POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON

OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Ron Kwok Chi Wai

, Hokling Cheung Hok Ling, Josephine Chen Yingjun, Thadani Dimple,

Bandyopadhyay Rupa, Tania Lau Yuenkei and Anthony Wong Man Chun

City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Keywords: ePortfolio, Reflective learning, Experiential learning, Student exchange.

Abstract: This study aims to propose a reflective ePortfolio approach and examine its effects on the outcomes of

students’ learning experience in their overseas exchange studies, the area that has been under-researched to

date. Based on the engagement theory, we proposed a research model and hypotheses to test the

effectiveness of our proposed ePortfolio approach (in terms of students’ affective engagement, cognitive

engagement and behavioural engagement via the use of the reflective ePortfolio system) on outcomes of

student overseas exchange learning experience (in terms of satisfaction with exchange experience,

satisfaction with ePortfolio, perceived achievement in learning, and actual achievement in learning). The

findings of this study provide potentially important practical implications for educators, students and

designers of ePortfolio on the use of ePortfolio for student exchange.

1 INTRODUCTION

This study aims to bring together the reflective

portfolio (Smith and Tillema, 2001) and experiential

learning (Eyler 2009; Kolb 1975; Walsh and Cuba

2009) streams of research to examine our proposed

electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) approach and its

effects on the outcomes of students’ experiential

learning in their overseas exchange studies, the area

that has been under-researched to date.

In general, students learn to appreciate the

positive and negative aspects of the people and

culture of the visiting country during their exchange

studies. Also, they learn to interact socially and

participate in discussions with their foreign peers.

Moreover, students learn to deal flexibly with and

adjust to new people, places, and situations, and in

particular, students become responsible, self-

confident, mature and independent and learn to

accept and appreciate people from other cultures

during their exchange studies.

However in spite of these benefits that the

students may gain in their exchange learning

experience, they face several problems as well.

Exchange students often experience cultural shock

during their stay abroad. Cultural shock usually

evolves in the following four stages (See details in

the Rotary Youth Exchange website).

The four stages are (1) Excitement and

Enthusiasm (this is the feeling of exhilaration that

accompanies when travelling to a new place, seeing

and doing new and different things, and meeting

new people); (2) Irritability (This occurs when the

initial excitement wears off and real cultural

differences become evident. No matter how

understanding and accepting the student may try to

be, there will be times when the negative feelings

will discourage the student); (3) Adaptation (This is

when students learn to accept that they will need to

adapt if they would like to be successful in their host

culture and then they start adjusting to local customs

and habits); and (4) Biculturalism (Students in this

stage realize that they have become competent in

another culture and can see the world and function

from another, very different, point of view).

Also, some exchange students may experience

homesickness (See details in the Rotary Youth

Exchange website), especially at the beginning of

their exchange study. They may feel lonely and

become overwhelmed with the day-to-day

challenges that accompany with the transition to a

new culture in a foreign country. The easy remedies

for acute homesickness are to keep occupied with a

Kwok Chi Wai R., Cheung Hok Ling H., Chen Yingjun J., Dimple T., Rupa B., Lau Yuenkei T. and Wong Man Chun A..

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

DOI: 10.5220/0003303600250035

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 25-35

ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

variety of enjoyable activities. Students may also

find comfort in talking with someone locally who

speaks their native language or understands what

they are going through.

It is important for students to understand that it is

natural and common to go through low period

during their exchange studies, and that cultural

shock and homesickness are normal. It helps if

students could have channels expressing their

feelings and needs. Also, students need to know that

the situation will improve as they continue to adjust

to a new culture and develop a better understanding

of the host country’s culture.

Based on the success of the use of ePortfolio

(e.g. Smith and Tillema, 2001; Ravet, 2007; Cheung

et al., 2007) as a new generation of educational

platform and approach that allows students to set

goals, execute plans and self-reflect their experience

and performance, this paper proposes a reflective

ePortfolio approach to assist students to overcome

this low period of their exchange studies in general,

and examines its effects on the outcomes of student

overseas exchange learning experience in particular,

an area that is under-researched so far.

The findings of this research study are expected

to have a deep and long-term impact on our

understanding of the use of reflective ePortfolios for

student exchange studies. In addition, this study

provides potentially important practical implications

for educators, students and designers of ePortfolio

on the use of ePortfolio for student exchange.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows.

We first review the literature of ePortfolio. Then, we

propose a platform of ePortfolio approach based on

the primary foundation of ePortfolio. Next, we

propose a research model and four hypotheses based

on the engagement theory, to test the effectiveness

of our ePortfolio approach on outcomes of student

overseas exchange learning experience. Afterward,

we describe our research method. Then, we explain

our results and analysis, followed by discussion and

implications. Finally, we illustrate the limitations,

future direction and our conclusion.

