Implementing programme - wide eportfolio to support sustainable student learning at USP

There has been increasing emphasis in recent years on moving away from traditional teaching and towards student-centered learning. This paradigm shift has encouraged moving power from the instructor to the learner, treating the learner as a co-creator in the teaching and learning process (Barr & Tagg, 1995). Grades are less relied upon as a proof of learning, stakeholders in education and the workplace want documentation that provides evidence of the entire process of learning. To answer these calls, our faculty at University of the South Pacific (USP) has introduced the use of ePortfolios and Mentoring in its four year undergraduate degree programmes in Software Engineering and Net-Centric Computing. This paper gives an account of the implementation of the project to date in the undergraduate subject and how the ePortfolio is being used here as both a learning tool and a means of aggregation. Using ePortfolios, students are provided a context within which they can appreciate the knowledge and skills they are acquiring and contextualize the understanding of the many roles within the profession. It also allows them to tell their own stories and make connections between their formal coursework and their informal, experiential learning (Wyllie, 2010).