Opened Practices Users Working at: Stanford University

Working to improve Sakai from a usability and pedagogical perspective at my campus

Helen L. Chen is research scientist at Stanford University's Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (SCIL). She earned her undergraduate degree in communication studies from UCLA and her PhD in communication with a minor in Psychology from Stanford University in 1998. Helen was the project director of the Learning Careers program, a five-year effort funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation exploring ways to support student integration of in-class and out-of-class learning experiences that are part of being an undergraduate at a research university.

Through collaborations with national and international portfolio researchers, she co-led the development of Folio Thinking, a reflective practice that situates and guides the effective use of learning portfolios. Helen is a founding member and co-facilitator of the Electronic Portfolio Action and Communication International (EPAC), a community of practice focusing on pedagogical and technological issues related to ePortfolios broadly defined. She also co-represents Stanford's participation in the National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Re earch and is a contributing blogger and discussion leader for the Apple Digital Campus Exchange.

Helen's current research interests focus on the application of Folio Thinking pedagogy and practices in engineering education and the evaluation of eportfolios and other social software tools (wikis, weblogs, etc.) to facilitate teaching, learning, and assessment for students, faculty, departments, and institutions. In addition, she is also interested in the affordances and scalability of these kinds of tools and their implications for the design and evaluation of innovative learning spaces to support formal and informal learning.