2 FROM PORTFOLIO TO

ePORTFOLIO

Stiggins (1994) defined a portfolio as a collection of

student work gathered to demonstrate achievement

or improvement. The material to be collected can

vary greatly as a function of the assessment context.

Stiggins (1994) also added that a portfolio is "a

means of communicating about student growth and

development" and "not a form of assessment"(p.87)

Portfolios are typically used for individual

student enhancement as well as for assessment

purposes. Educators have long used portfolios to

collect and assess student work because they

demonstrate that a student has met the intended

learning outcomes or expectation. Throughout the

process of creating portfolios, students are often

encouraged to reflect upon and organize their

learning achievements. Teachers can then offer

feedback on the work, providing them with further

opportunities to reflect on their learning experience.

This increases intimacy between teachers and

students.

With the development of the Internet, educators

began to recognize the benefits of digitizing student

work and portfolios. Digital versions of student

work can be stored and accessed efficiently.

Converting student work into digital formats creates

new and innovative ways for teachers and students

to organize and collaborate through ePortfolios.

ePortfolio is defined as a collection of authentic

and diverse evidence, drawn from a larger archive

representing what a person or organization has

learned over time on which the person or

organization has reflected, and designed for

presentation to one or more audiences for a

particular rhetorical purpose (Barrett & Carney,

2005). An ePortfolio is not a haphazard collection of

artifacts (i.e., a digital scrapbook or a multimedia

presentation) but also a reflective tool that

demonstrates growth over time (Barrett, 2000).

An ePortfolio uses computing technologies as a

platform that allows students and teachers to store

and organize work and thoughts in many media

types (audio, video, graphics, text); and use

hypertext links to organize the material and connect

evidence to appropriate outcomes, goals or

standards.

ePortfolios are being used increasingly in

education, but they are still in the nascent stages of

development. According to a white paper from the

Electronic Portfolio Consortium (Barrett & Carney,

2005): "There is not yet a coherent understanding of

functional requirements, design specifications, or

how and to what extent an ePortfolio might benefit

teaching and learning." In this paper we try to bridge

the research gap by relating the effects of developing

ePortfolios on students’ overseas exchange learning

experience.

ePortfolios provide a convenient platform for

exchange students to organize and communicate

their learning experience resulted from engaging in

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

these challenging and real-life tasks. Through

identifying the intended learning outcomes and

writing about their experience, thoughts and

reflection, students could draw meaning and

communicate their learning accomplishment with

their teachers and peers during their exchange

studies. Part of the reflective process is to have

students to tell stories about their experiences as a

form of collaborative learning with their peers as

well as with their teachers. This sets up an

environment for both individual and collaborative

learning especially during student exchange studies.

There are emerging ideas on using ePortfolios

for collaborative learning. The empirical research,

however, is very limited in this area. Portfolios are

not so much an instructional strategy to be

researched, but more of a means to an end: to

support reflection of students which help them

understand their own learning progress. Previous

research has focused on the use of ePortfolios for

student engagement (Barrett 2000) and student

motivation (Ring et al. 2008). There is limited

empirical research on the use of ePortfolios for

collaboration especially in the context of student

exchange. This paper proposes a reflective

ePortfolio system and illustrates how it can be used

for reflection and collaboration in order to solve the

problems of cultural shock and homesickness faced

by exchange students in a foreign university.

3 THE PROPOSED ePORTFOLIO

APPROACH

We propose an ePortfolio approach with a template

of four-section structure, namely Profile, Summary,

Showcase and Performance (See Figure 1 for the

template of the ePortfolio system). Students are

required to personalise this template in a technical

training. In the Profile section, students need to

provide a short description of themselves, their

values and beliefs, career aspirations, and interest

and hobbies. This allows students to reflect and

present themselves and facilitates teachers and

student peers to know each other better. In the

Summary section, students are required to set their

goals and expectations on their exchange

programme before setting off. At the end of the

programme upon their return to the hometown, they

are required to articulate and describe their

accomplishments of the learning outcomes and their

own goals with an overall reflection for future

direction. Students are also required to rate their

confidence in achieving the Course Intended

Learning Outcomes (CILOs)

. In addition, they need

to conduct a self-assessment based on the

assessment rubric, and submit a self-assessment

form to the teachers. Finally, students need to

provide examples of their actual work/evidence

correspond with CILOs in the Showcase section.

Assignments must be submitted by the deadline and

should remain unchanged. One of the assignments is

an overall self-reflection that students are required to

critically self-assess their exchange experience.

