I was in a web conference this afternoon on eportfolios and felt like more of a sell job than anything else and it was doing everything wrong in terms of presentation. But through the fuzz of boredom, I thought of something that is by far the bigger issue to overcome. ….grr… wireless dropped and I lost the entire post… so there is what I think I can pull out.
They blame “generation m” (aka generation mobile) as being to media saturated to be able to spend the time to reflect on what they are presented. Because of this, they argue that students are going to be reacting to information rather than applying any manner of cognitive skills to situations that are presented. The claim is that eports are able to slow students down and enable them to reflect. To this I wonder, if everything else in the life of the student is happening at “full tilt”, then why would eports be any different? I don’t think it’s this time issue at all that is a major obstacle.
In my mind, I’m thinking that the major problem with bringing eports into the higher ed realm, especially in larger institutions is that there is no culture on the part of the instructors to support an “object” that they don’t control, that they don’t really mark and that they may have to support but that might never have any of their course materials contained within. This culture also doesn’t promote any kind of academically altruistic actions on the part of instructors. If this can’t be overcome, there is no hope for eports.
The way to get around this would be to work within small groups/courses/cohorts and ensure that there is buy in from the instructors involved. The other option would be to run portfolios not from within courses, but rather from other organizations like the Student’s Union or the library.
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