e-Portfolios: Empowering parents to engage with their child’s learning

Abstract

Effective assessment practices are at the core of high quality e-Portfolios, and ultimately e-Portfolios aim to enhance learning outcomes for students. Despite increasing expectations for schools to use online tools such as e-Portfolios that provide anytime, anywhere access for staff, students and whānau there is often only a low level of active engagement from parents. Parental disengagement with e- Portfolios limits the potential benefits for student achievement and this research sought to examine an intervention designed to engage the disengaged. Fifteen parents participated in an intervention designed to increase parents' understanding of the positive influence they can have on their child's learning; improve their technical skills; and provide scaffolding for parents to give high quality feedback in their child’s e-Portfolio. Following the intervention parents completed an online questionnaire in which they rated their confidence and ability to leave feedback comments in their child’s e-Portfolio and the extent to which barriers inhibited their ability to give online feedback. They also rated the usefulness of the e-Portfolio workshop. The majority of parents reported an increase in their confidence and ability following the workshop, a decrease in the barriers; and highly rated the usefulness of the workshop. Data on the quantity and quality of parents’ comments were also collected for an 18 week timeframe before the intervention and another 18 week timeframe following the intervention for comparison. Findings reveal that, compared to the first timeframe, the parent feedback comments in the second timeframe increased in frequency by more than six times. In addition, the feedback comments in both timeframes were coded for the inclusion of specific effective feedback characteristics. This data shows that the quality of parent feedback improved dramatically in the second time period. This study highlights that even a short intervention can have a significantly positive impact on the frequency and quality of parent engagement with their child's learning. The challenge for schools is finding ways to ensure all parents have access to, and can participate in some way, in interventions of this type and then to sustain their engagement long term throughout their child’s education.