Comparing students’ perceptions of paper-based and electronic portfolios

Abstract

\Electronic portfolios offer many advantages to their paper-based counterparts, including, but not limited to working on ICT skills, adding multimedia and easier sharing of the portfolio. Previous research showed that the quality of a portfolio does not depend on the medium used. In this article the perceived support for self-reflection of an electronic portfolio and a paper-based portfolio in the same ecological setting are compared. We made use of the fact that during this study about half of the first year medical students was using an electronic portfolio (n = 157) and the other half a paper-based portfolio (n = 190). Nine questions were added to the standard end of the block evaluation, which is handed to 25 percent of year one educational groups. Findings suggest that perceptions about the support for self-reflection, and the usefulness of compiling a portfolio, do not differ between students using an electronic portfolio and students using a paper-based portfolio. Résumé : Les portfolios électroniques offrent de nombreux avantages comparativement à leurs homologues de papier, entre autres la possibilité de perfectionner les compétences liées aux TIC, d’ajouter des éléments multimédias et de partager plus facilement le portfolio. Des études précédentes ont montré que la qualité d’un portfolio ne dépend pas du support utilisé. Dans le présent article, nous comparons l’aide à l’autoréflexion perçue pour un portfolio électronique et un portfolio sur support papier dans le même environnement. Dans le cadre de cette étude, nous avons profité du fait qu’environ la moitié des étudiants de première année en médecine utilisait un portfolio électronique (n = 157) et l’autre moitié, un portfolio sur support papier (n = 190). Neuf questions ont été ajoutées à l’évaluation normale remise à 25 pour cent des groupes de première année à la fin du bloc de formation. Les résultats suggèrent que les perceptions des étudiants à l’égard de l’aide à l’autoréflexion et de l’utilité de compiler un portfolio ne diffèrent pas entre les utilisateurs de portfolios électroniques et les utilisateurs de portfolios sur support papier.

Alternative Assessment and Portfolios: Review, Reconsider, and Revitalize

“…When the term, "portfolio," is applied for educational purposes, it refers to packages of materials which students or others assemble as a means of communicating their interests and abilities to others (teachers, peers, potential employers, parents, administrators, and others) (van Wesel & Prop, 2008). Portfolios may contain a wide variety of materials and tasks including, but not limited to, photographs, drawings, technical reports, journals, testing results, teacher/student or supervisor/worker conferences, a resume, product or process assessment, check-off sheets, etc.…”

Factors Associated with Electronic Portfolio Adoption Among Pre-service Teachers

“…Gaitán (2012) pointed out that the clarity of purpose, institutionally or individually, was essential in driving ePortfolio usage. Van Wesel and Prop (2008) found the key factors of successful ePortofolio implementation were self-reflection skills and computer skills. Wuetherick and Dickinson (2015) investigated students' perceptions of ePortfolio use in continuing education environments and results showed that experience and comfort levels with technologies were keys to ePortfolio adoption and continuous implementation.…”

Electronic portfolios: Tools for supporting the teacher's need for assessment and the student's need for deep learning.

“…Van Wesel and Prop (2008) argued that in the past few years, there was a noticeable shift in higher education from the use of paper-based portfolios to electronic portfolios, and that the electronic portfolio became the preferred choice of portfolio in educational settings.…”

“…Driessen, Muitjens, van Tartwijk, and van der Vleuten (2007) pointed out that electronic portfolios contain the same content as traditional paper-based portfolios, but they present the information through multimedia technologies and are stored on disks, CDs, Zip disks or file servers on the World Wide Web such as blogs and wikis, which provide several advantages to the traditional portfolios (Avraamidou & Zembal-Saul, 2006;Heath, 2005;van Wesel & Prop, 2008).…”

“…Van Wesel and Prop (2008) identified technical problems associated with building portfolios on the internet. One common problem they ran into was that during times of heavy server use, students were redirected to unavailable servers and could not work on their portfolio until the server use had lightened.…”