POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON
OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Ron Kwok Chi Wai
1
, Hokling Cheung Hok Ling, Josephine Chen Yingjun, Thadani Dimple,
Bandyopadhyay Rupa, Tania Lau Yuenkei and Anthony Wong Man Chun
City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
1
Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Keywords: ePortfolio, Reflective learning, Experiential learning, Student exchange.
Abstract: This study aims to propose a reflective ePortfolio approach and examine its effects on the outcomes of
students’ learning experience in their overseas exchange studies, the area that has been under-researched to
date. Based on the engagement theory, we proposed a research model and hypotheses to test the
effectiveness of our proposed ePortfolio approach (in terms of students’ affective engagement, cognitive
engagement and behavioural engagement via the use of the reflective ePortfolio system) on outcomes of
student overseas exchange learning experience (in terms of satisfaction with exchange experience,
satisfaction with ePortfolio, perceived achievement in learning, and actual achievement in learning). The
findings of this study provide potentially important practical implications for educators, students and
designers of ePortfolio on the use of ePortfolio for student exchange.
1 INTRODUCTION
This study aims to bring together the reflective
portfolio (Smith and Tillema, 2001) and experiential
learning (Eyler 2009; Kolb 1975; Walsh and Cuba
2009) streams of research to examine our proposed
electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) approach and its
effects on the outcomes of students’ experiential
learning in their overseas exchange studies, the area
that has been under-researched to date.
In general, students learn to appreciate the
positive and negative aspects of the people and
culture of the visiting country during their exchange
studies. Also, they learn to interact socially and
participate in discussions with their foreign peers.
Moreover, students learn to deal flexibly with and
adjust to new people, places, and situations, and in
particular, students become responsible, self-
confident, mature and independent and learn to
accept and appreciate people from other cultures
during their exchange studies.
However in spite of these benefits that the
students may gain in their exchange learning
experience, they face several problems as well.
Exchange students often experience cultural shock
during their stay abroad. Cultural shock usually
evolves in the following four stages (See details in
the Rotary Youth Exchange website).
The four stages are (1) Excitement and
Enthusiasm (this is the feeling of exhilaration that
accompanies when travelling to a new place, seeing
and doing new and different things, and meeting
new people); (2) Irritability (This occurs when the
initial excitement wears off and real cultural
differences become evident. No matter how
understanding and accepting the student may try to
be, there will be times when the negative feelings
will discourage the student); (3) Adaptation (This is
when students learn to accept that they will need to
adapt if they would like to be successful in their host
culture and then they start adjusting to local customs
and habits); and (4) Biculturalism (Students in this
stage realize that they have become competent in
another culture and can see the world and function
from another, very different, point of view).
Also, some exchange students may experience
homesickness (See details in the Rotary Youth
Exchange website), especially at the beginning of
their exchange study. They may feel lonely and
become overwhelmed with the day-to-day
challenges that accompany with the transition to a
new culture in a foreign country. The easy remedies
for acute homesickness are to keep occupied with a
25
Kwok Chi Wai R., Cheung Hok Ling H., Chen Yingjun J., Dimple T., Rupa B., Lau Yuenkei T. and Wong Man Chun A..
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
DOI: 10.5220/0003303600250035
In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 25-35
ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
variety of enjoyable activities. Students may also
find comfort in talking with someone locally who
speaks their native language or understands what
they are going through.
It is important for students to understand that it is
natural and common to go through low period
during their exchange studies, and that cultural
shock and homesickness are normal. It helps if
students could have channels expressing their
feelings and needs. Also, students need to know that
the situation will improve as they continue to adjust
to a new culture and develop a better understanding
of the host country’s culture.
Based on the success of the use of ePortfolio
(e.g. Smith and Tillema, 2001; Ravet, 2007; Cheung
et al., 2007) as a new generation of educational
platform and approach that allows students to set
goals, execute plans and self-reflect their experience
and performance, this paper proposes a reflective
ePortfolio approach to assist students to overcome
this low period of their exchange studies in general,
and examines its effects on the outcomes of student
overseas exchange learning experience in particular,
an area that is under-researched so far.
The findings of this research study are expected
to have a deep and long-term impact on our
understanding of the use of reflective ePortfolios for
student exchange studies. In addition, this study
provides potentially important practical implications
for educators, students and designers of ePortfolio
on the use of ePortfolio for student exchange.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows.
We first review the literature of ePortfolio. Then, we
propose a platform of ePortfolio approach based on
the primary foundation of ePortfolio. Next, we
propose a research model and four hypotheses based
on the engagement theory, to test the effectiveness
of our ePortfolio approach on outcomes of student
overseas exchange learning experience. Afterward,
we describe our research method. Then, we explain
our results and analysis, followed by discussion and
implications. Finally, we illustrate the limitations,
future direction and our conclusion.
