Leveraging a Universally Designed Eportfolio to Scale Social-Emotional Learning

• In Event: Leveraging Technology for Social and Emotional Learning at Scale

Proposal

In collaboration with the Harvard EASEL Lab, CAST developed KERNELSFOLIO, a customized eportfolio designed for after-school educators to implement Kernels, EASEL’s social-emotional learning activities. Unlike traditional eportfolios that primarily store information, KERNELSFOLIO offers both an authoring interface and a learner response side. In our collaboration with EASEL, the research team uses KERNELSFOLIO to issue Challenges - models for how to implement Kernels activities with students - to the after-school educators. Upon completion, the after-school educators record how the activity went with their students and provide feedback in KERNELSFOLIO to help the EASEL team refine the Kernels activities.

Guided by Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, KERNELSFOLIO incorporates features like captioned videos, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, multi-language translation, and dictionary support (CAST, 2024). These UDL affordances ensure accessibility for all learners, including those with disabilities and English language learners, aligning with our goal to engage a diverse range of students in middle and high-income careers.

To date, versions of CAST’s eportfolio has been customized and implemented in various settings, including YouthBuild, two urban CTE high schools, an industrial manufacturing technician apprenticeship program, the NSF ATE-supported Micro Nano Technology Collaborative Undergraduate Research Network, and several community colleges. Feedback from these implementations confirms the tool's adaptability across industries and programs, with 100% usage of text-to-speech functionality and 25% using Spanish translation. Educators report increased student engagement, enhanced understanding and retention, greater student ownership of work, more frequent use of video for instruction, and varied options for demonstrating mastery.

In the 2023-2024 academic school year, approximately 15 educators used KERNELSFOLIO weekly to record their implementation of Kernels and provide feedback to the EASEL team. In the 2024-2025 school year, KERNELSFOLIO will be implemented at 90 sites across the state of Nebraska. KERNELSFOLIO not only supports after-school educators in developing students' social-emotional learning (SEL) skills but also provides valuable feedback to researchers for improving Kernels. This approach advances SEL research, enhances teaching effectiveness, boosts student engagement, and promotes the overall development of social-emotional competencies.

Authors

• Sam Catherine Johnston, Cast. Inc

• Alison Kent, CAST