Confession time

Originally published to eBridge on Thursday 28 June 2012

OK, I really need to get this off my chest in some way so I can start to do something about it.... I hate ePortfolios right now!  Or should I say I hate talking about them without feeling empowered to actually do something with them? That's probably a bit closer to the truth actually! A quote from Jane Bozarth (2012) in one of the Learning & Skills Group yesterday was: 'Learning isn't learning until you can do something with it', and I honestly still don't feel confident in my ability to use ePortfolios productively within my own professional context, so anything I write about them is liable to be way out of context, and not conducive to further learning.

So how can I fix this? A little late to fix it for the purposes of this workshop, but some Professional Development Planning is overdue, plus I could ask my line manager at work about using an ePortfolio in conjunction with our Performance and Talent Management reviews. Having something that is constructed for a specific purpose like this might help me to put things in perspective and feel like I am building towards something of benefit to myself. I'm happy with current employer - they are after all funding me to do this course, and my line manager is supportive of my progression. She will need to be able to take some kind of evidence to senior management if I am to be recognised (and rewarded) for skills development, so perhaps an ePortfolio will help here.

OK, feeling a little better now....

Reference:

• Bozarth, J. (2012). The truth about social learning, Learning & Skills Group Conference 2012.  [webinar] June 2012. Available at: <http://learningandskillsgroup.ning.com/forum/topics/june-27th-the-truth-about-social-learning-jane-bozarth> [Accessed 28 June 2012]

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Discussion:

Query:

Or should I say I hate talking about them without feeling empowered to actually do something with them? 

I was hoping that the experience of keeping an e-portfolio in Pebblepad during the workshop would give you some sense of 'doing something'...or do you feel frustrated because it doesn't fit into your professional context at the moment? I've never used e-portfolios in my work and it doesn't look likely to be implemented in my department in the near future - for reasons I'm hoping to explore in my e-poster. 

I think your idea of using one to evidence your professional development is a great idea, and there seems to be a movement at the moment for e-portfolios to belong to the student / employee, not the institution / employer. For example, my college has just made Mahara available to students and their Mahara account is theirs for as long as they want it. So this would mean the e-portfolio you develop for your manager could also be used to highlight your skills should you ever look for another job.

However - this does end up sounding like a glorified CV, rather than a 'learning process'...I think in the end e-portfolios are slippery little buggers and hard to pin down!

Response:

I think part of my frustration stems from the fact that we're using ePortfolios in a way that's somewhere between that of a blog and a wiki. Without the time bound element of a blog I sometimes find it hard to pick up strands of thought effectively - I sometimes feel like I end up with disjointed bits that I've written whilst reading different source materials, and I'm not sure how to join them up into a coherent piece. For writing up my reflective assignment I'll try dropping in my blog posts & forum articles with a 'time stamp' on them so I can remember a little better where I was coming from!

With regards to using ePortfolios like CVs, I also feel a bit of frustration because I'm absolutely rotten at self-promotion like this.