Ron Rojas

Digital portfolios and journals

E-portfolios are very much like journals, but with multimedia content. In my graduate leadership classes (Masters and doctorate) I’ve used journaling as an assessment tool since it allows me to see how students apply in their workplace what they learn in the classroom. The fact that they have to know the material, find the moment to apply the material, reflect on the event and then document the experience in a journal helps me see progress throughout the session. Although some aspects of the journal may be very personal, I let them know that the Final Exam is a summary of major learning events documented in the journal. What strikes me as a possibility is to expand documentation sources and allow students to use multimedia in their journaling. I think it will enhance the learning pr0cess and at the same time allow for some creativity. But then again, I’ll also have to communicate the advantages and disadvantages of each form of media so the students don’t dedicate more time to technology than to the documenting of the experience. Essentially (and if properly done) journaling formats can be expanded and look more like e-portfolios. Has anyone tried this expanding journaling by using multimedia based on the e-portfolio tool?