Guide to Electronic Submission

Transcription

1 Submitting your evidence of accomplished teaching is now easier, faster, and more secure! Key Features of the Electronic Portfolio System Accessing the System Formatting, Uploading, and Submitting Your Material Prepared by Pearson for submission under contract with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards 2013 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards All rights reserved. ElecSubGuide_01

2 Contents Key Features of Electronic Submission 2 Getting Started 2 Obtaining Your Voucher Code(s) to Access the eportfolio System...2 Registering and Entering Your Voucher Code(s) to Submit Evidence Online...3 Formatting, Uploading, and Submitting Materials 4 Formatting Your Evidence...4 Uploading and Submitting Your Materials...5 Policy and Guidelines 6 Changing NBPTS Product, Certificate, or Portfolio Selections...6 Portfolio Submission...6 System Specifications 7 Sample Electronic Submission at a Glance 8 Page 1

3 Key Features of Electronic Submission Gone are the days of mailing a box of paper materials and DVDs to NBPTS. Whether you are seeking National Board Certification, renewing an existing certificate, or participating in Take One!, you will need to use the eportfolio system to upload your submission(s) for scoring. We encourage you to read this publication carefully and refer to the National Board website ( for up-to-date information. The eportfolio system offers many benefits, including: Elimination of shipping costs An extended portfolio deadline The opportunity to use classroom lessons from the spring A more efficient and secure delivery system Reduced opportunity for packaging and formatting mistakes The eportfolio system has built-in features to facilitate your online submission process, including: An online system tutorial to guide you through the process of uploading your submissions Tracking capabilities so that you can easily monitor your progress Temporary storing features to upload and remove draft documents and videos until you are ready to submit for scoring, or the submission deadline, whichever comes first An automated process for transcoding most video files Getting Started The eportfolio system will be available from April 1 to May 31. Submitting your materials using the eportfolio system is easier than you might think. Follow the Portfolio Instructions: Parts 1 and 2 for your certificate area to develop each of your portfolio entries. To begin your online submission process using the eportfolio system, you will: Obtain your voucher code(s) to access the system Register and enter your voucher code(s) to submit your evidence online Obtaining Your Voucher Code(s) to Access the eportfolio System When your account is paid in full and the eligibility prerequisites have been met (the latter is for first-time certification candidates only), you will be ed a voucher code, or set of codes, that you will use to gain access to the eportfolio system. Important: Make sure your My Profile account is up-to-date with your preferred address to ensure receipt of your voucher code(s). Page 2

4 Registering and Entering Your Voucher Code(s) to Submit Evidence Online To register and begin using the eportfolio system, follow this five-step process: 1. Access the National Board website ( 2. Click the link to the eportfolio system. 3. Click Register in the top navigation of the eportfolio website. 4. Follow the instructions to create an account. 5. Enter your voucher code(s) in the text box. The system will validate your codes and display the assessments for which you are registered. Important: You may also wish to view the online training videos for step-by-step instructions for registration, uploading evidence, and portfolio submissions. Your registration process will vary slightly depending on your type of candidacy as follows: First-Time Candidates You will be able to submit evidence for portfolio entries 1 4 for your selected certificate area. Prior Take One! participants: If you are a first-time candidate and have an eligible Take One! score you intend to transfer, you do not need to resubmit that entry. In this case, DO NOT enter the voucher code for that entry during registration. Retake Candidates You will only be able to submit evidence for the entries you have selected to retake. Take One! Participants You will only be able to submit the pre-identified entry for your certificate area. Renewal Candidates You will be able to submit evidence for Components 1 3 and the reflection. Page 3

