4. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
What is collaboration?
Collaboration is referred to planning,
sharing, coordinating, decision-making and
general communication between two or
more members working together on a task.
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5. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
Web2.0, collaborative tools
• Web 2.0 offers many collaborative tools like blogs,
wikis, Social Bookmarking, social networks, forums,
micro-blogging, etc.
• Through them we can construct knowledge as well as
share information among partners (academia and firms
environment)
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6. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
Students Collaborative tool uses
Currently, students use...
– Blogs to think,
– Wikis to collaborate,
– Social bookmarking (e.g. Delicious) to share links and
information,
– Forums to foster their critical thinking and contribute
with new knowledge,
– …
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8. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania) Benefits in educational context...
• Collaborative tools have caused many changes in the traditional
methods, since they:
o reinforce information sharing and knowledge creation
o aid university teaching practice
o are complementary learning methodologies
• The use of these platforms encourages and facilitates project and
classroom students’ and professors’ participation
Raman et al. (2005) and Richardson (2006) articles argued that all
these tools simplify the access, sharing and creation of new
knowledge and increase the productivity and flexibility of
collaborative work.
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9. … reinforce students’ learning
EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
• Collaborative tools reinforce the students’ critical thinking,
autonomous learning and they support students’ learning (e.g.
Richardson, 2006 and Barrett, 2005)
• Collaborative tools foster accessibility, sharing and creation of new
knowledge in a group, and foster the productivity and flexibility in a
collaborative environments (e.g Raman et al. 2005 and Richardson,
2006)
As a result...
Collaborative tools can be used as complementary tools to help
us developing and assessing students’ skills and creating new
teaching methodologies.
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11. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania) What is an ePortfolio?
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12. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
Summing up, what is an ePortfolio?
• ePortfolio stems from the written version of traditional portfolio.
• An e-portfolio is a collection of electronic evidence assembled
and managed by a user.
As a result…
e-portfolio shows users’ capabilities and are self-expression
platforms reinforce communication competences, critical
thinking, auto-learning, innovation, …
• These evidences can be used to enhance learning and assess
the achieved skills.
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14. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
• R.Q. 1 Can the ePortfolio be used as a
complementary tool to improve students’
learning?
• R.Q. 2 Can the ePortfolio be used as a
complementary tool to assess students’
skills?
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16. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
Strategy activity design
• Not overloading students with homework,
• Being aligned with the objectives of each course and
degree,
• Adapted to every student’s curriculum,
• Being completely accessible and zero cost,
• Being easy to use,
• Suitable for any content and need of each subject.
Strategy Platform Activity
activity Design Selection Design
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17. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
Platform selection: Google Sites
Key aspects of the platform:
• easy to create, use and manage without asking for a license,
installation or maintenance for software or hardware.
• allow online collaborative work with other users,
• free access from anywhere in the net without duplicating contents, and
• integrating collaborative tools, such as blogs, videos, wikis, etc.
• students’ autonomy
• professors can assess contents and provide students virtually with
constant feedback which, at the same time, helps them develop their
critical thinking and improve their generic skills’ achievement.
Lack:
• However, forum discussions among students are not allowed.
Strategy Platform Activity
activity Design Selection Design
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18. Activity design
EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
1. Personal section – students develop their curriculum and write a
presentation letter.
2. Introductory section – brief description of the subject.
3. Application section – students describe the implementation of one
explained method in his/her own study case based in his/her
professional field.
4. Concluding section – brief reflection on the usefulness of the
ePortfolio.
Strategy Platform Activity
activity Design Selection Design
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20. The following results are stemmed
EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
from…
1. Voluntary questionnaire sent to all UPC
professors. Sample: 40 answers.
2. Student skills assessment through a 23
criteria rubric. Sample: 68 students’ ePortfolio.
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21. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
Preliminary Results
Can ePortfolio be considered as a
complementary tool to:
H1: improve students’ learning
H2: assess students’ skills
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22. H1: Can ePortfolio improve students’ learning?
EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania)
• According to Chun (2002), ePortfolio:
1. gather, assess and reflect students’ evidence;
2. students’ own reflection on learning and skills acquisition;
3. implementation of new concepts
• These allow us to identify students’ level of skills development
throughout students’ learning process.
This evidence reinforce the 1st RQ
Additionally, our students have developed the three needed ways of
learning according to Kolb (1984): autonomous learning (64%);
critical thinking (51%); and decision making (84%).
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23. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania) H2: Can ePortfolio assess students’ skills?
• According to Beck et al. (2003) and Klenowski et al. (2006), ePortfolio
use simplifies the learning of formative goals and assesses all what
the student has learnt throughout the academic course.
• Our experience shows… 77% of the teachers that use collaborative
tools inside their classroom notice the usefulness of collaborative
tools as a very effective teaching methodology to develop students’
skills.
This evidence reinforce the 2on RQ
Experience shows us a successful way to use ePortfolio tool as a
complementary tool to assess students’ skills:
1) Professors have to teach students’ how to use it,
2) They have to provide them with a specific rubric.
These will help you to assess and develop successful students’ skills
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25. EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordania) To take into account…
To accurately measure ePortfolio efficiency 4 factors are highly
recommended:
1. A very precise strategic planning to fit the needs, objectives and level
of skills for each subject,
2. teaching staff’s motivation toward the implementation of this
methodological innovation,
3. the development of generic rubrics for each level of competency
that could be generalized and applied to all subjects and, finally,
4. the constant support from the teaching centre and/or school.
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Summing up…
Results seem to indicate that the e-Portfolio can be viewed as:
1. A complementary tool for student’s assessment, since it allows us to
follow up student’s skills development.
2. A complementary tool for student’s learning, since it reinforces
self-reflection and improves decision-making among others
(communicative skills, team work, IT usefulness, social collaboration,
etc.)
These validate our hypothesis in considering this methodological
innovation as a possible teaching tool to foster students’ skills
development assessment.
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Limitation
• Our experience is only based on 2 subjects (69 ePortfolio students) at
similar stages of the different degrees.
• Some skills were not highly motivated, this is the reason to get lower
scores than the average.
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28. Thanks for your
EDUCON 2011 Conference – Amman (Jordan)
attention!
Questions or
suggestions?
Silvia Rodriguez-Donaire & Beatriz Amante, 2011
