COVA and the ePortfolio

Too frequently, students are taught for education's sake but really do not have anything to show for it. We are excellent at giving tests but do we really empower students to take control of their education? I was fortunate in that my some of the courses in my undergraduate education did give me tools to create evidences of learning. My university employed liberal arts degrees, so all my liberal arts courses used typical tests and essays. However, my major was in Broadcast Production and I was able to create a variety of audio and video files. Those courses in my major did really employ the COVA model and allowed us to take charge of our own learning. COVA is a model embodied at Lamar University in my Master's degree program and stands for Choice, Ownership, Voice, and Authentic. Each letter stands for a trait of learning that allows a learner to pass from superficial education to really taking hold of new information and ideas.

Prior to taking an ePortfolio course, I felt as though I had a fairly good working definition of an ePortfolio. However, I did really like Harapnuik's definition "a learner’s digital evidence of meaningful connections." (Harapnuik, 2015). The definition really gives learners freedom to start from the ground-up on their eportfolio and mold it as one sees fit.

References:

Harapnuik, Dwayne. 2016. Pulled from: http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=5977

Harapnuik, Dwayne. 2015. Pulled from: http://www.harapnuik.org/?p=5790