EP&LT began the Catalyst project by doing some simple research. "We looked at Alverno College, which had one of the oldest [ePortfolio] systems, and the University of Minnesota system, which was far enough along for us to take a peek at what they were doing and to figure out what direction we should take," claims Farrelly. "Basically, the conclusion we came to, and the philosophy behind the tool, is that it is a very student-centered design. The student has complete control over everything that goes into the ePortfolio, and they have a 500 megabyte quota." Students can take [electronic] artifacts and quickly and easily create an online portfolio via a loosely based template-driven tool that pretty much allows students to "post and store just about anything. They can take artifacts and quickly and easily create an online portfolio."

Farrelly calls Catalyst a "big dumb smart tool," because it is very similar to a file manager built around templates. "It is really just a way of displaying and explaining your artifacts to multiple audiences. We created the tool with the idea that people will use it anyway they want to, leaving the pedagogy and thinking to other departments."

Catalyst also includes a "Portfolio Project Builder" tool geared for instructors and advisors. The tool allows instructors to build in structured sets of interactions that are sent to students as guides to follow for building very specific ePortfolios. Additionally, an online messaging system is built into the tool that allows instructors to communicate regularly with students and provide feedback on their progress. Farrelly says that UW’s medical school and graduate school are gearing up to use Catalyst, adding that making the tool "wide open and flexible" facilitates ease-of-use and implementation "in terms of what instructors can ask students to produce."

"The three big words we use all the time are collect, reflect and present," says Farrelly. "It’s a place for students to collect work, reflect on their work with the help of an advisor or by themselves, and then present the work by publishing it."

UW launched Catalyst in September 20002 with an incoming freshman class who were participating in the university’s Freshman Interest Groups (FIG) Program, which are conducted each Fall quarter. FIGs, according to the UW Web site, "provide incoming freshmen with a bridge between the academic and social world of high school and that of the university. Each FIG is composed of a group of approximately 20 students who enroll in a common set of university classes organized around a central theme, such as people and politics, international relations, and performing arts. The FIG program attempts to facilitate the integration of first-quarter freshmen into the university environment by forming cohorts of students with similar academic interests and, as the quarter progresses, academic experiences. Because students see each other in every class, every day, they develop a familiarity and comfort level with each other that allows more active participation in whatever is going on in the classroom."

Approximately 3,200 freshmen were introduced to Catalyst by about 140 upper- classmen who were trained to be mentors when they attended a three-hour training session on how to use the tool. The incoming freshmen were asked to build their ePortfolios based around their experiences in the FIG program. "Some of the topics students discussed included how they hoped to learn, and how they planned to establish relationships with faculty and students," says Farrelly. "They also had to present their personal mission statement and build artifacts about who they were in high school and how they changed by the end of the quarter. It was a snapshot in time of who they are."

Farrelly adds that the entire process was really "a trial by fire." Although everyone was able to easily use the system, a lot of the feedback EP&LT collected from students led to revisions to the user interface and back-end functionalities, resulting in a second iteration of Catalyst that was released in March 2003.

"We are going to be using it with incoming freshmen classes every year; hopefully they will see it as a natural part of their education," Farrelly says. In the meantime, another 2,000 UW students have come on board as Catalyst users without any advertising or public relations efforts beyond the FIG project. Over the next few months, UW will start a publicity program that Farrelly expects to help bring in "another couple thousand users."