Integration of ePortfolios in a First Year Engineering Course for Measuring Student Engagement

For the past 3 years, the First-Year Engineering Program at the University of Notre Dame has used electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) as an assessment tool for their Introduction to Engineering course sequence. While each year the ePortfolio assignments have expanded, they have been focused largely in three types of reflections: (1) student experiences within the college but outside of the course, (2) the skills gained specifically through course projects, and (3) their four year plan to be a successful engineering student as defined by the ABET a-k criteria. ePortfolio assignments were initially included to allow students to reflect on their education, develop evidence of their blossoming skills, and take control of their graduation plan. After the first year of practice, there was a clear secondary benefit to the faculty and student advisors. Anecdotally, student reflections provide faculty with a measure of student engagement with the course and even possibly indicated retention into their sophomore year. For this reason, a more formal assessment was needed to determine if student engagement could be measured through ePortfolio reflections. While students are engaged with their ePortfolios, data that describes their interaction with the ePortfolio (number of times they log in, number of artifacts they submit, hits, comments, etc.) is continually collected. This paper will focus on: (1) how ePortfolios have been folded into the Introduction to Engineering course sequence, (2) if student reflections can be used as a measure of engagement and engineering interest, and (3) what markers within an ePortfolio can predict student retention. Specifically, study measures will consist of: (1) instructor categorization of student reflections and evidence types used and (2) assessment of the ePortfolio data features described above as they relate to student retention through the first year. Specifically, ePortfolio data features are continually collected through the use of a computational mining tool. In an initial study of the fall 2012 semester data, students who left the engineering track after one semester had an average of 12.7 logins to the ePortfolio system. Students who left the engineering track after two semesters and students who persisted into the sophomore year had a significantly larger average number of logins, with 18.7 and 19.1, respectively. Future plans include deeper exploration of ePortfolio features as markers of student interest in engineering, specifically identifying students by mid-semester that are at risk for prematurely leaving the engineering track and deploying intervention strategies for those students.