Tracy A. Creagh

ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: a review of the Australian ePortfolio Project

In October 2008, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council released the final report for the commissioned project ‘ePortfolio use by university students in Australia: Informing excellence in policy and practice’. The Australian ePortfolio Project represented the first attempt to examine the breadth and depth of ePortfolio practice in the Australian higher education sector. The research activities included: surveys of stakeholder groups in learning and teaching, academic management and human resource management, with respondents representing all Australian universities; a series of focus groups and semi‐structured interviews that sought to explore key issues in greater depth; and surveys designed to capture students’ pre‐course expectations and their post‐course experiences of ePortfolio learning. Further qualitative data was collected through interviews with ‘mature users’ of ePortfolios. Project findings revealed that, while there was a high level of interest in the use of ePortfolios in terms of the potential to help students become reflective learners who were conscious of their personal and professional strengths and weaknesses, the state of play in Australian universities was very fragmented. The project investigation identified four individual, yet interrelated, contexts where strategies may be employed to support and foster effective ePortfolio practice in higher education: government policy; technical standards; academic policy; and learning and teaching. Four scenarios for the future were also presented with the goal of stimulating discussion about opportunities for stakeholder engagement. It is argued that the effective use of ePortfolios requires open dialogue and collaboration between the different stakeholders across this range of contexts.

Using a Capability Maturity Model to build on the generational approach to student engagement practices

The generational approach to conceptualising first-year student learning behaviour has made a useful contribution to understanding student engagement. It has an explicit focus on student behaviour and we suggest that a Capability Maturity Model interpretation may provide a complementary extension of that understanding as it builds on the generational approach by allowing an assessment of institutional capability to initiate, plan, manage, evaluate and review institutional student engagement practices. The development of a Student Engagement, Success and Retention Maturity Model is discussed along with its application in an Australian higher education institution. In this case study, the model identified first-, second- and third-generation approaches and, in addition, achieved a ‘complementary extension’ of the generational approach, building on it by identifying additional practices not normally considered within the generational concept and indicating the capability of the institution to provide and implement the practices.