Resources

ePortfolios are web-based, student-generated collections of their work and reflections on their learning and growth. They are tools for students to synthesize and integrate their learning, inside and outside of the classroom, by critically reflecting on their academic and co-curricular experiences. I first learned about ePortfolios from George Kuh who visited our campus in the fall of 2016 and mentioned that they were the latest addition to the list of High Impact Practices that deepen student learning (https://www.aacu.org/leap/hips). As Bret Eynon and Laura Gambino note, ePortfolios can facilitate student inquiry into their own learning, reflection on their development and growth, and integration across disciplines, as well as curricular and co-curricular contexts (2017, 20). As repositories of student work, ePortfolios allow students to reflect on their academic learning at various stages of their undergraduate development. They facilitate critical reflection which has been theorized as a four-stage reflective cycle (presence in experience, description of experience, analysis of experience, and experimentation; Rogers 2002) or a three-step sequence (describing experiences objectively, examining experiences in light of learning goals, and articulation of learning that includes goals for future action; Ash & Clayton 2009). In ePortfolios, students can describe their work (research papers, leadership positions, etc.), analyze how it has contributed to their growth and development, and experiment with various future possibilities by tailoring their ePortfolios for different career paths and job opportunities. I have used ePortfolios in several different courses: first year seminars, upper-level seminars, directed individual study, and capstone courses. ePortfolios allow seniors and recent graduates to showcase their work, and they have been shown to improve performance in job interviews because students can readily recall what they have done over the course of their undergraduate career and cite specific examples of their transferrable skills. In my capstone course, I had students create a type of ePortfolio that included pages about themselves, their signature work, their co-curricular activities, their resume, and their contact information. On their signature work page, I had them describe their capstone project for the general public and reflect on what they had learned in their program. ePortfolios can be powerful for first year students as well. Some institutions, such as Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) include ePortfolios within their first-year-experience programs. They have students create ePersonal Development Plans (ePDP) that enable students to increase awareness of themselves and others, set self-concordant goals, develop hope, and shape education and career plans (https://eportfolio.iupui.edu/). When students create ePortfolios in their first year, they can build on it over time, reflect on what they have learned at various points in their undergraduate career, and chart different pathways when their personal and professional goals change. They can generate robust repositories of what they have learned in their academic and co-curricular experiences. Not unexpectedly, the ePortfolios from my first year seminar were less developed than my capstone course. First year students, navigating new terrain and trying to get their bearings, reflected on what they did in high school and what they hoped to pursue in college. Some had clearly defined goals and career aspirations, while others were uncertain and open to various trajectories. But I think the ePortfolio served two important purposes: first, it clearly demarcated their new identity as a college student, and second, it allowed them to reflect on what they wanted to get out of their college experience in a private forum. Although most free ePortfolios–such as Weebly, Wix, and Wordpress–are public, subscription ePortfolio platforms such as Digication, Pebble Pad, and Taskstream allow students to keep their ePortfolios completely private, share with particular individuals (such as their instructors or classmates), share it within their university, or make it publicly accessible. Many students find such privacy to be novel. When I asked my first-year students if they kept journals or did any reflective writing, I was surprised when only one student raised her hand. The rest said that they used social media such as Facebook, Instagram, or Finsta (a hidden Instagram shared among friends). Instead of engaging in private reflection, they were posting and performing on public or semi-public websites. As a result, many found ePortfolios to be unfamiliar territory, because there was no clearly defined audience, with the exception of myself, who would check to make sure that they were completing their pages, awarding all or no credit. For upper-level seminars and directed individual studies, I have had students create ePortfolios that were more closely tied to the course content. A student researching Aikido created one as a public website with an introduction to Aikido, an annotated bibliography of scholarly resources, and reflections on his personal experience. For my Buddhism course, they reflected on what they learned in the course, uploaded their scholarly review paper, and also wrote about their research for a more general audience. Questions to consider: Do you feel familiar with and comfortable using the ePortfolio platform? What campus resources and support are available for you and your students? For what purpose do you envision using the ePortfolio–for students to reflect on a paper/project, learning process, or academic development? Does your course seek for students to integrate their learning across various contexts or over time? If so, how might you use ePortfolios for this integrative learning? What prompts might you include in your ePortfolio to encourage the kind of integration, reflection, and synthesis that you would like to see? For example, you might ask what insights they gained from an assignment, how it connects to other goals, or how it contributes to their understanding of the discipline or their career development. References: Ash, Sarah L. and Patti H. Clayton. 2009. Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection for applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 25-48. Eynon, Bret and Laura M. Gambino. 2017. High-Impact ePortfolio Practice: A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Rodgers, Carol. 2002. “Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking,” Teachers College Record 104, no. 4:842-866.

