Twelfth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

Medical Schools across Australia but also globally are looking into designing, developing and implementing a programmatic assessment approach to their medical curricula. The use of an electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) tool, the provision of longitudinal tutorial support and credible feedback are often the key design challenges for programmatic assessment. At Macquarie University the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences designed, developed, and implemented a pedagogically sound and technologically workable and sustainable solution to programmatic assessment using an e-portfolio tool for its newly established Bachelor of Clinical Science. The Bachelor of Clinical Science is a 2 year accelerated undergraduate program. The curriculum includes a professional practice stream integrated across the entire program. It was in this stream that the students were introduced to the concept and pedadogy of an ePortfolio as way to help them join the dots between learning and professional capabilities across all the modules of study in their program but also from other aspects of their lives (work or volunteering experiences). The paper will discuss the results of the first two years of implementation. Data was drawn from focus groups (n=62 students). Qualitative thematic analysis was used and three themes were identified as important to student learning using an ePortfolio: the need for pedagogical training related to reflective practice; the relevance and connection of the ePortfolio to the capability framework and possible future careers; and the importance of longitudinal support, feedback and feed-forward. Implications for practice related to sustainability and scalability of ePortfolios will be discussed.