The study investigated students' perceptions and attitudes toward the use of ePortfolios for reflective practice as a learning and teaching strategy. A mixed-method approach was applied to the study in a first-year food science unit, at a regional Australian university. Data were generated via 3 sources, in order to provide the evidential basis…

This paper describes an ePortfolio implementation strategy at Federation University Australia, Victoria (formerly the University of Ballarat). The authors combined a personal and practical viewpoint to elicit pitfalls, challenges, and recommendations for improvement. The paper is divided into three main areas in order to outline the experiments…

This paper reports on the outcomes of a three-year study investigating the use of digital technologies to increase the authenticity of high-stakes summative assessment in four Western Australian senior secondary courses. The study involved 82 teachers and 1015 students and a range of digital forms of assessment using computer-based exams, digital…

High-stakes external assessment for practical courses is fraught with problems impacting on the manageability, validity and reliability of scoring. Alternative approaches to assessment using digital technologies have the potential to address these problems. This paper describes a study that investigated the use of these technologies to create and…

This study investigated the Individual Learning Plans of eighty-eight students who were deaf and hard of hearing attending facilities and schools for the deaf in Victoria Australia. The students' assessment and planning portfolios were scrutinised for evidence of formal and informal assessment used to generate goals for the Individual Learning…

Assessment expectations are communicated to students in various ways and at different points in the semester. The provision of written information in learning guides given to students at the start of semester articulates what they are to do and how well they are to perform in assessment tasks. This paper examines how assessment expectations at an…

Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching (TELT) is a ubiquitous feature of the learning and teaching landscape at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), supported and guided by a university-wide TELT action plan. This paper reports on the most recent stage of an ongoing investigation into the use of ePortfolio learning technology to improve students'…

This study looks at the fairness of assessing learning journals both as the fairness in creating a valid and robust marking process as well as how different student groups may have unfair disadvantages in performing well in reflective assessment tasks. The fairness of a marking process is discussed through reflecting on the practical process and…

This article presents the results of audit data compiled from a case study introducing e-portfolios into a Music Education degree program, and highlights the key challenges faced from the initial stages of student use to curricular embedding and student adoption. This article discusses the technological, social and educational impacts inherent in…

This paper reports on the results of a 3-year study conducted at the Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) at Edith Cowan University in collaboration with the Curriculum Council of Western Australia which concerns the potential to use digital technologies to represent the output from assessment tasks in the senior secondary…

Purpose: The use of e-portfolios in recognition of prior learning (RPL) processes in workplace and professional practice contexts has attracted little attention in the literature due to its emergent nature. This study seeks to explore the growing incidence of e-portfolio-based RPL (e-RPL) and professional recognition (e-PR) processes in Australia…

An applied Information Technology (IT) course that is assessed using pen and paper may sound incongruous but it is symptomatic of the state of high-stakes assessment in jurisdictions such as Western Australia. Whereas technology has permeated most aspects of modern life, including schooling, and more has been demanded of education systems in terms…

In many ways assessment drives the curriculum and often pedagogy at all levels of education. In a world where it is more important what you can do with what you know rather than just what you know, it is critical that practical performance is assessed in reliable and valid ways that are also cost-effective. Increasingly the use of digital…

There is a critical need for research into the use of digital technologies to support the assessment of performance on complex tasks in schools. This paper reports on a component of a pilot study aimed at investigating the use of digital forms of performance assessment, manageable within schools, with high levels of reliability and capable of…

This paper describes a student-focused activity that promotes effective learning in analytical chemistry. Providing an environment where students were responsible for their own learning allowed them to participate at all levels from designing the problem to be addressed, planning the laboratory work to support their learning, to providing evidence…