Abstract:

Over the last ten years, electronic portfolios have been introduced and widely used at all educational levels around the world. They have become an alternative tool for teaching, learning, and evaluating aspects of students’ learning—particularly skills and ethics—that standard tests in traditional classrooms might not detect. Furthermore, many universities and other educational institutions in various countries have adopted e-portfolios and integrated them into individual courses or entire curricula, depending on their specific circumstances and educational context. Numerous studies provide evidence of e-portfolios’ benefits and drawbacks.

The purpose of this article is to present further evidence from research confirming the transformative effects on students during the integration of the e-portfolio as a teaching, learning, and assessment tool, emphasizing learning skills and ethical issues, in general education classrooms at Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand. By using the transformative learning model and rubrics to create their e-portfolios, students improved their self-awareness, understanding, self-control and self-learning, as well as ethical and emotional development. Students’ e-portfolios indicated that they better understood their goals and motivations, and had greater confidence to shape and accept their own identity. Their reflections revealed improved self-regulation and awareness of their actions and values, especially regarding ethics. Students developed more meaningful learning approaches when they understood why they needed to learn and recognized their own learning styles, making compromises to reach their goals. According to quantitative and qualitative analyses, the e-portfolios enabled students to engage in self-learning and transform key aspects of their approach to self-directed learning and other types of lifelong learning.

Keywords:

E-portfolio, General Education, Ethics, E-portfolio as Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Tools, Self-Learning.