Helen Chen Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia 2015

Helen Chen

Helen L. Chen is the Director of ePortfolio Initiatives in the Office of the University Registrar and a research scientist in the Designing Education Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She earned her undergraduate degree from University of California, Los Angeles and her PhD in Communication with a minor in Psychology from Stanford University. Helen has collaborated with the Association of American Colleges and Universities on a variety of assessment-related initiatives and is the Co-Director for Research for the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning. She is a co-founder and co-facilitator of EPAC, an ePortfolio community of practice and serves on the editorial board for the International Journal of ePortfolio. Helen and her colleagues Tracy Penny Light and John Ittelson are the authors of Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (2011). Helen’s current research interests and scholarship are focused in a variety of areas, including: 1) Engineering education: What factors influence persistence in engineering in higher education and post-graduation? How can reflective techniques support engineering graduates to meet the challenges of the profession? How do institutions support engineering students’ innovation and entrepreneurial interests?; 2) Learning Spaces: What is the role of learning spaces as a technology to support innovations in teaching and learning?; 3) ePortfolios: How can the pedagogy and technology of ePortfolios foster greater integration and synthesis across curricular and co-curricular experiences? What are the unique features of an ePortfolio approach to assessing learning outcomes and competencies? 4) Redesigning the Academic Transcript: There are limitations to the traditional academic transcript as a meaningful representation of what students know and can do. What are the pathways and approaches by which the traditional transcript together with evidence captured in learning ePortfolios become more authentic and valid educational records of students’ skills, knowledge, and capacities?