A Narrative Biographical Study of Faculty Collaboration in E-Portfolio Development

Since an e-portfolio system was adapted at the authors’ college, the faculty has been encouraged to use e-portfolios in various areas from professional development to instructional purposes. In this paper, they describe two cases of faculty to discuss how they became collaborative partners who support each other in conceptualizing e-portfolios as an instructional tool, designing learning activities for graduate courses, and they reflect on their own practices for enhancing teaching and learning based on the results from interviews, reflective essays, questionnaires and participation in broader learning communities, and a review of their signature e-portfolio assignments. Additionally, they argue how broader teamwork at the college level helped them as faculty to continue their efforts, often supported by the administration. In conclusion, the importance of faculty partnership as well as a continuous support system for faculty in adapting a new technology will be discussed.


INTRoDUCTIoN
As technology is considered indispensable in current society, its pedagogical use has become one of the crucial foci in education (Buckingham, 2003;Cable in the Classroom, 2006, November;Marsh & Millard, 2000;Potter, 2005). For teachers to use technology to enhance their growth and adopt the technology for student learning, they must build knowledge and critical perspectives on using technology, beyond acquiring skills of using it (Kellner & Share, 2007;Leu & Zawilinski, 2007;Semali, 2003). The mere presence of technology in educational settings does not mean they are critically assessed and integrated into teaching and learning (Cuban, 2001;Kist, 2005). Therefore, it is important to support teachers to learn essential knowledge and develop perspectives on new technology for their teaching.
While there have been discussions and research on the use of e-Portfolios in higher education for student learning and growth (Lin, 2008;Young, 2002) as well as assessments (Shephard, 2009;Liu, Zhuo, & Yuan, 2004), few research on faculty and professional development is available, especially addressing challenges in using e-Portfolios for teaching and research (Luera, 2016;Hyland, 2012). In order to effectively support faculty in learning new technology, it is imperative to understand the experiences of faculty in the process. In this paper, we examine our own experiences in the process of learning and implementing an e-Portfolio system. Specifically, we, two faculty at a mid-sized college near a metropolitan area, will narrate our experiences when we explored the e-Portfolio, applying it to their teaching and professional development. We will discuss how our professional partnership helped us to go through the important steps in learning, planning, and applying technology to our teaching. Additionally, we will explain how our participation in a larger faculty learning community which was also supported by the college administration has helped us to grow as e-Portfolio users, reflective practitioners, and researchers.

Adaptation of e-Portfolios in Higher Education
Many higher education institutions have adapted e-Portfolios for various purposes, as Cohen (2008) assesses. Some universities and colleges encourage students to make showcase e-Portfolios to highlight their strengths and demonstrate core abilities in academic work as well as from their experiences (e.g., University of Michigan, University of Iowa), and other institutions focus more on administrative purposes including marketing and the support of faculty development and teaching (e.g., Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Tech).
Current college students are recognized as those who are ready for creating and compiling work on computers and digital networking (Ciocco & Holtzman, 2008). With web-based e-Portfolios such as Taskstream, their work will be digitized, stored, and readily accessible for future presentation to potential employers. More importantly, using e-Portfolios, students can share their creative work and documented experiences with faculty or peers who are willing to provide feedback moreover, they could do a self-assessment of their learning and growth, which usually happens in a timely or even an instant manner. Additionally, digitalized student work goes beyond the form of a word document, to include multi-media formats such as slide shows, digital videos, and links to external resources.
Not only for students but also for faculty, e-Portfolios can be a useful tool. With the right support system, faculty can overcome the limitation of time and space and monitor the progress of students over a course or a program, which allows ongoing feedback and evaluation (Ciocco & Holtzman, 2008). In short, both faculty and students can benefit from making and sharing e-Portfolios because it allows and encourages self-assessment, timely feedback, reflection, improvements over time, and verification of learning and growth. In a phenomenological study examining faculty points of view in using e-Portfolios, Zeller and Mudrey (2007) found out that faculty in different fields implement them for different purposes, but there was a common agreement on the importance of having "clarity of purpose, coaching students in the reflective process, providing feedback throughout the process, addressing technological issues and evaluating whether a course is well suited for a portfolio" (p. 426). They, therefore, argued that the role of faculty is very critical in making the e-Portfolio assignment meaningful and purposeful.

