Abstract
The last few years have seen an enormous growth of interest in e-portfolios and the benefits they can bring to learners. While it is generally agreed that e-portfolios have great potential to engage students and promote deep learning, the research that has been conducted to date focuses very little on student perceptions of value of the e-portfolio for their learning. If students do not agree or wish to use the e-portfolio as an integral part of their educational experience, then the potential impact the e-portfolio have on learning will not be realised. This paper describes the development of an e portfolio system to promote reflective skills for engineering students in a university in Malaysia. The Activity Theory is used as a lens to explain the reasons for the failed adoption of the e portfolio system.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
The Council For Industry and Higher Education, Helping Students Towards Success at Work - An Intent being Fulfilled (1998)
Mason, G., Williams, G., Cranmer, S.: Employability skills initiatives in higher education: what effects do they have on graduate labour market outcomes? Education Economics 17(1), 1–30 (2009)
N.C. of I. into Gran Bretaña, H.E., Dearing, R., Barnett, R.: Higher education in the learning society. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office London (1997)
Burgess, R.: Measuring and recording student achievement. Universities UK/SCOP (2004), http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/learningandteaching/DecemberNewsletter.pdf (abgerufen am 3.6.2006)
East, R.: A progress report on progress files. Active Learning in Higher Education 6(2), 160–171 (2005)
Halstead, A., Sutherland, S.: ePortfolio: A means of enhancing employability and the professional development of engineers. In: International Conference on Innovation, Good Practice and Research in Engineering Education (EE 2006), Liverpool (2006)
Loughran, J., Corrigan, D.: Teaching portfolios: A strategy for developing learning and teaching in preservice education. Teaching and Teacher Education 11(6), 565–577 (1995)
Wade, R.C., Yarbrough, D.B.: Portfolios: A tool for reflective thinking in teacher education? Teaching and Teacher Education 12(1), 63–79 (1996)
Klenowski, V., Askew, S., Carnell, E.: Portfolios for learning, assessment and professional development in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 31(3), 267–286 (2006)
Abrami, P., Barrett, H.: Directions for research and development on electronic portfolios. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La Revue Canadienne de l’Apprentissage et de la Technologie 31(3) (2005)
Smith, K., Tillema, H.: Clarifying different types of portfolio use. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 28(6), 625–648 (2003)
R.A. CRA: PDP and e-Portfolio UK Newsletter (2008)
Barrett, H., Knezek, D.: E-Portfolios: Issues in Assessment. Accountability and Preservice Teacher Preparation (2003)
Barrett, H.C.: Differentiating electronic portfolios and online assessment management systems. In: Proceedings of the 2004 Annual Conference of the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (2004)
Cotterill, S., McDonald, T., Drummond, P., Hammond, G.: Design, implementation and evaluation of a’generic’ePortfolio: the University of Newcastle upon Tyne experience. CAL-laborate (2005)
Balaban, I., Bubas, G.: Educational potentials of ePortfolio systems: Student evaluations of Mahara and Elgg. In: 2010 32nd International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces (ITI), pp. 329–336 (2010)
Love, D., McKean, G., Gathercoal, P.: Portfolios to Webfolios and beyond: Levels of Maturation. Educause Quarterly 27(2), 14 (2004)
Butler, P.: A review of the literature on portfolios and electronic portfolios. Techreport, pp. 1–23 (2006)
Vygotsky, L.: Mind in society (1978)
Nardi, B.A.: Context and consciousness: activity theory and human-computer interaction. The MIT Press (1996)
Kuutti, K.: Activity theory as a potential framework for human-computer interaction research. In: Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 17–44 (1996)
Engeström, Y.: Learning by expanding. An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research (1987)
Kaptelinin, V.: Activity theory: implications for human-computer interaction. In: Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 103–116 (1996)
Boer, N.I., van Baalen, P.J., Kumar, K.: An activity theory approach for studying the situatedness of knowledge sharing. In: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2002, pp. 1483–1492 (2002)
Engeström, Y., et al.: Activity theory and individual and social transformation. Perspectives on Activity Theory, 19–38 (1999)
Chesbrough, H., Spohrer, J.: A research manifesto for services science. Communications of the ACM 49(7), 35–40 (2006)
Spohrer, J., Maglio, P.P., Bailey, J., Gruhl, D.: Steps toward a science of service systems. Computer 40(1), 71–77 (2007)
Spohrer, J., Anderson, L., Pass, N., Ager, T.: Service science and service dominant logic. Otago Forum 2, 4–18 (2008)
Vargo, S.L., Lusch, R.F.: Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing, 1–17 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Abidin, W.Z., Uden, L., Alias, R.A. (2013). Investigation into a University Electronic Portfolio System Using Activity Theory. In: Uden, L., Herrera, F., Bajo Pérez, J., Corchado RodrÃguez, J. (eds) 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations: Service and Cloud Computing. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 172. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30867-3_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30867-3_26
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-30866-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-30867-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)