ePortfolio and Service-Learning: A Tale of Two Cities Connected by Two High-Impact Practices

Abstract

Two different post-secondary professional education programs from two different cities (New York and Madrid) took a similar approach in using ePortfolio to facilitate high-impact behaviors (HIBs) among their students while showing how the ePortfolio enhances and supports other high impact practices (HIPs). In Madrid, ePortfolio was utilized to support a Matumaini Project as it integrated the academic work carried out in the classrooms to help a community in Kenya. On the other side of the Atlantic, the ePortfolio was implemented in order to connect didactic learning from the classroom to the clinical practice in the local community. Both case studies suggested that the ePortfolio combined with other high-impact practices plays a complementary role with other High-Impact Practices (HIPs) in higher education. Our statistical analysis sheds light on the relationship between seven high-impact behaviors present when two high-impact practices, such as the ePortfolio and Service-Learning, are combined. The correlations, both combined and by city, demonstrate the importance of promoting two high-impact behaviors in particular, which are: 1) quality interaction between the students and the professors and 2) providing opportunities to relate academic learning to real world experiences. When these two high-impact behaviors were maximized, our data suggest that the use of other high-impact behaviors examined in this study expanded as well. This research also confirms the importance of providing students a way to relate their classroom learning with real-world experiences.