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EPAC Community of Practice
Electronic Portfolio Action and Communication
More about EPAC, what we do, who we are, and how to join, etc.
Note our new web address: http://epac.pbworks.com
Contents:
We are transitioning news updates, articles of interest,resources, etc. to our our new blog which can be found here:
http://epaccop.blogspot.com/
- 2009.06 - You (or someone above you) has decided to implement ePortfolios in your class, department, program, institution. Where do you begin? What resources about ePortfolios already exist? What tool should you use? Who else is doing this? Will this really benefit my students, faculty, my campus? If you're thinking about these questions (and more), please consider joining us at Stanford University in the San Francisco-Bay Area this August 10-12, 2009 for USING ePORTFOLIOS FOR TEACHING, LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT at http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/wsi/eportfolios.html.
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In this three day institute, participants will have the opportunity to actively explore how ePortfolios and Folio Thinking can support integrative (deep) learning and demonstrate learning outcomes. Through interactive discussions and activities, participants will be engaged with a range of ePortfolio case studies that highlight best practices in supporting integrative learning, methods for evaluating ePortfolio work, and strategies for successful ePortfolio adoption and implementation.
A unique outcome of this workshop will be a personal ePortfolio built by the individual/team that can subsequently be shared with colleagues and students to visibly document and model the value of what was learned. The program will also include time for project planning as well as individual consulting with each of the instructors.
Instructors: Helen L. Chen, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning and Wallenberg Hall; John Ittelson, K-20 California Education Technology Collaborative and CSU Monterey Bay; Tracy Penny-Light, St. Jerome’s University, Canada
Fees: Until June 30, 2009: Individual enrollment: $995.00 USD per person; Team enrollment (3 or more persons): $895.00 USD per person
Please feel free to contact Dr. Helen Chen, Course Director, for more information.
- 2009.05 - From George Lorenzo: Educational Pathways - formerly a paid-subscription newsletter that covers online teaching and learning, published by Lorenzo Associates, Inc., since January 2002 - has been converted to a freely accessible newsletter available at http://www.edpath.com/stories.htm. The current Spring-Summer 2009 issue is available at http://www.edpath.com/2009/SS09.htm. There have been some great articles in Educational Pathways relating to ePortfolios,vendors and ePortfolio tools, and case studies of institutional uses. Search the archives here: http://edpath.com/PublicSearch/search.asp
- 2009.05 - From Campus Technology (5/20/09): Why ePortfolio is the Tool of the Time and Who is Enaaeebling It
ePortfolios today are largely institutional reporting tools--assessment management applications. A new professional organization, called AAEEBL, aims to address two additional areas with ePortfolios. http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/05/20/why-eportfolio-is-the-tool-of-the-time-and-who-is-enaaeebling-it.aspx
- 2009.05 - Really interesting post on Helen Barrett's E-Portfolios for Learning blog on "Technology Trends and Gartner's Hype Cycle": http://electronicportfolios.org/blog/2009/05/technology-trends-and-gartners-hype.html
- 2009.05 - From The Chronicle for Higher Education: Community Colleges Need Improved Assessment Tools to Improve Basic-Skills Instruction, Report Says. To improve the success rates of students who are unprepared for college-level work, community colleges must develop richer forms of student-learning assessment, analyze the data to discover best teaching practices, and get faculty members more involved in the assessment process, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Traditional uses of institutional data, like grades and test scores, often fail to involve faculty members or do not encourage them to think about how they could improve their teaching, says the report, "Toward Informative Assessment and a Culture of Evidence." Those measures should be expanded to include more informative assessments such as value-added tests, common exams across course sections, and recordings of students reasoning their way through problem sets, the report says. Colleges can find significant gains in the success rates of students who lack the basic skills necessary for college-level courses, it says, by using these data to identify best teaching practices and by ensuring that faculty members talk openly about their teaching strategies. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=KvVby3c2PfjPsxG9f4MhNjQTqXCVb2pM. Link to the full report: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/publications/pub.asp?key=43&subkey=778. Lloyd Bond is an eloquent writer and does mention ePortfolios as an example. (From The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)
- 2009.05 - International Assessment and Retention Conference, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA), June 10-13 New Orleans, LA. I haven't fully mined this conference program but the topics look interesting and potentially related to ePortfolios and how they could be used. http://www.assessconf.net/
- 2009.05 - REMINDER to contribute: It's not too late to participate in the University of Northern Iowa,survey investigating how institutions of higher learning use digital or e-portfolios. We would be honored if you would be willing to spend 10-15 minutes filling out the survey at the following link by May 1. If you have already done so, thank you! If you are interested in participating, please click on the following link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/113249/eportfolios-in-higher-education
- 2009.05 -VALUE Initiative Seeks Campuses to Test Rubrics and Volunteers for Rubric Development Teams.
