20 Impact of COVID-19 on ePortfolio use in South African higher education: A conceptual paper

Rekai Zenda
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

ABSTRACT

In many countries, including South Africa, ePortfolios are increasingly becoming part of students’ experience in higher education. ePortfolio is a crucial instrument in online education that aligns well with self-regulated learning processes. Thus, the shift to online teaching and learning has emphasized the significance of autonomous learning abilities and online collaboration, as students are able to cope with the challenges of remote education with more success. The study explored the impact of COVID-19 on ePortfolio use in higher education, particularly in response to the challenges and opportunities experienced. The conceptual paper identifies the best practices and barriers to ePortfolio adoption among students and lecturers in higher education. The paper suggests that ePortfolios have flexibility, can showcase continuous student learning and achievement, and can afford the opportunity of scholarly reflection, collaboration, and growth over time and provide support to student learning. The concerns about ePortfolio use by students are identified regarding sufficient guidance, support, privacy, and plagiarism. Also, the conceptual paper found that lecturers and students are faced with major challenges of a lack of digital literacy skills, limited access to the internet, and a lack of electricity and connectivity. For the ePortfolio to be considered an effective and useful learning tool, students need to be actively engaged with their own ePortfolios, and universities must provide innovative support and training strategies for both lecturers and students.

Keywords: Conceptual paper, COVID-19 pandemic, ePortfolio, higher education studies, technology.

INTRODUCTION

During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities in South Africa shifted towards digital, autonomous, and collaborative frameworks (Devarajoo, 2020). The transition to digital platforms sustained academic activities and underscored the resilience and adaptability of higher education (Toquero, 2020). Thus, universities embraced ePortfolios as important for personal, academic, and professional development among students (Ahmed and Ward 2016) and drove their use into regular practice through online learning (Mudau & Modise, 2022). The integration of ePortfolios allowed for compatibility and interoperability with Learning Management Systems (LMS) and digital assessment platforms and collaboration tools (Zhang & Tur, 2024). Rather, ePortfolios facilitated emergency virtual education (Ismailov & Laurier, 2021; Schiff et al., 2021; Rahiem, 2021) and allowed flexible access to educational opportunities for students from varied backgrounds and geographical regions who were frequently unable to access higher education through traditional ways (Rodriguez et al., 2022).

Moreover, ePortfolios facilitated collaboration between students and lecturers in addressing educational challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic (Villatoro Moral & de-Benito Crosetti, 2022), enhanced communication and knowledge creation opportunities (Tur & Urbina, 2016), enabled students to engage with and share content (Baker-Doyle & Yoon, 2020), catered to individual learning needs and preferences (Li & Wang, 2024), and contributed to improved academic performance (Jiang, 2013). Essentially, ePortfolios were predominantly student-centered and promoted self-directed and lifelong learning (Van Wyk, 2018), depended on the notion of learning by doing (Moye et al., 2014), provided students with a platform to document learning and receive feedback in a digitally accessible format (Ismailov & Laurier, 2021), fostered students’ growth and critical reflections on learning (Mapundu & Musara, 2019), enhanced assessment of student learning (Ellis, 2017; Pegrum & Oakley, 2017), and required self-regulation, self-reflection, and self-evaluation (Zhang & Tur, 2022).

However, the students and lecturers experienced unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, including limited access to the internet, as well as a lack of digital literacy, electricity, and connectivity (Zhang & Tur, 2024); constraints on implementing ePortfolios, such as platforms’ accountability, usability, reliability, scalability, sustainability, and interoperability (Bryant & Chittum, 2013); students’ uncertainty, reluctance, and unfamiliarity (Harun et al., 2021); lack of technical support and scaffolding (Scully et al., 2018); and the issue of digital ethics, privacy, confidentiality, consent, copyright, and intellectual property (Wilson et al., 2018).

