Spring Forum 2003 - PETTT Exemplary Student Portfolios

Presentation by Jason Johnson, Dustin Daily, J.J. McCammon and Becky Francoeur, Mark Farelly moderates

Mark Farelly: And next we'll hear from Jason Johnson, and he's brought a whole bunch of students-so this is exciting-and Jason's the director of first year programs and all of these students that we'll be hearing from today are FIG leaders, is that right? Who will be reading the Freshman Interest Group sessions? Jason's responsible for having the bravery and trust to have us say, yeah, we have a tool that will be ready on September 20th and we'd like to release it to 3200 freshmen 3 or 4 days later, is that okay, and he said, sure, that sounds like a really fun experiment, so that's how we met Jason and how we used the portfolio tool with him and the students are Dustin Daily, J.J. McCammon, is that correct? And Becky Francouer? Great. And I'll just start -

Jason Johnson: Yes, so bravery and trust - since last fall I've come to come up with a few other words to describe myself. This pilot project that we had last year going on the FIG program where we did use the portfolio tool and what I want to talk about today though is to give you some insight into what it is that we're up to right now, which is preparing for Autumn Quarter 2003 with the FIG program, our second year using portfolios.

I'll start off first with just a basic description of the FIG program itself, some of the program structures. Also describe what we're doing with the portfolio tool so you can get, in some sense, a theory of action of what it is that we're up to. So first the Freshman Interest Group program is a learning community program whereby we prepackage clusters of courses for new freshmen, students can enroll in these same two or three classes together with a group of about 20 to 25 other freshmen who share similar interests. These are theme based clusters of courses. Some are say, for students who are interested in going into business, some health sciences, some engineering, and then some are more general for students who perhaps haven't yet made up their minds or they're just interested in the classes that are in the FIG itself.

This coming fall 2003 we'll have approximately 160 FIG's, which will enroll about 3500 students, which is about 75 percent of this next year's entering freshman class, so it's a pretty significant number of the entering freshmen. Every FIG includes a section of General Studies 199; the title of this course is the University Community. It's a two credit course which is graded Credit/No Credit, meets for one hour per week. It's facilitated by an undergraduate junior or senior who's known as a peer instructor or a FIG leader, and what they do is they facilitate a weekly meeting with the students as well as some out of class activities, help students transition into the University of Washington community.

As a part of the General Studies 199 class for what is now going to be the second year, we've required all FIG students to complete a portfolio project. The objectives for the project quite simply - you can think of them in two terms. One, to prompt students to think about their past, present and future in a reflective and constructive manner; first quarter of a student's college career can feel like a whirlwind, and so we like to do what we can to create a space for them to think about where is it that they've been, where it is that they're at now, and where it is that they're going. And second, to prompt students to take stock of their own learning, both inside and outside of the classroom - knowledge, skills and perspectives that they're developing, so that they can use it as a springboard for future decision making, future engagement in the university.

The FIG program lasts for only Autumn Quarter, so it's just the first 10 weeks of students' careers, so we really use the portfolio as I say here, a springboard hopefully. It's a modest goal. To give you a little bit of insight, we've seen a couple examples now of portfolios. This is a brief description of what it is that the FIG portfolio will include this coming fall.

First, identification analysis of students' most influential high school experiences. We like to use this as a bridge between high school and college, kind of prompt that conversation about differences between high school and college. Also, identification analysis of influential experiences at the UW thus far - students complete their portfolio project toward the end of the quarter, but by this time they've had a lot of significant experiences that could come and go unless they take a moment to pause and keep track of them, and as we all know, many of those experiences happen outside of the classroom - may be a big shock for some folks, but nevertheless that's what students tend to prefer to spend their time on. Identification analysis of knowledge, skills, and perspectives gained in their autumn quarter courses, so they're taking two or three classes together will prompt them to do some reflection on what it is that they're learning in those classes.

I'm not sure exactly where this quote comes from, but it sticks in my mind "you don't know anything until you know what you know". It's a principle that kind of undergirds this part of the program, where we're asking students to think together as well as individually about what they're learning that quarter. An annotated bibliography asking them to keep track of what it is that they're reading in their courses that particular quarter - not only reading in terms of books or articles but also films, plays, etc. that they may have interacted with, with their classes.

Also an analysis of three excursions that the FIG leaders organized their students to go on. An intellectual excursion, which is getting out into the university's intellectual community that happens outside of the classroom in numerous lectures, symposia, seminars on campus. An arts excursion, where students will come to a place like the Henry Art Gallery or the Burke Museum or maybe even the Seattle Art Museum downtown, and then a personal excursion which is something that they'll do on their own which will give them some exposure to cultural/social differences.