2 FROM PORTFOLIO TO
ePORTFOLIO
Stiggins (1994) defined a portfolio as a collection of
student work gathered to demonstrate achievement
or improvement. The material to be collected can
vary greatly as a function of the assessment context.
Stiggins (1994) also added that a portfolio is "a
means of communicating about student growth and
development" and "not a form of assessment"(p.87)
Portfolios are typically used for individual
student enhancement as well as for assessment
purposes. Educators have long used portfolios to
collect and assess student work because they
demonstrate that a student has met the intended
learning outcomes or expectation. Throughout the
process of creating portfolios, students are often
encouraged to reflect upon and organize their
learning achievements. Teachers can then offer
feedback on the work, providing them with further
opportunities to reflect on their learning experience.
This increases intimacy between teachers and
students.
With the development of the Internet, educators
began to recognize the benefits of digitizing student
work and portfolios. Digital versions of student
work can be stored and accessed efficiently.
Converting student work into digital formats creates
new and innovative ways for teachers and students
to organize and collaborate through ePortfolios.
ePortfolio is defined as a collection of authentic
and diverse evidence, drawn from a larger archive
representing what a person or organization has
learned over time on which the person or
organization has reflected, and designed for
presentation to one or more audiences for a
particular rhetorical purpose (Barrett & Carney,
2005). An ePortfolio is not a haphazard collection of
artifacts (i.e., a digital scrapbook or a multimedia
presentation) but also a reflective tool that
demonstrates growth over time (Barrett, 2000).
An ePortfolio uses computing technologies as a
platform that allows students and teachers to store
and organize work and thoughts in many media
types (audio, video, graphics, text); and use
hypertext links to organize the material and connect
evidence to appropriate outcomes, goals or
standards.
ePortfolios are being used increasingly in
education, but they are still in the nascent stages of
development. According to a white paper from the
Electronic Portfolio Consortium (Barrett & Carney,
2005): "There is not yet a coherent understanding of
functional requirements, design specifications, or
how and to what extent an ePortfolio might benefit
teaching and learning." In this paper we try to bridge
the research gap by relating the effects of developing
ePortfolios on students’ overseas exchange learning
experience.
ePortfolios provide a convenient platform for
exchange students to organize and communicate
their learning experience resulted from engaging in
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
26
these challenging and real-life tasks. Through
identifying the intended learning outcomes and
writing about their experience, thoughts and
reflection, students could draw meaning and
communicate their learning accomplishment with
their teachers and peers during their exchange
studies. Part of the reflective process is to have
students to tell stories about their experiences as a
form of collaborative learning with their peers as
well as with their teachers. This sets up an
environment for both individual and collaborative
learning especially during student exchange studies.
There are emerging ideas on using ePortfolios
for collaborative learning. The empirical research,
however, is very limited in this area. Portfolios are
not so much an instructional strategy to be
researched, but more of a means to an end: to
support reflection of students which help them
understand their own learning progress. Previous
research has focused on the use of ePortfolios for
student engagement (Barrett 2000) and student
motivation (Ring et al. 2008). There is limited
empirical research on the use of ePortfolios for
collaboration especially in the context of student
exchange. This paper proposes a reflective
ePortfolio system and illustrates how it can be used
for reflection and collaboration in order to solve the
problems of cultural shock and homesickness faced
by exchange students in a foreign university.
3 THE PROPOSED ePORTFOLIO
APPROACH
We propose an ePortfolio approach with a template
of four-section structure, namely Profile, Summary,
Showcase and Performance (See Figure 1 for the
template of the ePortfolio system). Students are
required to personalise this template in a technical
training. In the Profile section, students need to
provide a short description of themselves, their
values and beliefs, career aspirations, and interest
and hobbies. This allows students to reflect and
present themselves and facilitates teachers and
student peers to know each other better. In the
Summary section, students are required to set their
goals and expectations on their exchange
programme before setting off. At the end of the
programme upon their return to the hometown, they
are required to articulate and describe their
accomplishments of the learning outcomes and their
own goals with an overall reflection for future
direction. Students are also required to rate their
confidence in achieving the Course Intended
Learning Outcomes (CILOs)
1
. In addition, they need
to conduct a self-assessment based on the
assessment rubric, and submit a self-assessment
form to the teachers. Finally, students need to
provide examples of their actual work/evidence
correspond with CILOs in the Showcase section.