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shifted the landscape of higher education, necessitating a rapid transition to online and blended learning modalities. ePortfolio helped in interpersonal communication, reflection, collaboration, engagement, assessment, and feedback (Mapundu & Musara, 2019), fostered self-regulated learning, self-reflection, self-evaluation, inter-curricular knowledge growth, and the development of 21st-century skills (collaboration skills, self-management skills, and technological skills) (Sutarno et al., 2019; Zhang & Tur, 2022). While ePortfolios offered a valuable tool for student learning, assessment, and professional development, their widespread adoption and effective utilization within the context of South African higher education remain uncertain. This paper explored the potential impact of COVID-19 on ePortfolio use in South African higher education, considering the challenges and opportunities presented by this unprecedented shift in learning paradigms. The research question for this study is “How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the use of ePortfolios in South African higher education institutions?”

SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

This study provides valuable insights into how ePortfolios have adapted to the pandemic changes and their evolving role in higher education. In identifying the challenges and opportunities presented by the pandemic, the study can inform the development of more effective ePortfolio policies, guidelines, and support systems for both students and faculty. Understanding the impact of the pandemic on ePortfolio use can help institutions maximize student learning by promoting self-reflection, critical thinking, and portfolio development. The study provides valuable information for lecturer development programs aimed at improving ePortfolio integration into teaching and learning. This research will contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the use of technology in higher education in South Africa, specifically focusing on the impact of the pandemic on innovative teaching and learning approaches.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a crucial theoretical framework for comprehending how ePortfolios can encourage students’ engagement and success. SDT strongly emphasizes the role of ePortfolios in fostering long-term learning. The lecturers can support the development of student involvement in the learning process by giving them the freedom to choose and take charge of their learning and encouraging a sense of competence and mastery (Teixeira et al., 2020). The theory acknowledges that each student has unique needs, and therefore ePortfolio should adjust to meet those needs. The use of ePortfolio through online learning can make it easier to create personalized learning experiences. Thus, lecturers need to support the development of sustainable learning in their students by incorporating ePortfolios in their teaching (Bennie et al. 2021). The students’ interest in learning, as well as a desire to master new abilities or knowledge, are characteristics of ePortfolios (Skinner, Kindermann, Vollet, & Rickert, 2022). Also, the ePortfolios promote learning and a sense of autonomy and competence and are long-lasting and advantageous for long-term academic success (Zaccoletti et al., 2020). The use of ePortfolios can facilitate self-assurance and competence in students’ intellectual abilities (Lattie, Lipson & Eisenberg 2019). Rather, ePortfolios have an impact on students’ academic success, social support, and accessibility to ICT tools and support services. Therefore, SDT can facilitate the use of ePortfolios to enable lecturers to prioritize students’ engagement and to foster academic achievement and personal development (Grubic, Badovinac, & Johri, 2020).

CHARACTERISTICS OF ePORTFOLIOS

The ePortfolio has been referred to by multiple names, such as e-folio, digital portfolio, web-based portfolio, and online portfolio (Bryant & Chittum, 2013; Scully et al., 2018). It is the compilation of portfolio items stored in electronic formats such as audio-visual, graphical, pictures, videos, sounds, or text (Barrett, 2011; Mudau & Modise, 2022; Meyer et al., 2010). It is a tool for documenting and managing one’s own learning over a lifetime in ways that foster deep and continuous learning over a tuition period (semester or year) (Jenson & Treuer, 2014) and is a comprehensive electronic collection of multimodal artifacts as learning evidence that can be used in teaching, learning, assessment, and showcasing; illustrating skills development, progress, and achievement; and necessitating self-regulation, self-reflection, and self-evaluation (Beckers et al., 2016; Zhang & Tur, 2022).

Furthermore, an ePortfolio is a digital collection of student or teacher work used to document learning, showcase achievements, and support reflection and collaboration in assessment (Barak & Maskit, 2017; Lorenzo & Ittelson, 2005; Nkalane, 2018). Rather, the ePortfolio emphasise the idea of a continuous compilation of evidence of continuous learning that is submitted for the purpose of assessing the learning. In most cases, ePortfolio tasks, interactions, learning, and assessment happen predominantly online throughout the academic period (Barrett, 2011).