We also include what we call a curiosity project, which is a mini research project on a topic of student's own choosing. And then to conclude the portfolio, something that tends to come towards the end - a looking back and a looking forward statement, so if students can take a look back at the things that they've collected for this portfolio as well as just kind of entirety of their college experience as well as looking forward, making some note of some of their aspirations, their goals, their future plans.

So where it is right now with this project is we're in the next few weeks concluding our training program for the FIG leaders. 160 plus of them who actually at the beginning of the spring quarter, we asked them first to complete a portfolio of their own, a portfolio that at least at the beginning of this quarter it was our best stab of what the FIG student portfolio would look like in the fall. Well, one of our purposes here, not only to give them some exposure to the tool so they can have a sense of what the student end is like, but also they gave us really constructive feedback on the design of the project itself because people like me who are designing the prompts and so forth - I throw in words like "discursive consciousness" and crazy business like that, and then they tell me no, no, no, no, no. No one's going to get that and they're going to hate you for that - change it to this instead. And so what we're doing simultaneous this quarter is we're redesigning the portfolio project based upon the FIG leaders and the comments, their experiences with it themselves.

So I'd like to introduce three of our FIG leaders who are just going to lead you through different segments of the portfolio project that they've worked on and are actually working on a final draft of theirs right now. First Dustin Daily? Come on over?

Dustin Daily: Good afternoon, everyone. First I'd just like to make some general comments about my experience using technology in the FIG program. It's been a real great advantage. I was a FIG leader last year and just incorporating the portfolio tool has been a great advantage to the FIG program in that it brings continuity across the various classes and also as Jason mentioned, there is great fluidity in being able to change some of the language and prompts that go across, you know, over 100 FIG's.

The two areas I'm going to focus on today are notable classes and notable texts, so identification of past experiences that were influential to my career and educational choices, and kind of preliminary reflection, so this is preparing when I went through this process, it's preparing me to go onto some of the later areas. So notable classes - colors are a little weird. Supposed to be orange and black, which they are somewhat, kind of a throwback to high school, but it's fitting.

Notable classes, of course my first one up there is honors world history which way back in my sophomore year of high school, and so this is just an example of how I've brought in high school experiences. Freshman FIG students are going to be, that's primarily where their experiences are going to be so it's important to do that. Just a basic general description of how my attitudes about education changed and why this course is still significant for me, and in this case it basically brought me out of the realm of science and into the world of more humanities and social sciences. And again, artifacts, which were illustrated earlier, so just papers connected with the classes, a valuable tool.

And moving onto notable texts, of course, purple and gold, fancy it up a little bit. Just some of the basic text in a broad sense - novels, textbooks, poetry, plays, any of these items fit within this category. Of course Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom The Bell Tolls," this is a good example of a book that wasn't required to be read in any of my classes, but just one that I had read on my own and had great significance to my educational choices and just being able to bring it in to the FIG program, just another example.

Of course, for books it's hard to sometimes attach an artifact if you haven't written a paper, so we encourage FIG students to just maybe picture the cover there-in the last creative sense. But - and obviously as I'm going into my senior year this is kind of bringing in some of the text from my university career, Development as Freedom, Joel Migdal's book of course, and how those are related to my classes at the university and how they've kind of tapped in with the classes so much, not just focusing about hey, I read this book, it taught me a lot, but how it related between classes. So those were the two sections that I came here to present to you today, so more the looking back and preparing students to go onto the further sections.

Jason Johnson: Thanks, Dustin. Now I'd like to introduce J.J. McCammon who's going to talk with you about a different segment of the portfolio project.

J.J. McCammon: I wanted to start out by giving some of my own thoughts as well. I think there's two ways to approach the portfolio, it's really trivial to just write about yourself - anyone can do that - but I think there's another way to approach it which is sort of use the past experiences that you write about and try to reflect on - those inform the future choices that you want to make, and that's sort of what I tried to do when I was writing about my experiences.

I also think it's fun that you can publish them onto the web, so my parents can come and see them, or my friends. I think that's kind of neat. And they can also lead to feedback, which is fun. So I'm also going to presenting a couple of sections here. My first is notable people, places and events. So this is a chance for me just to reflect on some high school and college experiences. I'm a senior, so a lot of these come from my college life. So my first was just I talked about my girlfriend Nancy and have a couple of artifacts about her up there. You get in trouble if you don't do that, so - (laughter).