Guiding questions for reflection are provided to help

students make effective reflection. At the end of the

exchange programme, course teachers would assess

each student’s ePortfolio and grade their work

according to the assignment rubric with the overall

comments posted in the Performance section. Unlike

other sections, this Performance section with grade

and teacher comments is made by default for

individual students only so as to respect privacy.

Student could make it public if they feel comfortable

to do so.

Also, students could access all other classmates’

ePortfolios and they are encouraged to browse and

leave comments for each other. Teachers can make

regular visit to each student’s ePortfolio and give

feedback accordingly. Student interaction and

collaboration are facilitated and encouraged for

everyone in the class as a community.

Figure 1: The template of the ePortfolio system.

3.1 The Platform

Google Sites was originally planned to be used for

the exchange programme, with integration of other

Google applications, such as Google Docs and

Google Reader. These functions were structured and

integrated in a pre-designed template. Students were

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

expected to adopt the template with ease and

followed the guides embedded in the template. The

Google Sites and other applications were found to be

intuitive and easy for students to use with basic

training. For the Performance section which required

different access control, Google Docs was used as an

embedded content page in the section. Therefore,

teachers could continue to view and post grade and

comments for students’ work and reflection in the

same ePortfolios while other students could also

browse as much as allowed each others’ ePortfolios.

Google Form was used for both teachers and peers

to leave comments to facilitate reflection. The

Google Form allowed users to generate survey forms

to help individual to collect feedback. The same

mechanism was used by teachers to ask students to

submit their self-assessment. There were several

types of pages users could use for Google Sites.

Thus students wrote their reflection in a blog-post

format using the announcement page in the

Showcase section. This function allowed teachers to

see the last modified date and collect students’ work

with Google Reader via RSS feed. Thus instead of

browsing each individual students’ ePortfolios to

identify any changes, teachers could be alerted

timely via these functions and features.

However, the unexpected incident happened

that Google Sites was blocked in mainland China

prevented students who had already gone abroad for

their exchange programme in Beijing from accessing

their ePortfolios on Google platform. We had,

therefore, come up with several contingence plans,

such as making paper portfolios, using Blackboard

Personal Portfolio or University GApps. After a few

rounds of discussion with the course teachers and

ePortfolio project team, we agreed to use the

Campus Pack Wiki (Version 2.9.3) from Learning

Object integrated in the University’s eLearning

system, Blackboard.

3.2 Research Model and Hypotheses

We proposed the following research model (see

Figure 2) and hypotheses to test the effectivenss of

our proposed ePortfolio approach on outcomes of

student overseas exchange learning experience.

3.2.1 Affective Engagement

Based on Jimerson et al. (2003), we define affective

engagement as students’ sense of belonging,

connection and support by peers and teachers via the

use of reflective ePortfolio. In other words, students

would create a sense of belonging to the student

Figure 2: Our proposed research model.

exchange community and would be interested in

engaging in their exchange learning experience.

Overall, affective engagement via the use of

reflective ePortfolio is expected to have a positive

effect on the exchange learning experience, as it

helps students create their self-identity by

illustrating their successful stories in their exchange

studies. This makes students feel satisfied, pleased

and proud of their achievements.

In particular, affective engagement instills a

sense of belonging to the ePortfolio community in

which the student peer supports each other and

makes students feel being respected. Students also

feel that their peers are interested in their

achievements and care about their success. In return

they also help their peers to learn and this instills a

positive attitude in them about helping others. Via

the use of the reflective ePortfolio, students can

reflect on their experience, expected and actual

achievements with feedback from others which

would eventually develop positive views about their

learning experience and outcomes. Hence students

feel satisfied with their exchange programme and

their achievements by reflecting and collaborating

through the ePortfolio.

This leads us to first set of hypotheses:

H1a: Affective engagement leads to satisfaction

with the exchange experience

H1b: Affective engagement leads to satisfaction

with the reflective ePortfolio

H1c: Affective engagement leads to perceived

achievement in learning

H1d: Affective engagement leads to actual

achievement in learning

3.2.2 Cognitive Engagement

Based on Appleton et al. (2006), we define cognitive

engagement as students’ engagement in the

reflective ePortfolio expressed as goal setting, study

planning, and self-regulation of performance. In

Affective Engagement

Cognitive Engagement

Behavioral Engagement

Satisfaction with

Exchange Experience

Satisfaction with

ePortfolio

Perceived Achievement

in Learning

Actual Achievement

in Learning

H1a

H2a

H3a

H1b

H2b

H3b

H1c

H2c

H3c

H1d

H2d

H3d

Affective Engagement

Cognitive Engagement

Behavioral Engagement

Satisfaction with

Exchange Experience

Satisfaction with

ePortfolio

Perceived Achievement

in Learning

Actual Achievement

in Learning

H1a

H2a

H3a

H1b

H2b

H3b

H1c

H2c

H3c

H1d

H2d

H3d

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

other words, it refers to students self-regulate

themselves to achieve their learning goals during

their exchange studies. Students would maintain an

ePortfolio that is for their exchange experience and

make reflection of their learning experience.

