Empowering Eportfolio Process Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering Eportfolio Process

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Recognition, transparency, certification; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

EMPOWERING STUDENTS TO DYNAMIC EPORTFOLIO CREATION

Context and aim:
In competence-based higher education, the critical points of quality learning are assessment and guidance practices, which should be aligned with desired competences. Empowering Eportfolio Process (EEP) has identified a need to develop competence assessment towards student-centered direction by ensuring empowerment of students in learning process and by developing digital competences of students, teachers and HE institutes. In addition, there is a need to develop and strengthen the use of digital tools in assessment, to enhance participation of world of work in learning processes, thus, creating new kind of collaboration between employers and HE institutes. Eportfolios work as learning spaces and showcases in students’ competence development in education and world of work.

EEP aimed to develop student-centered education by enhancing transparency of assessment practices and developing empowering, dynamic approach to ePortfolio process. This increases students’ motivation, and fosters employability, including social participation and digital competence. The aim was to develop students’ continuous engagement in assessment and steer their career management using ePortfolio by focusing on student’s learning process and teacher’s guidance. EEP sought innovative ways on how students can use eportfolios during studies by making informal/nonformal and real-life learning experiences transparent. The aim was to strengthen HE institutes’ operations and culture in recognition of prior learning and competences acquired outside formal education. During the improved ePortfolio process the incongruity between competences of students and needs of employers were decreased.

The partners were HE institutes (6) from five countries representing multidisciplinary bachelor/master level education, teacher education and continuing education.

Target groups:
Direct target groups were students, teachers/study counsellors in HE, and the representatives of the world of work. Indirect target groups were managers in HE, ministries of education, other policy makers, teachers/staff in other school levels e.g. TVET. In total, appr. 1300 target group members took part in the multiplier and training events and pilot activities. In addition, other dissemination (newsletters/online platforms/meetings/seminars/conferences) reached at least double the amount of persons.

Activities:
– thematic workshops addressing different perspectives on assessment process and utilization of ePortfolios
– experimental pilots in each partner HE institute
– dissemination activities
– multimedia library to share open access materials on ePortfolios
– project management and quality assurance

Methodology:
EEP utilized co-creation and cross-fertilization, which were organized around five thematic workshops during the project. Qualitative information was collected systematically in every workshop. Joint knowledge-creation processes were used to steer the progress of EEP.

Main results:
– Baseline study/publication “Collection of best practices in ePortfolio process”
– Pilots improved ePortfolio process and increased empowerment of students and teachers for using digital tools in partner HE institutes. The pilots demonstrated examples from different educational contexts that others can benefit from when establishing their own ePortfolio processes.
– 40 open access articles from students’, employers’ and teachers’/HE institutes’ perspectives (available at https://unlimited.hamk.fi/articles-in-english/) providing tips, guidelines and experiences on the benefits, creation and utilization of ePortfolios
– 15 recommendations for the successful use of ePortfolios in Higher Education
– establishment of professional learning network for developing ePortfolio processes internationally (“Empowering ePortfolio process in education” Facebook group)

Impact:
The main impact is improved assessment process in higher education in which digital tools are utilized in an efficient and inspiring way. Students get enlarged possibilities to use digital tools to reflect skills/competences to be more engaged in their career possibilities from the perspective of lifelong learning. Teachers’ competence in guiding student-centered and collaborative assessment process improved which affected the future education supporting lifelong learning. Employers gained new understanding about education and ePortfolio as a tool to identify future employees by giving insight to students on how to achieve and demonstrate relevant competences. HE institutes developed assessment process and quality learning, and student-centered organizational culture was strengthened creating sustainable foundation for new kinds of assessment practices incl. procedures for recognition of prior learning and adaptive creation of individual learning paths. In addition, long-term impacts are strongly related to human capital development of HE institutes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 208664 Eur

Project Coordinator

HAMEEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY & Country: FI

Project Partners

• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
• VIA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
• UC LEUVEN
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE SETUBAL
• Marino Institute of Education