ePortfolio trial gets thumbs up from students

It’s nice to hit the mid-year with a success story to share from Health Skills Australia! It was a fantastic experience to run an ePortfolio trial that generated enthusiasm from staff and students. During the trial, everyone involved made an effort to try the different ePortfolio platforms and give feedback. Now the findings are helping us plan for a successful ePortfolio rollout in 2017 to coincide with a new nursing curriculum.

At the outset, the broad idea was for students and staff to showcase their achievements and demonstrate their professional practice by mapping themselves to the ANMAC nursing standards. Doing this helps students develop a sense of lifelong learning, professional identity and graduate capabilities.

After the trial 92% of our participants believed that implementing ePortfolios will benefit students and staff at our college. Some comments from participants:

ePortfolio is a “Perfect way to display your academic results, resume [and] yourself”.

“This is a very competitive industry and it is important to have any and all advantages to implement the skills we are learning in school. An up to date ePortfolio may be the difference between getting an interview and not”.

Furthermore, 83% of participants said they will continue to use their Wix ePortfolio. Some more comments:

100% I love it!… It makes me feel good about my achievements and it is practical, if I need to pull up my CPD it’s there, if I need to look back at a reflection, it’s there. Everything in one place, I will definitely continue to use Wix”.

“Thank you for introducing me to this great ePortfolio system, [it] has given me a head start in preparing my resume… it will make an immense difference [to the students] journey into [becoming] nurses”.

As a result of the trial, we have identified some issues to pre-empt as we plan the launch next year. Firstly, our participants didn’t sufficiently map themselves against ANMAC Standards of Practice and graduate capabilities. Some also commented that peers without as much computer experience could struggle with the technology. But participants overwhelmingly felt Wix was easy to use and no one accessed the extra support on offer during the trial.

You can click though the images below to view a couple of wonderful portfolios participants were willing to share:

If you have any questions or want to know more about ePortfolios, please contact Ingrid.Devlin@navitas.com or connect on Yammer.