Is There a Portfolio in this Community?

Tensions in the Use of ePortfolios for Employability Beyond the Academy

Darren CambridgeAAEEBL Annual Meeting, Boston

July 20, 2010

Employability

Integrative Employability

• Career identity integrates– Human capital

(competencies)– Social capital– Adaptability

• Cultivated by narrative- Ashford et. al.

Unemployment [is] now conceptualized as a phenomenon to be governed … through acting on the conduct of the unemployed person, obliging him or her to improve “employability” by acquiring skills, both substantive skills and skills in acquiring work, and obliging the individual to engage in a constant and active search for employment. … Each individual is solicited as a potential ally of economic success. Personal employment and macro-economic health is to be ensured by encouraging individuals to “capitalize” themselves, to invest in the management, presentation, promotion and enhancement of their own economic capital as a capacity of their selves and as a lifelong project.

N. Rose, Powers of Freedom

Aggregative Integrative

Individualist NedCar utilVIF

Collectivist Internet Shiminjuku Augusta Community Portfolio

Nedcar | Werk.nl

• From job-based to project-based industry

• Document competencies and market them to potential employers

• Plan retraining

Competency Matching for Employability

• Choose competency frameworks defined by employers

• Determine and document competency profile• Compare with career profiles• Connect to learning activites to fill gaps• Match with jobs

Aggregative Individualist

utilVIF

• Successful and harmonious integration of immigrants

• Modular personal portal links services to self-representation

Phase 1, Early 2009The Basics

Phase 2, Mid 2009Workplace Integration

Phase 3, Late 2009Daily Life

Language proficiency Personal profile Experiences Competence

Finding employment Health and safety Performing at interviews Local work culture Conflicts in the workplace Business networks Starting a business Team work Volunteering

Health Family Housing Leisure activities Banking Citizenship

Integrative Individualist

Internet Shiminjuku

• Juku of citizenship• Autonomous, social, and tool• Giri – Respect for social relationship• Wa – Tinkering for integration• Part of citizenship is contributing to others’

learning

Peer Teaching Builds Social Capital

• Regional online learning network– Citizen lecturers– Citizen participants

• New career paths • New enterprises• Digital archive

Aggregative Collectivist

http://augustaportfolio.com/

Goals of the Augusta Portfolio• Make visible to the world the impressive reading

and writing of the people of Augusta• Spark conversations about Augusta’s heritage,

achievements, and aspirations• Provide an online place to conduct and share

such conversations• Help people in Augusta develop 21st century

literacies• Synthesize and communicate a vision of

Augusta’s future

Three layers

• Exhibits – Designed by readers and writers in Augusta with the assistance of media experts

• Collective reflections – Results of discussions using the portfolio as a conversation piece

• Individual contributions and reflection – additions to and online conversations about exhibits and collective reflections

Integrative Collectivist

Public Displays of Connection

• Blogroll and friends lists as messages (Donath and boyd, 2004)

• Intentional performance of identity rather than a transparent representation of a social network beyond the system

• Network as implicit validation of profile information

danah boyd as suicide girl“impression management is an

inescapably collective process” (2008)

Materially Connected

• Neither fully production or consumption

• Meaning and functionality dependent on connections (Perkle 2008)

• Compare to “authorship” and “ownership” and “control”

• Where’s the text in this context?

Published by Stylus, 2009

R. Rice & K. Willis (Eds.). (Forthcoming). ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios in Public Workplaces. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press.

dcambrid@gmail.comncepr.org/darren (slides here) Available from Jossey-Bass

November 2010