Eportfolios in Engineering

Today, John Fielke will be talking to us about his experiences with using e-portfolios in his course ‘Computer Techniques’, which is one of eight core courses common to all of The University of South Australia’s Bachelor of Engineering degrees.

Dr. Fielke identified three interesting areas that arose from his experience with using e-portfolios, or webfolios, for the first time in 2009 in his Computer Techniques course.

The use of online formative feedback for students using webfolios

PebblePad is a ‘real time’ webfolio tool, which allows academics to review students’ work and provide formative feedback. During my Computer Techniques course I gave my students feedback and then allowed them to update their work. However, very few students took up this opportunity. I suppose the students could be helped to see the benefits of the provision of this type of formative feedback if marks were allocated for the use of the feedback, but it is still up to the students to decide if they want to use to take advantage of this.

Using the Profiler tool in PebblePad to assist students to reflect on his/her development of the UniSA Graduate Qualities

Another part of PebblePad that I used was the profiler tool where I got the students to reflect on their learning outcomes. The profiler offered the opportunity for me to ask students questions and I tailored these to allow the students to reflect on the university’s graduate qualities. For example, I asked questions about their background knowledge of computer-aided engineering drawing before the course, and then I asked them to rate their knowledge after the course.

The profiler tool not only provides information about the students, but also allows the students to reflect on their own development. For example, I asked the students to rate the effectiveness of their learning in specific learning environments such as the computer practicals or the lectures. This allowed the students to acknowledge that they did learn differently in different modes. The best part of the profile is that you see this in real time as the students are working on it and you can use the reporting function to find out where everyone is up to at a specific time.

Students reflected on their modes of learning

The students might be inclined to put off their thinking about the graduate qualities until they near graduation, however, presenting a series of questions that they have to answer about their current personal development makes them reflect on this and helps them to think very clearly about the skills they are developing even at this early stage of their studies.

Self-assessment using the Profile tool in PebblePad
I also used the profiler tool to ask the students to reflect on their effort and learning in the course, and predict their grades. I was surprised at the number of students that self-rated themselves quite low and identified that they did not put a huge effort into the course. They included many comments to justify why this was the case. Some students did think they deserved a HD, whereas other students thought they deserved a C and suggested that they had understood most of the course but had a few difficulties here and there. Some self- rated themselves as a P2 and commented that they did not try too hard, but thought they had done enough to scrape over the line. A couple of students rated themselves as an F and explained that they had not had the time to put the effort into the course. I was very surprised at how accurately they predicted their grades, probably within one grade. It really showed to me that the students do acknowledge the amount of work they put in and they do aim for a grade. They are not all after a HD for an assignment, they might like it but in reality, they are just going to do enough work to get the grade they are aiming for.

It was very easy using the profiler tool. The reporting function allows quick and easy access to information provided by the students. However, there is so much functionality in PebblePad that we still have not used.