AAC&U's VALUE initiative (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) has developed rubrics for most of the “Essential Learning Outcomes” highlighted in AAC&U’s LEAP initiative. We are seeking campuses or departments who are interested in testing rubrics on samples of their own students’ work between May 1 and June 15, 2009. We are also seeking volunteers to join our existing rubric development teams from June 15 and July 15 to help with the final revision of rubrics on a wide array of learning outcomes. For a full list of the outcomes, see the VALUE metarubric page. For more information about volunteering for VALUE rubric development, please e-mail VALUE Initiative Manager Wende Morgaine at wendemm AT gmail DOT com.
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2009.05 - Survey qustions relating to student's experiences with an ePortfolio? At the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, one of our education professors participated in an e-portfolio pilot using Desire2Learn's new e-portfolio tool. The purpose of the e-portolio was to help preservice teachers reflect on their professional development and to create a professional portfolio for school administrators to view during the hiring process. We would like to send a brief questionnaire to these student teachers about their experience, what they learned from creating an e-portfolio, and how it influenced their learning by gathering and sharing examples of their student teaching that they will share with potential employers. Have any of created such a questionnaire and be willing to share the type of questions you asked? Please respond to Karen Skibba, Instructional Design Specialist, UW-Whitewater at kaskibba AT UWM DOT EDU.
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2009.05 - Podcast interview with Emma Purnell, Blended Learning Advisor at the University of Wolverhampton. Emma discusses her (many years) experience in the use of eportfolios as a student, lecturer, and staff support expert. Emma also gives some very insightful and pragmatic advice for an organisational adoption of eportfolios for those who are just beginning to discover their enormous potential. Access the podcast interview with Emma Purnell in full (26 minutes), here:
http://kev-brace.blogspot.com/2009/05/rsc-mp3-monthly-audio-podcast.html. (from the Midlands Eportfolio Group listserv)
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2009.05: Case study: Capturing and Enhancing the Experiences of International Students Using ePortfolios. Abstract: Increasing numbers of international students are being recruited onto technical postgraduate courses which creates a challenging environment for teaching staff who want to help these students develop valuable professional skills for their subsequent use in the workplace. This
case study reports on the use of freely available online tools, for students to record their personal learning development with portable ePortfolios. http://www.engsc.ac.uk/downloads/scholarart/case-study-hill-experiences-international-students-eportfolios.pdf (from the Midlands Eportfolio Group listserv)
- 2009.05 - Relevant stories on NPR's Talk of the Nation (thanks to Ruth Cox for the pointers!)
- "Jobless? Get Noticed In The New Economy" (4/29/09) emphasized the importance of having a web presence (Linked in, and a more formal web identity). They didn't name ePortfolios, but it's what they were recommending and talking about a lot & promoting "Visual CV". On the same NPR page: Multimedia Resumes Add Pizazz To Job Search with a description of a SJSU student: "San Jose State University student Josephine Chandra wrote and filmed her online resume for a class. Chandra graduates in May and is hoping her writing and video skills will land her a job. Also on her Web resume is an unnarrated promotional video for the school's career center. When visitors click on Chandra's Web resume, they see a photograph of her smiling, next to her name at the top. There's text on her education and work experience, but also links to PowerPoint marketing campaigns. Some Web resumes even offer instant Web references." See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103613245
- "Education Tuning Shows What Students Learned" (4/14/09): Sure, everyone takes Psych 101. But do you think we all actually know the same stuff? A new approach at some universities will require that your degree reflect a defined set of skills rather than another multiple choice test. In our first hour today, Phyllis Safman, assistant commissioner for academic affairs at the Utah System of Higher Education, and Gary Rhoades, General Secretary for the American Association of University Professors and a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, will examine whether or not education "tuning" is better, or just different. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103095104 More info on Utah: You can follow the progress of this effort by monitoring the Undergraduate Studies web site at http://www.ugs.utah.edu or you can see the specific web tools that Mark has created for assessment of Gen Ed courses at https://evals.ugs.utah.edu/woot3.php
