Capítulo 16 - First steps in using ePortfolio in a university course
Igor Balaban
University of Zagreb
1. INTRODUCTION TO EPORTFOLIOS
Electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) represent a user-centred environment in e-learning and can be defined as a personal digital record containing artefacts which can be provided to the Faculty, peers, friends, prospective employers, or the general public (i.e. to whomever the owner has chosen to grant permission). According to some authors, ePortfolio is considered to be an electronic learning record (Barker, 2003) which enables an individual to store, organize and present his/her work and accomplishments. The term artefact stands for a representative collection of an individual’s work which best shows his/her skills, competencies and talents. Artefacts can come in form of information, links, tools or other personal or non-personal records that can be selectively provided by the ePortfolio owner.
EPortfolio, as an ‘extension’ of e-learning, is meant to support Personal Development Planning (PDP) and Lifelong Learning (LLL) concepts. In other words, ePortfolio should put the individual front and center. Consequently, instead of the individual taking part in e-learning supported by an LMS, the latter should participate in the individual’s personal growth and development.
The roles of an ePortfolio can be diverse and complex. As a collection of artefacts it can be used in various ways: as an assessment tool or an environment for personal development planning (PDP), for presentation of one’s achievements, and for lifelong learning. The concept of lifelong learning is especially important for adult education (e.g. Bisovsky and Schaffert, 2008). On the other hand, a collection of individual ePortfolios can be used for presenting organizational potential. Another use of ePortfolio could be to enable individuals to become self-directed and reflective learners. Self-reflection is one of the crucial benefits of ePortfolio. To be able to exploit the potential of reflection in ePortfolio, users should be taught how to become reflective thinkers and reflective writers. However, to fully utilize the possibilities of an ePortfolio system, students must first be introduced to the technology itself (Jafari et al., 2006, p. 165).
Considering ePortfolio presentation capabilities, three main types of ePortfolios can be drawn from literature (Jafari&Kaufman, 2006; McGrath et al., 2004), some of which were used in the university course described in this chapter. These types are as follows:
- Assessment Portfolio. Demonstrate student competence and skill for well-defined areas. The purpose is to evaluate student competency as defined by program standards and/or outcomes. Student publishes his/her work and educators as well as peers can leave their feedback.
- Development Portfolio. Demonstrate the advancement and development of student skills over a period of time. They support Personal Development Planning.
- Showcase Portfolio. Demonstrate exemplary work and student skills. Students typically show this portfolio to potential employers or to peers or educators. It can be used as one’s CV, for example.
In addition, a Hybrid Portfolio can be drawn by combining all three types of Portfolio. This is the most widely used Portfolio today.
It has to be noted, however, that these types are not to be taken for granted. In most cases individuals will create an ePortfolio without being aware of which type they are creating. Even if someone intends to create a showcase Portfolio, that same Portfolio can be used to assess that individual. In that particular case it will become an assessment Portfolio. Some of those ePortfolio types have been used in the university course described in this chapter to actualize some of the inherent potential ePortfolio.
2. PREPARING THE ENVIRONMENT
During the winter semester 2008/2009 we decided to implement an ePortfolio system in a hybrid (blended) course Security of Information Systems at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI), University of Zagreb. The instruction for the fifty-four students attending this course included conventional classes and practical sessions in a computer lab. Additional teaching materials as well as discussion forums were placed in the Moodle Learning Management System. Most of the students were in their third year of study.
Introducing an ePortfolio system into this course was motivated by two main goals:
- Choosing which ePortfolio system would be most suitable for use at FOI, regarding the course structure, since most courses at the Faculty are organized in a similar manner.
- Introducing the ePortfolio concept to students and educators. Here we followed a common strategy found in literature, in which starting small-scale pilots aimed at exploring the ePortfolio in a specific context and training the key players is preferred to introducing the system to all students at once.
In Croatia there has been a growing tendency to work with integrated architecture standards, taking into consideration open standards and interoperability. Therefore, by parsing out commercial ePortfolio systems and open source based ones which were not compatible support the Faculty’s IT infrastructure and did not contain some of the needed functionalities, we introduced Mahara and ELGG ePortfolio systems to our students. Mahara is entirely built as an ePortfolio application, while ELGG is primarily a social networking platform that supports ePortfolio functionalities. Numerous examples of using both of these systems as an ePortfolio can be found in literature. Since both of them are open source systems, they are being continuously improved by the Community, so new functionalities are added rather frequently.
According to literature and users’ experience, Mahara has a much simpler user interface. In addition, it is impressive how quickly the Mahara developers fix bugs that have been reported. ELGG, on the other hand, has a richer set of functionalities and therefore offers a better support in the community/social network respect. Mahara has been entirely built as an ePortfolio system in accordance with its definitions. Although we primarily wanted a system which would support ePortfolio features, we offered the students ELGG, with its social networking functionalities, to see if those functionalities would also be used by them. One of the biggest advantages of Mahara over ELGG is that it supports single-sign-on from Moodle. In this case, no such connection has been activated in order to preserve the independence of the systems and to avoid giving any advantage to Mahara since our students are using Moodle LMS and would perhaps prefer to use a system that is interoperable with Moodle.
