The University of Newcastle is using e-portfolios for formative and summative assessment, as well as annual appraisal in their Medical Program. They were introduced for both practical reasons (the fact that students are not physically on campus for three years of their program, paper logs are complex and cumbersome to carry around to various clinical settings) and pedagogical reasons (providing a framework for recording and evidencing programme outcomes and student derived objectives, keeping track of meetings and actions, and reflecting on and sharing information).
The e-portfolios are now used for:
Professional development planning
Recording meetings with personal tutors
Cinical logbooks
CV
Significantly, the successful implementaion of e-portfolios has taken ten years. The e-portfolio is now embedded in the Medical Curricula at Newcastle University. The e-portfolio was developed in-house and care was taken to ensure that it was easy to use and very flexible making it adaptable for many different uses within the medical program. It was constantly fine-tuned to ensure that it met the needs of students and faculty and the criteria for effective assessment.
After the first year of use students were surveyed and focus groups were conducted. Student feedback suggests that the use of e-portfolios was a useful learning experience and encouraged them to relflect on their placements. More than half the students said it would influence their learning in the subsequent year.
The developers of the e-portofolios at Newcastle emphasize the importance of ensuring that the use of the technology is based on sound pedagogical and learning requirements and that there is a "high level of stakeholder buy-in and ownership." They also talk about the importance of having a "clarity of purpose" which I think is one of the keys to succesful implementation of technological advances. It is easy to get caught up in innovations that have potential benefits for some learners but that do not match our particular learners' needs. In this case learner needs were the driving force behind the introduction of the technology giving it the best chance of being successful.
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Some very interesting points here, Moira.
ReplyDeleteThings that strike me are the timespan ( not change overnight), the level of feedback and "buy in", and pedadagogy/ learning as the driver. This also sounds like innovation on a departmental level: no maverick innovators.
Thanks for this Moira, and for pointing out it took Newcastle 10 year and it sounds as if they are still continuing to look and change things. The impression I get is that thought and care has gone into the use of IT in learning... That's good I think!
ReplyDeleteKathryn