eJournal
This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch)
eJournal is an e-portfolio tool in which students can save assignments, feedback and assessments in one place and share them with others. This provides teachers, tutors and students insight in the progress on learning objectives and competencies in clear and easy dashboards. It is possible to assess competencies or learning objectives that recur throughout the course or program, for example, reflection skills, collaboration and academic writing. This allows students to take ownership of their learning process and gain better insight into their own progress. In addition, teachers and mentors can also monitor how individual students as well as groups are developing and which learning objectives may need more attention.
The tool is suitable for use in (programmatic) assessment at a program level. The use of this application will therefore start with an extensive intake to discuss the possibilities and preconditions so that the use of this tool adds as much as possible to the organization of your program.
Do you want to get started with eJournal or would you like more information? Please click on the button ‘Request tools’.
On the website of eJournal you can also find more information about the functionality of the tool and manuals.
Can I use this tool for a single course?
No, eJournal is most useful and effective on a program level.
There are several educational institutions that have been using e-portfolio tooling for some time. SURF has shared a report on the use of this tooling in higher education (only in Dutch available).
The CHARM-EU program started using eJournal as a e-portfolio tool for their Master students as of September 2024. The Master’s programme ‘Global Challenges for Sustainability’ is jointly run by the nine partner universities of the CHARM-EU Alliance, including Utrecht University. The programme is set up in a student-centered way and relies heavily on programmatic assessment. The main goal of this is to support students in their learning process by moving away from a traditional approach and instead assessing student development across the whole Master’s programme. Students are assessed on eight different programme learning outcomes.
CHARM-EU was the first programme at UU to make the move to eJournal as new portfolio tool. CHARM already had experience with programmatic assessment as such, so they could formulate their needs quite quickly. Teaching staff needed some training to get used to the new system: for example, how to set up group assignments, or how to distinguish between feedback, comments and formal assessment. Also students received some training. For many students, programmatic assessment is new, and some typical mistakes have appeared that CHARM is now training students to avoid – such as inadvertently submitting the whole portfolio right at assignment number one.
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