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2009.05 - Change Magazine (May-June 2009): New Guys in Assessment Town. Carnegie Vice President Pat Hutchings writes in the May-June issue of Change magazine: I guess I haven'tbeen paying attention." For the past twenty years, most of the assessment experts I know have been banging the drum of faculty involvement and local responsibility. Yes, they say (and I agree), the demand for assessment may come from outside the institution, but the work must take shape inside, with real engagement by faculty and others whose job it is to ensure that students learn what the institution promises. The most notable success stories --the ones showcased at national conferences and written about in the extensive literature -- are from places where assessment has been an occasion for faculty to come together; hash out the most important goals for students; develop projects, instruments, and approaches to determine whether those goals are being met; and enter into a cycle of ongoing improvement. This is really hard work...But it turns out there's a new kind of help on the way, from outside the institution. Of course many campuses have engaged external consultants to jumpstart the assessment process; that's not new. And neither is the use of tests and instruments designed by others. What's new is an influx of for-profit assessment providers offering tools and services that promise, variously, to make assessment easier, faster, less intrusive, more useful, and/or more cost effective." http://www.changemag.org/May-June%202009/full-assessment-town.html
- 2009.05 - AA&U News (May 2009): Survey Reveals Widespread Support for Broad Learning Outcomes for All Students and Variety of Assessment Approaches to Measure Progress
AAC&U recently completed a national survey of its members revealing trends in undergraduate education and documenting the widespread use of a variety of approaches to assessing learning outcomes. Nearly 80 percent of colleges now have a broad set of learning outcomes for all students and more than 70 percent now assess outcomes across the curriculum beyond the use of course grades. In addition, academic leaders surveyed revealed an increasing adoption of high-impact teaching and assessment practices—57 percent report using electronic portfolios for at least some students and nearly all those surveyed now offer capstone projects for at least some students. The survey was completed by chief academic officers at 433 colleges and universities of all sorts (public and private, two-year and four-year, large and small). See the first of two reports on the findings—Learning and Assessment: Trends in Undergraduate Education and a press release summarizing the findings. The second report on the survey findings, Trends and Emerging Practices in General Education, will be released later in May. See also related news coverage:
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Chronicle of Higher Education (4/28): The Chronicle of Higher Education (4/28, Glenn) reports, "Colleges appear to be doing more to assess student learning, according to a report scheduled for release today by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU)." The report found "that 78 percent of those institutions have established common learning goals for all of their undergraduates, and that 72 percent try to assess learning outcomes across the curriculum. The learning goals mentioned in the survey include both subject-specific knowledge...and general skills." However, "the report also suggests that many college leaders are worried that their students do not know about the learning outcomes they are supposed to achieve." Further, "the survey found that relatively few colleges are using external learning assessments that might allow institutions to compare their performance with that of their peers." http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/04/16870n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
- Inside Higher Ed (4/28, Jaschik) lists the specifics of the report's key findings, and notes that Carol Geary Schneider, president of the AACU, "said she was generally encouraged by the findings," but added that "it bothered her that so few colleges feel that their students understand learning outcomes and assessment." Schneider also "said colleges need to reach out more to elementary and secondary schools, so that the K-12 and higher ed systems collaborate on curricular goals and promote them throughout a student's education." http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/28/assess
(From ASEE First Bell, 4/28/09)
- 2009.05 - The latest issue of AAC&U's Peer Review (Winter 2009, Vol. 11, No. 1) focuses on "Assessing Learning Outcomes: Lessons from AAC&U's VALUE project" and provides an overview of new assessment approaches it is helping campuses develop, including the application of rubrics assessing a broad set of important learning outcomes using examples of student work completed over time in an e-portfolio. Articles address rubric development, e-portfolios for learning and assessment, assessment processes, and the use of assessment results for individual, program, and institutional improvements. Some of the articles are available online here: http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/index.cfm
- 2009.05 - ePortfolios on twitter: Follow Kathleen Willbanks of the CSU system who maintains the great resource, ePortfolios in the CSU (http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/eportfolio/) here: http://twitter.com/kw_ePortfolios
Do you have an ePortfolio Bibliography or Reference List?
As our community grows, one much-needed resource is a comprehensive list of ePortfolio-related resources and references. For those of you who might be working on a thesis related to ePortfolios or if you have a personal "Top 10" of key books, websites, articles, etc., and wouldn't mind sharing them with our EPAC community, please send them to Helen. And, if you have any interest in helping to compile and annotate this list, please contact me as well!
