WEBFOLIO APPLICATION IN PRIMARY EDUCATION: Qualities and Usability of Webfolio System

Abstract

In today’s world, educational establishments should follow and utilize technological developments in order to improve the quality of educational activities. One of the fields that technology can be integrated into educational establishments is evaluation. There is a tendency of process evaluation in today’s evaluation field, and portfolios are among these process evaluation tools. In order to provide a faster and easier process, portfolios have been prepared in electronic settings and transformed into e-portfolios. Moreover, in time, e-portfolios had to be moved into web to improve their efficiency, and web-based-portfolio (Webfolio) emerged. The aim of this study is to identify the qualities of products, which came up as a part of webfolio application applied in primary education, and to determine the use of webfolios both by students and teachers. In this study, which aims to determine how effective webfolios are, one of the qualitative research designs, Natural Inquiry Approach was preferred. In this study, one of the purposeful sampling methods, criterion sampling was used was held in a private school connected to National Education Directorate of Eskisehir in 2008-2009 academic year spring term. Webfolios prepared by students, assignments given by the teacher, and other digital data available in webfolio system were used as data collection tools. When student webfolios were examined concerning their quality, most webfolios prepared by the students were found to be qualified enough in terms of readability, authenticity, timeliness, and the use of media sources. However, most of the student webfolios do not have a systematic design. The assignments given by the teacher was determined to be readable, clear, and has no misspelling. It was also observed that the teacher urged students to deliver their webfolios in time, suggested the use of class book and the Internet. Students, in their webfolios, preferred using text, picture and tables, but did not prefer to use video sources.