Assignments must be submitted by the deadline and
should remain unchanged. One of the assignments is
an overall self-reflection that students are required to
critically self-assess their exchange experience.
Guiding questions for reflection are provided to help
students make effective reflection. At the end of the
exchange programme, course teachers would assess
each student’s ePortfolio and grade their work
according to the assignment rubric with the overall
comments posted in the Performance section. Unlike
other sections, this Performance section with grade
and teacher comments is made by default for
individual students only so as to respect privacy.
Student could make it public if they feel comfortable
to do so.
Also, students could access all other classmates’
ePortfolios and they are encouraged to browse and
leave comments for each other. Teachers can make
regular visit to each student’s ePortfolio and give
feedback accordingly. Student interaction and
collaboration are facilitated and encouraged for
everyone in the class as a community.
Figure 1: The template of the ePortfolio system.
3.1 The Platform
Google Sites was originally planned to be used for
the exchange programme, with integration of other
Google applications, such as Google Docs and
Google Reader. These functions were structured and
integrated in a pre-designed template. Students were
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
27
expected to adopt the template with ease and
followed the guides embedded in the template. The
Google Sites and other applications were found to be
intuitive and easy for students to use with basic
training. For the Performance section which required
different access control, Google Docs was used as an
embedded content page in the section. Therefore,
teachers could continue to view and post grade and
comments for students’ work and reflection in the
same ePortfolios while other students could also
browse as much as allowed each others’ ePortfolios.
Google Form was used for both teachers and peers
to leave comments to facilitate reflection. The
Google Form allowed users to generate survey forms
to help individual to collect feedback. The same
mechanism was used by teachers to ask students to
submit their self-assessment. There were several
types of pages users could use for Google Sites.
Thus students wrote their reflection in a blog-post
format using the announcement page in the
Showcase section. This function allowed teachers to
see the last modified date and collect students’ work
with Google Reader via RSS feed. Thus instead of
browsing each individual students’ ePortfolios to
identify any changes, teachers could be alerted
timely via these functions and features.
However, the unexpected incident happened
that Google Sites was blocked in mainland China
prevented students who had already gone abroad for
their exchange programme in Beijing from accessing
their ePortfolios on Google platform. We had,
therefore, come up with several contingence plans,
such as making paper portfolios, using Blackboard
Personal Portfolio or University GApps. After a few
rounds of discussion with the course teachers and
ePortfolio project team, we agreed to use the
Campus Pack Wiki (Version 2.9.3) from Learning
Object integrated in the University’s eLearning
system, Blackboard.
3.2 Research Model and Hypotheses
We proposed the following research model (see
Figure 2) and hypotheses to test the effectivenss of
our proposed ePortfolio approach on outcomes of
student overseas exchange learning experience.
3.2.1 Affective Engagement
Based on Jimerson et al. (2003), we define affective
engagement as students’ sense of belonging,
connection and support by peers and teachers via the
use of reflective ePortfolio. In other words, students
would create a sense of belonging to the student
Figure 2: Our proposed research model.
exchange community and would be interested in
engaging in their exchange learning experience.
Overall, affective engagement via the use of
reflective ePortfolio is expected to have a positive
effect on the exchange learning experience, as it
helps students create their self-identity by
illustrating their successful stories in their exchange
studies. This makes students feel satisfied, pleased
and proud of their achievements.
In particular, affective engagement instills a
sense of belonging to the ePortfolio community in
which the student peer supports each other and
makes students feel being respected. Students also
feel that their peers are interested in their
achievements and care about their success. In return
they also help their peers to learn and this instills a
positive attitude in them about helping others. Via
the use of the reflective ePortfolio, students can
reflect on their experience, expected and actual
achievements with feedback from others which
would eventually develop positive views about their
learning experience and outcomes. Hence students
feel satisfied with their exchange programme and
their achievements by reflecting and collaborating
through the ePortfolio.
This leads us to first set of hypotheses:
H1a: Affective engagement leads to satisfaction
with the exchange experience
H1b: Affective engagement leads to satisfaction
with the reflective ePortfolio
H1c: Affective engagement leads to perceived
achievement in learning
H1d: Affective engagement leads to actual
achievement in learning
3.2.2 Cognitive Engagement
Based on Appleton et al. (2006), we define cognitive
engagement as students’ engagement in the
reflective ePortfolio expressed as goal setting, study
planning, and self-regulation of performance. In
Affective Engagement
Cognitive Engagement
Behavioral Engagement
Satisfaction with
Exchange Experience
Satisfaction with
ePortfolio
Perceived Achievement
in Learning
Actual Achievement
in Learning
H1a
H2a
H3a
H1b
H2b
H3b
H1c
H2c
H3c
H1d
H2d
H3d
Affective Engagement
Cognitive Engagement
Behavioral Engagement
Satisfaction with
Exchange Experience
Satisfaction with
ePortfolio
Perceived Achievement
in Learning
Actual Achievement
in Learning
H1a
H2a
H3a
H1b
H2b
H3b
H1c
H2c
H3c
H1d
H2d
H3d
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
28
other words, it refers to students self-regulate
themselves to achieve their learning goals during
their exchange studies. Students would maintain an
ePortfolio that is for their exchange experience and
make reflection of their learning experience.