Students would have to learn to plan and execute

accordingly to achieve their goals. Students would

make explicit their values, beliefs and thinking

through the ePortfolios. They would have a more

substantial record of writing to observe the

differences in attitudes, behaviors and cultural

background of themselves as well as their peers.

Cognitive engagement requires students to set goals,

create action plans, record their thinking and

articulate their achievements. Students are prompted

to identify their own interests and goals of the

exchange programme in addition to the intended

learning outcomes and expectations from teachers.

This in turn helps students identify the possible

value of the programme and better assess their

accomplishments at the end of exchange study.

This leads us to the following hypotheses:

H2a: Cognitive engagement leads to satisfaction

with the exchange experience

H2b: Cognitive engagement leads to satisfaction

with the reflective ePortfolio

H2c: Cognitive engagement leads to perceived

achievement in learning

H2d: Cognitive engagement leads to actual

achievement in learning

3.2.3 Behavioral Engagement

Based on Jimerson et al. (2003), we define

behavioral engagement the frequency and the extent

to which the reflective ePortfolio was physically and

actually used. In other words, it refers to the time

and efforts students spent on developing and using

the ePortfolio for the exchange programme. Students

are encouraged to use ePortfolios to share their

experience and showcase accomplishments with

their peers and teachers. Students can decide on how

frequently they update their reflection on the

experiences and accomplishment through the

ePortfolios. They can also decide when and how

often they should visit others’ ePortfolios.

Behavioral engagement focuses on students’ time

and efforts in developing the ePortfolios. Students

have to update and visit their ePortfolios. This helps

students to feel satisfied with their exchange

programme and their achievements by frequent

interaction with their ePortfolios.

This leads us to the following hypotheses:

H3a: Behavioral engagement leads to satisfaction

with the exchange experience

H3b: Behavioral engagement leads to satisfaction

with the reflective ePortfolio

H3c: Behavioral engagement leads to perceived

achievement in learning

H3d: Behavioral engagement leads to actual

achievement in learning

4 METHODOLOGY

To evaluate the effects of the ePortfolio system on

students’ overseas exchange learning experiences,

this study adopts a multi-method protocol, including

student portfolio grading and survey. In particular,

our data were collected using self-administrated

survey. The respondents were undergraduate

students from our university who enrolled in the 1-

credit unit course “Exchange Experience

Assessment” during Spring semester of 2009/2010.

Students who enrolled in this course were required

to go on a one-semester exchange programme

overseas. Reflective ePortfolio was used as a

platform for them to reflect on their overseas

experience during their exchange. 30 students were

enrolled in this course and 23 of them completed the

survey. A total of 43.5% of the respondents were

male.

4.1 Independent Variables

Affective Engagement. It measured students’ sense

of belonging, connection and support by peers and

teachers via the use of reflective ePortfolio. It was

measured on a 9-item scale modified from Finns

(1989), Fredericks et al. (2004), Appleton et al.

(2006), and Jimerson et al. (2003). This measure had

a Cronbach alpha reliability of 0.921. The sample

items were “When I was constructing my ePortfolio,

I had the feeling of Prideful”, “My

teachers/classmates respected what I wrote in my

ePortfolio”, and “My comments on the ePortfolio of

my classmates were open”.

Cognitive Engagement. It measured students’

engagement in the reflective ePortfolio expressed as

goal setting, study planning, and self-regulation of

performance. It was measured on a 9-item scale

modified from Finns (1989), Fredericks et al.

(2004), Appleton et al. (2006), and Jimerson et al.

(2003). The reliability coefficient of the scale was

0.890. The sample items were “I checked the

relevance of the content of my ePortfolio from time

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

to time”, “I used my ePortfolio to demonstrate the

achievement of my goals of the exchange

programme”, and “I constructed my ePortfolio for

completing the requirements of the coursework.”

Behavioral Engagement. It measured the frequency

and the extent to which the reflective ePortfolio was

physically used. It was measured on a 3-item scale

adapted from Finns (1989), Fredericks et al. (2004),

and Jimerson et al. (2003). The reliability

coefficient of the scale was 0.75. The items were “I

frequently logged in to the ePortfolio system to

update my personal portfolio”, “I frequently used

the ePortfolio to record my achievements”, and “I

frequently visited the ePortfolio to check for my

classmates and teachers’ comments.”