5 Formatting, Uploading, and Submitting Materials Formatting Your Evidence You will continue to develop evidence using the instructions and evidence format specifications found in the Portfolio Instructions: Parts 1 and 2. However, improvements have been made in the following areas, changing the way you submit key evidence types: Cover sheets and forms. There is no longer a need to submit cover sheets that were designed to help an assessor locate paper evidence. Instead, you need to submit only the following types of cover sheets and forms provided in the Portfolio Instructions: Part 2: Cover sheets and forms that require you to enter information about the evidence you are submitting. Complete these by typing into the shaded fields of the form and printing it or by handwriting on a printed copy. Cover sheets that include prompts you must respond to on a separate sheet of paper. Cover sheets that identify the evidence attached. For example, a cover sheet such as Student B Response must be scanned and included with the student response evidence to identify it for scoring. You may submit your cover sheets and forms as PDF files. If you scan these pages as graphics files, you may insert them into word processing files for submission. Written commentaries. Written commentaries and reflective summaries are composed using word processing software. When creating these files, you must follow the format specifications found in the Portfolio Instructions, including the font size, margin specifications, and maximum page length allowed. Submit your work as Microsoft Word, Open Office, or PDF files. Video recordings. Video recordings of your classroom teaching can now be uploaded directly into the eportfolio system without the need to burn and mail a DVD. Your video recordings must adhere to the format specifications outlined in the Portfolio Instructions and must be submitted as an flv, asf, qt, mov, mpg, mpeg, avi, wmv, mp4, or m4v file. For certificate areas requiring the submission of video segments, you may now submit these as separate files. The eportfolio system has a 500 MB file size limit for each file that is uploaded. There is no limit on the number of megabytes (MB) uploaded for an entire portfolio. You must compress larger video files before submission. Please follow the instructions for video compression found on the Help page of the eportfolio system. Other types of evidence. There are other evidence types that require you to submit artifacts and evidence together with cover sheets that provide additional detail. You may have gathered this evidence in both hardcopy and as electronic files. The evidence must be organized together with the appropriate cover sheets and submitted as Microsoft Word, Open Office, or PDF files. Refer to the Electronic Submission at a Glance on the National Board website ( for a list of evidence to submit electronically, as well as cover sheets and forms from the Portfolio Instructions: Part 2 that no longer need to be submitted. A sample chart is provided at the end of this document. Page 4

6 Uploading and Submitting Your Materials Follow the steps below to upload and submit your material: 1. Access the National Board website ( 2. Click the link to the eportfolio system. 3. Log in to the eportfolio system. The Portfolio Entry Summary page displays (see the sample screen shot below of the Portfolio Entry Summary page for the Adolescence and Young Adulthood/English Language Arts assessment, Entry 3). 4. Click Start. You will be prompted to upload your electronic file(s). 5. Mark Ready to Submit when your evidence file for each part is uploaded. A progress bar for each submission will indicate when all the parts are complete. 6. Click Submit Portfolio Entry for Scoring to submit your work for each entry for which you are registered. The eportfolio system includes online help to answer your questions and online training to guide you in using the system. If your questions are not answered online, you may contact Customer Support at TEACH Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. CST. Page 5

7 Policy and Guidelines Changing NBPTS Product, Certificate, or Portfolio Selections Refer to the Guide to National Board Certification for specific policy and instructions regarding product, certificate, or entry changes. If you make changes after you ve obtained your voucher code(s), these codes will be invalidated and you will be issued new voucher code(s) via . If you have already registered using the invalidated voucher code(s), the entry information for those code(s) will be removed from your account. You will need to click on the Register link, sign in using your registration information, and add the new voucher code(s) you receive. It is important that you use the newest voucher codes you have to submit your materials in the system. Portfolio Submission You will receive an confirmation for each entry you submit indicating successful submission for scoring. After the submission deadline, if you have materials in the eportfolio system that have not been submitted for scoring and you have not received an approved submission extension from NBPTS, all uploaded materials (including incomplete entries) will be submitted for scoring as is. You will be scored based on the materials uploaded prior to the submission deadline. Page 6

8 System Specifications You will need access to a computer with the following minimum specifications: Operating System Browsers Supported* Internet Connection** Additional Software Required Windows XP or later Internet Explorer 8.0 or higher Firefox 4 or later High speed Adobe Flash Player 10.1*** or higher Adobe Reader *** or later Microsoft Word or later, or OpenOffice 3 Mac, OS X v10.6 or later Safari 5 or later High speed Adobe Flash Player 10*** or higher Adobe Reader *** or later Microsoft Word or later, or OpenOffice 3 *Users should avoid Google Chrome on a PC or Mac, or Firefox on a Mac, as they may experience difficulty viewing files using those browsers' built-in readers. **The speed of uploading files to the eportfolio system is dependent on the type of network, the size of the file, and the capacity of the network at upload time. Documents should upload and appear in the "Ready" state within 15 minutes; video files may take as long as one hour to upload and appear as "Ready." ***Adobe Flash Player and Reader are available free of charge at and If you are unable to update to Reader version , you may use version 9.5 as an alternative. Page 7

9 Sample Electronic Submission at a Glance Guide to Electronic Submission This sample illustrates electronic submission information for the Middle Childhood/Generalist assessment. Obtain the chart specific to your assessment at the National Board website ( Page 8

10 Produced for by. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards logo, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, NBPTS, National Board Certified Teacher, NBCT, National Board Certification, Take One!, Accomplished Teacher, and Profile of Professional Growth are registered trademarks or service marks of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective organizations. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Inc. has been funded in part with grants from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation. The contents of this publication do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education or the National Science Foundation, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors. Prepared by Pearson for submission under contract with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Pearson and its logo are trademarks, in the U.S. and/or other countries, of Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s).