Abstract:

E-portfolios, as a digital format professional portfolio, have become common tools in health professional education. E-portfolios have significant potential to promote student responsibility for the self-regulated development of professional capabilities. E-portfolios have been found to improve communication about expectations and feedback as well as promote reflective thinking (Emmett, Harper, & Hauville, 2005; Howatson-Jones, 2004). However, e-portfolio implementation has been met with varying degrees of success (Endacott et al, 2004).

This study is related to a faculty-wide e-portfolio selection and implementation project that began in 2012. Ours is a large health sciences and professions faculty located at University of Auckland, a major research-intensive university in New Zealand. Undergraduate professional programmes in medicine, pharmacy, nursing, population health, and optometry, as well postgraduate programmes in human nutrition and medical imaging all were using portfolio-based assessment or had ambitions to do so.

Method:
This exploratory, qualitative (Bernard, 2012) scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) study aims to understand the experiences and perspectives of key stakeholders involved in embedding an e-portfolio across multiple curricula in the health sciences faculty of a large, research-intensive university. Data were collected via key informant interviews with staff (n=3) and students (n=15) affiliated with relevant faculty academic programs. The research questions are:
• What are the experiences of staff and students with e-portfolios?
• What are their perspectives with respect to the value of e-portfolio-based assessment?
• What sorts of opportunities or challenges are experienced when working with e-portfolios?
• What are the implications of these findings for curriculum development in health professional education?

All interview data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using Atlas.ti qualitative data analysis software. Data have been analysed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Results:
Five key themes from our preliminary analyses indicate: role of user support, utility of e-portfolio structures to complete required assessments, the value of reflection, speed and quality of feedback, and mitigating distance. Students who were given access to bespoke user guides found them very useful. In programs where assessment was embedded persistently through Chalk and Wire, student satisfaction was higher (and using an e-portfolio more valued) than in programs that used a less structured, more “hands off” approach. Students saw the value in having an e-portfolio to contribute to reflective practice (Schon, 1987) regardless of how well they feel Chalk and Wire was implemented in their program. Challenges for staff and students were more often related to time required for upskilling and onboarding with the new system. Opportunities included having a central repository for program-related collateral and the potential for migrating elements of a programme-related e-portfolio to a professional e-portfolio or curriculum vita when entering the job market. These preliminary data show that a program-level strategy that embeds e-portfolios across a curriculum, including delivering some assessable tasks in the e-portfolio platform, is beneficial for students and staff. Recruitment for the study is ongoing and will continue until the end of 2016.

Keywords:

Eportfolio, e-learning, professional education, health.