Barrett (2007) points out several characteristics of an ePortfolio, including using electronic technology, allowing students to collect and arrange artefacts in multiple modalities, showing evidence, and being hyper-connected. In this context, ePortfolio is referred to as some assignments that are electronically submitted via the LMS for non-venue-based examinations. Thus, the ePortfolio must have a specific link to a university LMS that guides the lecturer and students to their personal learning ePortfolio environments. The ePortfolios include specific questions designed to test students’ learning and understanding of the content and reflection. According to Mahasneh (2020), a model of an ePortfolio must comprise ten components, including student biography, course plan, reports and research, homework, projects and experiments, activities, summaries and conclusions, scientific material, audio and video clips, and samples of student performance. Thus, an ePortfolio module within the university context should be any module that has an element of an ePortfolio, specifically a web-based portfolio, which comprises 75% of teaching and learning and assessment activities online.

The ePortfolio enhances student learning by promoting metacognitive skills such as goal setting, strategy use, and reflection (Meyer et al., 2010). It supports various forms of learning-formal, informal, and non-traditional through artefacts and reflective practices (Balaban et al. 2013). Additionally, it enables self-evaluation, incorporates feedback, serves as an assessment tool, and documents the experiences of both students and lecturers (Morrison, 2003; Siemens, 2004; Yang et al., 2017; Clark & Eynon, 2009; Barak & Maskit, 2017).

The ePortfolios facilitated the development of psychological ownership in students, including being viewed as a positive resource for attitudes (e.g., higher commitment and responsibility), self-esteem, self-efficacy, motivation, accountability, performance, self-identity, self-adjustment, and sense of belonging and citizenship (Buchem et al., 2020). Ellis (2017) argues that ePortfolios create new possibilities and opportunities for conceptualising, facilitating, structuring, supporting, and assuring a modern learning environment. By leveraging ePortfolios, universities in South Africa promoted student engagement that led to higher academic achievement and better social relationships (Li & Wang, 2024). Jenson & Treuer (2014) and Jimoyiannis (2012) identify reflection, self-directed learning, collaborating, collection, and integrated learning as key ePortfolio literacy skills. The ePortfolio format has the advantage of enabling sharing of the content with a greater number of people (Komló, 2019). Akcil & Arap (2009) argue that learning is permanent where ePortfolios are employed, thus developing lifelong learning.

IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON ePORTFOLIO USE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Lecturer role and participation

In this context, ePortfolios helped lecturers to creatively develop courses in higher education that resulted in the use of relevant and meaningful instructional approaches (Kabilan & Khan, 2012; Zhang & Tur, 2023). The lecturers had the opportunity to create a free and open environment where students freely communicated and facilitated a community of inquiry. It offered a platform for investigating, debating, and discussing the content as well as problem-solving to develop critical thinking skills (Mudau & Modise, 2022). The role of the lecturer was to manage the online learning environment and focus on facilitating learning experiences (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004; Bissessar et al., 2020). Bates (2015) argues that ePortfolios are one of the examples of ways that lecturers develop unique affordances using the internet. The lecturers served more as facilitators, offering structure while allowing students the freedom to explore and express their learning journey (Modise, 2021; Viscarret et al., 2022).

The use of ePortfolios allowed lecturers to design learner-centered, engaging, and personalized learning environments, with responsibility for implementing strategies that supported student engagement (Li & Wang, 2024; Mudau & Modise, 2022). The interactions that students experienced with lecturers were linked to active participation in learning, academic success, and feelings of support (Richardson & Radloff, 2014). The lecturers had the opportunity to engage students through various platforms (such as social media sites and discussion forums) and helped students to compile all their artifacts from various digital places and packaged them accordingly in one ePortfolio platform (Abuzaid et al., 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2022; Viscarret et al., 2022). Thus, lecturers used examples and templates with detailed descriptions to scaffold, established clear and detailed guidelines, checklists, and rubrics, and communicated them to students (Zhang & Tur, 2023). The lecturers allowed students autonomy and flexibility in their use of ePortfolios by enabling them to take ownership and choose the ePortfolio platforms they wanted to use (Ismailov & Laurier, 2021; Miyoshi et al., 2021).

