Abstract:

The e-Portfolio is a relevant tool to promote the development of reflection competences in the students’ learning process. But even if the literature shows several research studies on the use and value of the e-Portfolio (Barrett, 2013) at school, the higher education context, mostly the university programs, are less investigated (Scully, O'Leary e Brown, 2018; Hoven, 2019) in direction of a systematic use of e-portfolios and its effectiveness for improving students’ critical abilities and reflection.

The impact of e-Portfolios in the academic learning process, recognized as an High Impact Practice (HIP) (Eynon e Gambino, 2016), is mainly related to the attention to critical reflection in line with the constructivist model of teaching/learning practices (Davis & Sumara, 2003; Hoven & Palalas, 2016) and transformative ones (Mezirow & Associates, 2000) in online environments.

The present contribution aims at describing the e-Portfolio Mahara system, an open source platform that offers several tools useful to create a learning community and will present the modalities applied at University of Macerata (Italy) in a first year discipline of the degree course in Education Science.

The affordances of the digital portfolio, compared to a traditional portfolio system, is that can be easily edited and shared among peers and teachers; the content can be uploaded and stored in different media formats (audio, video, etc.) (Hoven, 2014). Specifically, the e-portfolio lets students be in contact and create connections for both a peer exchange and teacher support; the environment can, thus, improve a metacognitive perspective on the learning process.
The paper will highlight the structural and functional aspects of the e-Portfolio Mahara, the modalities applied by teachers to let students approach the environment and the choices made by students in terms of creation of content, sharing options and expression of reflections on their learning process.

Keywords:

E-portfolio, reflection, training of educators.