ePortfolio paper wins international accolade
In recognition of its leadership in employing electronic portfolio technology to encourage involvement in engaging, reflective and autonomous education experiences, City University of Hong Kong (CityU) was awarded the ePortfolio Team Distinguished Paper Award at the 2010 International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e-Education, and e-Technology (e-Case and e-Tech 2010) held in Macau.
“Electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) are emerging as a catalyst encouraging individuals to take more control over their education and development.” These comments formed the introduction to the paper that earned CityU’s award.
CityU has been encouraging the use of the ePortfolio system, a powerful tool that improves performance, professional development and employment prospects. Using the system, users set clear development goals, review their performance over a period of time and create their own CV using the available templates. CityU launched the system in 2005.
The paper, “An Evaluation of Electronic Portfolio Platforms in Higher Education,” was co-written by ePortfolio team members from the Education Development Office (EDO) and the English Language Centre (ELC), namely Ms Cheung Hok-ling, Education Development Officer; Dr Zhou Mingming, Research Fellow; Mr Anthony Wong Man-chun, Research Assistant; Ms Vicky Chan Yin-fan, Programmer; and Ms Valerie Pickard, Instructor. The paper outlines an evaluation framework that adopts heuristic inspection techniques from three perspectives: individual developers (students), audience or users (teachers) and institutions. More than 250 papers from around the world, including the US, Taiwan, Finland, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Iran, New Zealand, Poland and Germany, were presented and only around 10% won this honour.
“We are delighted that our research paper has received this award. The recognition motivates us to further enhance this platform at CityU,” said Ms Cheung.
EDO and ELC have been working together to research the implementation of ePortfolios into several language courses. They also stage the CityU ePortfolio Competition to lay the foundations of a university-wide ePortfolio culture among CityU students, alumni and staff.