It goes without saying that the most common questions asked by and of EPAC members are "What ePortfolio tool(s) are you using and is there anything you would recommend?" EPAC does not advocate for any specific ePortfolio tool or product but we would like to take this opportunity to invite all EPAC members to help us compile a comprehensive list of ePortfolio tools and technologies (software and/or hardware) that you using. We'll take advantage of the features of our wiki to start putting this together so if you'd like to contribute, just click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the page and "Save" at the bottom of the page when you're done. You will need to create a pbwiki account before editing. Check out our evolving list here.
Often times we will get questions from the EPAC community that we normally would have posted to our listserv to solicit responses. But rather than sending emails back and forth, what better way of tapping into the collective knowledge of EPAC members AND summarizing the responses than to use our wiki? Check out the questions here and if you would like to respond or make a comment, you will need to create a pbwiki account first and login.
March 2009 queries:
2009.03 - Does anyone know of any institutions where an acknowledgment of ePortfolio completion or exemplary development is included on students' official transcripts?
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- May 2009 Webcast/Chat: The Launch of AAEEBL, The Professional Association for the World ePortfolio Community. This special event is jointly sponsored by EPAC and AAEEBL to mark the formal launch of The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning. Click here for the official press release and more information about this webcast.
- April 2009 EPAC Webcast/Chat: Developing Communities of Practice for ePortfolios: Brainstorming Strategies to Build Connections and Buy-in with Faculty with the University of British Columbia (chat transcript, slides, and additional resources).
- March 2009 EPAC Webcast: ePortfolios in Math with Professor Suzanne Topp, Salt Lake Community College (recorded archive, slides, and additional resources)
- February 2009 EPAC Chat: Making Sense of ePortfolio Tools and Technologies -- Where to Begin? with Helen Barrett and Nils Peterson (transcript and resources)
- December 2008 EPAC Chat: AAC&U's VALUE Project: Evaluating the "Foundations and Skills for Lifelong Learning" Metarubric (transcript and resources)
- November 2008 EPAC Chat: ePortfolios -- A Signature Assessment for Liberal Education? (transcript and resources)
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7th Annual Canadian e-Learning Conference, June 17-19, 2009, University of British Columbia, Vancouver: http://celc2009.ca/ With the theme of From Implementation to Innovation, you are invited to come and share with us your individual innovations, success and challenges with e-learning. Learn, collaborate, and discuss with your peers on best practices and new pedagogies. We encourage all of you to go beyond implementation and innovate on what you've implemented! The conference program streams will explore the following e-learning topics:
- Open, connected & social - discover Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), new media and open education
- Extending the CMS - consider how Web 2.0 tools, RSS and built-in APIs can extend the capabilities of the CMS
- Teaching and Learning - reflect on how technology can enhance learning and teaching
- Research - investigate how new technologies and teaching practices are altering the online or face-to-face classroom
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The University of Wolverhampton and JISC are pleased to announce the Telling e-Portfolio Stories Conference 2009: e-Portfolio-Based Learning, June 10-11, 2009. This year's conference aims to explore the emergent theme of e-portfolio-based learning. We would like to share e-portfolio stories from areas such as learning, teaching, assessment, PDP, CPD, work based learning, research, strategy and policy. As we would like to align the conference closely with the work of JISC and the e-portfolio effective practice publication, we aim to theme this year's stories into multiple perspectives: Learning perspective, Practitioner perspective, Institutional perspective, and Lifelong learning persepctive. Thanks to the additional support from JISC, we are able to offer this 2 day event for £40 per delegate. (accommodation for this event will need to booked separately - a hotel list will be available on the website) All details regarding abstract submission and registration for this event can be found at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/default.aspx?page=16960 or if you need any further information please contact Marie Gildea m.gildea@wlv.ac.uk
Conference programme sneak preview: We will be having a live web link presentation from Kathy Blake-Yancey, from Florida State University, who is a co-director of the International Coalition for Eportfolio Research (INCEPR) and co author of the recent book 'electronic portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact '. In addition we will have confirmed a number of hands on workshops in a range of eportfolio flavours, exploring both eportfolio theory and practice.
