Lifelong Learning: Professional Development Through ePortfolios
The professional development section consists of nine chapters. Each of these chapters describes how an ePortfolio process can be used to help people develop a sense of resilience in both their academic studies and personal lives. The chapters also show how ePortfolios support continuous growth and reflective practice. The first chapter, ‘Enhancing Professional Development and Teaching Excellence through the Use of a Teaching Portfolio: A Phenomenological Study,’ directly addresses the theme of this section. This study examines teachers’ perceptions of the teaching portfolio as a transformative tool for professional development, teaching excellence, and a legacy.
The next chapter, ‘ePortfolios for Academic Induction: Enhancing Professional Growth and Reflective Practice for New Lecturers,’ expands on the theme of professional development. This chapter critically examines the role of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in academic induction programmes as tools for promoting reflective practice and professional identity development among early-career lecturers.
‘Using ePortfolios to Build Healthier, Post-Pandemic Online Learning and Professional Development Programs’ focuses on how ePortfolios can be used for cultivating emotional, cognitive, and social competencies—key components of digital resilience. This chapter presents a case study of seven educators participating in the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators’ (GSOLE) asynchronous literacy instruction certification program during 2020–2022.
Self-directed learning plays an important role in professional development, and this is emphasized in the chapter, ‘ePortfolio as a strategy to enhance self-directed learning skills for personal and professional development: A policy perspective.’ This chapter provides an integrative theory of Kolb’s active experiential learning and Knowles’ self-directed learning theory to put forward suggestions to use ePortfolios to promote SDL skills leading to personal and professional development.
The focus on self-directed learning (SDL) continues in the chapter, ‘ePortfolios as Catalysts for Self-Directed Learning in Higher Education.’ This study highlights the need for strategic implementation and supportive institutional policies to maximise the effectiveness of ePortfolios in promoting SDL.
A big part of self-directed learning is critical reflection. and this is highlighted in the chapter, ‘Critical Reflection and ePortfolio Practice as a Journey Towards Transformative Learning.’ This chapter reviews common themes of critical reflection and presents a step-based model to support a person to embed critical reflection as a crucial step both towards ePortfolio high-impact practice and transformative learning.
The next chapter, ‘Reflection and Feedback Interaction: ePortfolio Pedagogical Strategies that Help Students Engage with their Learning,’ demonstrates the importance of integrating reflection and feedback for professional development. The chapter discusses how timely and targeted feedback, albeit time-consuming, is a pedagogical strategy that helps stimulate project revision and subsequent completion. Moving forward, continuous feedback engendered by general chat systems may lead to a more collaborative form of communication to help engage students further in their learning process.
Another key component of professional development in the 21st-century is digital literacy, which is highlighted in the chapter on ‘The Role of ePortfolios in Developing Digital Literacy Skills for Students in Higher Education.’ This chapter demonstrates how ePortfolios, as digital platforms for collecting and reflecting on students’ work, have become valuable tools in supporting students’ development of digital literacy skills.
The final chapter, ‘Integrative Learning Matters: Fostering Career Readiness and Digital Resistance through eCareer Portfolio,’ emphasizes the notion of developing a lifelong learning mindset through the use of ePortfolios. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the curriculum, instructional design, implementation strategies, and assessment approaches that make the eCareer Portfolio a scalable and replicable model for fostering student agency and future-ready learning in an AI-enhanced world.
