“I am trying to practice good teaching”: Reconceptualizing eportfolios for professional development in vocational higher education

Abstract

Chris Winberg is the director of the Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She holds a South African Research Chair in Work-integrated Learning. The Fundani Centre is responsible for enhancing teaching and learning, and for promoting educational research. Chris' work involves academic and institutional development. Her research focus is professional and vocational education and technical communication. Nicola Pallitt is a lecturer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. As part of the unit's curriculum and course design team, Nicola is involved in a variety of curriculum innovation initiatives and assists university staff with blended and online learning design. She co-teaches on programmes in educational technology and assists with staff development workshops. Nicola is a member of the e/ merge Africa team, an online professional development network for educational technology researchers and practitioners in African higher education. AbstractTeaching portfolios have become increasingly important to university teachers. Portfolio requirements for the appointment or promotion of academic staff recognize that the assessment of teaching practice requires more depth and detail than a candidate's academic CV generally affords. The focus of this study is the electronic teaching portfolios, developed for purposes of promotion, in a vocational higher education context. Data were obtained from candidates' eportfolios, from precourse and end-of-course surveys, as well as from eportfolio assessors' formative and summative feedback. The analysis of the data reveals tensions arising from portfolio building in the particular context of vocational higher education. The nature of the vocational field impacts not only on teaching and learning practice, but on how academic staff choose to present their practice in an eportfolio. The paper argues that the constraints and enablements of context, including the disciplinary context, as well as the possibilities and limitations of agency, will strongly influence the purposes of eportfolio development and the extent to which university teachers can exercise agency in the creation of an eportfolio in a "high stakes" context. The findings can help university appointments and promotions committees, as well as educational developers, to better understand these enablements and constraints in order to inform policy and implementation.Introduction and background: Eportfolios in a high stakes context Teaching portfolios have been used to demonstrate evidence of growth, competency and the attainment of excellence, as well as a means toward linking theory and practice in professional education (Hauge, 2006;Seldin, 1993).The terms "teaching portfolio" and "eportfolio" are not interchangeable, although eportfolio platforms can be appropriated to create electronic teaching portfolios. We use the term "eportfolio" in this article for convenience to refer to an electronic teaching portfolio. The exp...

Investigating the influence of the most commonly used external variables of TAM on students’ Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and Perceived Usefulness (PU) of e-portfolios

“…They provide visible and tangible evidence of how students are progressing and allow others to monitor, discuss and assess student learning (Driessen, 2008, p.9). E-portfolios are considered an important tool for student learning and personal development (Joint Information Systems Committee, 2008;Hsieh, Chen & Hung, 2015, p.838), for professional development in vocational higher education (Winberg and Pallitt, 2016;Lim, Lee and Jia, 2016) and for student assessments (Contreras-Higuera, Martinez-Olmo, Rubio-Hurtado & Vila-Banos, 2016;Buyarski & Landis, 2014). Studies such as Attwell (2007), Barrett and Garrett (2009), Meyer et al (2010), Posey et al (2015) and Trevitt, Macduff and Steed (2014) also have shown that positive benefits can be derived from the use of e-portfolios in education both as multimedia containers and as tools to support learning and personal development.…”

The evolved landscape of ePortfolios: Current values and purposes of academic teachers and curriculum designers

“…Some are working with postgraduate students to enhance reflection and higher order thinking; and others need to create ePortfolios of their own to demonstrate abilities within their profession and to argue a case for promotion or leadership capabilities (Danowitz, 2012). Winberg and Pallitt (2016) conducted a study with higher education staff working in vocational education to implement ePortfolios. The participants in their study were keen to learn, and valued the possibilities of using an ePortfolio in the future to apply for promotion or teaching awards.…”

“…During the professional development sessions and webinars participants were encouraged to create their own ePortfolios, not only to model good practice to students and colleagues, but also to encourage academics, curriculum and educational designers to engage in their own evidence gathering regarding their growth and competency. The interviewees who had created their professional ePortfolios noted the work involved, but acknowledged the resulting value the portfolio had in their career promotions (Winberg & Pallitt, 2016) Expanded purposes of ePortfolio…”

Reflection for Action: Designing Tools to Support Teacher Reflection on Everyday Evidence

“…There exist proposals to support written reflection using digital journals (e.g., Lindroth, 2015), as well as e-portfolios (e.g., Winberg & Pallitt, 2016), with a variety of purposes, from teacher assessment (Lambe, McNair, & Smith, 2013) to the creation of professional learning communities (e.g., shared through social media, Kennedy, 2016).…”