Students would have to learn to plan and execute
accordingly to achieve their goals. Students would
make explicit their values, beliefs and thinking
through the ePortfolios. They would have a more
substantial record of writing to observe the
differences in attitudes, behaviors and cultural
background of themselves as well as their peers.
Cognitive engagement requires students to set goals,
create action plans, record their thinking and
articulate their achievements. Students are prompted
to identify their own interests and goals of the
exchange programme in addition to the intended
learning outcomes and expectations from teachers.
This in turn helps students identify the possible
value of the programme and better assess their
accomplishments at the end of exchange study.
This leads us to the following hypotheses:
H2a: Cognitive engagement leads to satisfaction
with the exchange experience
H2b: Cognitive engagement leads to satisfaction
with the reflective ePortfolio
H2c: Cognitive engagement leads to perceived
achievement in learning
H2d: Cognitive engagement leads to actual
achievement in learning
3.2.3 Behavioral Engagement
Based on Jimerson et al. (2003), we define
behavioral engagement the frequency and the extent
to which the reflective ePortfolio was physically and
actually used. In other words, it refers to the time
and efforts students spent on developing and using
the ePortfolio for the exchange programme. Students
are encouraged to use ePortfolios to share their
experience and showcase accomplishments with
their peers and teachers. Students can decide on how
frequently they update their reflection on the
experiences and accomplishment through the
ePortfolios. They can also decide when and how
often they should visit others’ ePortfolios.
Behavioral engagement focuses on students’ time
and efforts in developing the ePortfolios. Students
have to update and visit their ePortfolios. This helps
students to feel satisfied with their exchange
programme and their achievements by frequent
interaction with their ePortfolios.
This leads us to the following hypotheses:
H3a: Behavioral engagement leads to satisfaction
with the exchange experience
H3b: Behavioral engagement leads to satisfaction
with the reflective ePortfolio
H3c: Behavioral engagement leads to perceived
achievement in learning
H3d: Behavioral engagement leads to actual
achievement in learning
4 METHODOLOGY
To evaluate the effects of the ePortfolio system on
students’ overseas exchange learning experiences,
this study adopts a multi-method protocol, including
student portfolio grading and survey. In particular,
our data were collected using self-administrated
survey. The respondents were undergraduate
students from our university who enrolled in the 1-
credit unit course “Exchange Experience
Assessment” during Spring semester of 2009/2010.
Students who enrolled in this course were required
to go on a one-semester exchange programme
overseas. Reflective ePortfolio was used as a
platform for them to reflect on their overseas
experience during their exchange. 30 students were
enrolled in this course and 23 of them completed the
survey. A total of 43.5% of the respondents were
male.
4.1 Independent Variables
Affective Engagement. It measured students’ sense
of belonging, connection and support by peers and
teachers via the use of reflective ePortfolio. It was
measured on a 9-item scale modified from Finns
(1989), Fredericks et al. (2004), Appleton et al.
(2006), and Jimerson et al. (2003). This measure had
a Cronbach alpha reliability of 0.921. The sample
items were “When I was constructing my ePortfolio,
I had the feeling of Prideful”, “My
teachers/classmates respected what I wrote in my
ePortfolio”, and “My comments on the ePortfolio of
my classmates were open”.
Cognitive Engagement. It measured students’
engagement in the reflective ePortfolio expressed as
goal setting, study planning, and self-regulation of
performance. It was measured on a 9-item scale
modified from Finns (1989), Fredericks et al.
(2004), Appleton et al. (2006), and Jimerson et al.
(2003). The reliability coefficient of the scale was
0.890. The sample items were “I checked the
relevance of the content of my ePortfolio from time
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
29
to time”, “I used my ePortfolio to demonstrate the
achievement of my goals of the exchange
programme”, and “I constructed my ePortfolio for
completing the requirements of the coursework.”
