Overview
The electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) demonstrate professional, academic, and personal progress toward a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. Each reflection should be 1200 to 1500 words in length and include several artifacts with the exception of the professional reflection, which might not have appropriate artifacts to include.
As library and information professionals, students will need to be skilled at assessing their own learning and identifying additional things they need to know. As students progress through SIRLS, the faculty expects that students will move from dependence on faculty assessment of their achievements to a realistic self assessment of achievement. The ePortfolio reflections are the tools and opportunities for students to monitor their own learning and augment it as needed.
The reflections are part of the assessment of a student within SIRLS. They are private between the student and the evaluator(s). The evaluators will judge whether each reflection is satisfactory or not, and they will be marked either "acceptable" or "in need of revision." The evaluators provide both positive and negative feedback so that the student can revise the reflection as necessary.
Reflections are detailed narratives in which students self evaluate and consider their learning.
The SIRLS Master's Degree focuses on 10 competencies. Self-reflections are an analytical tool organized around these 10 competencies. They help students provide an overview of what the students have learned. They give evidence of a clear understanding of various topics, issues, challenges, and procedures in LIS. Self-reflections also give insights into decision-making and examples of how information learned in courses would apply to information specialists. The reflections illustrate the development of competencies at various stages in the degree program. Reflections describe how coursework, professional development activities, internships, and other learning experiences prepare students for a career as a librarian or information specialist. Through reflections, students demonstrate their intellectual development and their understanding and knowledge of subject content.
Within the infrastructure used for the ePortfolio, most reflections should have artifacts, and reflections may also link within their bodies to other documents, images, spreadsheets, etc. The artifacts document the learning described in the reflection. For example, in a reflection, a student may discuss how a particular paper that the student wrote for a course gave him or her special insight, in which case it would be natural either to attach that paper or to link to it.
Artifacts might be written papers, PowerPoint presentations, images, bibliographies, links to web pages, etc. Students do not create artifacts explicitly for the ePortfolio. Instead, the artifacts are produced as a part of students' other SIRLS experiences (e.g., coursework, presentations). When the students begin to self assess, a necessary part of this assessment will be to reflect upon these previously-created artifacts.
SIRLS suggests that students admitted to the master's program between January 2006 and January 2007 keep ePortfolio postings ePortfolio entries in an alternate private location because the longevity of the site is not guaranteed.
Student authors of ePortfolios should log in at http://eportfolio.sirls.arizona.edu/user. In the right sidebar they will find My account and My workspace either of which will lead them to their reflections; and Create content will create a new reflection.