Eportfolios in the Sciences

The Role of Reflection as students build professional skills and career readiness

Abstract

This poster presents a series of UNSW LTU seed funding grants that explored a program-wide approach to using ePortfolios as a reflective learning process together with the need for life-long and life-wide learning alongside career goal setting. ePortfolios were selected as the learning technology for these studies as they provide a cohesive and reflective space to enable a student to reflect upon and understand different ways of operating and possible new directions for their learning. In higher education more recently, there has been a growing imperative to have a portable record of work undertaken across a number of areas of endeavor in a student?s academic life for assurance of learning. A Mahara ePortfolio serves several important functions with this in mind; it allows for integration of reflective elements, in the Journal, with career-oriented elements, including the articulation of academic and personal skills, plans and the Resume; it records past and current practice for reflecting upon practice to effect change, and acts as a change agent by enabling long-term on-going evaluation of student performance and associated learning outcomes.