Also, the lecturers had the opportunity to promote cooperation, enabled and facilitated students’ reflection through prompts, and provided guidance and ongoing support to students (Mudau & Modise, 2022); promoted students’ critical thinking; encouraged students to regulate, evaluate, and reflect on their own ePortfolio learning (Zhang & Tur, 2023); and offered consistent and constructive feedback to help students optimise their ePortfolio learning outcomes (Harun et al., 2021; Wilson et al., 2018). The lecturers offered continuous guidance, support, and assessments in their ePortfolio tasks. They had the opportunity to encourage students to work in pairs or groups to interact and support each other.

Student engagement

The ePortfolios were important for successful learning and helped students function despite times of crisis. Thus, ePortfolios aligned well with a student-centered approach (Ebil et al., 2020; Zhang & Tur, 2024) and learning by doing, which resulted directly from one’s own actions, as contrasted with learning from watching others perform (Reese, 2011). Thus, ePortfolios by their nature were designed to foster active student engagement (Mudau & Modise, 2022), develop 21st-century skills (Ismailov & Laurier, 2021; Modise, 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2022), allow students to build an online community from which social learning was enabled (Zhang & Tur, 2024), play an important role in controlling the level of interaction among students, and develop a community spirit (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). ePortfolios increased students’ participation in their learning in a systematic and organized way (Zhang & Tur, 2024), actively engaged students through the intersection of social, cognitive, and teaching presence (Mudau & Modise, 2022), increased accessibility of use (Wilson et al., 2018), and engaged students in productive learning (Yang, Tai & Lim, 2016; Meyer et al., 2010). McKenna, Baxter & Hainey (2017) applaud an ePortfolio as an integrated tool to bring a community of students together to create and share knowledge in a learning situation.

In this context, the self-regulated, autonomous nature of ePortfolios empowered students to take ownership of their learning (Devarajoo, 2020; Domene-Martos et al., 2021). Parker et al. (2012) noted that ePortfolios enabled students to advance their technological skills since the creation and maintenance of ePortfolios is technologically oriented. Ideally, the ePortfolio afforded students the opportunity to solve problems (Moye et al., 2014), shaped their professional and personal behaviour and leveraged their ambitions, aspirations, and interests (O’Brien et al., 2014), and students undertook more ownership of their education, became aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and developed the ability to create objectives, autonomous learning, and agency (Meyer et al., 2010; Whitney et al., 2021). Thus, interactive, personalized learning experiences for students helped to promote sustainable learning.

The ePortfolio emphasized the development of critical thinking skills and promoted students’ sense of autonomy and self-efficacy, leading to improved academic achievement. According to Crisol Moya et al. (2021), the students are required to respond to specific questions related to their module content, submitted either in a Word or PDF document via the university’s LMS submission system, Dropbox, or via email. In this regard, the students actively participated and competently managed their own learning (Pintrich 2000). Abrami and Barret (2005) elaborate that using ePortfolios enabled students to become engaged and active in the learning process. Mapundu & Musara (2019) further argue that ePortfolios helped students to keep track of their own progress, acted as a guide, developed knowledge, and enhanced lifelong learning. Li & Wang (2024) contend that ePortfolios gave students flexible and convenient access to learning materials and chances for self-directed learning.

Collaboration practice

Although ePortfolio use was typically viewed as an individual and self-directed learning method, collaboration was vital in the implementation process (Tur & Urbina, 2016). According to Bozkurt & Sharma (2020), the COVID-19 challenges necessitated collaboration and the establishment of supportive communities. The ability of ePortfolios to maintain a sense of community and collaboration in a digital space was a lesson from the pandemic that still holds enduring value. Thus, ePortfolios were designed to promote collaboration and digital literacy among students (Mudau & Modise, 2022). Also, collaboration was enhanced through regulating, organising, and interacting among lecturers and students. The students developed their responsibility for learning and took charge of their own learning with lecturers’ and peers’ assistance (Villatoro Moral & de-Benito Crosetti 2022). As Bozkurt & Sharma (2020) stated, supportive and collaborative communities were vital for lecturers and students to cooperate and support each other during the pandemic.