Behavioral Engagement. It measured the frequency
and the extent to which the reflective ePortfolio was
physically used. It was measured on a 3-item scale
adapted from Finns (1989), Fredericks et al. (2004),
and Jimerson et al. (2003). The reliability
coefficient of the scale was 0.75. The items were “I
frequently logged in to the ePortfolio system to
update my personal portfolio”, “I frequently used
the ePortfolio to record my achievements”, and “I
frequently visited the ePortfolio to check for my
classmates and teachers’ comments.”
4.2 Dependent Variables
Satisfaction with Exchange Experience. It was
measured on a three-item scale partly adapted from
Bhattacherjee (2008). This measure had a Cronbach
alpha reliability score of 0.854. Participants were
asked to rate the overall experience with the
exchange learning experience based on a 7-point
likert scale (i.e. your overall learning experience of
this exchange programme was satisfied/ enjoyable/
delighted.).
Satisfaction with Reflective ePortfolio. It was
measured on a three-item scale partly adapted from
Bhattacherjee (2008). This measure had a Cronbach
alpha reliability score of 0.905. Participants were
asked to rate the overall experience with the
reflective ePortfolio usage based on a 7-point likert
scale (i.e. your overall experience of using the
reflective ePortfolio was satisfied/ enjoyable/
delighted.).
Perceived Achievement in Learning. It was
measured on a three-item self-developed scale. The
reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.893. The
measurement items were “I achieved my
expectations of the exchange programme”, “I
achieved my goals of the exchange programme”, “I
implemented my plan of the exchange programme
successfully.”
Actual Achievement in Learning. It was measured on
the actual marks assigned to students who took
based on the scale of 100.
5 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Means, standard deviations, and correlations
coefficients of all constructs are depicted in Table 1
(see Appendix). The mean for cognitive engagement
was slightly higher than that of the affective
engagement, indicating that students used reflective
ePortfolio more for goal setting and self-regulation
purposes.
Referring to the correlations matrix, affective
engagement was significantly correlated with the
perceived achievement in learning, satisfaction with
exchange experience and satisfaction with ePortfolio.
Cognitive engagement was significantly correlated
with the perceived and actual achievement in
learning. However, behavioral engagement was only
found correlated with the perceived achievement in
learning. Thus, the perceived achievement in
learning was significant correlated with affective,
cognitive and behavioral engagement of reflective
ePortfolio whereas the actual achievement in
learning was only correlated with cognitive
engagement. Gender was the control variable and it
was not significantly related to the predicted
variables.
To test the hypotheses, four multiple regression
analyses were carried out. In other words, the
predictor variables were the same in all of the
analyses, whereas the predicted variables changed.
The four predicted variables were satisfaction with
exchange experience, satisfaction with ePortfolio,
perceived achievement in learning and actual
achievement in learning. Table 2 (see Appendix)
presents the results of the regression analysis.
As shown in the results of structural model (see
Figure 3), no statistically significant relationship was
found between affective engagement and (1)
perceived achievement in learning, (2) actual
achievement in learning. Thus, hypothesis 1c and 1d
were not supported. However, it was found that
affective engagement in ePortfolio was positively
associated with satisfaction with exchange
experience (β= 0.696, t=4.212, p<0.001) and
satisfaction with ePortfolio (β= 0.812, t=4.609,
p<0.001). Hypotheses 1a and 1b were supported.
Figure 3: Results of structural model.
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
30
Moreover, it was found that hypotheses 2c and
2d were supported as cognitive engagement was
positively related to perceived achievement in
learning (β= 0.567, t=2.605, p<0.05) as well as
actual achievement in learning (β= 0.675, t=2.604,
p<0.05). Although significant relationship was found
between cognitive engagement and satisfaction with
ePortfolio (β= -0.567, t=-2.546, p<0.05), the
relationship was in opposite direction. No
statistically significant relationship was found in
satisfaction in exchange experience. Thus,
hypotheses 2a and 2b were not supported.
Behavioral engagement was not significantly
associated with any of the predictors. Table 3 (see
Appendix) presents the summary of hypotheses
testing.
6 DISCUSSION
It is necessary to point out that, due to the limited
number of the enrolled students in the surveyed
course, effective size is small. Therefore, certain
paths may not be as significant as perceived due to
this limited statistical power. Nevertheless, the data
has revealed some interesting results that may
inform effective implementation of ePortfolios in
students’ exchange programmes in the future.
Interestingly, different from what the engagement
theory (e.g. Finns 1989, Fredericks et al. 2004,
Jimerson et al. 2003, Appleton et al. (2006))
suggests, not all of the components of engagement
(i.e. affective engagement, cognitive engagement
and behavioral engagement) lead to the four learning
outcomes (i.e. satisfaction with exchange
experience, satisfaction with ePortfolio, perceived
achievement in learning and actual achievement in
learning). The discrepancies lie in three areas:
1) Affective engagement is most significantly
related to the satisfaction with exchange
experience and ePortfolio, while there lacks a
high correlation between affective engagement
and the perceived or actual achievement in
learning;
2) Cognitive engagement is most significantly
related to the perceived and actual achievement
in learning, but there lacks a high and positive
correlation between cognitive engagement and
the satisfaction with exchange experience and
ePortfolio respectively.