Faculty Collaboration and Professional Development
Faculty in higher education need opportunities for professional development in an era of rapid and continuous change. However, as most higher education institutions have limited resources available for their faculty, collaboration among faculty is seen as a vital tool to motivate faculty learning and promote professional development. As Baldwin (1990) identifies, a substantially larger percentage of faculty saw collaboration among faculty as vital in various academic activities. More importantly, collaboration is a key to successful initiatives in areas of rapid change such as technology because collaborative faculty development enables individual faculty to step out of their comfort zones and learn how to work productively in tandem with others (Baldwin & Chang, 2007). Therefore, collaboration is the process as "an effective interpersonal process that facilitates the achievement of goals that cannot be reached when individual professionals act on their own" (Bronstein, 2003, p.299). Higher educational institutions can greatly benefit from collaborative faculty development as it can help to maintain a dynamic institutional climate that sustains good faculty and ultimately promotes a healthy learning environment for students (Baldwin & Chang, 2007). As collaborative learning is emphasized in teacher education programs, faculty members explore collaboration to enhance their teaching and research. Therefore, learning is a major incentive for faculty collaboration as they are seeking to develop knowledge to apply to their practice (Ebers, 1997as cited in Baldwin & Chang, 2007.

Personal Narrative
Personal narratives in an educational context are a creative means for examining and understanding teaching and learning experiences (Barkhuizen, 2011;Freeman, 2006;Nelson, 2011). First-person accounts of participants' own experiences provide valuable data and evidence for the experience that is being studied (Polkinghorne, 2005). Therefore, autobiographical narratives serve best the primary purpose of our study as our own narratives engage us in the process of thinking about, talking about, writing about, analyzing, and reflecting on our own practice (Pavlenko, 2007). Autobiographical narratives (Barkhuizen, 2011;Nelson, 2011;Polkinghorne, 2005) challenge the idea of a detached or objective research method while actively engaging the researcher in the research process. The process of analysis also involves an interpretation of truths and knowledge in an interactive relationship between the narrator and the researcher. Narrators as trained researchers can determine what anecdotes to tell and present what they saw as meaningful. An inductive process of analysis of the narratives (Nelson, 2011) was used within an interpretative autobiography framework. "It is often noted that writing autobiographic narratives, for example, can encourage learners to value their own experiential knowledge as important knowledge, which can be empowering, especially for those to whom the act of naming and framing lived experience in an educational context is not necessarily familiar, comfortable, or historically valued" (Nelson, 2011, p.467). Since first-person accounts or self-reports of experiences can capture the richness and fullness of an experience (Polkinghorne, 2005, p. 138), data collected from narrative can be adequate to provide evidence for the study of our experience.

Case Study
In this study, we used the case study approach (Creswell, 2018) to collect the narrative data to examine phenomena by "the coding of narratives according to emerging themes, trends, patterns, or conceptual categories" (Pavlenko, 2007, p. 166). The faculty narratives are, what Freeman (2006) calls, "big stories" that entail reflection beyond specific events and situations and involve the process of meaning-making of their examined experiences. Therefore, the biographical narratives of us as faculty in this study were a background text as well as a vehicle for inquiry, into how we responded to the issues of adaptation of e-Portfolios to our teaching and other changes in the institution. The narrative data were collected through interviews, reflective writings, and dialogues.
First, we interviewed each other to recollect their reflections on learning experiences including training sessions on Taskstream, their participation in an e-Portfolio learning community, our experiences with faculty support teams such as our technology support team and administration, and the implementation of e-Portfolios. The interviews were done with a semi-structured interview method (Creswell, 2018) which aimed to facilitate our reflective process, by providing prompts to initiate thought processes. Second, we selected their signature assignments and learning activities using e-Portfolios from our respective courses. Through phenomenological or thematic data analysis (Creswell, 2018), the interview data and our writings were categorized according to emerging themes. As the data were reviewed, however, more conversations and discussions were done to clarify or verify the categorization. This procedure was also done to supplement the initial responses to the previous two methods and to deepen our reflective processes. The analysis of narratives helped us become more aware of and understand better as faculty. Therefore, through narrative writing and analysis, we were making meaning of our teaching and learning experiences, making sense of our lived experiences, and telling our stories in contexts (Barkhuizen & Benson, 2008 as cited in Barkhuizen, 2011, pp. 394-395).
The analysis of the narrative data resulted in the following broad categories; faculty as learners in conceptualizing e-Portfolios; use of e-Portfolios for designing signature assignments and other uses; and faculty partnership and collaboration in reflection and professional development. In this paper, each category is used as a theme to describe the faculty's experiences and outcomes. Along with the descriptions, our separate views on using e-Portfolios as well as the similarities we commonly share are also presented. Additionally, our perceptions of the partnership, broader teamwork in the larger learning community, and the administrative efforts in sustaining e-Portfolio projects will be presented.

