Within the App & Teach project, content development is ongoing across all partners. As INQS is developing content around Competence Unit 4 – “Monitoring supporting and evaluating the apprentice’s learning process”, we thought that we would share some of the developed content which is aimed at supporting Apprenticeship placement:

A very useful tool to encourage students to engage in self-reflection and self-evaluation is the use of journaling tools. These can provide an effective way of encouraging apprentices to frequently and consistently engage in reflection to capture their experiences and learning and to reflect on these. There are multiple tools available for this process, but a highly versatile tool which may be particularly useful is an eportfolio.

 

A portfolio is “a carefully selected set of accomplishments substantiated by samples of work, fully realised only through reflective writing, deliberation and serious conversation”. (Schulman, L.S. (1994) ‘Portfolios in Historical Perspectives’ Presentation at the Portfolios in Teaching and Teaching Education Conference, Cambridge, MA.). An ePortfolio then is an electronic version of what has been described here by Schulman. An ePortfolio is an electronic collection of evidence that show a person’s efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas. Eportfolios can be thought of simply as digital versions on one’s own portfolio.

Sometimes apprentices struggle to see a connection between the different continuous assessments that they have been given to undertake, or even in some cases find it difficult to see the real-world relevance of those assessments. Likewise, their tutors or training providers may struggle to find a way to help apprentices document both the key employability skills or graduate attributes that their placement has given them the opportunity to develop, as well as their overall mastery of the learning outcomes for both individual tasks and working within an organisation as a whole.

Given their electronic nature, ePortfolios are more flexible than their paper- based counterparts allowing for the presentation of a much wider range of media types including video and audio files; they facilitate and accommodate constant reflection; they can be accessed and edited anytime anyplace; and they can span and document an apprentice’s entire placement process should they want it to.

For more on the App & Teach project (including the developed European ECVET Curriculum on Management of Apprenticeship Programs for SMEs), please see https://www.appandteach.com/