AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science

AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science Vol 03 (2013) 1046-1050

3rd World Conference on Information Technology (WCIT-2012)

Monitoring learning with an electronic portfolio J. Enrique Agudo *, University of Extremadura, Santa Teresa de Jornet, 38, Mérida 06800, Spain. Héctor Sánchez, University of Extremadura, Santa Teresa de Jornet, 38, Mérida 06800, Spain. Mercedes Rico, University of Extremadura, Santa Teresa de Jornet, 38, Mérida 06800, Spain. Remedios Hernández-Linares, University of Extremadura, Santa Teresa de Jornet, 38, Mérida 06800, Spain. Suggested Citation: Agudo, E., J., Sánchez H., Rico, M. & Linares H., R. Monitoring learning with an electronic portfolio Cleavage Site Analysis, AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online]. 2013, 3, pp 1046-1050. rd Available from: http://www.world-education-center.org/index.php/P-ITCS. Proceedings of 3 World Conference on Information Technology (WCIT-2012), 14-16 November 2012, University of Barcelon, Barcelona, Spain. Received 10 February, 2013; revised 3 July, 2013; accepted 4 August, 2013. Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser. ©2013 Academic World Education & Research Center. All rights reserved. Abstract How to monitor learning in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is one of teacher’s concerns with the new trends at university education. We propose to use an electronic portfolio to record the student learning process in a determined task. Students are organized in groups and they are responsible to build their own portfolio and use it adequately. We try to analyze how to measure the participation of each student in the final portfolio through the student records in forum, views and files created. Keywords: Monitoring activities, electronic portfolio, collaborative learning;

* ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: J. Enrique Agudo, University of Extremadura, Santa Teresa de Jornet, 38, Mérida 06800,

Spain, E-mail address: [email protected] / Tel.: +34-924-387-068

J., Sánchez H., Rico, M. & Linares H., R. Monitoring learning with an electronic portfolio Cleavage Site Analysis, AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science. [Online]. 2013, 3, pp 1046-1050.. Available from: http://www.world-education-center.org/index.php/P-ITCS

1. Introduction The European Higher Education Area (EHEA)(EHEA Website, 2011) try to create a comparable higher education systems in Europe (Brookes & Huisman, 2009; Diaz, Santaolalla, & Gonzalez, 2010). One of the main innovations for teaching in the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is students tracking through mentoring throughout the course. These tutorials are usually held from 3 to 5 times with each group of students in each course. The idea is that these groups are small, between 5 and 8 students, but depending on the infrastructure, teacher availability or different regulations may be changed. The objective of these tutorials is to track a group of students and the teaching of certain content or skills that are not achievable in the traditional classroom, such as transversal skills. On the other hand, the electronic portfolio trying to record the progress of students in different ways for students to participate in their own learning and make them reflect on the learning process (Chang et al., 2011). There are already several proposals for use in the university (Chamoso & Cáceres, 2009; Cavaller, 2011). Besides, there are Open Source applications like Mahara (MAHARA, 2011) to create portfolios that also have social networking capabilities. This tool lets you create your own digital portfolio oriented to education. Also includes blogs, presentations, file manager, groups and creator of views that allow you to create versions of content for a given context. In this context, we aim to design an activity to assess students' social interactions and group work in a portfolio to determine how to measure their involvement in the final work. The aim is to measure the degree of participation, through their social interactions.

Electronic Portfolio

Views

Forum

Evaluation

Files

Groups

Fig. 1. Electronic portfolio evaluation

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2. Activity Design Our proposal is to record the work on these tutorials and the group itself in an electronic portfolio where students themselves create their own content and reflect on how their development team work on a topic provided by the teacher (Akçıl & Arap, 2009). The portfolios itself allows control monitoring and use it as evaluation tool. In addition, students themselves are gradually seeing their progress and other partners enabling them to reflect on their work and be self-critical of it. Similarly other generic skills are working as team work, technological competence, work management, selfcriticism, etc. so important in the EHEA. Students register on the platform and create their own group within it. As a group can manage and create their own content. The aim is to record all work and group communication within the portfolio of the group, they can create views that can add artefacts collaboratively, forums to communicate and a file manager to manage your content. In figure 1 you can see how students register views, forum, files and groups in the portfolio and how teacher can use it to evaluate their work. 3. Testing We are currently conducting a pilot test with students from the Databases Systems course in Computer Science Engineering degree with a group of 15 students. We divided them into groups of 5 students to create 3 different groups. Each group is assigned a problem on which to work, and during the course have three meetings with the teacher to keep track of the activity. The aim is design and creates a database according to given specifications. The students create their own group in Mahara (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Group components.

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Students register in the portfolio both classroom activities, and non-attendance at the group's portfolio. They can communicate via the forum so that is reflected in the group portfolio.

Figure 3. View created for the group.

The teacher is also part of the group so you can see the progress and assist in the resolution if necessary, so you can measure the level of participation. We have observed different aspects to the student’s interaction in the portfolio that can be considered to evaluate them: •

Post in the forum.

•

Views created (Figure 3).

•

Files Uploaded.

•

Groups and friends.

4. Conclusions Although this first test has been making contact with the tool and its use we've found that has sparked students' motivation and are achieving the expected learning outcomes. As a measure of social participation in the group, it is still early to determine, but it seems more appropriate to measure participation in the forums, the views created and the number of uploads to analyze the work of each of the members in each group. Acknowledgements Patronage is provided by the Regional Government of Extremadura (Consejería de Economía Comercia e Innovación), Spain.

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References Akçıl, U., & Arap, İ. (2009). The opinions of education faculty students on learning processes involving eportfolios. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1(1), 395–400. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.071 Brookes, M., & Huisman, J. (2009). The eagle and the circle of gold stars: Does the Bologna process affect US higher education? Higher Education in Europe, 34(1), 3–23. Cavaller, V. (2011). Portfolios for entrepreneurship and self-evaluation of higher education institutions. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 12, 19–23. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.02.005 Chamoso, J. M., & Cáceres, M. J. (2009). Analysis of the reflections of student-teachers of mathematics when working with learning portfolios in Spanish university classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(1), 198–206. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2008.09.007 Chang, C.-C., Tseng, K.-H., Yueh, H.-P., & Lin, W.-C. (2011). Consideration factors and adoption of type, tabulation and framework for creating e-portfolios. Computers & Education, 56(2), 452–465. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.006 Diaz, M. J. F., Santaolalla, R. C., & Gonzalez, A. G. (2010). Faculty attitudes and training needs to respond to the new European higher education challenges. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 60(1), 101–118. EHEA Website. (2011). European higher education area website 2010-2020| EHEA. Retrieved April 29, 2011 from http://www.ehea.info/ MAHARA. (2011). Open source e-portfolio and social networking software - Mahara ePortfolio System. Retrieved April 29, 2011 from http://mahara.org/

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