Eileen McGowan and PITF Karl Wendt created an ePortfolio and collaborative database that accomplished the following:

a)Provided a place for collaboration between faculty, students, and partner organizations prior to and during the residency. 

b)Created an online digital portfolio of student work, which was designed to inform future students, function as a resume builder, and provide philanthropic organizations and individuals with evidence that the program was succeeding. 

c)Created a coherent structure for the capstone project by allowing the faculty to easily assess and comment on student work while they were in the field.

Teaching Challenge:

In the fall of 2010, the Ed.L.D.program was launched. While some of the curricular content is shared with the traditional masters and doctoral programs, Ed.L.D. poses a unique set of challenges for students and faculty. In the program, students work toward a final capstone project while in residency with the specific educational institution. Some of the questions and challenges they faced are:

• How to structure and assess the capstone project across disparate locations and given different project objectives? 
• How to insure a consistent level of student work over the course of their residencies? 
• How to provide opportunities for collaboration between students during residency? 
• How to assure goals are aligned between the students, faculty and partner organizations? 
• How to record student work in a way that meaningfully allows future cohorts to grow and benefit from prior student work
• How to showcase and leverage student work to improve relationships with donors?