International best-practice ePortfolios launched at UOW

Mar 14, 2007

Eighty students from the University of Wollongong’s new Graduate School of Medicine (GSM) are the first in Australia to be provided with an ePortfolio rated as “international best-practice” by industry experts.

UOW is the country’s first university to purchase and implement the Blackboard Portfolio for Vista tool, which works in conjunction with the University’s existing Learning Management System, Blackboard Vista.

A launch of the new tool took place today (14 March), with Professor John Bushnell from the Graduate School of Medicine addressing and demonstrating the GSM’s use of the ePortfolio.

The GSM students are the first cohort to use the tool as part of a suite of innovative IT products that form an online learning environment unique to UOW. Students across the other faculties including Arts and Health and Behavioural Sciences will begin using the ePortfolio tool in March and most other faculties are taking up ePortfolios during 2007.

“The Graduate School of Medicine is using the ePortfolio to enable students to collect evidence and reflections of their learning, and link these to specific learning outcomes in the curriculum,” said GSM Deputy Dean, Professor John Bushnell.

“They can also collect evidence from their clinical interactions with patients and record reflections on their learning needs as well as their plans to meet them. Students can then share their ePortfolio with peers, tutors, and even clinical supervisors for comments and evaluation. At the end of their course, graduates will be able to export their ePortfolio to help them demonstrate their learning to employers and medical associations.”

Project Manager, Sarah Lambert, said UOW had been developing and trialling the different ePortfolios since 2002.

“However, it is only recently that the technology has caught up to the potential of ePortfolios. Now we have a smart tool that is more than just a place to store files."

It helps students collect evidence of their developing skills and evidence of learning…allowing them to apply for jobs more quickly. The ePortfolio can also be released to external recruiters and will be used for work experience units of university courses.”In addition to the academic trials, the UOW Careers Service will be working with students across the faculties to explore the employability benefits of using ePortfolios.

“In a competitive graduate employment marketplace, ePortfolios provide a great potential for students to collect evidence of their learning and work experiences which can be easily accessed and customised to respond to employment opportunities,” said Linda Corrin from the Careers Service.

Industry reviewers for the IT in education peak-body, ascilite, rated the campus-wide implementation of the UOW ePortfolio as “international best-practice” and awarded Project Manager Sarah Lambert and co-author Linda Corrin the “Best Paper” award at the annual conference.

The paper outlined the implementation of the ePortfolio tool across the University as well as the roll out of various student and staff support options.