Abstract:

Introduction:
The concept of “active learning” promoted by the government includes such aspects as subjective, interactive, and deep learning. In subjective learning, the students use perspective and reflection on their own learning activities in order to take advantage of it on the next learning level. Interactive learning helps students to deepen and expand their thoughts through the interaction with others. Deep learning trains the students to find and solve problems while acquiring knowledge and skills.

E-portfolio system, in which all learning records are electronically collected and accumulated, has been attracting attention as a means of supporting these learning processes. E-portfolios have the advantage of encouraging students to browse their own records and interact with other people because everyone can access e-portfolios anytime and anywhere through a computer network. Hence, students can understand their own learning status.

However, when using e-portfolio systems in active learning, it is not clear how to design classes and what kind of e-portfolios should be collected and accumulated. Moreover, it is not clear how to utilize the accumulated e-portfolios in learning assessment.

This study aims to promote active learning using e-portfolios. Specifically, we focus on an e-worksheet system. We implemented functions to promote active learning and tested our system to verify its effect on students.

Approach:
We assumed the following requirements for active learning.
Requirement 1. Students can acquire knowledge and skills and utilize and explore them by seamlessly connecting different classes, or class and home learning.
Requirement 2. Students can learn through collaboration and peer-assessment, anytime anywhere.
Requirement 3. Students can reflect on their own learning anytime anywhere, grasp their own growth.
Requirement 4. Teachers can design the content and flow of the activities and decide what kind of e-portfolio will be accumulated in an active learning class.

In order to satisfy these requirements, our study focused on e-worksheet system. E-worksheet system is an e-portfolio system with a worksheet as an interface. The items of the worksheet can be individually accumulated as e-portfolios according to the determined rules.

We defined the relational rules of the worksheet items for the e-worksheet that corresponds to active learning and e-portfolios. We attempted to fulfil the requirements by implementing a mechanism that accumulates learning records individually while keeping the meaningful chunks based on the rules. We implemented the mechanism in e-worksheet system "manabi sheet".

Test and evaluation of class using the system:
We tested our system in a university class in order to verify the effect it has on the students. We conducted surveys using a questionnaire with and without our proposed system. The results suggest that the following effects can be expected.
Finding 1: Students tend to use what they have learned, think well, and judge and deepen their own learning. Students do their homework while reflecting on what they have learned in class.
Finding 2: When talking to the teacher and other classmates, students pay attention to what others think or notice, and thus expand their own thoughts.
Finding 3: Students try to reflect on what they have learned or noticed themselves and take advantage of that in the next learning.
Our proposed system is considered to promote students’ active learning.

Keywords:

Active learning, e-portfolio, e-portfolio system, e-worksheet.