Question

Some institutions that require students to develop e-portfolios as a part of their program of study also may use this evidence of student learning to evaluate the program quality or generate evidence for accreditation reports. What do you think should be the driving purpose behind requiring electronic portfolios – professional development planning or institutional evaluation? What are the merits of each approach?

Answer 1

What do you think should be the driving purpose behind requiring electronic portfolios – professional development planning or institutional evaluation?

Traditional eportfolio scholarship has tended to focus on establishing student gains, with reported growth in learning, self-efficacy, and persistence (Sandler, 2010; Stefani, Mason, & Pegler, 2007; Wright, Stallworth, & Ray, 2002). In a post-auxiliary setting where understudy commitment, abilities, and personnel contact are frequently accentuated (Chickering and Gamson, 1987; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991), eportfolios give a rich and responsive system for encouraging and evaluating understudy achievement. Further, eportfolios offer a few appraisal points of interest, for example, working as a computerized storehouse of multidimensional information and reflecting learning procedures and advancements (Acker, 2005; Zubizarreta, 2009). Frequently, the investigation of eportfolios has concentrated on understudy learning. However, with the ability to connect appraisal and guidance, eportfolio activities additionally give a critical road to draw in staff and to advance workforce improvement. The appraisal of eportfolios is an imperative piece of drawing in staff in "taking on a similar mindset as a program," with chances to express and create educational programs past individual courses and to advance a culture of development, especially in new media. Composition studies have a long and dedicated tradition of portfolio assessment, gaining traction in the 1980s (Yancey, 1999). ndeed, wherever "time and assets allow," portfolios have "accomplished remaining as the composition evaluation technique for decision" (White, 2005, p. 582) to empower developmental and summative input on understudy execution. To some extent, this pledge to portfolios needs to do with composing being comprehended to be a procedure, and the nature and structure of eportfolios have been utilized to encourage the reflection and update abilities organized in post-optional sythesis guidance. Subsequently, eportfolios are the most widely recognized task in first year recruit organization courses (Freedman, 1993), regularly working as a "capstone" item exhibiting individual work or highlighting a learning procedure. Since eportfolios are so fundamental to showing understudy learning, how faculty respond to reviewing student writing (reflective and assignment-based) is critical to a program’s overall assessment strategy.

What are the merits of each approach?

A well-executed e-portfolio program is an incredible tool for higher education. They furnish establishments with bona fide evaluations of understudy learning and advance the more profound discovering that we need for our understudies. I don't comprehend why more establishments aren't utilizing them.From registration through graduation, the objectives for expected understudy learning are colossal and eager. Subsequent to looking into statements of purpose from different organizations, analyzing different accreditation rules, and meeting business and network pioneers, AAC&U has discovered accord among these assets that school learning ought to incorporate wide information, intense scholarly and down to earth aptitudes, individual and social duty, and the capacity to coordinate long stretches of learning into an associated, utilitarian entirety. The search for ways to foster and document such complex learning for all students has led some campuses to develop e-portfolios as teaching, learning, and assessment tools.  

Those foundations are presently finding how to utilize e-portfolios to illuminate the procedure of enhancement from the individual understudy level up to the institutional level.

Understudies for the most part utilize e-portfolios to gather their work, consider qualities and shortcomings, and endeavor to make strides. Similarly helpful are the information that staff, divisions, and establishments infer when they evaluate the work in portfolios, think about it in curricular settings, and utilize the information and reflections to get ready for development.