Use Of Digital Portfolios Research Articles

Learning with Digital Portfolios: Teacher Candidates Forming an Assessment Identity

This study focuses on how the use of digital portfolios in teacher education can support teacher candidates to shift their understanding of assessment as they form their assessment identity. The study was in the context of a changing curriculum and assessment practices promoted in British Columbia. We draw on data from a cohort of teacher candidates in the first term of a 16-month post-degree teacher education program, where they created a digital portfolio across multiple courses as part of their final assessment to be used in an exit interview with instructors and teaching professionals from the field. Narratives of teacher candidates’ experiences were collected to shed light on their changing understanding of assessment for learning practices and their emerging teacher identity as assessors promoted by the digital portfolio process. Significance of using digital portfolios to support their process of becoming teachers is focused in conclusion of the paper.

Teachers’ Perspectives on the Use of Digital Portfolios in EFL Teaching Context

Teachers’ Perspectives on the Use of Digital Portfolios in EFL Teaching Context

The digital portfolio as an assessment strategy for learning in higher education

ABSTRACT This study was developed in the context of a course in higher education and in a blended learning environment—online, distance, and face-to-face (b-learning). The aim was to identify and characterize the meanings and effects that students and teachers attribute to the use of digital portfolios as an assessment and learning strategy. The experience allowed the portfolio to be recognized as a mediating device in the development of assessment procedures that generate learning—an epicenter of efficient feedback and a means of enhancing the (re)construction of knowledge. The portfolio also helped develop students’ reflective capacity on their work and their learning, autonomy, and collaboration action, and improved their learning.

The Use of Digital Portfolios to Enhance English as a Foreign Language Speaking Skills in Higher Education

The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of digital portfolios to enhance EFL (English as a Foreign Language) speaking skills in English-major under-graduate students at Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, in southern Ecuador. The participants were 42 students at the A2 level, according to the CEFR (Com-mon European Framework of Reference for Languages). All of them were en-rolled in an English Language Integrated Skills course. A mixed-method ap-proach was used to collect and analyze data in this study. Pre and post-questionnaires, observation sheets, and speaking rubrics were applied as instru-ments. Students used their smartphones to create digital portfolios in Google Drive, which included videos and audios about certain topics considered in the course syllabus. The speaking activities consisted of recording information in dif-ferent locations of the university campus (cafeteria, laboratories, library, chapel, sports ground), and other places of the city. The students worked individually, in pairs or groups to carry out different speaking activities during an academic term of 5 months. Personalized feedback was provided by analyzing the students’ oral performance through the speech artifacts uploaded in each portfolio. The findings show that digital portfolios were effective to enhance students’ pronunciation and fluency. It was also confirmed that the implementation of digital portfolios through Google Drive can increase students’ motivation to practice oral skills in the target language.

Rafrænar ferilbækur sem leið að aukinni námsvitund. Starfendarannsókn í sjónlistum

Hér er greint frá starfendarannsókn um þróun rafrænna ferilbóka í sjónlistum á unglingastigi sem fór fram skólaárið 2017–2018. Tilgangurinn var að efla nám með því að skapa sameiginlega sýn og samábyrgð nemenda og kennara og stuðla að aukinni einstaklingsmiðun. Innleiddar voru ferilbækur sem tilraun til þess að stuðla að fyrrnefndum þáttum. Markmiðið var að ég sem kennari lærði af eigin vinnu og mótaði starfshætti þar sem nemendum eru gefin aukin tækifæri til þess að takast á við námið á eigin forsendum. Rannsóknarspurningin sem lagt var upp með var: Hvernig má nota rafrænar ferilbækur til þess að auka einstaklingsmiðun í sjónlistakennslu? Gagnaöflun var margþætt og fólst í skráningum í rannsóknardagbók, samtölum í umræðuhópum nemenda og rýniviðtölum við úrtak úr nemendahópnum, rafrænni könnun meðal nemenda og mati á rafrænum ferilbókum þeirra. Niðurstöður benda til þess að rafrænar ferilbækur hafi haft margþættan ávinning, bæði fyrir nemendur mína og mig sem kennara. Þær reyndust vera leið til þess að auka einstaklingsmiðun í kennslu minni í sjónlistum og þær gáfu nemendum aukna yfirsýn á nám sitt. Einnig sýndu niðurstöður að ferilbækur voru vettvangur til ígrundunar þegar markvissum námsstuðningi var beitt. Rafrænar ferilbækur reyndust einnig vera leið til þess að veita mér sem kennara aukna yfirsýn á nám og framför nemenda.

