Developing and evaluating an e-portfolio for the final year project (FYP)

An e-portfolio is typically a collection of work or ‘artefacts’ selected by a student to:
• showcase his or her abilities;
• provide evidence that learning has occurred;
• evidence that learning outcomes have been met.
In addition to these artifacts or ‘evidence of learning’ there is often an element of reflection on the tasks reported. The most attractive feature of an e-portfolio is the high student involvement in putting together the contents of an e-portfolio, often through discussion or negotiation with teacher. The portfolio provides a more rounded and reliable assessment of learning achieved than written examinations or essay assignments alone. An assessment-based learning system for the final year project was set up as e-portfolio for students to monitor their learning progress during the semester, including two online assessments on evaluating the knowledge on “research method”. Lecturer will revisit the content of “research method” based on the result of online assessments, and give guidelines to help them write up different parts of project. There were also two online quizzes to reassess how much they understand about the content of “research method” again after lecture review and lecturer’s supervision. An experimental study, ANCOVA analysis, and focus group interviews were conducted to reveal students’ learning effectiveness in the study. Forty final year full-time BEd (ECE) students in either experimental group or control group were invited to participate in the study. The CLEI (College Learning Effectiveness Inventory) was used to measure student learning effectiveness during the study. The result indicated that students in the experimental group receiving e-portfolio assessment-based learning system performed better in online quizzes and report write-up than the control group did. This implies that e-portfolio assessment-based teaching and supervision can help students learn better. As regards learning effectiveness, students' academic self-efficacy in the experimental group was significantly improved by the end of the project. Students showed higherorder cognitive ability to reflect on past experiences and make personal choices based on management of time, goal, and priority setting. Copyright © 2012 Pixel. All rights reserved.