3. INTRODUCING EPORTFOLIO SYSTEMS
Since ePortfolio had not been previously introduced in any of courses at FOI, this was the students’ first encounter with such a system. In order to avoid possible issues and provide the students with the necessary information, a lecture was given as an introduction to the concept of ePortfolio, as well to ePortfolio as a tool which they would use in the course. In addition, an agenda with stages of ePortfolio implementation and its usage was given to students. Thus the students had a full insight into the entire process; they knew what their assignments were and what would be expected from them at any moment. In the same week in laboratory classes they were given a quick tutorial on the use of the ePortfolio systems Mahara and ELGG.
| Stage | Title and description |
|---|---|
1 |
Introduction to ePortfolio 1. Introduction to the ePortfolio concept and systems; The need for an ePortfolio; Power of reflection. 3. Fill in personal profile (including resume) and review at least 5 profiles of your peers. |
2 |
Reflecting on ePortfolio 1. Monitor progress, problem solving... 3. Split in groups. Make a view available only to peers from your group in which you will include the reflection made in Step 2. Use the ePortfolio systems to give feedback on reflections made by other peers within your group. |
3 |
Using ePortfolio to make course related reflections 1. Monitor progress, problem solving...
|
4 |
Analyzing the results and evaluating the systems 1. Final conversation about experience and impressions. |
The basic idea was to give the students some tasks for which they would have to use ePortfolio. As it can be seen from Stage 1, apart from being introduced to ePortfolio, they were also given exercises like artefacts upload and tagging in order to get used to this new system. First they had to create a showcase Portfolio and after they got familiar with the systems they had to create an assessment Portfolio by placing their assignments and reflections for assessment in the ePortfolio systems (Stage 3).
Types of ePortfolio (showcase, assessment...) are usually represented as ePortfolio views. To illustrate this, we shall use an example of ePortfolio creation:
- Person creates his/her ePortfolio account and logs in.
- If Personal Profile or Resume fields are included in the ePortfolio, the owner fills them with information about himself or herself. If not, the owner creates a document in which he/she will store personal information.
- The ePortfolio owner starts uploading artefacts into the system. An artefact can be any document, multimedia file, link, blog or another type of digital record. The owner can also write reflections on stored artefacts. Until this moment, not a single artefact has been revealed to audience –they are still inaccessible to others–.
- The ePortfolio owner creates view(s). A view is a collection of artefacts targeted at a certain audience. The owner selects artefacts to be included in the view as well as the view layout. The owner can nominate persons who will have access to the created view. Based on the type of artefacts within the view, the ePortfolio type can be determined. If the view is created for assessment purposes and contains seminar or practical work to be assessed by the educator, then we talk about an Assessment Portfolio. Since in this first stage our students had to show their best work, skills and personal information, this was an example of a Showcase ePortolio. An example of a Showcase ePortfolio can be seen in figure 1.
- After the view has been created and published, other peers can browse it and add their feedback. The potential of reflection and feedback is considered to be the most valuable characteristic of ePortfolio.
Figure 1. An example of students' showcase ePortfolio
4. WORKING WITH EPORTFOLIO: EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVE
Since we were involved in a hybrid (blended) course it was much easier to introduce ePortfolio to students than it would have been in a completely on-line course. Laboratory exercises showed that our students did not have any problems with either of the ePortfolio systems since they were familiar with Web 2.0 technologies and e-learning in general. Here it has to be mentioned that, since the course was oriented towards security of information systems, it was expected that the students enrolled in the course would be comfortable using (new) information technologies.
The main goal of Stage 1 was to get students interested in the ePortfolio. Previous experience and literature review showed that students were likely to be more interested in the type of work during which they could create something for themselves as well as to show their competencies. This was the reason the students’ assignment consisted of uploading their personal information as well as the information they found relevant for showing the best of them. Another reason was the research which showed that the information of the contents of ePortfolio must be selected by the owner of digital portfolio «to be able to show his or her educative achievement and reflections about his or her own learning, in such a way that it reflects to himself or herself and to the others (teachers or "peers"), the knowledge acquired in a certain period» (López, 2004, p. 56). That proved to be a complete success, because students were very enthusiastic about this new idea of using the ePortfolio. In fact, some of them completed Stage 2 ahead of schedule.
