eportfolios, social constructivism and assessment - stephen bright (university of waikato)
TRANSCRIPT
ePortfolios, Social Constructivism and Assessment: a match made in heaven
Stephen Bright Centre for Tertiary Teaching and Learning
Mahara Social Constructivism
Social Constructivism
Aaron Wells @ Catalyst
‘There is nothing so practical as a good theory’
(Kurt Lewin, 1951)
Social Constructivism (1)●New knowledge as building upon
the foundation of previous learning●Context important in shaping learners’ knowledge
development●Learning as an active rather than passive process●Language and other social tools important in
constructing knowledge
(Anderson & Dron, 2011)
Social Constructivism (2)
●Metacognition and evaluation as a means to develop learners’ capacity to assess their own learning
●Learning environment as learner-centred & stressing the importance of multiple perspectives
●Knowledge needing to be subject to social discussion, validation, and application in real world contexts (Anderson & Dron, 2011)
Social constructivist theme Mahara eportfolio affordances
Context is critical in shaping learners’ knowledge development
different eportfolio pages or collections can be contextualised for different purposes
Social constructivist theme Mahara eportfolio affordances
New knowledge builds upon the foundation of previous learning
Range of artefacts & reflection shows progression in learning and skills over a longer period of time (e.g. multi-year programmes)
Social constructivist theme Mahara eportfolio affordances
Learning as an active rather than passive process
student-centred, student actively creates pages and collections, and decides who it is shared with, for how long, what the other person(s) can view, and whether they can give feedback or not
Social constructivist theme Mahara eportfolio affordances
Language and other social tools’ importance in constructing knowledge
Student can use a range of language media - podcasts, video and images as well as written text as artefacts contributing to knowledge construction
Mahara Social Constructivism