What is a Digital Teaching Portfolio?

I Definition of a Digital Teaching Portfolio and an Introduction to This Project

A digital teaching portfolio (Hereafter DTP) is "a goal-driven, organized collection of materials that demonstrates a person's expansion of knowledge and skills over time.(Kilbane & Milman, 2005, p.1). "DTPs are always created for an audience and the creator of a DTP should choose a design and materials most relevant for the target audience. DTPs include all materials associated with teaching which can include course syllabi, communication with students, student homework, learning artifacts, thematic units, photographs and videos. One can imagine a DTP as a kind of Electronic portfolio (ibid. p.3) which is a term for the same concept but applies to people across disciplines. According to the E-portfolio Team, there are three kind of electronic portfolios:

Developmental Portfolios: They demonstrate the development of the creator's skills over time. These portfolios are considered works-in-progress and include both self-assessment and reflection/feedback elements. The primary purpose is to provide communication between students and faculty.
Assessment ePortfolios: They demonstrate student competence and skill for well-defined areas. These may be end-of-course or program assessments primarily for evaluating student performance. The primary purpose is to evaluate student competency as defined by program standards and outcomes.
Showcase ePortfolios: Demonstrate exemplary work and student skills. This type of eportfolio is created at the end of a program to highlight the quality of student work. Students typically show this portfolio to potential employers to gain employment at the end of a degree program.

The eportfolio team elaborates that most electronic portfolios are hybrids and usually do not subscribe to one of the aformentioned types. The MMCE Facilitator's Portfolio can be thought of as a combination of one and two; I am trying to track my own development as an instructor of multicultural education and I have also created this portfolio for assessment. At the moment, however, I have not thought of this portfolio as something that I would put on my CV.

Although electronic portfolios are usually a way for a student to show a teacher how she is progressing, the unique feature of this project is that the creator of the portfolio is a teacher himself with no insructor. Thus, the people who I hope to receive assessment from are my students and other practicioners.

II Benefits of an E-Portfolio

Materials are easy to reproduce.
If your portfolio is on-line then it is accessible to a HUGE audience.
Digital teaching portfolios support great creativity by giving the creators access to a variety of multimedia tools. (Kilbane and Milman: 2005,p.7)
Learning artifacts are instantly accessible clicking on a link
Digital portfolios can be used to create community when creators help each other and comment on eachother's portfolios
Lots and lots of learning artifacts can be stored on-line
Long lasting!
The creator can learn a lot about Information Technology

III Problems with DTPs

Software, computers etc. are expensive!
It requires A LOT of technical knowledge on the part of the creator
It is easy include a lot of materials, but if materials are poorly organized or two numerous, it will discourage people from exploring the DTP.
DTPs require A LOT of time and energy. Quite often technical/ design issues can distract the creator from focusing on the content. It can also take away A LOT of the creator's time in general.

IV The Process of Making a DTP

There are 5 stages in the process for creating a DTP (Kilbane and Milman, 2005)

Stage 1	Planning the Digital Teaching Portfolio The first part of this stage involves identifying a rationale. The rationale for creating this DTP was to create a resource for multicultural/ global education for other people to reference and improve upon. Another reason for this was to improve the curriculum of the course I was teaching and also relfect upon and improve my own facilitating abilities. After choosing a rationale, determining a focus group was quite easy. In the case of this project the focus group was teachers and anyone interested in multicultural or global education. The last part of this stage is framing in which the creator ensures that he designs the portfolio around his rationale and the people for which the portfolio is intended.
Stage 2	Considering Digital Teaching Portfolio Contents At the beginning of this stage the learner collects a wealth of material; the emphasis is on quantity. After many materials are created then the focus turns to quality and the creator chooses the best material. The creator reflects on the quality of his/her material through reflective statements. What can be achieved by these reflective statements is one, the creator understands how these materials were relevant to his professional development and two using the statements will be able to explain to others the significance of the material he has chosen. In this project, since I was not evaluating myself as a teacher in general but rather as a facilitator of MMCE, I felt it important to include the MMCE participants' work from each assignment because the quality of the work would show the quality of the assignment. In this project the material was first collected in the On-Line Handbook of Multicultural Education.
Stage 3	Designing the Digital Teaching Portfolio In this stage the materials are organized. The creator will create a table of contents, a story board, and a site map. In this project, the front page and a site map was initially created. A rough design for each page in the site was created just before construction of a page began. However, the end product always different greatly from the rough design as the creator would usually discover a new functions on his software and drastically change the design.
Stage 4	Evaluating the Digital Teaching Portfolio This includes two types of evaluation: summative and formative evaluation. Formative evaluation involves gathering input and feedback about the portfolio during various stages in its developments. According to Kilbane and Milman (ibid.) critical friends can come in handy at this time. When the portfolio is completed, summative evaluation is conducted to judge the quality of the portfolio in total. In this stage rubrics and short question and answer forms can be used. This project has just arrived at stage 4. My classes ended a couple of days ago and I have been hurriedly turning the On-Line Handbook of Multicultural Education into an MMCE Facilitator's Portfolio. So far, in the formative evaluation of this project, several colleagues have given me some feedback. I am still looking for more and am hoping that some of my colleagues at the 全国英語教育学会 will also be able to provide me with some feedback!
Stage 5	Publishing the Digital Teaching Portfolio The DTP is either burned on a CD and distributed to others or put on the internet for the whole world to see! In this project the MMCE Facilitator's Portfolio has been loaded onto the internet before its official completion. However, the URL of the portfolio has only been released at this current conference and has yet to be linked to the university website.