Participant Researchers
Our institution adopted Taskstream as an e-Portfolio platform, aiming to use it for multipurpose from administrative tools, such as a repository of documents, to teaching and learning tools as faculty instructional applications and student learning space. To provide faculty with the support they might need in the latter, the administration provided a series of training and workshops, and more importantly, instructional designers who can help the faculty with e-Portfolios. The administration supported the initiatives of faculty learning communities in which faculty had opportunities to learn how to use e-Portfolios for their professional development, discuss various issues that we had, and share what we had done with e-Portfolios.
One of us who is faculty in a Literacy graduate education program (F1) began her Taskstream training in the same semester when the institution adopted it and started participating in a learning community in the following semester and continued participation in the following two semesters. Then, she was invited to become a member of the institution's e-Portfolio learning community. The other who is faculty in a TESOL graduate program (F2) was invited to join the same e-Portfolio learning community one semester after Taskstream was adopted. At the time, the main purpose of e-Portfolios in Taskstream was to assess students' academic performance, and the faculty learning community was created to help faculty develop e-Portfolios for professional development such as teaching and research. We as faculty in the same department had collaborated in teaching and research and regarded ourselves as technologically savvy and capable of learning new instructional technology.

EMERGING THEMES The Faculty's Conceptualization of e-Portfolios
As we reflected on our learning experiences over the period of three years, there were several facets of learning required to adopt e-Portfolios for our professional development. First, it was required to develop skills to use Taskstream. Secondly, as teaching faculty, we wanted to know how to use e-Portfolios in teaching. Thirdly, the institution's expectations and the main purpose of adopting e-Portfolios for faculty and students. As we were conceptualizing our goals and need as teaching faculty and those of our students in utilizing e-Portfolios, we had great rapport and support from each other through collaboration and the institution provided our support for faculty development. At the beginning of our journey in conceptualizing e-Portfolios, we informally met and talked about the process, often expressing our frustration from various challenges. We were expected to acquire technology skills, conceptualize the use of e-Portfolios for teaching and student learning, and meet the institution's expectations.
The first breakthrough was the involvement in the faculty e-Portfolio learning community. As members of the learning community, we engaged in the discussion of exploring e-Portfolios as professional development and instructional tools. The learning community was a space where faculty learned to understand various ways in which e-Portfolios could be used in their current practice. It was a formal setting, but comfortable enough for open conversations, where faculty engaged in discussions about utilizing e-Portfolios as a tool for best practices and reflective learning and teaching. The follow-up conversations frequently took place after the learning community meetings in a more informal setting, such as the faculty lounge, offices, phone conversations, and emails. During those conversations, we shared and exchanged ideas and thoughts as well as constructive feedback. We were willing to share our thoughts that we were unlikely to share with the learning community. In the narrative, the TESOL faculty (F2) reflects on the experience in the faculty learning community where e-Portfolios were introduced as an instructional tool. The narrative provides the faculty with a vehicle to reveal her understanding and feelings about e-Portfolios in the initial stage of the experience. However, the faculty development opportunity presented by the college assessment director encouraged them to consider incorporating e-Portfolios into their current practice.
The college assessment director approached me in the spring of 2009. It was appealing to me since our school was one of the two schools that were at the forefront of adopting Taskstream e-Portfolios for the students. (F2) The faculty's involvement in the learning community introduced them to the concept of using e-Portfolios for both instructional and professional purposes. Through the workshops and small group meetings organized by the learning community, the faculty successfully implemented their professional e-Portfolios in Taskstream. The peer faculty leaders of the learning community provided individual consultations with the faculty and supported them with various resources. The institutional support through the learning community created an environment that promoted collegial support for faculty development and helped the faculty explore the use of e-Portfolio in their teaching.
The learning community engaged the faculty in developing structured learning e-Portfolios for their students. However, these sessions of the learning community did not necessarily cover what we were concerned about, especially content-area-specific issues which are tied to their areas of research and teaching. We both agreed that the second breakthrough was the day when we realized that the experiences in the process were a form of true collaboration. We engaged in collaborative reflection through reflective dialogues. Reflection involves retrospective thinking about the past. When we reflect to learn from our past experiences, we need to consider how this reflective thinking can help us shape our future -what is the underlying reason for doing it (Moon, 1999). The following section describes how we collaborated in the process of selecting e-Portfolios and developing signature assignments in our respective courses.

