‘It is not sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost. It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from this reflection that generalisations or concepts can be generated. And it is generalisations that allow new situations to be tackled effectively.’ (Gibbs, 1988)

ePortfolio is a tool that can be used to encourage and improve your reflective practice. The ownership of the blog is with you. You decide what posts to share, and with whom to share them. This can help encourage deep reflection including writing about mistakes you have made, your fears, and hopes, confident that only you can see the post unless you choose to share it.

To write a blog post, follow these instructions:

Blog entries can be made from several areas of ePortfolio. You will see the adding blog entry graphic on the frontpage, the blog page, communities, and the skills section.

• Title – This is the title of your blog post.
• Blog Text – This is where you should type the main content of your blog post.
• Everyone in the University – tick this box to make the blog post public.
• Tags – this is where you would enter keywords to describe your blog posts. Use accurate keywords as this will enable more effective indexing and searching.
• Communities – Communities are online collaborative spaces, where ePortfolio users can share blogs and comment on other members’ blogs. If the blog post is to be shared with any of the communities, use this area to select which communities can see the post. You will only see Communities that you are a member of.
• Skills – you can align a blog post with a skill from a skill set, or competency framework. All undergraduate students will be subscribed to the Graduate Skills Framework
• Shared group – if you wish to share this post with any of your share groups, ensure that group is ticked. If you do not see this option, you are not a member of any share/supervision groups.
• Upload a file – You can add a file to go along with your post. Your file will be shared with any of the groups you are sharing the blog post with.

Note: If you save a partially completed blog post and have some sharing options enabled (either share group, supervision group, or community), the partially saved blog post would be seen by those you are sharing with. They will see a live link to your post, so if you edit it later, they will see the updated version.

If you are looking to further explore the reflective process I would recommend reading some articles from Jenny Moon, Graeme Gibbs, and Donald Schon.

Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Further Education Unit.

Why is this useful to me?

The ePortfolio system is automatically available to anyone in the University to use. You already have an account there. There are already easy ways to tag your posts with skills relating to the UK Professional Standards Framework if you are working towards HEA Fellowship, or with categories relating to Staff Skills including Success Factors. Both os which you might find useful in logging things you have done as you go along, so that when you come to prep for your PDR, or to write your fellowship application, you have material ready and available to draw upon.

Neat eh?