Enhancing Reflection and Narrative Development with ePortfolios

Reflection is recognized as a critical component of learning and student development. Assignments that promote reflective thinking encourage students to make connections between the knowledge acquired across multiple courses and integrate information they have learned. In engineering, reflection compels students to think critically about the impact engineers can have and their future roles. Our Electrical and Computer Engineering Department has adopted ePortfolios to provide a structure for students to integrate and reflect on their holistic educational experiences, thereby contributing to the ongoing development of their engineering identities and widening their capabilities. 

We have integrated ePortfolios into several courses in our curriculum. While our results have been successful, we have determined that embedding this at an individual course level limits both the context and timeframe of the integration. We are working to integrate ePortfolios into a curriculum spanning course where students engage them in reflective thinking across their entire college experience in a programmatic ePortfolio. This session will introduce the benefits of reflection and introduce ePortfolios and how they might be used in a course. We will discuss our experience, initial results and our future plans.

Speakers for this webinar are Rebecca Thomas (Bucknell University) and Stu Thompson (Bucknell University).

This webinar is part of a larger series on building community and reflecting to re-envision in engineering education. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC-1733004.

If you have questions, please contact learning@asee.org.