School Experience Students’ Perspective on the Benefit of Blackboard LMS for e-Portfolio Development

Abstract

Putting together a Portfolio of evidence is a difficult, time-consuming, and intimidating undertaking, especially when emergency remote online teaching and learning is required as compelled by COVID-19 restrictions. Under these conditions, student teachers were required to finish their school experience teaching practice and provide portfolios of evidence to demonstrate their developing teaching competencies. Given that there were no contact lectures or tutorials during this time, these students had to rely on Blackboard support through online workshops and pre-recorded training sessions to help them construct their school experience e-portfolios. The aim of this study was to evaluate how Blackboard support equipped the student teachers to develop their e-portfolios with no face-to-face contact sessions. This study examined the benefits of Blackboard support in the building of e-Portfolios by student teachers. The fourth-year and Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students submitted data through a qualitative survey in which they narratively conveyed their perspectives on support provided for e-portfolios. Thematic analysis was used to extract meaning units, which were then aggregated into themes and then presented as categories suggested by the research questions. This study evaluates Blackboard support as well as the affordances that are most and least attended achieved with the Blackboard e-Portfolio module, and through the support provided by the workshop facilitators. Recommendations on the effective use of Blackboard, the practices that would foster the realisation of all the conceptual, practical and reflective competencies and the enhancement of e-Portfolio development for the school experience are provided.