Karen chaired a meeting recently regarding e-portfolios. We had an interesting discussion. It was good to see different points of view on this issue being exchanged.
My, possibly laboured, point keeps coming back to the educational purpose of e-portfolios. What do we want them for? What value will they have for our students? I think that we need to be very clear on educational purpose from the start.
I think the "for our students" bit is important in the question posed in the last paragraph. An e-portfolio's purpose shouldn't be to make our administration easier.
My point at the meeting was that an e-portfolio is an Internet-based space owned by the student. The life-cycle of the space should transcend the the time spent by the student at Stevenson. I showed how my Google account could act as an e-portfolio. My account is a place where I can access all the blogs, sites, groups that I'm involved with. It also acts as a space to work, online, collaboratively on word, excel or PowerPoint documents. I can also develop my online CV from this space. Of course, all of this comes free.
I think (if I can condense the views at the meeting) that there were differences of opinion based on where control should reside with an e-portfolio system: the student or the college.
It might be a good idea for the people involved in the e-portfolio group (and anyone else) to respond to this post so we can thrash out through robust dialogue our vision of e-portfolios. A way forward may just become apparent ...
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2 comments:
Thanks for this, Jerry. I missed the meeting last week so I think that this will help to sum up the discussions and to continue to talk about it.
I have only started thinking about the e-porfolios this year and I therefore have more questions than answers, but I agree with you that the most important point to consider is What's in it for the students? We should never forget to make that our priority.
The other point I agree with is that it should be controlled by the student, as it is ownership that motivates them to keep doing it for themselves, and not just because "the teacher says we have to do it". I certainly see that this approach works with the blogs and the work I am doing with my class.
I look forward to other people's comments/ideas etc
I think we all have different reasons for using an e-portfolio, but I agree with the comments that it should be student centred (of clear benefit for the student and owned by the student). However, I want to be able to assess and HN unit through a e-portfolio rather than a paper based portfolio, which is huge and not environmentally friendly. An e-porfolio would mean that students could get peer and tutor feedback on their personal development which could lead to deeper refelction and clearer goal setting. An e-portfolio may not appeal to every student, so do I offer a paper-based option? I would be reluctant to do that, but that then changes the nature of how student-led an e-portfolio actually is.
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