An e-portfolio is a pedagogical tool that integrates educational paradigms such as self-regulated learning, and a competency-based approach. It is primarily used as a summative assessment to document and showcase evidence of the learning and skills acquired by students. Teaching in an open-distance electronic learning environment entails co-constructing knowledge with students through connectivism and information communication tools. Regrettably, online students are more concerned about the grades they get for assessment activities than about learning the content. This researcher adopted an interpretive approach to understand how participants utilize e-portfolios for teaching and learning through formative assessment activities. A qualitative study was conducted by way of a designed e-portfolio checklist and semi-structured interviews. Ten participants formatively assessing their students using e-portfolios were conveniently chosen for semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study suggest that administering formative assessment activities through e-portfolios encourages self-directed learning. The participants designed formative assessment activities for the e-portfolio to facilitate students' engagement with the content, measure their knowledge and skills, and determine their competency. These lecturers facilitated co-teaching and co-learning through collaborative tasks and online tools such as blogs, social media, YouTube, and discussion forums. This study concludes that the e-portfolio can be used as a teaching methodology to facilitate student engagement and online learning because it is a competency-based and student-centered assessment tool for online modules and courses. It is recommended that lecturers also design practical tasks to improve their content delivery and assessment practices.
Moffat Xolani Majola (Tue,) studied this question.