The ABE eportfolio system is a revolutionary idea in qualitative student assessment. Currently, most institutional eportfolios use a web serviced application template to organize their information. Although these systems are very efficient, they also have a tendency to reduce the students’ ability to represent their work as an individual by forcing them to present their artifacts in an institutional template. We have conducted studies in the ABE department that suggest a significant amount of student learning happens outside of the traditional classroom. Therefore, to enhance our own understanding and assessment of student learning our goal is to give them more control over the representation of their education. Our belief is that by giving students control over their eportfolio interfaces that we will come to a better understanding of which learning sites and strategies are most effective in helping our students become practicing Agricultural professionals.
Implementing the Rich Intenet Application Model
The ABE eportfolio system retains the advantages of a web serviced application system while also giving students complete control over the design of their interfaces by utilizing Macromedia’s Rich Internet Application (RIA) model. The RIA model is fast becoming the standard information architecture of the web and works by having information pulled from various web services to be presented through one interface. The goal of the RIA model is to have the interface adapt itself to the user rather than the user moving from page to page.
The ABE eportfolio system implements the RIA model through the use of Flash components that act as information appliances. Using a toolkit metaphor, the ABE eportfolio system distributes custom designed Flash components to students who then can use them to access artifacts within the eportfolio database. Please view the movies below to get a better sense of how our system works.