Thus, the ePortfolio was used for collaborative purposes by communicating with peers and sharing ideas, thereby improving academic performance and experience (Mapundu & Musara 2019). The students interacted online through online group work and became active and independent lifelong learners (Beckers et al., 2016). Pegrum & Oakley (2017) and Hodgson (2017) further note that students had the opportunity to collectively showcase their curriculum and co-curricular learning experiences using ePortfolios. Implementing ePortfolios typically entailed a high level of student autonomy and initiative and student responsibility for their learning (Zhang & Tur, 2023) and for co-learning and co-producing knowledge with peers (De Jager, 2019). Essentially, ePortfolio systems allowed students to share information using learning management (LMS) platforms to facilitate a smooth transition between assignments and course materials.

Bozkurt & Sharma (2020) emphasize the need to create supportive and collaborative ePortfolio practices and to create secure learning environments that encourage sharing and mutual support, where lecturers and students work together. The collaborative learning environment enhanced teamwork skills in universities to benefit and maximize students’ knowledge development (Tur & Urbina, 2016). Through collaboration, lecturers could monitor the students’ ePortfolio implementation journey (Viscarret et al., 2022). Collaborative learning was viewed as an activity performed with the assistance of others outside of the individual approach and as a supplement to individual learning (Tur & Urbina, 2016), a relational resource for peer-to-peer support and dialogic learning, and a contextual resource for learning-related decision-making (Buchem et al., 2020). However, there is still a need to address collaboration through a systematic design in which roles and tasks are described for lecturers, students, and peers.

Reflective learning

The ePortfolios were unique resources for reflective practice (Buchem et al., 2020). Thus, reflection was one of the important tools that lecturers used to encourage engagement and deep learning throughout the tuition period to allow students to think deeply about their learning and consider where they needed to improve using the feedback to inform future learning (Mudau & Modise, 2022), and it promoted higher-order thinking and critical reflection (Zhang & Tur, 2024). Thus, reflective learning was considered an integral part of ePortfolios (Bassot, 2015) and was acknowledged to have the power to promote learning and to develop expertise (Ebil et al., 2020). The lecturers had the opportunity to provide reflection templates and guidance and supported students in deepening their self-reflection skills (Miyoshi et al., 2021; Viscarret et al., 2022). Through interaction with content and with others, reflective learning was used to creatively design learning activities and continuous feedback and authentic assessment. Reflection led to greater confidence and assertiveness (a change in attitude), perspective, or priorities. Furthermore, it reinforced reflection-in-action because it allowed students to reach a higher level of correlation between theory and practice.

Reflective evidence aims to document student learning, strengths, and accomplishments. Learning can be augmented and more profound when students are encouraged to reflect on the learning event and exercise their judgment about the content and the learning processes. Ideally, ePortfolios promoted student reflection and made them aware of their starting point, their planning, the establishment and modification of goals, the learning process, and the evaluation of the final product (Mudau & Modise, 2022) and enabled the student to design, organize, make decisions, and gather experiences (Hartnell-Young et al., 2021). Through self-reflection, the students explored and discovered for themselves the best way to represent their work and illustrated their learning outcomes (Ruiz & Pardo, 2021), tracked their learning and facilitated self-evaluation and reflection (Harun et al., 2021; Scully et al., 2018), facilitated knowledge construction, which was crucial for lifelong learning and learning how to learn (Roberts, 2018; Salazar & Arévalo, 2019), and improved their academic progress (Arbesú & Gutiérrez, 2021).

Ebil et al. (2020) argue that reflection gave students an opportunity to make sense and create meaning of their learning experiences. Thus, reflective learning was the core of ePortfolio that offered students the opportunity to interact with content and with each other to solve problems and helped to create self-confident and highly motivated students (Mohamad et al., 2016). Essentially, reflective learning developed and improved students’ self-directed learning skills to take ownership of their learning (Garrison, 1997), and they gained lifelong learning skills (Mudau & Modise, 2022); they had the opportunity to adjust their ePortfolios according to feedback and recommendations (Chau & Cheng, 2010; De Jager, 2019), they made meaning of new information (Thang et al., 2012), and they reflected on their own learning practices and evaluated the course or learning goals (Akleh & Wahab, 2020).