Faculty's Implementation of e-Portfolios
After having actively participated in the learning community and becoming familiar with e-Portfolios in Taskstream, we were planning to use e-Portfolios in our teaching. For example, the TESOL faculty (F2) explained that there were several issues that she took into consideration in selecting an e-Portfolio tool aligned with the institution's focus on integrating reflection into student learning e-Portfolios.

In the fall semester, I implemented e-Portfolios in the introductory TESOL course at the YH campus.
Initially, the idea of integrating e-Portfolios in the course came to mind when I was exploring digital storytelling as a possible project for the students. In the course that covers theoretical and practical

aspects of teaching English to learners of English as a second language, my goal was for the students to share their learning experiences in the course with their peers. So, I thought digital storytelling to be an ideal project since it allows the students to tell their stories using their own voices. (F2)
Once she identified a specific course for implementing e-Portfolios, she began to create a signature assignment that includes learning activities to address learning outcomes and goals. The key feature of learning activities was a reflection, and the documentation of student learning in their e-Portfolios was aimed to provide evidence of student integrative learning.

While using digital storytelling as a final project where the students show the evidence of their learning, I thought of using e-Portfolios as a tool to promote the students' ongoing reflection on their learning in the course throughout the semester. This multimedia narrative was a semester-long project in which the students enrolled in the introductory TESOL course developed a narrative of their learning experiences about English Language Learners both in class and in the field. Throughout the semester, the students developed an e-Portfolio in Taskstream which is an instructional tool adopted by the college, and they created a digital story using Photo Story 3 as the final project. The goal of this project was to provide the students with the opportunity to become reflective, engaging, collaborative, and competent users of their knowledge of content and technology. (F2)
For the students to use the e-Portfolio as a tool to demonstrate their reflective learning, they needed to design learning activities that "should identify and define a structured time and space for the students to reflect on his or her education within the context of their e-Portfolio (Penny Light, Chen, & Ittelson, 2012, p. 52). Before the semester began, the TESOL faculty (F2) with the help of the learning community facilitators planned a series of sessions for the students on the e-Portfolio tool in Taskstream and Digital Storytelling. The support from the college's learning community was essential to our effort in implementing e-Portfolios in the course.
As the project was multifaceted with various technological tools incorporated, it was imperative to prepare the students with the technology, so I reached out to the senior instructional designer to discuss how to set up orientation sessions for the students. The senior instructional designer, instructional designer, and assessment director (administrator) who were learning community facilitators offered to do those sessions. These orientation sessions were extremely helpful in equipping the students with the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to carry out the project. (F2) The Literacy faculty (F1) wanted to implement e-Portfolios for different purposes; in various courses, at the program level, or for professional use; she asked her students to create e-Portfolios as an accumulative project in two of her courses; she supported the graduate school of education to replace its old comprehensive examination to e-Portfolios at a program level to be qualified for one's graduation, and lastly she also developed her own showcase to collect her dossiers and artifacts as a professional which was used to apply for her promotion and tenure. As she believed that an e-Portfolio is a tool to help students reflect on their past and plan, as Moon (1999) supported, she conceptualized an e-Portfolio as a showcase of one's work, in a more traditional way of using a portfolio.
I think that while there are many uses for e-Portfolios and many reasons for using them, for example, e-Portfolios can be such visually-attractive tools and can come in handy to store and share, to me, e-Portfolios must be considered as a type of portfolio. As a literacy person, I learned about portfolios as a form of authentic assessment. Portfolios may contain, for example, student writing samples from prewriting notes to revised and edited drafts, their past work to the current work and therefore, show their potential for future work. Everything, to me, is the perfect fit -from reflection and for the future, and this new, but at the same time old, way of assessment -e-Portfolio. (F1) Interestingly, she pursued similar help and support, as the TESOL faculty (F2) did, from the instructional designers and the assessment director when she began to implement Taskstream in her classes. The assessment director and an instructional designer came to her classes to teach basic concepts and skills to use Taskstream as a showcase e-Portfolios. She reflected that without this kind of support, she wouldn't have made the e-Portfolios a requirement in her courses. In addition to the technological support for students from these resources, the TESOL faculty (F2) collaborated with the senior instructional designer during the development of learning activities for the e-Portfolio signature assignment. As one of the key areas of the learning community's focus is reflection, the faculty in the learning community had been engaging in the reflective practice of their learning and teaching through e-Portfolios. Therefore, the discussion about learning activities for the signature e-Portfolio assignment between the TESOL faculty (F2) and the senior instructional designer was a continuation of their collaboration in the learning community. There was already good rapport established between them through the learning community, and they shared a common goal of supporting and engaging faculty and students in integrating reflection into the learning process using e-Portfolios. The collaboration with the learning community helped us in the process of introducing the e-Portfolio concept to the students as it "comes with the commensurate amount of support and preparation time to adapt and adopt this new model that will be critical to a successful launch" (Penny Light, Chen, & Ittelson, 2012, p. 123).

