Global Campus, Faculty Collaboration Drives ePortfolio Course Success

Students in an online section of the Professional ePortfolio course claimed three of the four top awards in a recent Professional ePortfolio competition – an outcome that highlights the quality of Global Campus classes.

The contest was judged by career experts, alumni and former award winners. Lynn Meade, a teaching associate professor in Fulbright Student Success at the University of Arkansas, recently celebrated the achievements of her students and reached out to Global Campus to let them know about the win.

"I think this is one illustration of how Global Campus offers top-quality courses where students can compete on all levels," Meade said. "To me, I am always double-checking (and sometimes second-guessing) whether my online students are getting all they need to succeed. My students winning the awards answers that question, and the answer is a 'Yes!'"

 

Preparing for the Future

The course, which Meade has been teaching for three years, gives students the opportunity to show what they have accomplished in college and what they have learned from extracurricular activities. Building the ePortfolio website helps them showcase skills to employers, awards committees, funding sources, graduate schools and family and friends.

The tagline for the class is "show what you know," Meade said, "because it helps students to show off the many wonderful things they have learned in college."

Meade says the Professional ePortfolio class has helped students launch their careers.

"I have heard back from students that it has helped them get jobs and that it helped them prepare for job interviews," she said. "The best part of the class is how much students grow in interpersonal confidence and how they begin to see how everything they have done fits together." 

This class is one of many that fulfills a requirement of the Professional Agility and Career microcredential. The undergraduate microcertificate launched by Fulbright College encourages students to participate in classes and to gain experiences that prepare them for their professional lives. Students can complete all the required courses through Global Campus.

 

Global Campus' Role

Global Campus staff played a key role in the success of the Professional ePortfolio course. During the development phase, Meade met weekly with instructional designers Camie Wood and Alex Dowell.

"The Global Campus team was phenomenal. They had ideas that were thoughtful and grounded in the best practices in the scholarship of teaching and learning," Meade said.

At the end of the course development, Meade also recorded a two-part podcast, Beyond a Resume: ePortfolios in Higher Ed for The Pedagogy Toolkit, a Global Campus production hosted by Wood and Dowell.

 

Animation Addition

Custom animated videos were used to deliver course content. Amy Cooper, animation coordinator, was "all ears" when Meade pitched the idea of making animations to deliver content, she said.

"Early on, I told (Amy) and Camie that I was the person who was willing to experiment with whatever ideas they might have on the back burner waiting for the right person and the right situation," Meade said. "This opened us up to some highly creative brainstorming. Which led to informative animated videos that are engaging to watch."

Cooper used illustrated duck characters created by Maggie Ivy, who assisted with the illustrations that were then animated by Whitney Winkler, digital editor. Winkler did the final editing and sound design on the video using Cooper's storyboard as a guide.

Meade showed a clip of one of those videos when speaking at the Lilly Conference for Teaching and Learning.

"The instructional designers who attended my Lilly Conference presentation came up to me afterwards to tell me that they were so impressed by the content and the quality of our videos," she said.

 

Student Involvement

Global Campus' media production team was also willing to try out new things when Meade asked the team to include students in the course development, literally.

"I wanted to bring my students into the studio and let them be the experts and tell how they built their portfolios," she said. "My goal was to let students learn from students as a way to make the content engaging and meaningful."

"Jerin Crandell, media production manager, and Luke Gramlich, senior videographer and editor, met with me and created a special setup and they worked their magic."

Because of their detailed prep work, the team was able to record the course videos in one session.

"I am so thankful that they took the time to not just tell me what to do but why to do it that way," she said.

"The best part of all was the way the team helped my students to feel like rock stars. Students got to take pictures, and they got to laugh a little, which really helped ease their nerves while on camera."

 

Post-Production

Kris Washington, videographer and editor, edited hours of film for the course creating a consistent structure for the videos that really established a strong branding for the course and for Global Campus, Meade said.

"I really appreciate the way that she worked back and forth with me to fine tune how we wanted the videos to look," she said. "We collaborated on the structure of the first video and established what I wanted so all the other videos could follow that pattern."

"What an amazing eye she had! When I made suggestions, she graciously would take that information and then produce something that exceeded my expectations."

 

Amazing Experience

"Global Campus staff exhibited the right mix of being informative and willing to listen," Meade said. "For any faculty wanting to develop a class, I can tell you that the team is top notch, professional, and willing to listen. For any student wondering if they are getting a comparable academic experience, I can tell you that my students have the awards that tell the tale."