To improve the power of Learning Portfolios to enable long-term peer-to-peer mentoring between McMaster students and alumni, this Learning Portfolio Fellowship will establish a centralized database which can be used by students to formulate effective learning and career action plans based on current and past student experiences. The research question for this Learning Portfolio Fellowship is: “Can a meta-analysis based Learning Portfolio database contribute towards the undergraduate student career action plan?” While Learning Portfolios are effective qualitative measures of student outcomes, the proposed research will analyze current portfolios and capture quantitative metrics pertaining to the courses, experiential placements, volunteer opportunities, and extracurricular opportunities obtained by students pursuing various programs and career paths. Once the meta-analysis is conducted, the database will allow students to enter search queries, which will link them to collected repositories of information on their prospective career path.
This project is a collaboration with Dr. Rosa da Silva of McMaster’s Biology Department (pictured).