CA 2.2 – Reflection on E-portfolio Drivers Activity

I initialing thought this activity would be fairly straight forward, read some papers, tease out the key drivers and then discuss in the forum before populating a table in the course wiki. How wrong was I? Although I had reserved more than 15 hours to study this past week I had too many other distracting events which reduced my study time and hence did not engage until late. I was really impressed with Frauke’s proactive approach to get this collaborative activity under way by helping to organise and provide a focus to both groups.

Some frustration crept in when I printed all ten papers and released how much reading had to be done. Being dyslexic I struggle to maintain concentration whilst reading and find myself having to re-read many sections to extract the main drivers and issues with the use of e-portfolios. Whilst reading the text I found it hard to distinguish between a driver and an advantage. I had to remind myself that a driver should reflect a reason for the introduction of an e-portfolio whereas I sometimes found myself looking at the benefits after they had been introduced.

The core reading papers were lengthy documents and as a result much of my time was taken up delving into these than contributing to the forum or wiki. By the time I had constructed my own thoughts and comments others had already made a contribution and my efforts would not have added any value. Should I have made some comments in the forums to show some activity or sit back and watch others do a better job? I did not want to de-value their efforts and opted to make a small and probably insignificant contribution.

For our first collaborative activity in H808 perhaps the OU might have chosen a smaller range of information to discuss and work on within a group. This might have enabled greater inclusion and dialogue between students rather than the polite acceptance that most of us have made a contribution. Although I made the suggestion a little late in a forum post, perhaps I would have been more comfortable working in a pair on a specific set of papers rather than trying to scan all the papers. That said it is commendable that some members in our group have made a significant effort to complete this activity; thank you very much for taking this activity to its conclusion, I take my hat off to you all.

In an attempt to map my efforts of this activity to the framework for personal and professional development in the course handbook, I can identify that I have been mildly pro-active in the communication-related competencies due to my limited contributions to the group forum and, to a much lesser extent, in the research-related competency. Here I identify that I will need to up my study routine by making more time to be pro-active and improve my efforts to contribute in collaborative activities. In a strange way I guess this reflection is a positive step towards improving my personal and professional development profile.