What do I know how to do? Piloting the 'Student ePortfolio' as a reflective learning tool in the Bachelor of Regional Resource Management course

The Bachelor of Regional Resource Management at the University of Tasmania, Cradle Coast campus, is an interdisciplinary course with a practical focus on building leadership in regional contexts. In 2008, ‘Student ePortfolio’ software was piloted in both a first and a second-year unit, in order to assist students to make the link between experiences and developing skills, both in the classroom and in workplace projects. The pilot emerged from a reflective process with students at the end of their second year in 2007 in which they indicated that they were struggling to articulate “What do I know how to do?” as a result of their classroom and workplace experiences. The results of the two pilots suggest that the ePortfolio tool can help students log their experiences and reflect on the specific skills developed as a result, thus making a more explicit link between experiences and learning over time. At the same time, the complex nature of interdisciplinary and applied learning, particularly in workplace contexts, suggests a need for greater flexibility in the portfolio tool, as well as potentially a more structured and directed reflective process.