4.2 Dependent Variables

Satisfaction with Exchange Experience. It was

measured on a three-item scale partly adapted from

Bhattacherjee (2008). This measure had a Cronbach

alpha reliability score of 0.854. Participants were

asked to rate the overall experience with the

exchange learning experience based on a 7-point

likert scale (i.e. your overall learning experience of

this exchange programme was satisfied/ enjoyable/

delighted.).

Satisfaction with Reflective ePortfolio. It was

measured on a three-item scale partly adapted from

Bhattacherjee (2008). This measure had a Cronbach

alpha reliability score of 0.905. Participants were

asked to rate the overall experience with the

reflective ePortfolio usage based on a 7-point likert

scale (i.e. your overall experience of using the

reflective ePortfolio was satisfied/ enjoyable/

delighted.).

Perceived Achievement in Learning. It was

measured on a three-item self-developed scale. The

reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.893. The

measurement items were “I achieved my

expectations of the exchange programme”, “I

achieved my goals of the exchange programme”, “I

implemented my plan of the exchange programme

successfully.”

Actual Achievement in Learning. It was measured on

the actual marks assigned to students who took

based on the scale of 100.

5 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Means, standard deviations, and correlations

coefficients of all constructs are depicted in Table 1

(see Appendix). The mean for cognitive engagement

was slightly higher than that of the affective

engagement, indicating that students used reflective

ePortfolio more for goal setting and self-regulation

purposes.

Referring to the correlations matrix, affective

engagement was significantly correlated with the

perceived achievement in learning, satisfaction with

exchange experience and satisfaction with ePortfolio.

Cognitive engagement was significantly correlated

with the perceived and actual achievement in

learning. However, behavioral engagement was only

found correlated with the perceived achievement in

learning. Thus, the perceived achievement in

learning was significant correlated with affective,

cognitive and behavioral engagement of reflective

ePortfolio whereas the actual achievement in

learning was only correlated with cognitive

engagement. Gender was the control variable and it

was not significantly related to the predicted

variables.

To test the hypotheses, four multiple regression

analyses were carried out. In other words, the

predictor variables were the same in all of the

analyses, whereas the predicted variables changed.

The four predicted variables were satisfaction with

exchange experience, satisfaction with ePortfolio,

perceived achievement in learning and actual

achievement in learning. Table 2 (see Appendix)

presents the results of the regression analysis.

As shown in the results of structural model (see

Figure 3), no statistically significant relationship was

found between affective engagement and (1)

perceived achievement in learning, (2) actual

achievement in learning. Thus, hypothesis 1c and 1d

were not supported. However, it was found that

affective engagement in ePortfolio was positively

associated with satisfaction with exchange

experience (β= 0.696, t=4.212, p<0.001) and

satisfaction with ePortfolio (β= 0.812, t=4.609,

p<0.001). Hypotheses 1a and 1b were supported.

Figure 3: Results of structural model.

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Moreover, it was found that hypotheses 2c and

2d were supported as cognitive engagement was

positively related to perceived achievement in

learning (β= 0.567, t=2.605, p<0.05) as well as

actual achievement in learning (β= 0.675, t=2.604,

p<0.05). Although significant relationship was found

between cognitive engagement and satisfaction with

ePortfolio (β= -0.567, t=-2.546, p<0.05), the

relationship was in opposite direction. No

statistically significant relationship was found in

satisfaction in exchange experience. Thus,

hypotheses 2a and 2b were not supported.

Behavioral engagement was not significantly

associated with any of the predictors. Table 3 (see

Appendix) presents the summary of hypotheses

testing.

6 DISCUSSION

It is necessary to point out that, due to the limited

number of the enrolled students in the surveyed

course, effective size is small. Therefore, certain

paths may not be as significant as perceived due to

this limited statistical power. Nevertheless, the data

has revealed some interesting results that may

inform effective implementation of ePortfolios in

students’ exchange programmes in the future.

Interestingly, different from what the engagement

theory (e.g. Finns 1989, Fredericks et al. 2004,

Jimerson et al. 2003, Appleton et al. (2006))

suggests, not all of the components of engagement

(i.e. affective engagement, cognitive engagement

and behavioral engagement) lead to the four learning

outcomes (i.e. satisfaction with exchange

experience, satisfaction with ePortfolio, perceived

achievement in learning and actual achievement in

learning). The discrepancies lie in three areas:

1) Affective engagement is most significantly

related to the satisfaction with exchange

experience and ePortfolio, while there lacks a

high correlation between affective engagement

and the perceived or actual achievement in

learning;

2) Cognitive engagement is most significantly

related to the perceived and actual achievement

in learning, but there lacks a high and positive

correlation between cognitive engagement and

the satisfaction with exchange experience and

ePortfolio respectively.

