Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2008. / Title from title screen (site viewed Feb. 17, 2009). PDF text: xii, 140 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 4 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3327472. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-107).

This case study documents the stages, procedures, and interactions between a researcher and a public school teacher during the implementation of electronic portfolios. The primary topics highlighted are: general information regarding portfolios; reflection; and issues that arose during the study. The classroom teacher in this particular study worked in Southwest Virginia at a modern vocational facility, and she had expressed a desire to master the various technologies necessary to implement electronic portfolios. The researcher was competent in these technologies; her objective was to ascertain the methods and materials, and other processes in which electronic portfolios could be implemented in a public school setting. The collaboration between the researcher and the teacher provided for an arrangement wherein the teacher often learned the technologies simultaneously, along with her students. The researcher's ongoing assistance also offered the teacher time to concentrate on the various management aspects of the project.Reflection was developed as a critical component of the process. It was instrumental for the students, the teacher, and the researcher. Students were required to write "reflections" about the artifacts they had chosen for their electronic portfolios. The researcher and the teacher would meet regularly to reflect on the project's status; methods and materials; management issues; and even to reflect on reflection itself, and the methods to take the students deeper as it pertained to their reflections on any given artifact.Three aspects of the process revealed themselves to be major components that would be inescapable considerations for any classroom teacher who wished to implement electronic portfolios: the technology; the reflective writing process; and management issues. The management issues generally pertained to time issues. This study was successful because it proved to identify the essential components of an electronic portfolio project. And, lastly the collaboration between the teacher and the researcher proved to be successful because the two major objectives of the study were achieved: the teacher mastered the technology (and the process) necessary to implement electronic portfolios; and the researcher identified, correlated, and recorded this discovery so that it might be replicated. / Ph. D.

Instructors in higher education are being asked to introduce electronic portfolios (ePs) into their teaching without prior knowledge or experience on how to do it effectively. They struggle with conceptualizing how the eP process connects pedagogy, assessment and student engagement within their courses and programs. Research has shown that instructors need to experience the eP process first hand, within meaningful and situated contexts that enable professional learning. This study explores how instructors make meaning of the eP process in relation to their own professional learning, and subsequently how they construe the eP process’s pedagogic purpose and value for their students. In this context, professional learning is defined as a relational engagement between identity, knowledge construction and professional practice that leads to a transformative understanding of learning as embodied and holistic. Based on a review of the literature on the eP process and theories of professional learning, a group of instructors in higher education were engaged in a shared self-study of the eP process within a narrative inquiry methodology. They used images, video, word clouds and other artifacts to explore and build awareness of the values and beliefs that have shaped their teaching practices. Participants concluded that the eP process promotes multiple competencies linked to “readiness,” the ability to assess new situations and move forward in new environments. Intrinsically formed through iterative cycles of reflection and engagement, “readiness” is a dispositional stance or type of knowing-in-action that can help students bridge the gap between conceptual knowledge learned in classrooms and situated, relational knowledge required for professional practice. The study implications are that the eP process can be used as tool for professional educators to examine their own practices, in order to imagine new ways of learning for their students. / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2006. / "August, 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-39). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.E.)--University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 24).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Also available in print.

The use of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) to support learning, assessment, and professional development across higher education has increased in recent years. However, higher education faculty who are instrumental to successful adoption and implementation are not often invited as active participants in the innovation process. In addition, while student perspectives of ePortfolio adoption are well represented in the literature, faculty perspectives are not. The goal of this research study was to investigate faculty and administrators perspectives regarding the university-wide implementation of an ePortfolio initiative in order to develop a framework for implementation that integrates the voice of faculty as well as diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. The study employed a design and development research methodology, comprised of three phases (analysis, development and evaluation, and revision) and focused on a large United States research university in its tenth year of electronic portfolio implementation. An analysis of survey and interview data in light of DOI theory as well as expert review resulted in a six-component modular framework that can be used by any faculty group to guide electronic portfolio adoption and implementation. One implication is that higher education now has a process technology to support successful integration of an instructional technology, electronic portfolios, in university teaching and learning. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, December 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jan. 22, 2009). "Department of English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-222).

Thesis (Ed.D)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Fred T. Hofstetter, School of Education. Includes bibliographical references.