The scope of Stage 2 was threefold. Firstly, we wanted the students to learn how to reflect, which is in line with the user-centred constructivist approach and represents a crucial step in using ePortfolio. The tendency of the new e-portfolios in web-based environments needs be more oriented to the modern theories of learning typically covering aspects like social learning with a constructivist perspective, without forgetting its individualization aspect (López, 2004). Secondly, by dividing the students into groups within which they were supposed to browse and comment on views of their peers, they had to realize the potential of using ePortfolio views for presentation and getting feedback from others. Thirdly, we wanted to get feedback from students about the ePortfolio and thus find out their opinion about the ePortfolio and its usage in teaching and learning.
Stage 3 had only one purpose: to create an assessment ePortfolio. Here we found out that certain types of work are suitable for assessment using ePortfolio, whereas others are better assessed with an LMS system. The feedback we got from the students at this stage was of great value for us as we got a complete insight into the parts of the course that the students found either less appealing or too comprehensive. It also helped us realize which aspects of the course should be changed and why, from the students’ perspective. As a result, improvements in the course were made for the next generation of students, using the participants’ suggestions.
In Stage 4 we discussed the ePortfolio concept face-to-face, so the students had a chance to update their reflections and feedback from previous stages. The students filled out a comprehensive questionnaire created to enable the evaluation of and comparison between the two ePortfolio systems. Statements in the questionnaire were mostly focused on (a) application features such as their application in general, organization of artefacts, file management, communication, security and privacy, as well as (b) technical features. Furthermore, in order to find out more about the students’ impressions regarding the use of ePortfolio as a new way of learning, several statements were included in the questionnaire for that purpose only. It is important to mention that the questionnaire was based on an extensive overview of ePortfolio literature, as well as on a questionnaire developed for on-line course evaluation in our previous research.
By analyzing the students’ responses in the questionnaire, interesting results were obtained and both of the afore-mentioned goals were achieved. In the process of selecting the ePortfolio system, Mahara outperformed ELGG in all categories. Therefore Mahara was the system introduced to the students in several other courses during the spring semester 2008/2009. Almost 400 students are using Mahara today as an ePortfolio system at the Faculty. The second goal of introducing the ePortfolio as a new concept and teaching and learning methodology has also been fully realized. Namely, based on the results of the first part of the questionnaire, in which the students expressed their opinion about the ePortfolio in general, we can conclude that they were overwhelmed with this new tool. Most of them intend to use Mahara and ePortfolio in general in the future to show their competencies, work results, goals and reflections. The students did not only find the ePortfolio very useful, but also reported that learning how to build a personal ePortfolio was fairly easy for them.5. STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCE
Instead of a conclusion, feedback from some students will be brought up in this final section. Judging from their reactions, the future of ePortfolio at our Faculty is a bright one indeed.
«So far I didn’t know there were systems as good as ePortfolio. The famous Facebook and similar systems are used for building personal profile and communication, but they do not provide what is important, what ePortfolio systems do provide, especially Mahara. Those systems offer a possibility to find a job much faster and more easily, to work on projects and maintain relationships with other peers that use this system. In any case, I fully support educators in introducing ePortfolio to other students. It is most likely those systems will replace a job interview in the future.»
«EPortfolio has enabled me to record my qualifications and experience during education. My own ePortfolio could assist me in student mobility, in finding a right job and starting my career. EPortfolio enables me to introduce myself, my competencies, skills and work to potential employers.»
«EPortfolio has a special purpose in fulfilling personal goals. Namely, when one has one’s life goals written out in one place like in an ePortfolio, one will look at them more often and therefore ask oneself whether they are being fulfilled or not. If one of those goals is lifelong learning, it can be assumed that some of the activities in one’s life would be directed towards fulfilling that goal.»
«I see ePortfolio application in lifelong learning primarily as an opportunity to express our soft skills we didn’t acquire in formal education but rather through working on projects or in teams or doing some other job ... Furthermore I like the possibilities the ePortfolio offers, such as the ability to benchmark with other peers. In that way we can perceive our advantages and disadvantages to work on to improve our own capabilities.»REFERENCES
BARKER, K.C. (2003): ePortfolio Quality Standards: An International Development Project, discussion paper, FuturEd, September 2003, retrieved from http://www.futured.com/pdf/ePortfolio%20Quality%20Discussion%20Paper.pdf
BISOVSKY, G., SCHAFFERT, S. (2008): Learning and teaching with E-Portfolios: Experiences in and Challenges for Adult Education, Proceedings of the ICL conference, Austria, September.
JAFARI, A., KAUFMAN, C. (2006): Handbook of Research on ePortfolios, Idea Group Reference, USA
LOPEZ FERNÁNDEZ, O. (2008): Digital learner portfolio as a tool for innovating assessment in the European Higher Education Area, Interactive Educational Multimedia, 16, 54-65, retreived 12/4/2009, from http:// www.ub.es/multimedia/iem
MCGRATH, S., MOLDER, M., QUON, P., TRAPNELL, T., WILTON, D. (2004): Types of ePortfolios, ePortfolio portal, December 2004, retrieved in January 2009 from http://www.danwilton.com/eportfolios/types.php
