Abstract:

The use of the learning portfolio in higher education is often limited to a specific subject and there are not many studies that verify whether gender and country variables significantly affect the development of the reflective learning style. Based on these limitations, a teaching innovation project was carried out between 2016 and 2020 with the objective of validating a methodological strategy of using the digital portfolio in a global way for the development of reflective learning. The main differential of the designed strategy is that it transcends subject-specific competencies, encompassing the training process globally and the completion of the master's thesis as objects of metacognitive reflection. A pretest-posttest design was adopted with an experimental group and a control group with students from six countries studying virtual master's degree programs at the Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana (UNINI-Mexico). The instrument used to measure the effectiveness of the proposal was the Honey-Alonso Learning Styles Questionnaire. The evaluation of the methodological strategy implemented shows that if the portfolio is used transversally and includes the master’s thesis as an object of reflection, it also has relevant effects on the development of the reflective learning style. No significant correlations were found between the variables gender and country of origin of the students and the results obtained.

Keywords:

Digital portfolio, higher education, postgraduate, reflective learning.