In this context, students mastered self-learning and self-evaluation skills (De Jager, 2019). Therefore, the primary purpose of reflection was to encourage students to be more aware of what they do, how they do it, and why they do it, and for them to be able to identify helpful problem-solving strategies, as well as recognize their strengths and weaknesses concerning their understanding of content knowledge, procedures, and practical skill development and application. However, Ebil et al. (2020) suggest that reflection needs to be guided and is a skill that should be encouraged and taught.

Student assessment

The ePortfolios were used as assessment tools, supported practicums, and facilitated collaborative and self-directed learning (Mudau & Modise, 2022); offered continuous and authentic assessment (Roder & Brown, 2009; Shroff et al., 2013); offered opportunities to assess real-world skills and problem-solving competencies (Raynault et al., 2022); and improved student academic success (Abd-Wahab et al., 2016). According to Kabilan & Khan (2012), assessment was designed to improve students’ skills and understanding of course content. It was fundamental for assessment to be continuous and authentic and required application of what students learned to a new situation, which demanded judgment to determine what information and skills were relevant (Conrad & Openo, 2018). The essence of ePortfolio was evidence of the student’s knowledge-in-use that denoted the achievement of desired levels of competency through active learning. Mudau & Modise (2022) argue that peer assessment was built into the design of the ePortfolio. For lecturers, ePortfolios were employed in daily teaching as formative and even summative assessments (Modise, 2021).

Constructive feedback

The interaction with students and giving them instantaneous feedback was very effective in facilitating the learning process in online learning. ePortfolios allowed for the provision of constructive and personalised feedback. Yang et al. (2016) argue that constructive feedback is a precursor for sustained learning support. Kabilan & Khan (2012) and Strydom and Barnard (2017) also report that students’ learning and achievement were attained by feedback given by peers and the lecturer. In this context, feedback helped to improve students’ critical thinking skills (De Swardt et al., 2019; Mohamad et al., 2016), enhanced deep learning (Lukitasari et al., 2020; Mhiri Sellami, 2017), and enabled students to know if they had mastered the content throughout the learning process (Mudau & Modise, 2022). Meyer et al. (2010) argue that through ePortfolio use, the students easily overcame their academic shortcomings through refinement and positive feedback via a well-defined metacognition platform.

BENEFITS OF ePORTFOLIOS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The ePortfolio facilitated self-regulated learning, self-reflection, and self-evaluation. It also benefited inter-curricular knowledge and 21st-century skills development (communication and collaboration) and promoted engagement and interaction (Zhang & Tur, 2022). It was seen as flexible and easy to access and use, prompting personal development and lifelong learning. The ePortfolio had the possibility of tracking the learning process, building networks, enabling diverse assessments and feedback, facilitating teaching and learning, addressing technological skills, and the inclusion of multimedia (Wilson et al., 2018).

Furthermore, ePortfolios were excellent for organising learning resources and promoted the student growth process, allowed remote access, and promoted learning at any time and any place (Barrett, 2009; Meyer et al., 2010). According to Wade, Abrami, and Sclater (2005), ePortfolios increased the development of crucial educational skills and abilities, particularly literacy skills. The ePortfolios facilitated recording of the learning process and network development and multimedia integration (Harun et al., 2021; Scully et al., 2018).

CHALLENGES OF ADAPTING ePORTFOLIOS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Although the use of ePortfolio was guided and planned by the lecturer, sharing the responsibility for learning with the students generated different emotions in them (Saltman, Tavabie, & Kidd, 2013). Thus, overwhelming workloads and increased working time hindered the effectiveness of ePortfolios (Viscarret et al., 2022). These concerns stem from insufficient guidance and support from lecturers and learning peers.

Mudau & Modise (2022) suggest a lack of a common understanding, institutional definition, and proper guidelines for ePortfolio use within institutions. As a result, it has led lecturers to develop their own understanding, some profiling their modules as an ePortfolio when that was not the case. Also, there were key concerns, including the issue of digital ethics, privacy, confidentiality, consent, copyright, and intellectual property (Wilson et al., 2018). The other challenge in South African universities was the level of digital literacy necessary to develop quality ePortfolios that were supported by student-centered assessment approaches and methods that supported meaningful learning in higher education (Akleh & Wahab, 2020; Lukitasari et al., 2020).

