Reflection- What triggers students to create ePortfolios?

What triggers students to create ePortfolios?

International seminar to share innovative Europan practices

General overfew:

The seminar started with some welcoming words from Pedro Dominguinhos the President of the Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal. He showed us the schedule of the Seminar and introduced the different visitors to us. After that Ana Luisa Oliveira Pires and Marja Laurikaninen explained the EEP project a little bit. 

Schedual:

“What students want?” was the first part of the presentation and it was very interesting for me.  They interviewed a lot of students about this topic and also worked with them on this seminar. Some of the examples came from Ireland and it was interesting to see how the Irish students are thinking about this topic. Most of the interviewed students were talking positive about it and they think it is very useful for their education. I really like the idea of “progressing construction of learning” and I also think that creating an ePortfolio is a good thing.

After this a few more professors from different countries (for example Ireland and Belgium) were talking and informing us about the most important aspects of creating an ePortfolio. I really liked that the professors asked a lot of questions into the audience and that they also made some special questions for us students.

  

One or two aspects you considered relevant? Why?

For me one of the most important aspects is that also students are integrated in the researching work and that they can use their own creativity for doing their ePortfolios. Every Portfolio is different because the students can write about their own interests in their individual style. I also really like the idea of conecting the work from school with the own experiances of the students. In the end every student have their own individual ePortfolio. I think creating an ePortfolio is a good experiance for every student and it is also a very useful tool to make learning visible without doing for example exams. 

What are the most important ePortfolio caracteristics for the learning process? 

 (as a student)

 It is very interesting and fun for students to conect the own experiances with their education. They can always see the work of the other students and it can be very motivating to see how their colleagues are working with this tool. The blog should always be updated and thats why the students should work with their ePortfolio regularly.  They should try to update their ePortfolios as often as they can and try to get familiar with this kind of tool.

(as a teacher) 

For a teacher working with the ePortfolio is very helpful to find out the different interests of the students. It helps the teachers to make the students work continuously on their blogs without loosing their motivation.