I was involved in student government, so I put a couple of links about some of the things I've done in student government. And this Long Beach, this is my sort of senior trip in high school, the mischief and mayhem that I wrote about - it was nice to look back and think about how fun that was because I had almost forgotten about that, so it was fun to look back on that. And then down at the bottom I go on to talk about my roommate I live with, his name is Yuri and he went to 35 countries in a year, so it was really interesting to room with him - he's really sort of influenced my thinking of the world, I guess, because he's very traveled. You guys are probably reading my Long Beach thing there (laughter). Wondering how I stole that hotel room.

So now I'm going to talk about my future classes of interest. I just went through here and I want to learn to play the guitar so I sort of wrote about that. I really love film so I wanted to take the Film 270, which is sort of intro to film. I'm an electrical engineering major, so I don't get a chance to do much of, you know, the sort of artsy kind of classes. I put a link there to Ebert & Roeper's website because I really love Ebert, I go and read all his reviews. And then I went through and I also have some electrical engineering classes on there that I sort of learned about from my friends and classes I want to take. So those are the two sections that I present.

Jason Johnson: Thanks a lot, J.J. Speaking about stealing hotel rooms - learn something new about our FIG leaders just about every day. Last, I'd like to introduce Becky Francoeur, who's going to talk about the looking forward and looking back statements, I believe.

Becky Francoeur: Yes. Okay, so as a FIG leader, we're told at the beginning of this quarter that we have to go to a class two hours a week and that also we have only two weeks to do the portfolio presentation which if I'm not mistaken; the FIG students have ten. So, naturally, I was really excited about it (laughter), but you know what? All joking aside, what I realized was this project rather was a really good way for me to, like Jason was saying, take stock of my college career.

I was in a FIG a couple years ago and did not have a chance to do a project like this, so I think it's a great opportunity for me to actually look back. The looking forward and looking back sections are the two kind of final sections after you've written about all your past experiences and they are really the accumulation of all of these experiences, and you're left with that kind of lingering - okay, now what? They're the two sections I think have the least amount of criteria in terms of what you actually have to write about. So you're kind of left with okay, now you've done your whole FIG portfolio, but what are you going to say about it?

So, hopefully, to preserve everyone's sanity, you should complete the FIG portfolio in more than one sitting, which I think a lot of people didn't do, and were up til 3 o'clock in the morning doing it. But if you do it in several sittings, the disadvantages you don't realize that there's all these connections to be made about classes you took and how they influenced you or people that you met or books that you've read.

So, the looking back sections are really good chance for you to take a look at what you've already written because it's astounding the kind of connections you can make and there's a method to your madness, I guess is what you realize. By examining all the people who've affected you, you're able to take a look at what you've done thus far and how that's affected where you are today and then start to think about what you want to do in the future. You're able to look at all that you are able to accomplish based on all of the challenges you've previously encountered.

So I talk a lot about mine and the patterns that I've seen, my inability to keep a journal for a long period of time and why this was really good for me - because I usually quit after week one. And kind of talk about how I've learned through my FIG portfolio that I've really become a person who's really tolerant and a person who can respect differences in others, and I've found this through meeting new people, both in high school and college and that transition. The looking forward I think, for me, was the most daunting in that everyone has a certain degree, or at least I do, of fear about the unknown. Again, you look at your accumulation of past experiences and they enable you to look at where you are today, and then think where do I want to go.

Again, some of the prompts that we were given were things like you want to be a person of influence in the world and that one really scared me because okay, I know I'm not going to cure cancer and I probably won't win the Nobel Prize for Literature, so how can I influence the world and what I realized was I wanted to influence a small circle of people positively the way that say, Jane Austen influenced me in high school or Stephanie Fishman influenced me my junior year honors English class in high school or the way Carly and Amanda influenced my freshman year dorm experience by making me feel like okay, even though I'm different, I'm from Los Angeles which is kind of scary for people in Seattle (laughter) - it's okay! I can fit in here and I can be a part of this university, so I think that the looking back and looking forward sections are a really good chance for everyone to kind of take stock of where you are, take stock of what you've written in your portfolio, and kind of make that next leap to what do I want to do with my future.

Jason Johnson: All right, thank you very much, Dustin, J.J. and Becky. Coming soon to a join the FIG program poster near you, I'm sure (applause).

Jason Johnson: To make one final note, you have a handout has my contact information. We're really midway through this project, if you'd like to pay attention to what happens next fall, just drop me a line. Thank you.

For more information, please contact pettt@u.washington.edu