Showcase You on iTunes U: The iportfolio enables self student self-assessment of key capabilities and the public showcase of acheivements

Abstract

Increasingly, teaching staff and institutions are encouraging or requiring students to self-assess achievement of graduate capabilities and competences using electronic portfolios. This paper describes Curtin University of Technology's electronic portfolio, called the iPortfolio. The iPortfolio was piloted with 2000 staff and students in late 2009. As of May 2010, over 10,600 iPortflio accounts had been created. Increasingly, media rich assessments and authentic iPortfolio-based learning experiences are being woven into the formal curriculum of many units. This paper places particular emphasis on describing the role of the iPortfolio in evaluating what students have actually learned in order to close the loop on curriculum design and its implementation. Key to the strategy is an on-line iPortfolio space called the My Ratings tab where students self-assess attainment of Curtin's graduate attributes. It is now possible for aggregated data from the My Ratings tab to inform a needs analysis used by teaching staff during the curriculum review process.A strategy is described for using the My Ratings tab as a staging area in which students plan and produce short video resumes. Video resumes and other media rich artefacts that highlight skills and key capabilities can be shared with selected others in the iPortfolio My Showcases tab. The iPortfolio holder can seamlessly publish My Showcase entries to the University's presence on iTunes U where they become broadly available to the public. Once published to iTunes U, these media rich entries facilitate further qualitative analysis of student achievement by teaching teams, curriculum review participants, accreditation panels, and prospective employers.