When we assess the development of an infant, we all look for certain outcomes–babbling, talking, crawling, walking etc.  Listen to any new parent and you’ll hear “Do you think its normal that my baby isn’t walking yet?”.  Or, on the slightly more obnoxious side of the spectrum, “My baby can speak three languages–isn’t he a genius?”

My point is that everyone looks for defined norms in human behavior to assess if an individual is functioning at some base level of agreed-upon “ok”, or in the case of the latter example, “better than ok”.

I don’t think we ever stop doing this to people.  Think of your latest performance review:  Were you a 4 or 5 based on your boss’s perception of your efforts? 

However, when people, or superiors, focus only on outcomes, we start to either modify our behaviors to get that “5″ or simply zone out.  So in some ways making outcomes the primary focus can lead to lower performance.  If you’ve ever watched someone coach a baby about how their walking is coming along or insist that a toddler simply MUST use the toilet, you’ll notice these tactics are not particularly effective.  Humans do things when they want and are able to do things.  Everyone with health on their side walks eventually, and when faced with enough social pressures, everyone will also eventually be potty trained.  (I promise.)

When educators undertake a period of self-study to prove quality, they do so to align their evidence to a third party’s view of quality in the form of standards and they reflect during that process on their own work in order to make improvements.

The process of self-study is designed to actually lead to greater quality.  It isn’t just a stopping point of demonstration.  As an educator looks for evidence that meets a certain criteria, they are forced to really assess if they are meeting that objective and, if not, they face immediate pressure to modify their work.

The term ePortfolio means many different things to different people.  We’re finding a large number think that it is just a collection of artifacts or a blog.

At SchoolChapters, we know that merely collecting artifacts of work isn’t compelling, or even necessary, as an extension of a resume or school experience.  Our solutions go deeper to provide a structured format for individualized self-study with multiple end-users in mind.  By using SchoolChapters, learners are able to engage in an experience of reflection and improvement with the software itself, making the outcomes apparent to multiple end-users, including instructors, parents, friends and employers.

We understand that software designed only to create a showcase can lead to contrived results.

That’s why we’ve built software that actually improves the process of  reflection and study.  Improving the process leads to higher quality and therefore to a better showcase—not the other way around.

At the AAEEBL Executive Summit in Boston last Monday, ePortfolio thought leaders shared their perspectives on the purpose, design and content required in an effective ePortfolio.   As Gail Ring, Ph.D. Director of the ePortfolio Program at Clemson University spoke about the process of aligning evidence to outcomes, a member of the session from the private sector intervened with the perspective that large corporations like Google or Microsoft don’t care about evidence of learning.  He argued that companies would screen candidates based on critical thinking, demonstrated through interview questions. (think: “why are all man-holes circular?”)

This is really a thread of a larger conversation that takes place subtly or not in higher ed every day.  In the liberal arts, (of which I should say I myself am a product), the objective of course work is to promote questioning and critical thinking, mounted on a foundation of knowledge.  Whereas in many professional or vocational programs at Community Colleges, the objective of course work is to acquire very defined skills–the knowledge obtained is related to the task at hand.   Conceptually, the bridge between these disciplines fall in the domains of Computer Science, Teaching and Medicine…the professional programs where specific skills are required as a basis of critical thinking.

ePortfolios are actually a fantastic way to link these different aspects of academia.  The very act of aligning evidence of any kind to an outcome can create a path to critical thinking.  When things get really interesting, students are able to pull information from Linkedin, Facebook and other networks into their ePortfolios as social evidence as well.  An ePortfolio, created in an organized way, can include evidence of learning and critical thinking through live puzzles and demonstration of their process of alignment.

We’ve been out of the blogosphere for a while, focusing on our clients, obsessing over our software and frankly, mulling over what we’re really contributing to the education community.

We’ve always told our clients to call us whenever they need help, but in the last year we backed that up with 24/7 toll-free guaranteed support at no charge.  Our thought?—if the software is actually any good people would use it, love it and not call.  Frankly, if our customers can’t sleep because they’re worrying over features or stability, neither should we.

This is not to say, we haven’t received calls.  But the most vocal customers have contributed to some of the best new features in the last year, including more advanced collaboration and improved UI.

So the software obsession will continue, with daily meetings and monthly releases.  We’ll be introducing more mobile functionality, in addition to our current SchoolChapters Remote app available for iPhone, iPad and Droid.

The dedication to our clients remains our top priority.  And now we’re ready to bring our ease-of-use, dedication and experiences to higher ed and the broader consumer market—-where our university lab clients tell us we’re needed.