu or Tom Lewis at tomlewis@u.washinton.edu. Farrelly is the outreach coordinator and Lewis is the director of the Ed-Tech Development Group for the Office of Educational Partnerships & Learning Technologies.
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