I’ve been looking at ePortfolios recently. Partly as a project I’m working on uses an ePortfolio for technician language learners – which I’ve written more on here – but also I’ve become more interested in the importance of curation in e-learning. But ePortfolios just never really seemed to work for me. As Martin Weber stated:
They [eportfolios] can be seen as a case study of how educational technology gets it wrong…Blogs are good enough for eportfolios, if what you want from an eportfolio is for people to actually, you know, use them.
But this post from Jane Hart grabbed my attention and in particular, the statement:
The organization will keep a record of your training activity in their LMS noting courses taken, course completions, results of quizzes, etc – and if the LMS is one of the newer social versions this will probably also even record your social activity, ie the number of posts you have made or comments you have added. However, this training record belongs to the company as THEY own your learning, and even if they were happy to share it with you, this “activity record” generated automatically from their systems doesn’t actually show what impact your training has had on your productivity or performance.
She goes on to state that ePortfolios are :
…. about recognizing that most of your real learning takes place continuously – and frequently unintentionally – in many other ways e.g.
- in your daily dealings with your colleagues, customers, clients or friends
- by being active in the fast moving flow of ideas and new resources being exchanged in your professional networks
- by keeping up to date with what’s happening in your industry or profession through a constant stream of industry news
But this is more than narrating your work but also reviewing, collating and reflecting on your work-in-learning and learning-in-work.
But … I still can’t engage with bespoke ePortfolio tools: they still seem just ‘wrong’ yet I also know I’m not engaging here in a way that values my learning. I do wonder whether actually, I’m not acknowledging the importance of my learning-in-work to capture ist systematically and rigorously as part of my day-to-day work?