Swimmin’ Lessons

Final Project: Course 3 : Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators
(SUNY: EDC 6054 Authoring for Educators)

My colleague Dana Watts and I are committed to establishing E-Portfolios as an essential element of our learning community here at International School Bangkok.

There are many utilitarian reasons to sponsor the use of E-Portfolios–not the least of which is that more universities are using them as part of their admissions policy.

Our proposition is the following: E-Portfolios are an alternative means of learning and assessment that helps develop a student’s intrinsic interest.

Carol S. Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, says, “It matters greatly what students believe about their intelligence” (Dweck 2007; http://www.isacs.org/misc_files/EducationCanada.pdf).

Traditional grading practices (A, B ,C, D, F) are based on extrinsic motivation, a system that seeks to motivate as a function of reward and punishment. Developing students into self-directed, independent, lifelong learners “will not happen if educators rely on extrinsic motivation” (Principal’s Research Review January 2009).

Many student’s view their intelligence as it is tethered to this traditional and seriously flawed system.

E-Portfolios help foster a student’s intrinsic motivation. “The ePortfolio project team shows how we believe the portfolio can stimulate learning and a move away from extrinsic towards intrinsic motivation through a cycle of goal-setting, action and reflection” (INTERACT, INTEGRATE, IMPACT; Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) Adelaide, Australia 7–10 December 2003; Editors: Geoffrey Crisp, Di Thiele, Ingrid Scholten, Sandra Barker, Judi Baron (http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:9RrtzfXG5-EJ:www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/adelaide03/docs/pdf/601.pdf+%28INTERACT,+INTEGRATE,+IMPACT&cd=1&hl=th&ct=clnk).

As Manitoba Education (2006) stated, “According to current cognitive research, people are motivated to learn by success and competence. Assessment can be a motivator, not through reward and punishment, but by stimulating student’s intrinsic interest.” Student motivation can be intrinsically enhanced by “Reinforcing the idea that students have control over, and responsibility for, their own learning” (Manitoba 2006).

Teachers will provide appropriate lessons for the skills needed for Web publishing; however, many if not most students already possess internet based technological skills and a certain comfort level in utilizing those skills.

All students would benefit from a scaffolding approach to mastering these skills.

“Scaffolding instruction as a teaching strategy originates from Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). “The zone of proximal development is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.” The scaffolding teaching strategy provides individualized support based on the learner’s ZPD. In scaffolding instruction a more knowledgeable other provides scaffolds or supports to facilitate the learner’s development. The scaffolds facilitate a student’s ability to build on prior knowledge and internalize new information. The activities provided in scaffolding instruction are just beyond the level of what the learner can do alone. The more capable other provides the scaffolds so that the learner can accomplish (with assistance) the tasks that he or she could otherwise not complete, thus helping the learner through the ZPD”

Student e-portfolios that exhibit “a purposeful collection of artifacts that characterize learning experiences of the portfolio owner”  will become a vehicle for intrinsic student motivation.

Self-directed, intrinsically motivated students become life-long learners.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Dooley, Flickr/Creative Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/2201791390/)