Partnership, Collaboration, and Reflective Practitioners
The impetus of the collaborative work between us came from how we viewed ourselves as faculty serving at a teaching institution. The research that we engaged in was mostly derived from practice in our own classrooms, as reflective practitioners exercise reflective thinking and reflective inquiry into teaching where teachers draw on their experiences and analyze them to improve their practice.
As colleagues in the same department who have common research interests and areas of expertise, we engaged frequently in both formal and informal collaboration in which we practiced reflective thinking and reflective inquiry. The conversations about students, teaching, and research took place both on and off campus. Through our collegial and sometimes informal conversations, we developed a good rapport that enabled us to share our ideas, feelings, and concerns.
In my first year at the College, a mentor was assigned to the new faculty, and M was assigned to mentor me. Even though it was a formal structure set up at the college level, our relationship has evolved into various forms both professionally and personally. As the new faculty, I had millions of questions regarding courses and other faculty responsibilities. Our conversations took place in our offices, in the cafeteria, through e-mail and phone, and in our homes. Whatever the topic of conversation might be, we provided each other with constructive feedback and comments. We fully supported each other emotionally as well. Our relationship was intellectually stimulating and emotionally supportive. We created a safe place for ourselves to vent, ask questions, challenge as well as encourage each other, and reflect. I have felt so fortunate to have this relationship and place. (F2) As Baldwin and Chang (2007) call collaborations as social enterprises, the collaborative relationship was developed through socialization in the community and culture. The supportive environment that the institution and the faculty learning community created played a key role in fostering collegial relationships among the members of the community.
I think the regular team meetings at the learning community with delicious food and energy brought the faculty from different schools and departments together. Sometimes, it was difficult for me to attend all of those meetings during a hectic academic year, but I benefited greatly from being a part of that community. Interestingly, we didn't talk much about what we were doing in the learning community, but it was the learning community that provided us with a place to talk. (F2) The collaborative relationship was established in a supportive and collegial community and enriched both their professional and personal lives.
When we were on campus, we would look for each other to have lunch together. Our conversation normally began with our teaching-related matters, both of us tending to be critical of ourselves but sympathetic toward each other. I always found our lunchtime to be productive because your thoughtful feedback oftentimes put my anxiety at ease. Our conversation helped me see the problem from a different perspective. What was most helpful to me was knowing that I wasn't all alone. (F2) The Literacy faculty (F1) recalled a moment that one day the TESOL faculty (F2) shared her own A-ha moment in conceptualizing the use of e-Portfolios for her students.
She (F2) called me at an odd time, I think it was early morning, I mean, very early... Her voice told me that she was very excited about something…As I hear out about her breakthrough in how to integrate e-Portfolio, reflection, and digital storytelling which was at the time, another technology project she had been involved in. I was happy for her; I was more grateful that I was the first person that she thought about calling and sharing this news. It truly showed our friendship and collegiality because she and I had gone through so many steps together, discussing every little or big thing about e-Portfolios, including our application for a faculty development grant on studying e-Portfolios. (F1) Moreover, the Literacy faculty (F1) reflects that it was when she and the TESOL faculty (F2) wrote a proposal to apply for a faculty development grant that she realized she could pursue her interest in e-Portfolios beyond her classrooms. She wanted to share their research interest with her colleagues in and outside of the college community by publishing and presenting at academic conferences. The two faculty, therefore, continued researching and writing on e-Portfolios together and felt comfortable and professional about the roles in each project. The Literacy faculty (F1) thinks that the relationship between the two faculty was almost an ideal partnership. In the practice of reflection in collaboration, we initially approached the problematic situation from our respective perspectives in the form of individual interpretations and understandings of the situation. As conversations continue, we would reframe the situation from a new perspective we gained from each other. It started as an informal conversation between two colleagues, became a systematic practice of reflective thinking and inquiry, and continued to grow in a formal form of collaboration at the institutional level, which led us to act.

