Modern apprenticeship -- the use of an e-portfolio in learning Jewellery Design

Huang Shih-fang, Chou Yung-ping and Chiang Hsiu-jye
National United University
Miao Li, Taiwan

In design and art education, it is important for educators to understand how the students' works are created, but this is becoming more and more difficult nowadays as teachers usually have to teach many students on a single course. This paper describes how an e-learning tool, an e-portfolio, was introduced into a course on Jewellery Design to enhance mentor-apprentice interaction in learning the conventional hand-drawing skills via design projects; and it focuses on the effects of such e-portfolio interactions on the development of students' creative design ideas and expressive skills.

The e-portfolio platform integrates email, a discussion forum and web-pages capable of accommodating graphics and PowerPoint files, which together form the content of the course e-portfolio. The research methods used in this study included focus-group interviews, a questionnaire survey and content analysis of the personal reflective reports and diaries in the e-portfolios. The assessment was based on not only the final works but also the quality of students' reflections on their skill development. The findings show that the use of an e-portfolio, in conjunction with existing pedagogy, is particularly valuable for helping the teacher to understand students' learning difficulties. With such an information platform, the teacher can observe clearly the evolution of his/her interactions with students and adjust his/her teaching accordingly. The e-portfolios allow students' achievement to be evaluated on a much more objective and empirical basis, since the teacher is looking at the whole learning process, not just the final results. The findings also indicate that, when compared with conventional classroom-only instruction, the students' concept development appeared to be more profound and creative, and they developed more advanced expressive skills in jewellery design. These effects appear to arise from the timely and adaptive advice provided by the teacher and the enhanced peer interaction via the platform.