Student’s Digital Portfolio for Assessing and Presenting Talents

Student portfolio management is focused not only on use in the educational process, but also on job search. In the labor market, the competitiveness and demand for a university graduate will be determined not only by the knowledge and practical skills acquired, but also by the ability to show the results of their activities in the most favourable light. It is important for the employer to demonstrate a professional level (HardSkills), the ability to think, create and act independently, to solve unaccustomed tasks (SoftSkills). A competently filled digital portfolio of a student will make it possible to present his achievements in the best possible way and will become one of the important ways to attract the attention of employers. This paper covers prospects for the development and use of digital portfolios for training, evaluation and job search.

Digital Portfolios in Action: Acknowledging Student Voice and Metacognitive Understanding in Art

ABSTRACTStudents need a genuine voice in the content, process, outcome, and assessment of their learning so they can take ownership of their education (Jaquith and Hathaway 2012). Digital art portfolios allow students to research, document, and reflect on the development and assessment of their learning. Unlike traditional portfolios, which typically emphasize product, the use of digital portfolios as a process portfolio for learning has the potential to increase autonomy, experimentation, and allow the student to tell the story of their learning; to be metacognitive about their work (Berrett 2005). For the purposes of our research, we are defining metacognitive as awareness or analysis of one's own learning or thinking processes. The key elements of traditional paper portfolios include: collecting, selecting, reflecting, directing/goals, and presenting/celebrating. The use of technology adds to that list the processes of archiving, linking/thinking, storytelling, collaborating, sharing, and publishing (Barrett 2005). This paper examines how online digital portfolios provide a platform to promote students’ metacognitive skills and direct their learning.

From Ground to Distance: The Impact of Advanced Technologies on An Innovative School Leadership Program

An educational leadership preparation program for the 21st Century not only makes use of innovations in teaching and learning, but pushes the educational experience forward through the effective use of advanced technologies. This idea frames the delivery methodology for a blended online principal preparation program. The blended online program was designed upon the foundation of an existing innovative classroom-based principal preparation program. The technology enhanced program relied on three instructional technologies: high-participation threaded online discussions through Blackboard, the use of digital portfolios for project management and evaluation, and the establishment of online communities of inquiry and supportive networks. Since the classroom-based and blended online principal preparation programs share a common evaluation framework and project design, this consistency offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of the utilization of advanced technologies in the delivery of a professional preparation program. Initial findings reveal that program participants in the blended online program report similar outcomes as those in the classroom-based program. The power of the field-based inquiry projects and the implementation and impact of the technologically advanced delivery system are discussed along with implications for program development.

Electronic portfolios: Perspectives of students, teachers and parents

This study explores the perspectives of students, teachers and parents to evaluate the use of digital portfolios as an additional way to capture and enhance the learning of elementary students in a public school setting and as an opportunity to communicate this learning to parents. The research questions address four problems: complex assessment of learning, parental participation, and student and teacher satisfaction and the impact of the portfolio on teaching methods. Particularly, we are interested in the subjective satisfaction of students, teachers and parents in the portfolio development process. We are also interested in whether students learn to reflect constructively on their work, whether teachers have changed their teaching methods and whether parents believe the portfolio was used or could be used for enhanced communications.

The Effectiveness and Use of Digital Portfolios for the Assessment of Art Performances in Selected Secondary Schools

This is a report of an experimental study that focused on adjudicating the art portfolios of secondary art students assessed in both actual and digital forms in order to determine whether art teachers evaluate actual works of art in students' portfolios differently than digital copies of them. The study participants included 178 students of 29 secondary teachers from four school districts in Florida and Indiana. This report includes description of the rationale for the study, goals and objectives of the study, analysis of the data, and discussion of findings of the study. The results suggest that electronic portfolios can be used to reliably estimate student art performances and that scores produced from art teachers' evaluations of digital copies of actual works of art are consistent with scores produced from evaluations of these same works in the actual form.

Digital portfolios in pre-service teacher education

With the pre-service student portfolio process and product well in hand in a paper-based format, in the Bachelor of Education (Primary) (B.Ed. Primary) at University of Western Sydney (UWS), new horizons have presented themselves. These new possibilities are facilitated but not driven by developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The impetus for this study comes from the changing context in which the students will work and from the rapidly evolving mediums of communication employed by the society these future teachers will serve. With new technologies being developed the use of digital portfolios could give an extra dimension to student learning as well as giving choice and variety to the reporting and presenting of that learning. This paper aims to report on the process of the development of digital portfolios as an alternative method of reporting and presenting student learning, as opposed to the current paper-based portfolios used in Pre-service Teacher Education at UWS. A study of the processes employed by nine students who elected to develop their portfolios digitally was carried out over a three-semester period. This resulted in a procedure that assisted students in using ICT to showcase their learning. The advantages and limitations of the use of such technology and the results of this process during its initial implementation are discussed.