3) Behavioral engagement is not significantly

related to any predictors.

Affective engagement measures students’ sense

of belonging, connection and support by peers and

teachers via the use of reflective ePortfolio. As

discussed earlier in this paper, exchange students

face multiple challenges when study overseas, such

as cultural shock, homesickness, language

difficulties. Therefore, psychological support from

peers who are in the same situation and confronted

with the similar problems is crucial for exchange

students to survive and succeed in the new

environment. In addition, psychological support also

comes from oneself. When students create their self

identity and recognise their achievements, their

esteem is built up, and hence the satisfaction of their

exchange experience grows. In other words, whether

students find their exchange programme satisfying,

enjoyable or delightful is largely related to the

degree of affective engagement, that is, collaborative

psychological engagement and individual

psychological engagement.

If we look at the exchange students’ ePortfolios,

we will find that both types of psychological

engagement can be obtained through the

development of ePortfolios. In the provided

template, collaborative functions, especially leaving

comments, are included. Students are encouraged to

provide feedback to their classmates on their overall

ePortfolios, as well as a particular piece of work

and/or experience. This also implies that students

can see what their fellow classmates are doing, what

problems they are facing, and how they cope with

these problems. In such an ePortfolio community,

students are expected to gain practical and

psychological support from each other. Furthermore,

in an exchange ePortfolio, students are asked to

record their achievements, conduct self-assessment

and make reflections on their values, development

and future directions. By doing so, students are

expected to gain self-respect in an environment

where their esteem is often challenged. To this end,

it is clear that, as the data also suggests, affective

engagement is closely related to the satisfaction with

exchange experience and the development of

ePortfolios. While affective engagement has more to

do with the psychological part, that is, a sense of

satisfaction, cognitive engagement is more related to

learning achievements.

Cognitive engagement refers to self-regulation

and measures the efforts students make to achieve

their learning outcomes. If we take a look at the

Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs)

set by

the course teachers, we can see that ePortfolios play

an important role in helping students achieve these

CILOs. Students are asked to set goals in addition to

CILOs, to make action plans to achieve their goals,

and to record actual work/evidence to demonstrate

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

their learning, and to reflect on the work they have

done, activity participated and experience involved.

A large component of these work, activities and

experiences has to do with communicating with

local people, identifying culture differences,

overcoming cultural barriers, and observing the uses

of IT in the local communities. When the

development of ePortfolios help students achieve

learning outcomes, which is precisely what cognitive

engagement is defined, it is clear that high cognitive

engagement can increase perceived and actual

achievement in learning, and vice versa. But it,

unlike affective engagement, has limited impact on

the psychological aspects, such as satisfaction with

exchange experience, and even negative impacts

(see Figure 3 for the negative correlation between

cognitive engagement and satisfaction with

ePortoflio) on satisfaction with ePortfolios. These

findings imply that we need to provide better

training for students for the effective use of

ePortfolio for cognitive engagement activities. Also

we also need to further improve the design of the

ePortfolio platform, such as the inclusion of “fun”

elements of the system, in order to motivate students

to cognitively engage in the goal setting, study

planning and self regulating of their exchange

studies via the use of the ePortfolio system.

Finally, the data shows that behavioural

engagement is not significantly associated with any

of the predictors. Behavioural engagement measures

students’ participation in the exchange programme,

and the frequency and the extent to which

ePortfolios are physically used. The result indicates

that forcing students to use ePortfolio physically

without engaging them affectively or cognitively

will not increase their satisfaction of learning, nor

help them achieve learning outcomes. Having said

that, we do not deny that behavioural engagement is

necessary. In fact, it is the prerequisite for affective

and cognitive engagement to occur. Without

physically involving students to participate in the

exchange programme and to use ePortfolios, no

satisfaction or learning can happen.

7 IMPLICATIONS FOR

STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND

DESIGNERS

Having presented thus far, we can see how certain

engagement components relate to different learning

outcomes. Some suggestions for teachers and

students who use ePortfolios in exchange

programmes, and for e-learning platforms designers

in general, can be drawn as follows:

To achieve learning outcomes, teachers, first and

foremost, should make their expectations clear in

terms of measurable and observable learning

outcomes and encourage students to personalise

these outcomes as their own learning goals or to

identify more valuable outcomes for the exchange

programme or the learning activity. Also, teachers

should provide students with instructions and

guidance on how to reflect, what information and

work are valuable to evidence learning, and what

criteria they should use to self-assess. These enhance

cognitive development and engagement. To create a

more open and collaborative platform and

atmosphere for students and teachers to express and

communicate is essential to enhance the affective

engagement and satisfaction on the experiences.