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ePortfolio 2009, London, England, June 22-24, 2009. How are ePortfolios practice transforming individual, organisational and community learning and development, creating an opportunity for the emergence of new models and paradigms in the field of learning, employment, human capital and social innovation? How are digital identity technologies transforming ePortfolio technologies and practices? The main themes for ePortfolio 2009 are:
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P1 ePortfolio, innovation and creativity
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P2 ePortfolio, accountability and quality
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P3 ePortfolio, education and personal construction
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P4 ePortfolio, employability and professional development
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P5 ePortfolio, organisational learning and dge management
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P6 ePortfolio, policies and implementation
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P7 ePortfolio, technologies and system architectures>
Conference website: http://www.epforum.eu/. Call for proposals has been extended to April 15!
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ED-MEDIA 2009: World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, June 22-26, 2009, Honolulu, Hawaii- ED-MEDIA 2009 is an international conference, sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia, hypermedia and telecommunications/distance education. ED-MEDIA, the premiere international conference in the field, spans all disciplines and levels of education and attracts more than 1,500 attendees from over 60 countries. For more information, visit: http://www.aace.org/CONF/EDMEDIA/
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10th Sakai Conference, July 8-10, 2009, Boston, MA - The deadline to submit a proposal has been extended to April 24, 2009. The Open Source Portfolio (OSP) is now fully integrated into Sakai and will have a presence at this conference. More information can be found at: https://educonference.com/sakai/boston/index.php
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Campus Technology Conference, July 27–30, 2009, Boston, MA - Campus Technology 2009 returns to Boston with more workshops, more sessions and more opportunities to network and share with technology experts and peers in higher education. Find out "what's next" in teaching and learning technology. New Assessment Strategies/Student ePortfolios are mentioned under their "Learning Infrastructure" conference track and Institutional ePortfolios under the "Learning Infrastructure" track. For more information, go to http://www.campustechnology.com/mcv/conference/summer09/
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Using ePortfolios for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, Stanford University's Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall, Palo Alto, CA, August 10-12, 2009: Registration is now open for the 2009 Summer Institute, a unique forum in which industry leaders, researchers, educators, and practitioners explore critical issues at the crossroads of learning, collaboration and technology.COST varies for each session. Please see the individual workshop descriptions for details. Early bird and team discounts are available for most sessions. FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/wsi
(Disclosure: EPAC co-facilitators Helen Chen & John Ittelson are part of the workshop teaching team)
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2009 Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana scheduled for October 25-27, 2009. The institute is the country’s largest (and best!) annual gathering on assessment and includes a special track on ePortfolios, to be keynoted by Helen Barrett, as well as tracks on student development and diversity, faculty development, the first-year experience, and other topics of interest to us all. The Institute web site can be accessed at http://www.planning.iupui.edu/ai/;
Calls for Proposals, Papers, Conference and Publication Submissions
- 12th International Conference on Interactive Computer-aided Learning, Villach, Austria,September 23-25, 2009. This interdisciplinary conference aims to focus on the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences gained while developing and testing elements of interactive computer aided learning, especially in Engineering Education. Therefore pilot projects, applications and products will also be welcome. There will be a special track on E-Portfolios. Deadline for full papers: May 15, 2009. Deadline for short papers, demonstrations, posters, special tracks, tutorials, workshops: May 29, 2009. Conference website: http://www.icl-conference.org/
Funding Opportunities
EPAC Resources
ABOUT EPAC
Previously sponsored by the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative/Educause Learning Initiative and the American Association for Higher Education, the EPAC Community of Practice has been a leading resource on electronic portfolios since October 2002. Current EPAC co-facilitators include: Helen L. Chen (Stanford University), John Ittelson (California State University Monterey Bay), Darren Cambridge (George Mason University), and Barbara Cambridge (National Council of Teachers of English). Joining EPAC is currently free and all community members share the following benefits:
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Virtual interactions through online chats & discussions, audio and video conferences discussing ePortfolio-related issues, case studies, pedagogical approaches, assessment techniques and best practices;
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Networking and face-to-face opportunities with EPAC members at conferences and meetings;
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Exchange of resources via the EPAC email listserv and wiki;
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Tracking of international and national conferences, requests for proposals and funding opportunities;
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Active exploration and evaluation of tools and practices to support ePortfolio-related activities, reflective thinking, and community-building.
Support for EPAC, our wiki, and online events is generously provided by:
To join EPAC or to unsubscribe from the listserv, please contact Helen Chen
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