Abstract:

As the world is rapidly changing into a knowledge and information society, it is important for higher education to prepare graduates for successful careers and life in facing the 21st century challenges. Lifelong learning is one of the much-needed skills. Since the turn of the century, pioneers have sought theories, pedagogies, and best practices to innovate education. ePortfolio has been proposed as a learner-centered approach to teaching, learning and assessment. Adopting ePortfolio is more than just an innovation in teaching, educators are transforming education from a positivistic paradigm built on behavior theory to a post-modern paradigm or multi-paradigmatic approach.

What is ePortfolio? The notion is open for interpretation in various contexts from a collection of works to showcase a learner's outcome according to standards to a capstone product that integrates learning outcomes across the curriculum and demonstrates professional promise.

This paper presents a conceptual model and its implementations of a graduate-level capstone ePortfolio program as a degree requirement.
The model conceptualizes ePortfolio as a process leading to product (eP-pro):
1. During the process, the learner:
• works closely with an advisor to plan a personalized curriculum with the focus on learning outcomes to support the student’s career goal
• self-assesses progress by accomplishing milestones
• collects learning artifacts and reflects on them
2. As a final product, the learner
• presents selected artifacts to showcase how the learner applied knowledge and what skills the learner mastered
• reflects on learning experiences and achievement to project beyond graduation
• delivers the ePortfolio on the Web

To engage learners and foster self-regulated learning, the process is monitored by four milestones (A figure will be included in the paper):

1. learning goals and action plans
2. ePortfolio prototype (site architecture and navigation plus one artifact)
3. ePortfolio
4. ePortfolio defense

To ensure high quality presentational ePortfolios across all learners, the presentational ePortfolio includes five sections: reflection, knowledge, artifacts, competences and projection. The sections are interrelated. For example, in reflection the learner highlights achievements in connection with learning goals and in projection the learner looks forward to the future in the chosen career path. The three sections knowledge, artifacts and competences are related in that the learner articulates selected concepts (or theories) and how they were applied to produce the artifacts, and how these artifacts demonstrate the skills (competences); further, learners make references (hyperlinks) between specific concepts and their artifacts, and between specific artifacts and their competences. Matrices are used to map learning goals with actions and to integrate and show the relationships among the knowledge, artifacts, and competences (K-A-C). The K-A-C matrix, which is displayed graphically as a table, visually demonstrates how artifacts are built upon specific knowledge concepts as well as the skills needed to produce artifacts.

Ongoing action research is conducted every semester after all ePortfolios have been defended to understand the experiences of ePortfolio students and advisors and to solicit input and suggestions. The findings have been incorporated in order to improve the process and revise the guidelines.

Keywords:

Capstone ePortfolio in higher education, learning assessment, ePortfolio as a process, ePortfolio as a product, action research.