Developing a national approach to eportfolios in engineering and ICT

The small scale study, informed by literature into eportfolio best practice, surveyed universities on their use of eportfolios in Engineering and ICT. Questions focused on choice of platforms, scale of use (i.e. whole of program versus single unit use) and the standards or outcomes against which the portfolios were framed. Ten universities responded. Responses were analysed, using NVivo, and were clustered into thematic categories. The initial study determined that eportfolio use ranged from student initiated, individual unit use to whole of program embedded use with some eportfolios having a specific work integrated learning focus. The most developed process and support seemed to be at one university which had developed a whole of program/course approach where the intention was to develop and maintain the eportfolio across all units and explicitly teach students the skills of critical reflection throughout - though the specific implementation was still relatively new. It is believed that this approach is likely to be the most sustainable. Where eportfolio use was restricted to a single unit, there was a heavy reliance on individual academics for its implementation and success. Platforms, resources used to support portfolio development including critical reflection, the domains or outcomes against which student artefacts were mapped, and the ways in which portfolios were assessed all varied across institutions. Mapping occurred across a variety of domains and whilst many respondents mentioned Engineers Australia's Stage 1 Competency Standards, some were only indirect inasmuch as subject or course outcomes were linked to these competencies. Similarly, there was little or no consistency in terms of assessment with no clear sense of how best or when to do this