Activity 2.1 - applications of eportfolios (notes)

Are eportfolios fulfilling a genuine need or are they just the latest fad?

There are definite benefits for all parties involved.. certainly at the academic level (student, teacher, adminstrator). Eportfolios can be used by all of them to achieve any number of objectives.. but there are a good number of questions that need to be answered to make them meaningful and purposeful (sources - Stefani (2005), Vuorikari (2006) )


Is PDP different for students than for staff?
Originally I thought that they are in many respects similar, perhaps in most cases much less prescriptive for teachers .. whereas students may need much more guidance and direction on how and when to use them.


However, perhaps that guidance depends on the amount of experience someone has had with eportfolios before .. no matter what their age (same structure might be required for teachers who have never been exposed to the process) . So now I'm coming back to concluding that fundamentally I don't see how there can be much different. We still have a process of collecting evidence, reviewing / reflecting on the evidence, to then arrive at some sort of conclusion, review which can then be used to plot something forward. How they are realized might be different because of the level of understanding of the concepts that may be introduced .. especially at the introductory stage.

At such a point, I would anticipate the need for some form of detailed scaffolding for a newbie.. to realize construction / collection of evidence and placement of it into a logical framework (similar to what is happening here in our H808 course now - with the creation of evidence via activities and guidance on where to put them, how to tag them). As time progresses, the level of scaffolding might be less directive and become more coaching in style.

However Stefani's point about the need for some sort of assessment / review to make the eportfolio process meaningful (certainly in the context of CPD) struck me as realistic. If that assessment is to be done on one's own, then one needs to have developed / constructed some sort of rubric to make sense of how to review the collection for meaningful / focussed reflection - the demands of which sound very forboding especially for the uninitiated (i.e. yours truly). Thus it's likely more realistic to think that having some sort of rubric to help with reflection might be as useful for staff / faculty as it would be for students.

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my posting to the bulletin board - Core Activity 2.1

Interesting to see the readings that I studied (Batson, Jafari, Stefani, Vuorikari) putting so much importance on assessment and the need for it to be "meaningful" and "purposeful". As a former teacher and now an IT support specialist, I found my interest peeked when I read about portfolios being used in the context of CPD for teachers.

As Stefani (PDP/CPD and eportfolios, 2005) points out , assessment of CDP for teachers, is as important as assessment of PDP for students. Here some sort of review / assessment is needed to encourage integration of concepts learned through PD activities into one's professional practice. It has been my experience that this is typically not done, evidence being typically unpredictable teacher attendance levels for PD activities as well as a low level of engagement or follow up by teachers, and the absence of any recognition (extrinsic motivation) by management of a teacher's efforts to do so.

Perhaps the only time some sort of PD activity is encouraged is through the annual teacher performance review when we as EFL instructors are required to submit a portfolio. The porfolio being promoted here, echoes almost in entirety, the 5 key aspects of teaching that the Univ or Auckland faculty drew up. These same headings are used to guide some sort of demonstration of one's "teaching effectiveness". My experience is that it did cause me to reflect upon my work of each past year. Interestingly, because of my tech competencies, I was motivated to support my "reflection" by assembling digital evidence or samples of things tried. This became especially useful when that reflection may have been about something more negative (i.e. expected response versus actual response by students to an activity). Over a number of years, I did find this process to be a positive one, however a good number of my colleagues still approached it as yet another bureaucratic exercise.

So I read with a great deal of curosity as to how this form of "detachment" to the exercise by a good many of my colleagues could be turned around to be more positive and engaging. While all four of the articles promoted the "eportfolio cause", they also shed some light on the many obstacles that come in the way of realizing effective use of portfolios (let along eportfolios).