Structural Measures of Intern ePortfolios in a NSF-funded REU Summer Program in Applied Psychology

Abstract

Intern-constructed eportfolios, depicting their work in our NSF-funded REU summer program, were designed to facilitate training and assessment goals. We developed objective structural measures of these eportfolios to strengthen their descriptions and to explore their connections to training outcomes. ePortfolios from the past four years of a summer research program in applied psychology were assessed in terms of objective measures such as number of pages, number of hyperlinks, number of external pages, number of cross-links, number of documents, and the levels of the website in which these attributes were located. There was strong and significant hierarchical organization of these components in the interns’ eportfolios, and differences in objective measures were associated with intern ratings of learning outcomes. These results indicate promise for objective eportfolio measures as an index of training outcomes as well as supporting program assessment goals.

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