Another widespread criticism was that ePortfolio systems were still underdeveloped; thus, well-developed systems and technologies should be implemented to maximize the practical use of ePortfolio (Miyoshi et al., 2021; Modise, 2021). Some of the challenges included a lack of digital devices and the lack of awareness of ePortfolios in higher education. In this context, the lecturers and students were faced with challenges of limited access to the internet, as well as a lack of electricity and connectivity (Scully et al., 2018).

Furthermore, the lack of technical support and scaffolding, technical difficulties, lack of familiarity and common knowledge, and insufficient pedagogical support were also among the challenges (Abuzaid et al., 2021; Mudau & Modise, 2022; Viscarret et al., 2022). There were also constraints on implementing ePortfolios, such as platforms’ accountability, usability, reliability, scalability, sustainability, and interoperability (Bryant & Chittum, 2013); students’ uncertainty, reluctance, and unfamiliarity (Harun et al., 2021).

CONCLUSION

A move to use ePortfolios was precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, the technological advancement has facilitated the integration of ePortfolios into the learning environment and done away with traditional paper-based portfolios. The development of ePortfolios in higher education facilitated the integration of compatible concepts, new technologies, and pedagogical approaches. It was found that ePortfolios encouraged students, emphasized positive elements, engaged students by choosing the right platform, and employed innovative techniques to keep them motivated. The ePortfolio was found to promote Open Educational Practices (OEP) and foster a more holistic educational experience that prepared students for interdisciplinary learning. However, lecturers did not have time to acquire the necessary skills for designing learning materials for online teaching and learning and using ePortfolios.

To mitigate the challenge of lack of appropriate digital literacy, universities need to design innovative support and training strategies for both lecturers and students. It will benefit both lecturers and students if they participate in continuous training on how to design and develop learning materials that will foster student engagement in ePortfolios and online learning. It is important to provide lecturers with the tools and training to successfully integrate ePortfolios into their instruction and recognize their advantages in various settings. In this regard, universities must provide ongoing technical support and develop training modules that enhance faculty and student proficiency in using ePortfolios.

The higher education institutions need to make a transition from paper-based portfolios to electronic portfolios if they are to improve the quality of education and provide students with a productive learning experience. Much emphasis should be placed on developing scalable, sustainable ePortfolio models that are adaptable to varying contexts and that can withstand future disruptions. It is crucial to maintain the momentum of ePortfolio usage, not just as a response to a crisis but as an integral component of modern pedagogy.

The lecturers should avoid micromanaging the ePortfolio process to prevent stifling student agency, which is foundational for self-directed learning. Furthermore, lecturers must scaffold the ePortfolio creation process by using examples and templates with clear descriptions. The lecturers must establish clear guidelines and rubrics and communicate them to students directly during the introduction and coaching sessions.

The appropriate choice of ePortfolio software and platforms may also help to reduce the negative attitudes in students and lecturers. Ideally, ease of access and use, and ability to give instant feedback, and promoting interaction will determine the successful implementation of ePortfolios. The use of software and/or platforms can encourage adoption and use of the ePortfolios by lecturers and students.

Lastly, university system improvements are essential for enhancing the functionality and user experience of ePortfolio platforms. These improvements include technological upgrades and enhancements aimed at making ePortfolio platforms more effective, efficient, and user-friendly, which are crucial for their adoption and sustained use. Thus, investing continuously in ePortfolio technologies is essential to ensure they remain current, accessible, and effective for various learning activities.

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AUTHOR

Dr. Rekai Zenda is senior researcher at University of the Witwatersrand. Dr. Zenda was educated in Zimbabwe, as well as in South Africa. He has a degree in education from University of Zimbabwe, Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Studies from Free State University, Masters in Education from the Zimbabwe Open University and a PhD in Curriculum Studies from UNISA. Prior to joining Wits University, he worked as a teacher in Zimbabwe as well as in South Africa. He is an avid researcher, and his work has been published in reputable journals. His expertise and research interest are on rural education, science education, e-Portfolios, policy in education, technical and vocational education (TVET) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) integration in schools.
Email zendarekai@yahoo.com