Council of Writing Program Administrators

WPA invites you to attend the

2007 WPA Assessment Institute

July 12, 2007

Sponsored by the Council of Writing Program Administrators
in conjunction with its summer conference at the
Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe, AZ, July 12-15, 2007

Focus: “Electronic Portfolios, Writing Classrooms, and College Programs: Emerging Practices and Theories, New Issues and Challenges”

This day-long institute will continue last year’s popular and productive focus on electronic portfolios addressing the various questions that arise for WPAs thinking about, planning, or implementing eports.

• What might a range of models and purposes be for ePortfolios?
• How should context matter when considering ePortfolios in local settings?
• What are the relationships between using ePortfolios in writing programs and courses to college and campus-level initiatives? In particular, how do we negotiate and map between programmatic and institutional outcomes?
• What are some productive ways we can read, systematically collect information, and respond to ePortfolios at the programmatic level? How might we frame our responses and findings for different audiences (e.g., students, faculty and administrators in our home institutions, national audiences, etc.)?
• What platforms are currently available for ePortfolio authorship and administration, and how does a WPA enter conversations about applications in response to larger campus-wide technologies and initiatives?
• What are the relationships between ePortfolios and social software (e.g., blogs, wikis, social networking sites, etc.)?
• How might WPAs draw from statements on best practices in ePortfolios to promote positive models and assessment practices at our own institutions?
• What additional resources are available for WPAs to further our understanding about ePortfolios?

Institute Leaders

Darren Cambridge is assistant professor of Internet Studies and Information Literacy at New Century College, which offers integrative studies, first-year experience, and experiential learning programs at George Mason University. He is Associate Director of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research and works with the IMS/GLS, Open Source Portfolio, and Learning Record Online.

Margaret Price is an Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College and Director of Spelman’s Electronic Portfolio Project (SpEl.Folio), which is supported through a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Her interests include representations of Black women in web-based environments, disability studies, and multi-modal learning. She is at work on a book titled Composing Themselves: Spelman Students Explore Their Purposes through Electronic Portfolios . Her writing about SpEl.Folio appears in the Handbook of Research on ePortfolios (Idea Group, 2006) and in Campus Technology (http://campustechnology.com/articles/41320). More information can be found at http://www.spelman.edu/~mprice2

Michael Neal is an Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University where he is exploring intersections between writing assessments, multi-modal literacies, and technologies in his research and teaching. He has directed first-year composition, served as an ePortfolio faculty fellow, and delivered numerous workshops and consultations on electronic portfolio initiatives. Neal has taught courses from first-year composition and professional writing to seminars in composition theory, research methods, and visual rhetoric. (Please see http://mailer.fsu.edu/~mrneal/ for more information.)

Institute price: $ 140 (includes lunch and two breaks)

Online registration is now closed. Mail-in registration must be postmarked July 1 or earlier. After that date, only onsite registration will be accepted.