3) Behavioral engagement is not significantly
related to any predictors.
Affective engagement measures students’ sense
of belonging, connection and support by peers and
teachers via the use of reflective ePortfolio. As
discussed earlier in this paper, exchange students
face multiple challenges when study overseas, such
as cultural shock, homesickness, language
difficulties. Therefore, psychological support from
peers who are in the same situation and confronted
with the similar problems is crucial for exchange
students to survive and succeed in the new
environment. In addition, psychological support also
comes from oneself. When students create their self
identity and recognise their achievements, their
esteem is built up, and hence the satisfaction of their
exchange experience grows. In other words, whether
students find their exchange programme satisfying,
enjoyable or delightful is largely related to the
degree of affective engagement, that is, collaborative
psychological engagement and individual
psychological engagement.
If we look at the exchange students’ ePortfolios,
we will find that both types of psychological
engagement can be obtained through the
development of ePortfolios. In the provided
template, collaborative functions, especially leaving
comments, are included. Students are encouraged to
provide feedback to their classmates on their overall
ePortfolios, as well as a particular piece of work
and/or experience. This also implies that students
can see what their fellow classmates are doing, what
problems they are facing, and how they cope with
these problems. In such an ePortfolio community,
students are expected to gain practical and
psychological support from each other. Furthermore,
in an exchange ePortfolio, students are asked to
record their achievements, conduct self-assessment
and make reflections on their values, development
and future directions. By doing so, students are
expected to gain self-respect in an environment
where their esteem is often challenged. To this end,
it is clear that, as the data also suggests, affective
engagement is closely related to the satisfaction with
exchange experience and the development of
ePortfolios. While affective engagement has more to
do with the psychological part, that is, a sense of
satisfaction, cognitive engagement is more related to
learning achievements.
Cognitive engagement refers to self-regulation
and measures the efforts students make to achieve
their learning outcomes. If we take a look at the
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs)
i
set by
the course teachers, we can see that ePortfolios play
an important role in helping students achieve these
CILOs. Students are asked to set goals in addition to
CILOs, to make action plans to achieve their goals,
and to record actual work/evidence to demonstrate
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
31
their learning, and to reflect on the work they have
done, activity participated and experience involved.
A large component of these work, activities and
experiences has to do with communicating with
local people, identifying culture differences,
overcoming cultural barriers, and observing the uses
of IT in the local communities. When the
development of ePortfolios help students achieve
learning outcomes, which is precisely what cognitive
engagement is defined, it is clear that high cognitive
engagement can increase perceived and actual
achievement in learning, and vice versa. But it,
unlike affective engagement, has limited impact on
the psychological aspects, such as satisfaction with
exchange experience, and even negative impacts
(see Figure 3 for the negative correlation between
cognitive engagement and satisfaction with
ePortoflio) on satisfaction with ePortfolios. These
findings imply that we need to provide better
training for students for the effective use of
ePortfolio for cognitive engagement activities. Also
we also need to further improve the design of the
ePortfolio platform, such as the inclusion of “fun”
elements of the system, in order to motivate students
to cognitively engage in the goal setting, study
planning and self regulating of their exchange
studies via the use of the ePortfolio system.
Finally, the data shows that behavioural
engagement is not significantly associated with any
of the predictors. Behavioural engagement measures
students’ participation in the exchange programme,
and the frequency and the extent to which
ePortfolios are physically used. The result indicates
that forcing students to use ePortfolio physically
without engaging them affectively or cognitively
will not increase their satisfaction of learning, nor
help them achieve learning outcomes. Having said
that, we do not deny that behavioural engagement is
necessary. In fact, it is the prerequisite for affective
and cognitive engagement to occur. Without
physically involving students to participate in the
exchange programme and to use ePortfolios, no
satisfaction or learning can happen.