These can therefore add value to the behaviorial

engagement and motivate students to regularly

update and review of each others’ ePortfolios.

Secondly, to make the exchange experience a

good one, a supportive and constructive culture and

virtual environment needs to be established where

students are encouraged communicate their needs

and offer support for each others. They should be

open to share problems and difficulties encountered

in the exchange programme, and to give

positive/helpful feedback to their peers. To further

facilitate this affective engagement, teachers should

interfere whenever necessary. For instance, when

problems cannot be solved by students themselves,

teachers can use the comment function to provide

professional advice. Teachers can also recommend

some student’s ePortfolio or a particular event

he/she has participated in and recorded in the

ePortfolio to the rest of the class. In this way,

students can not only learn from each other but can

also be appreciated by their peers and therefore

increase their satisfaction of the exchange

experience. Needless to say, the ePortfolio template

has to have the collaborative and reflective functions

to make this happen. If students gain satisfaction

from their exchange programme through the use of

ePortfolios, they are more likely to gain satisfaction

from developing their ePortfolios.

Thirdly, to enhance achievement in learning

(either perceived or actual), students and teachers

should make sure certain skills are developed. These

skills may include goal setting, making action plans,

recording learning experience and reflecting,

depending on what course intended learning

outcomes. These skills have to do with the cognitive

engagement. While students should consciously

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

engage in the skill developing process, teachers can

provide training and support to facilitate cognitive

engagement.

Last but not least, the survey results have

revealed that behavioural engagement alone is

unlikely to lead to satisfaction or achievements in

learning. This informs us that the conventional e-

learning platforms that often neglect affective and

cognitive engagement are not effective to achieve

learning outcomes. To this end, designers of e-

learning platforms should include at least two

elements that are crucial for learning to occur. The

first element is related to collaboration. This

includes sharing function (i.e. sharing work to the

selected groups or open to anyone) and commenting

function (i.e. providing feedback to peers and

receiving from audience). The second element is

skills-driven. If we believe learning outcomes can be

obtained in the process of developing certain skills,

e-learning platforms should be skills-driven.

Students should be informed clearly what is

expected from them and be guided step by step.

Each step should be skill-based. For example, if

students are asked to set goals, they should learn

what smart goals are and how to set smart goals. If

students are asked to make reflection, they should

learn how to reflect. In an effective e-learning

platform, designers should state these steps

explicitly and provide guidance if necessary. Also as

aforementioned, designers of ePortfolio system may

consider to include more “fun” elements in the

design of the ePortfolio system, with the purpose to

let students have an enjoyable cognitive engagement

in the goal setting, study planning and self regulating

of their exchange studies via the use of the

ePortfolio system.

8 LIMITATION AND FUTURE

RESEARCH

We acknowledge several limitations to our study

related to the design of the ePortfolio system, which

suggest the need for future research. As

aforementioned, we used the Campus Pack Wiki

(Version 2.9.3) as the platform of our ePortfolio

system. In fact, several functions are missing in the

Campus Pack Wiki (Version 2.9.3) as compared to

Google Sites. Firstly, the Campus Pack Wiki cannot

set page permission, and therefore online grading

has to go offline. In this regard, the Performance

section was renamed as Assessment Criteria. In

addition, RSS feed and blog were given up in the

Showcase section, but teachers were still able to

keep track on students’ last modified date of their

ePortfolios. Finally, we changed the self-assessment

form from Google Form to a Blackboard test which

could generate a summary of students’ self

evaluation. The major challenge in Campus Pack

Wiki (Version 2.9.3) is that teachers have to create a

template for each individual student instead of

creating one for all to download. This will result in

too much workload for teachers.

We are still evaluating other ePortfolio platforms

in order to enhance more communication and

collaboration among students and teachers, and

students themselves, during exchange programme.

The popularity of Facebook has inspired us to

integrate some social features into our ePortfolio

template and the respective demand on the

technological platform and functions. They include,

naming a few, adding friends, summarising friends’

update in a dashboard and viewing who is online,

and other social networking features. Students can

even vote for the best work of their classmates. With

ranking shown on each assignment, students will be

more motivated to share their exchange experiences.

