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Using e-portfolios to promote SOTL and independent student learning
Abstract

Using e-portfolios to promote SOTL and independent student learning

Michael Christie, Anne Tietzel and Timothy Strohfeldt
2014 International Consortium for Educational Development Book of Abstracts, p.202
International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) Conference: Educational Development in a Changing World, 2014 (Stockholm, Sweden, 16-Jun-2014–18-Jun-2014)
2014
url
http://www.iced2014.se/docs/ICED2014%20abstracts.pdfView
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Abstract

Other Education career advancement e-Portfoliost learning and teaching
In this paper the authors argue a case for using e-Portfolios to promote the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to improve the quality of student learning at university. Key aspects of that quality is that students become more self motivated to learn, take greater responsibility for their learning and focus on formative feedback and assessment as well as seeking to do well in a final exam. A case study approach, embedded in a mixed-methods approach, is used. The case study focuses on a final year course for graduating primary school teachers called 'Professional Learning - Transitioning into the Profession'. The course was run for the first time in semester two, 2013. The course had been designed some time earlier for accreditation purposes and when the first author was given responsibility for it the course plan was already set. The assessment consisted of a traditional 2400 word end-of-course essay and a successful four week practicum. The lecture/tutorial part of the course was intended to assist graduands to gather together evidence that they could use in their essay to show that they had met a set of graduate standards, imposed by a national body called the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). Although it was the students' right to simply submit the 2400 word end-of-course essay it was decided to re-design the course so that there would be formative as well as summative assessment during the ten weeks of lectures and tutorials. There are seven AITSL standards and the course was altered so that the first two weeks were given over to developing a clear philosophy of teaching and learning and the following seven to gathering evidence together in an e-Portfolio that showed how each of the standards had been achieved. There are commercial software packages such as Pebble Pad that would make this process more effective but negotiations to buy that software for the univesity had not been finalized. It was decided that students should complete an individual private wiki each week within the BlackBoard portal, an online Learning Management System (LMS) that they were familiar with. Some statistical data based on the numbers completing these wikis and qualitative data from self reflections and evaluations were gathered and analysed to validate the use of an e-Portfolio as a way of improving the quality of the students' learning, and in particular their willingness to learn proactively and imaginatively instead of simply responding to an obligatory final essay. The second author, who was in charge of a course for Early Childhood Education (ECE) students, also in their final year, was responsible for another course that made use of e-Portfolios and part of the research method was that the authors compared and contrasted the Primary and ECE students handling of the e-Portfolios during the data analysis. The authors kept their own e-portfolios during the project in which they detailed how they sought to shift the student focus from a summative assessment task to a student centred and student motivated activity that would be of use in finding work and developing their own future SoTL. These analytical, critical, reflective log-books were kept throughout the two courses and helped triangulate the research methods and techniques that were employed in the project. The key research question for this case study, which is inherent in the title of this abstract, is 'whether e-Portfolios can promote the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) of the university lecturers involved and improve the quality of learning among a cohort of teacher education students, who themselves are about to take up teaching posts where SoTL will be a focus for their own staff development'.

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