7 IMPLICATIONS FOR
STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND
DESIGNERS
Having presented thus far, we can see how certain
engagement components relate to different learning
outcomes. Some suggestions for teachers and
students who use ePortfolios in exchange
programmes, and for e-learning platforms designers
in general, can be drawn as follows:
To achieve learning outcomes, teachers, first and
foremost, should make their expectations clear in
terms of measurable and observable learning
outcomes and encourage students to personalise
these outcomes as their own learning goals or to
identify more valuable outcomes for the exchange
programme or the learning activity. Also, teachers
should provide students with instructions and
guidance on how to reflect, what information and
work are valuable to evidence learning, and what
criteria they should use to self-assess. These enhance
cognitive development and engagement. To create a
more open and collaborative platform and
atmosphere for students and teachers to express and
communicate is essential to enhance the affective
engagement and satisfaction on the experiences.
These can therefore add value to the behaviorial
engagement and motivate students to regularly
update and review of each others’ ePortfolios.
Secondly, to make the exchange experience a
good one, a supportive and constructive culture and
virtual environment needs to be established where
students are encouraged communicate their needs
and offer support for each others. They should be
open to share problems and difficulties encountered
in the exchange programme, and to give
positive/helpful feedback to their peers. To further
facilitate this affective engagement, teachers should
interfere whenever necessary. For instance, when
problems cannot be solved by students themselves,
teachers can use the comment function to provide
professional advice. Teachers can also recommend
some student’s ePortfolio or a particular event
he/she has participated in and recorded in the
ePortfolio to the rest of the class. In this way,
students can not only learn from each other but can
also be appreciated by their peers and therefore
increase their satisfaction of the exchange
experience. Needless to say, the ePortfolio template
has to have the collaborative and reflective functions
to make this happen. If students gain satisfaction
from their exchange programme through the use of
ePortfolios, they are more likely to gain satisfaction
from developing their ePortfolios.
Thirdly, to enhance achievement in learning
(either perceived or actual), students and teachers
should make sure certain skills are developed. These
skills may include goal setting, making action plans,
recording learning experience and reflecting,
depending on what course intended learning
outcomes. These skills have to do with the cognitive
engagement. While students should consciously
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
32
engage in the skill developing process, teachers can
provide training and support to facilitate cognitive
engagement.
Last but not least, the survey results have
revealed that behavioural engagement alone is
unlikely to lead to satisfaction or achievements in
learning. This informs us that the conventional e-
learning platforms that often neglect affective and
cognitive engagement are not effective to achieve
learning outcomes. To this end, designers of e-
learning platforms should include at least two
elements that are crucial for learning to occur. The
first element is related to collaboration. This
includes sharing function (i.e. sharing work to the
selected groups or open to anyone) and commenting
function (i.e. providing feedback to peers and
receiving from audience). The second element is
skills-driven. If we believe learning outcomes can be
obtained in the process of developing certain skills,
e-learning platforms should be skills-driven.
Students should be informed clearly what is
expected from them and be guided step by step.
Each step should be skill-based. For example, if
students are asked to set goals, they should learn
what smart goals are and how to set smart goals. If
students are asked to make reflection, they should
learn how to reflect. In an effective e-learning
platform, designers should state these steps
explicitly and provide guidance if necessary. Also as
aforementioned, designers of ePortfolio system may
consider to include more “fun” elements in the
design of the ePortfolio system, with the purpose to
let students have an enjoyable cognitive engagement
in the goal setting, study planning and self regulating
of their exchange studies via the use of the
ePortfolio system.
8 LIMITATION AND FUTURE
RESEARCH
We acknowledge several limitations to our study
related to the design of the ePortfolio system, which
suggest the need for future research. As
aforementioned, we used the Campus Pack Wiki
(Version 2.9.3) as the platform of our ePortfolio
system. In fact, several functions are missing in the
Campus Pack Wiki (Version 2.9.3) as compared to
Google Sites. Firstly, the Campus Pack Wiki cannot
set page permission, and therefore online grading
has to go offline. In this regard, the Performance
section was renamed as Assessment Criteria. In
addition, RSS feed and blog were given up in the
Showcase section, but teachers were still able to
keep track on students’ last modified date of their
ePortfolios. Finally, we changed the self-assessment
form from Google Form to a Blackboard test which
could generate a summary of students’ self
evaluation. The major challenge in Campus Pack
Wiki (Version 2.9.3) is that teachers have to create a
template for each individual student instead of
creating one for all to download. This will result in
too much workload for teachers.
We are still evaluating other ePortfolio platforms
in order to enhance more communication and
collaboration among students and teachers, and
students themselves, during exchange programme.
The popularity of Facebook has inspired us to
integrate some social features into our ePortfolio
template and the respective demand on the
technological platform and functions. They include,
naming a few, adding friends, summarising friends’
update in a dashboard and viewing who is online,
and other social networking features. Students can
even vote for the best work of their classmates. With
ranking shown on each assignment, students will be
more motivated to share their exchange experiences.
