Teaching and Learning Matters
Key ePortfolio features and strategies for student success in a competency-based clinical research program

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cptl.2021.03.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Student ePortfolios provide an interactive space for faculty, student peers, and potential employers to view skillsets and reflective expressions of students.

Educational Activity

The adoption of ePortfolios in an interdisciplinary, competency-based, master's degree program in clinical research at a university in the Midwestern United States is described. Students submitted their ePortfolios as their culminating assessment. A survey was used to collect objective and open-ended responses from 104 students between 2015 and 2019 followed by a voluntary post-survey interview. Two ePortfolio platforms and instructional methods were compared.

Critical Analysis of the Educational Activity

A user-friendly platform enhanced student engagement and reduced student and faculty frustration with the ePortfolio requirement. Thirty-seven students and alumni responded to an ePortfolio survey, and five students shared their experiences in a post-survey interview. Students described positive experiences related to their academic program and job search as a result of completing the ePortfolio. However, alumni were not strongly motivated to maintain their ePortfolio post-graduation. ePortfolios provide evidence of student acquisition of core competencies in a professional graduate degree. Facilitating the process of ePortfolio creation with instruction guides, exemplar ePortfolios, and an evaluation rubric support student success. A user-friendly ePortfolio platform with social media linking features will enhance exposure of the student's work to key stakeholders during and after their academic program. If the ePortfolio is to have an impact on a student's professional trajectory after graduation, it should contain meaningful examples of academic work that can be shared publicly and allow updating of ePortfolio content.

Section snippets

Background

An electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) is a pedagogical tool that can be used to document acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs), and professional development through a digital collection of information, artifacts, and reflections that illustrate competence. ePortfolio use in education is grounded in adult learning theory, which emphasizes a self-directed, experiential, problem-centered approach to learning.1 ePortfolios support this type of approach and have demonstrated usefulness

Setting

The Master of Clinical Research (MCR) program at a large Midwestern university is a fully online, asynchronous, interdisciplinary (nursing, pharmacy) program with two profession-oriented degree specializations: Clinical Research Management (CRM) and Regulatory Affairs (RA). The curriculum's core courses are mapped to 47 core competencies for clinical research professionals defined by the Joint Task Force (JTF) for Clinical Trial Competency (Table 1).24,25

Additional courses provide advanced

Core Competency Reflections

The most important assessment elements for the MCR ePortfolio final program examination are the required core competency reflections. Students are required to write reflections on their acquisition of KSAs that demonstrate metacognition and critical thinking for each of the eight core competency domains and encourage the development of short-term and long-term goals associated with their professional development post-graduation. We provide specific guidance to students on the essay elements for

Critical Analysis of the Educational Activity

Since the start of the MCR program in 2014, a total of 140 students have completed an ePortfolio, 12 using the university WordPress platform and 128 using Portfolium. We continue to find the ePortfolio requirement to be an effective means for students to showcase their acquired knowledge and skillsets. The reflective writing requirement also provides students with a level of self-evaluation and professional goal setting as they transition from graduate student to clinical research professional.

Summary

This paper describes a learning activity and associated rubric as a means to provide a summative evaluation of student competency-acquisition in the program. We also present our experiences with the implementation of the assignment using two distinct, cost-free ePortfolio platforms, WordPress and Portfolium, in our competency-based graduate program for clinical research professionals. This work contributes to the literature by offering an approach to evaluate students and programs for

Disclosure(s)

This article has not had any external funding. Dr. Jones is funded, in part, from the Ohio State University CCTS NIH CTSA grant number UL1TR002733.

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

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