Kathleen Gabriel’s Creating the Path to Success in the Classroom is a clear, engaging, and practical book that will be of use to anyone teaching in a university or community-college classroom. In his forward to the book, Stephen Caroll praises Gabriel’s “deep integration of theory and practice” (xiii). This integration is one of the book’s major strengths. Gabriel introduces the reader to scholarship on barriers to student learning, student mindsets, and effective pedagogy. Extensively referenced and cited, Gabriel’s book is thus a primer on classic and more recent scholarship of teaching and learning. After describing this scholarship, Gabriel then offers practical suggestions of classroom strategies designed to engage students effectively given the data. These range from one-time strategies – reading a particular article on growth mindsets as a class, doing an active-learning activity – to strategies that unfold over the course of an entire semester. Gabriel offers concrete scripts for welcoming students and setting a classroom tone, giving student feedback that encourages persistence and growth, creating and shuffling small groups, and much more. Gabriel not only suggests what to do and why, but also encourages faculty to make those reasons explicit to students, making students intentional partners in their own learning. Gabriel explores strategies for creating a positive classroom climate during the first days of class, engaging students during the first month of the semester, growth mindsets and mental toughness, creating interactive lectures, motivating students to read, think about, and discuss course readings, integrating critical thinking and writing into class activities and assignments, and developing student resilience and persistence. In four appendices, Gabriel offers even more practical suggestions. For example, in her chapter on classroom climate, Gabriel notes that “one way that professors can increase their own cultural competence is to read both nonfiction and fiction material that addresses multicultural issues” (20). Gabriel then directs the reader to Appendix A, a list of nonfiction and fiction readings by authors of color that helped her expand her own “cultural competence and awareness” (131). Gabriel is gentle in encouraging faculty to teach minority, first-generation, and academically unprepared students more effectively, suggesting incremental steps that faculty can take as they become more comfortable with new pedagogical strategies. She insists throughout that inclusive pedagogy not come at the expense of a rigorous academic standards: “We can design our assignments in a way that holds students to high standards, but, at the same time, we can give all our students encouragement, support, and resources so that they have ample opportunity to achieve those standards” (111). Creating the Path to Success in the Classroom will be helpful to teaching veterans and novices alike. In her opening chapter, Gabriel frames the book as designed to help faculty effectively teach and retain minority, first-generation, and academically unprepared students. As is the case with many implementations of universal design principles, however, these strategies ultimately improve student engagement and learning for all students.

This intriguing 20-article volume edited by Kathleen Cahalan, Edward Foley, and Gordon Mikoski explores the question of integration in theological education. The editors, who also author multiple articles in this book, divide this text into four sections – schools, curriculums, courses, and frameworks – to engage integration. The authors represent a variety of disciplines in theological education including: practical theology, worship, Christian education, spirituality, ministry, leadership, and church history. In the introduction, Stephen Graham explains, “this book takes a very broad view of integration, using the term in three ways: making connections between bodies of knowledge, overcoming the divide between theory and practice, and enhancing what is called the ‘professional’ model by integrating intellectual, practical, and moral and professional aspects of theological education” (ix). Cahalan frames this volume with a very personal and robust essay. She writes, “I fear we have left it to the students to connect the dots between study, call, and ministry…the lack of integration in theological education and ministerial practice comes at a high price. It reverberates through the personal, ecclesial, and systemic messes we see every day in the church” (2). She then frames this book with various approaches to integration including: the split between theory and practice, divisions between various branches of theological study, and the integration between the intellectual, practical, and moral/professional domains. In the first section on schools, the authors consider integration across the wider school communities. Foley opens this section by examining the school as an agent in the integrating process. He broadens the concept of school to include formal, informal, and semi-formal education. After chapters on faculty development and renewal processes, Foley returns to provide a case study from Catholic Theological Union and an additional article to sum up this section. He concludes that “these are challenging times, but these challenges are also gifts, and they would be a terrible thing to waste” (71). The second section, on curriculums, addresses the opportunities and problems in the area of integration in theological programs of study. Cahalan begins by exploring the dynamics of seminary curriculum around the concept of integration. She argues that “if faculty want education to be more integrative, they have to do more than rearrange the courses and credits and defend their turf” (75). Then she outlines principles of curricular design to produce integrated learning. Her themes are continued in articles by David Rylaarsdam, who explores overhauling curriculum, Jeffery Jones, who gives special attention to the relationship between field education and the rest of the curriculum, and David Jenkins, who adds the needs of denominations to the mix of curricula drivers. The third section explores integration with courses. Mikoski starts breaking integration down to the course level including engaging the explicit, implicit, and null curriculum. After three well-developed case studies, Jeffery Tribble adds the concept of racial differences and Foley adds the challenge of online classes to the discussion on integration. Finally, in the last section, the three editors engage integration through three lenses: “as models, as practical wisdom, and as theology” (14). All three provide engaging conclusions that should propel readers to action. Although the target audience for this book is theological educators and administrators, this book offers important fodder for independent theologians and leaders of religious communities to consider. In addition to being well-written and clear, a very difficult task for an edited volume, this text unpacks some very complex educational theories and theological issues in accessible non-jargon packed language. Although this text could have benefited by exploring the politics and challenges of change in light of its call for integration, it presents a well-rounded and very worthwhile read. The concept of integration will remain an important topic for faculty, administrators, and religious leaders for years to come, and this book provides a valuable contribution to the discussion.

Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al., U C Press, 1985) was required reading in my first-year seminar in the late 1980s. That book, and the liberal arts education into which I was being initiated, changed my life profoundly. It introduced me to new modes of thought (sociology, philosophy, religious studies), instilled a critical sensibility (concern about individualism in American culture), and planted a seed about the importance of religion within a culture (and why it is worthwhile to study it). When I saw the name of one of Habits’ authors attached to a new book on integrated learning, something my own institution takes very seriously, I was intrigued. Sullivan is a senior scholar at the New American Colleges and Universities consortium, and on one level this book merely reports on distinctive activities and programs at some of the member institutions. Those brief descriptions can be helpful and inspiring, especially if your school is embarking on similar programmatic development. A sizeable appendix offers short campus profiles of the twenty-five institutions. In the introduction, Sullivan addresses his readers as people (parents, prospective students, future faculty) who may be “looking for a college that seriously tries to integrate the liberal arts, professional studies, and civic responsibility” (1). There is a dizzying array of initiatives, but the book succeeds in its agenda of persuasion: that the ideals of integrated learning are significant and worthy. Yet, there is a second aspect to Sullivan’s agenda, and at that level the book is a lot more interesting to those already situated in higher education. Woven throughout the book, Sullivan offers insightful commentary on the significance as well as the effectiveness of integrated learning. For example, at the end of the first chapter Sullivan connects the importance of service learning with emerging research in developmental psychology. Drawing on the work of William Damon who writes about the importance of forming a sense of “life purpose,” Sullivan argues that “growing into a mature, educated person committed to significant purposes requires living in a community where values are taken seriously and structure behavior in everyday life” (27). That is precisely what our more innovative programs can do: cultivate that needed sense of purpose, which in turn fosters resilience. But in Sullivan’s hands, resilience is not just about retention and graduation rates – it is part of a larger mission to produce a healthier civic culture with an engaged, proactive citizenry. Later, Sullivan posits, “the key factor is that the members of such societies share a sense of membership in some larger whole. This gives them an ability and willingness to recognize that the well-being of each group depends on cooperation with the others. Such shared expectations and bonds are the prerequisite for a functioning, pluralistic democracy” (60). For those in theology and religious studies, this book offers a larger context in which to understand the work of instilling the virtues of tolerance and understanding. Those involved in service learning, study abroad, civic engagement, or vocation-related programming will appreciate that such initiatives are celebrated in these pages. At this level, the book can be a needed tonic for beleaguered faculty. If you share Sullivan’s ideals and his sense of the role liberal learning can play in that vision of a pluralistic, democratic society, then this book serves as a reminder of how your work contributes to that mission.

In 1950, just over 25,000 foreign students were enrolled in institutions of higher education in the United States. At the time this review appears on the Internet, that number will be close to 1 million (1). While many schools’ admissions offices have sought to increase their enrollment of international students as an important source of revenue, those who work at colleges and universities in the U.S. should understand that the integration of so many international students into campuses poses a special challenge. If faculty and administrators do not do it well through intentional policies and practices, institutions run the risk of failing the students who have chosen to come to their schools. This book seeks to identify the types of campus environments that lead to the greatest flourishing and growth for international students. The authors draw from two primary types of data in order to discover best practices for integrating international students on campus. They combine analysis of the big data provided by the ongoing Global Perspective Inventory with stories from individual international students. As they put it, the authors’ goal is to use both the “big stories” and the “small stories” to learn what factors contribute to flourishing for such students. The small stories are one of the real strengths of the book, as they are drawn from a variety of schools: small private liberal arts colleges, large state universities, and community colleges are all represented. Over the course of the book, the authors tackle a number of big issues that they see as central to international student flourishing. Individual chapters are devoted to: how diversity is recognized and addressed in the classroom; how international students are involved in campus student leadership; the roles that friends and peers, family, and social media in helping students; and what types of campus contexts create a sense of belonging. Ultimately, the authors conclude that intentional campus-wide policies and practices that support integration of students into many different aspects of campus life are the most successful. They give a number of specific suggestions for best practices, which are well summarized in the last chapter of the book. One of their central arguments is that such measures should not be limited to particular offices (the advising office, the admissions office, and so forth), but that entire campus cultures need to be adjusted, and that this requires buy-in not only from administrative units, but from academic units as well. This book provides much to think about, and would be useful for people in a number of different positions within academia. It is a welcome contribution at a time when faculty and administrators are engaging with the question of what it means to have increasing numbers of international students in college, university, and seminary classrooms.