In addition to the communication among peers, the
interaction between teachers and students are also
crucial. A good platform should also contain
assessment submission feature which can lock and
take a frozen shots of the ePortfolio pages, so the
assignment cannot be changed after submission
deadline. Teachers will also be able to leave
comments that are can only be seen by the student,
and to grade online. We will keep trying different
platforms and continue to seek the best platform for
the collaborative and reflective ePortfolios for
student exchange experience.
9 CONCLUSIONS
This study examines the effects of our proposed
reflective ePortfolio system on the outcomes of
students’ learning experience in their overseas
exchange studies, the area that has been under-
researched to date. Based on our collected data and
results, we found that students’ affective
engagement in ePortfolio was positively associated
with satisfaction with exchange experience and
satisfaction with ePortfolio. Also, we found that
students’ cognitive engagement in ePortfolio was
positively related to perceived achievement in
learning as well as actual achievement in learning.
More interestingly, although significant relationship
was found between cognitive engagement and
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
33
satisfaction with ePortoflio, the relationship was in
opposite direction. In other words, our findings
suggest that students’ affective engagement in
ePorfolio has more to do with the psychological part,
that is, a sense of satisfaction, while cognitive
engagement is more related to learning
achievements.
We wish our proposed reflective ePortfolio
approach could help students go through the low
period of their exchange studies in general, and
provide positive effects on outcomes of their
overseas exchange learning experience in particular.
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APPENDIX
Table 1: Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations
a
.
Variables Mean s.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 Affective Engagement 5.232 0.77 (.921)
2 Cognitive Engagement 5.327 0.70 .472* (.890)
3 Behavioral Engagement 5.435 0.71 .261 .646** (.751)
4 Satisfaction with the Exchange Experience 5.74 0.84 .679** .248 -.147 (.854)
5 Satisfaction with the Reflective ePortfolio 4.99 0.91 .623** .011 .148 .425* (.905)
6 Perceived Achievement of Learning 5.40 1.06 .575** .697** .420* .546* .447* (.893)
7 Actual Achievement of Learning 79.26 12.76 .339 .603** .296 .329 .050 .071 --
8 Gender (Control variable) .456 .468 .394 .875 .444 .384 .122 --
a
n =23; reliability coefficients are reported along the diagonal: Mean and standard deviations reported here are
for unstandardized variables
*p<.05
**
p
<.01
***p<.001
Two-tailed tests
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
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Table 2: Regression Analyses.
Independent variables
Satisfaction with
Exchange Experience
Satisfaction with
ePortfolio
Perceived Achievement
in Learning
Actual Achievement
in Learning
Beta T Beta t Beta t Beta t
Affective Engagement 0.696*** 4.212 0.812*** 4.06 0.315 1.831 0.061 0.297
Cognitive Engagement 0.226 1.081 -0.567* -2.55 0.567* 2.605 0.675* 2.604
Behavioral Engagement -0.475 -2.488 0.302 1.49 -0.028 -0.142 -0.156 -0.66
n 23 23 23 23
R 0.774 0.737 0.752 0.618
R
2
0.599 0.544 0.565 0.382
F 9.442 7.552 8.218 3.905
Notes: Significance *p<0.05; **p<0.01, ***p<0.001
Table 3: Summary of Hypotheses Testing.
Hypothesis Results
H1a Affective engagement--> Satisfaction with exchange experience SUPPORTED
H1b Affective engagement--> Satisfaction with reflective ePortfolio SUPPORTED
H1c Affective engagement--> Perceived achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED
H1d Affective engagement--> Actual achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED
H2a Cognitive engagement--> Satisfaction with exchange experience SUPPORTED
H2b Cognitive engagement--> Satisfaction with reflective ePortfolio SUPPORTED
H2c Cognitive engagement--> Perceived achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED
H2d Cognitive engagement--> Actual achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED
H3a Behavioral engagement--> Satisfaction with exchange experience NOT SUPPORTED
H3b Behavioral engagement--> Satisfaction with reflective ePortfolio NOT SUPPORTED
H3c Behavioral engagement--> Perceived achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED
H3d Behavioral engagement--> Actual achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED
1
There are five course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs) for “Exchange Experience Assessment”: 1) Describe the role of
communication in culture and overcome communication barriers, 2) Recognise cultural variables and explain how they shape our social
and work interactions, 3) Identify and critically evaluate communication norms, rituals, and taboos of students’ cultures and other cultures
they have been exposed to during their study programme, 4) Develop successful strategies to overcome cultural barriers and demonstrate
their usefulness, and 5) Compare and contrast the use of IT in local universities/organizations with the counterparts overseas.
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
35