Learner Bytes

I’m hoping to establish a project next year to work on the implementation of eportfolios as a tool to support the development of student learning. I was able to attend the RMIT and University of South Australia – ePortfolio Review and Planning Forum a few days ago, and also a couple of workshops the day before the ascilite09 conference began.

All this has definitely given me a huge dose of eportfolio knowledge, understanding, projects, products, and an a good grasp of the scale & scope of implementing eportfolios as a tool for learning. I see that using these tools for learning may need some thinking around the curriculum and how that might need to be adjusted – particularly assessment activities. “An e-portfolio is a purposeful aggregation of digital items – ideas, evidence, reflections, feedback etc, which “presents” a selected audience with evidence of a person’s learning and/or ability.“ (Sutherland & Powell, 2007) .

My understanding of how we could use eportfolio comes from an acknowledgement that they can be a product, as well as a process. By product I would mean a collection of artefacts collected over time that may have been the result of assessment activities, resources, or digital objects meaningful to the learning that can provide evidence of learning or demonstrate competencies achieved. By process, I see the eportfolio as being something that records a learning journey, populated with reflection of what has been learned and how this learning has changed the perspectives & understanding of the learner.

I’m aware that when introducing eportfolios some issues will need to be addressed if implementation is to be successful. These may include the: the purpose & processes, if being used for assessment, motivation by staff & students, engagement by sponsors, ownership by all stakeholders, and acceptance that use could be disruptive to established practice. So, I see that much needs to be done to develop a project that could be used to trial or test the validity of eprotfolios into programs in the faculty. I’m looking forward to working with a team of interested & like minded people who will help me create the conditions, scaffolding, encouragement, rationale, and hopefully a community of practice, to support a project that aims to introduce eportfolios across a range of units across programs in the Faculty. My hope is that we can model how well eportfolios might provide conditions for learning that encourages student engagement and develops them as life long, reflective learners.

One thought I’ve had is that I may need to think about another name for eportfolio, as there seems to be a range of understanding of what eportfolio might mean so a different name that explains itself could be useful. The more I think about a name though, the more I realise I could confine the understood potential or purpose. I’ll keep thinking about this, and if you’ve got any ideas, I’d love to hear about them.

As I begin the next steps of my adventure with eportfolios, I would like to recognise the people who have been generous enough to share their stories about eportfolios and appreciate the insights that I’ve harvested from conversations with them. Lisa Gray, Megan Botterill, Gillian Hallam, Lisa Halstead, Jerry Leeson, Hazel Owen, Allison Miller, Helen Barrett, Shane Sutherland, & others. I also need to thank those people who have been willing to listen to me rant on about eportfolios as I came to develop my own understand of their value and benefit to learning.

There are a few good places to find resources regarding eportfolios; JISC – e-Portfolios: An overview, & the JISC – e-Portfolios: Key resources page, the Australian ePortfolio Project, and Dr. Helen Barrett’s Electronic Portfolios website.

Reference: Sutherland, S. and Powell, A. (2007), Cetis SIG mailing list discussions [www.jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/cetis-portfolio.html] 9 July 2007