In addition to the communication among peers, the

interaction between teachers and students are also

crucial. A good platform should also contain

assessment submission feature which can lock and

take a frozen shots of the ePortfolio pages, so the

assignment cannot be changed after submission

deadline. Teachers will also be able to leave

comments that are can only be seen by the student,

and to grade online. We will keep trying different

platforms and continue to seek the best platform for

the collaborative and reflective ePortfolios for

student exchange experience.

9 CONCLUSIONS

This study examines the effects of our proposed

reflective ePortfolio system on the outcomes of

students’ learning experience in their overseas

exchange studies, the area that has been under-

researched to date. Based on our collected data and

results, we found that students’ affective

engagement in ePortfolio was positively associated

with satisfaction with exchange experience and

satisfaction with ePortfolio. Also, we found that

students’ cognitive engagement in ePortfolio was

positively related to perceived achievement in

learning as well as actual achievement in learning.

More interestingly, although significant relationship

was found between cognitive engagement and

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

satisfaction with ePortoflio, the relationship was in

opposite direction. In other words, our findings

suggest that students’ affective engagement in

ePorfolio has more to do with the psychological part,

that is, a sense of satisfaction, while cognitive

engagement is more related to learning

achievements.

We wish our proposed reflective ePortfolio

approach could help students go through the low

period of their exchange studies in general, and

provide positive effects on outcomes of their

overseas exchange learning experience in particular.

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APPENDIX

Table 1: Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations

Variables Mean s.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 Affective Engagement 5.232 0.77 (.921)

2 Cognitive Engagement 5.327 0.70 .472* (.890)

3 Behavioral Engagement 5.435 0.71 .261 .646** (.751)

4 Satisfaction with the Exchange Experience 5.74 0.84 .679** .248 -.147 (.854)

5 Satisfaction with the Reflective ePortfolio 4.99 0.91 .623** .011 .148 .425* (.905)

6 Perceived Achievement of Learning 5.40 1.06 .575** .697** .420* .546* .447* (.893)

7 Actual Achievement of Learning 79.26 12.76 .339 .603** .296 .329 .050 .071 --

8 Gender (Control variable) .456 .468 .394 .875 .444 .384 .122 --

n =23; reliability coefficients are reported along the diagonal: Mean and standard deviations reported here are

for unstandardized variables

*p<.05

<.01

***p<.001

Two-tailed tests

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Table 2: Regression Analyses.

Independent variables

Satisfaction with

Exchange Experience

Satisfaction with

ePortfolio

Perceived Achievement

in Learning

Actual Achievement

in Learning

Beta T Beta t Beta t Beta t

Affective Engagement 0.696*** 4.212 0.812*** 4.06 0.315 1.831 0.061 0.297

Cognitive Engagement 0.226 1.081 -0.567* -2.55 0.567* 2.605 0.675* 2.604

Behavioral Engagement -0.475 -2.488 0.302 1.49 -0.028 -0.142 -0.156 -0.66

n 23 23 23 23

R 0.774 0.737 0.752 0.618

0.599 0.544 0.565 0.382

F 9.442 7.552 8.218 3.905

Notes: Significance *p<0.05; **p<0.01, ***p<0.001

Table 3: Summary of Hypotheses Testing.

Hypothesis Results

H1a Affective engagement--> Satisfaction with exchange experience SUPPORTED

H1b Affective engagement--> Satisfaction with reflective ePortfolio SUPPORTED

H1c Affective engagement--> Perceived achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED

H1d Affective engagement--> Actual achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED

H2a Cognitive engagement--> Satisfaction with exchange experience SUPPORTED

H2b Cognitive engagement--> Satisfaction with reflective ePortfolio SUPPORTED

H2c Cognitive engagement--> Perceived achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED

H2d Cognitive engagement--> Actual achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED

H3a Behavioral engagement--> Satisfaction with exchange experience NOT SUPPORTED

H3b Behavioral engagement--> Satisfaction with reflective ePortfolio NOT SUPPORTED

H3c Behavioral engagement--> Perceived achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED

H3d Behavioral engagement--> Actual achievement in learning NOT SUPPORTED

There are five course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs) for “Exchange Experience Assessment”: 1) Describe the role of

communication in culture and overcome communication barriers, 2) Recognise cultural variables and explain how they shape our social

and work interactions, 3) Identify and critically evaluate communication norms, rituals, and taboos of students’ cultures and other cultures

they have been exposed to during their study programme, 4) Develop successful strategies to overcome cultural barriers and demonstrate

their usefulness, and 5) Compare and contrast the use of IT in local universities/organizations with the counterparts overseas.

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF REFLECTIVE EPORTFOLIO ON OVERSEAS EXCHANGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE