Learner Perspectives
David Tosh and Jeff Haywood of SCROLLA presented 'Students and e-Portfolios - " What is in it for me?"'. 'Students and e-Portfolios - " What is in it for me?' at ALT-C 2005. This gave some very useful insights into the views of learners about e-portfolios. Some of the findings are given below.
Promotion of the e-Portfolio:
Show good examples
Highlight the benefits
Demonstrate the benefits
Show them yours
Needs to be cool and helpful
Highly Structured vs Open System
A system that is highly structured guides through all you need to know
An open system gives more control over the whole process
While the e-portfolio is a new experience, 80.5% prefer a highly structured system
Post-use, 59.8% prefer a highly structured system
50% view the main barrier to using e-portfolios as the technology, the system.
Despite problems, many learners felt that they had demonstrated competences and had learned about reflection (nearly 80%).
Summary and Further Resources
Learner feedback has demonstrated that there are clear benefits to be gained from using e-portfolios but the implementation needs to be clearly thought out and planned. The involvement of all stakeholders in the process will lead to a system that is easy to use and that learners and tutors want to use.
Institutional support is vital with clear policies and guidance being issued. When e-portfolios are integrated into the academic programme, learners see the relevance and benefits and are more easily able to make the links between different parts of their academic and work based studies.
e-Portfolios are still a relatively new tool for the majority of learners and staff. Practice and ideas are still in the infancy stage, but are growing. JISC infoNet would be pleased to receive your experiences relating to the implementation and use of e-portfolios.
The Centre for Recording Achievement has a useful list of resources at
http://www.recordingachievement.org/Useful_Links/links_display.asp?catid=5&offset=0.
La Guardia Community College displays some student portfolios at
http://www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/lagcc_student_eport.html.
PebblePAD is an example of an innovative digital portfolio tool.
The e-portfolio section of the e-Learning Framework website gives links to relevant specifications and Open Source implementations. You may also wish to contribute to the discussion area.
The European Institute for E-Learning (EIfEL) has a number of useful resources.
Finally, the REFLECT Initiative's Dr. Helen Barrett's material on electronic portfolios.
