Principle 8, Scenario 2
You are an educator who has asked your students to complete an ePortfolio as part of a capstone course. Students have already selected artifacts from their learning and co-curricular experiences to include in the ePortfolio but have not yet begun creating and filling the actual site. You distribute a survey to students to identify how comfortable they are using digital devices, if they have used the ePortfolio platform before, and how familiar they are with ePortfolios as a genre. You discover that while students use digital devices often for social media, few have created a website and none know what an ePortfolio is. On the first day exploring the platform, you observe students struggling to make minimal changes to the premade template.
You need to provide students with additional support in how to use the ePortfolio platform: (1) explicitly support the technical knowledge needed in the ePortfolio creation process in the course; (2) put students in contact with institutional, local, or public experts; (3) create classroom spaces for students to share peer knowledge and ask each other questions across a learning community. You should also discuss students’ unfamiliarity with ePortfolios with the program administrator and/or staff member to see how students can learn about ePortfolios before entering the capstone course.