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ERIC Number: EJ1412899
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1554-8244
The Value of Purposeful Design: A Case Study of an ePortfolio Reflective Prompt
Kathleen Blake Yancey
Across the Disciplines, v20 n3-4 p31-49 2023
What kinds of questions guide ePortfolio-based reflections that are meaningful, and what kinds of meaning do students make in response to such questions? These questions directed our work in designing a new reflective prompt for an internship ePortfolio completed by students in the Editing, Writing, and Media major at Florida State University. As detailed below, we decided on five progressively oriented questions keyed to time and space. Most obviously, the five questions asked students to address three periods of time; rather than concentrate exclusively on what students were learning in the moment of the internship, the questions directed students' attention to past, present, and future learning. In addition, the questions asked students to consider the learning taking place in three spaces: learning occurring in prior and current coursework; learning experienced in the internship itself; and learning taking place in the spaces between both. Taken together, these dually focused questions constitute a reflective frame, a heuristic intended to tap students' prior and current knowledge, understanding, and practice as it guides them toward describing and making meaning from their internship experiences. This reflective frame, then, is keyed not to predetermined outcomes, but to the learning that students experience in the internship, to a consideration of that learning in the context of school-based learning, and to an articulation of what that learning means for their futures. Moreover, a content analysis of a set of ten ePortfolio reflective texts responding to this reflective frame demonstrates how it promotes meaningfulness, in three ways: by asking authentic questions that only students can answer; by presenting the questions in a progressive sequence moving from more focused considerations to larger, more open-ended ones; and by identifying the parameters governing the reflective texts. In sum, this reflective frame, intentionally located in the two dimensions of time and sites of learning, is defined by features necessary for reflective questions seeking to elicit meaningful student responses keyed to learning.
WAC Clearinghouse. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Tel: 970-491-3132; Web site: http://wac.colostate.edu
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Florida
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A