Evaluating ePortfolios, Scenario 2
You are a student who is working on an ePortfolio as part of their capstone course in Health and Human Sciences. You have been using the assignment sheet to begin the ePortfolio drafting process but are feeling nervous about whether or not you are on the “right” track and will earn a good grade. Luckily, your educator has planned a peer review, and you are hopeful that this will be an opportunity to get feedback from peers. You are quite nervous though, because the last time you participated in a peer review activity, the educator shared a rubric with you and told everyone to read it and look over their peer’s writing. That was confusing because the rubric had a lot of “teacherly” words, and you weren’t sure how exactly to apply a rubric to writing. When you got your paper back, your peer had only moved some commas around.
The educator in your capstone course takes a different approach to peer review. They begin by explaining the purpose for peer review and what they hope you gain from the activity. Then, they explain how the peer review directions have been aligned to the ePortfolio assignment and include criteria that are meaningful to professionals in your disciplinary community along with two blank criteria, which the class will get to determine. Next, you all practice using the peer review directions on an example ePortfolio with space for questions and concerns. After, you apply the criteria to two ePortfolios from your course. The criteria guide you in giving your peers feedback on particular parts of their ePortfolios. As you have questions, you add them to the class’ shared question document, which is reviewed regularly. Finally, you do some reflective writing where you review the feedback you received and begin planning for revisions as needed.