DISCUSSIoN
The narrative case study of two faculty attests to collaboration as a powerful tool to promote faculty learning and teaching. Faculty collaboration as evidenced in this study greatly benefited the two faculty in advancing teaching and scholarship. We developed the knowledge and skills for integrating technology into teaching and promoting individual and collective reflection in an interdisciplinary learning community where faculty from different fields engaged in professional development (see Gunawardena et al., 2010). Various activities organized in the learning community, such as workshops and faculty seminars provided us with resources for developing instructional materials that we used in their classes. Discussions facilitated by a team of faculty engaged us in the reflective practice of learning and teaching. It is evident in the cases of the two faculty that we entered the process of collaboration through the learning community because of our desire to learn. In the process, we supported each other in conceptualizing an e-Portfolio as an instructional tool, designing learning activities for their students, and reflecting on our practices for further improvement. Therefore, we worked in the process of collaboration which is "an effective interpersonal process that facilitates the achievement of goals that cannot be reached when individual professionals act on their own" (Bronstein, 2003as cited in Baldwin & Chang, 2007. The role of faculty as reflective practitioners is critical to establishing a connection between research and teaching or theory and practice and helping their students become reflective practitioners themselves by modeling for them. According to Schӧn (1983Schӧn ( , 1987, reflective practitioners engage in a reflective conversation with the setting, a teaching situation for teachers. When engaging in a reflective conversation, practitioners reflect on their experiences to address a new, unfamiliar situation. Reflective practice requires one to know his or her discipline, research, curriculum, and students. Such reflective practice is exercised both in and outside of the classroom. They engaged in, what Schӧn (1983Schӧn ( , 1987 calls, a reflective conversation where a situation would arise, they analyze the situation to identify problems, and they approach the problems. This was a system where their conversations and interaction took place, which is a reflection in collaboration. Working closely with a colleague presented the opportunity to explore the new terrain of our scholarly practice (Austin & Baldwin, 1991).

CoNCLUSIoN
In the narrative study, we documented how we engaged in narrative activities individually and collaboratively and presented how such engagement contributed to professional development. This collaborative inquiry resulted in faculty partnership in conceptualizing e-Portfolio as an instructional tool, designing learning activities for our students, and reflecting on our own practices for further improvement. The process of inquiry into practice was true evidence of our commitment to advancing teaching and learning and the college's support system for its faculty development.
This faculty collaboration was a meaningful experience for us as it brought us closer to the institution as a community. The faculty collaboration created an institutional environment that also values collegial support for faculty development and promotes a desirable learning environment for students. Collaboration as a powerful tool can promote faculty's professional development and growth in the areas of teaching, scholarship, and service. The two faculty in the study worked together to achieve our common goals through various collective efforts that provided us with continual assistance.
Higher education institutions can greatly benefit from faculty collaboration in a faculty-led learning community by organizing professional activities and developing resources for teaching and research. Such a collaborative community creates a space for faculty to engage in creative, innovative, and reflective activities to enhance teaching and research and put theory into practice.