Research into portfolio assessment highlights its potential to help L2 writers organize, reflect on, and take charge of their own learning. Although many have investigated L2 students’ use of e-portfolios as alternative assessment, little attention is paid to EFL learner perceptions. This study aims to explore EFL college writers’ perceived benefits and barriers of e-portfolio creation and evaluation. A platform, Wix.com, was utilized for students to build up their e-portfolios to showcase their written work. This study followed two classes of sophomore students (n = 29) for two academic years. To gain insights into students’ perceptions, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including a questionnaire, students’ reflections, and interviews. Results indicate that most students valued the practices of creating and maintaining their own Wix-based e-portfolios which displayed their development and growth as writers and learners over time. Although some students reported barriers to constructing the Wix-based e-portfolios, they considered the e-portfolio approach innovative, integrated, and reflective. This study concludes with implications for educators who wish to integrate the portfolio approach through web-based platforms.
Research Article
Benefits and Barriers of Utilizing E-portfolios in EFL Writing
https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1829171/v1
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portfolio assessment
feedback
EFL writing
digital portfolio
Electronic portfolios, also known as e-portfolios, have gained increasing attention in education. In second language (L2) writing, e-portfolios refer to purposeful digitalized collection of multimodal artifacts, which can be used to document students’ writing process and formatively assess their progress with regard to their production and performance (Burner, 2014; Lam, 2020). They have been found to enhance students’ writing performance (Barrot, 2020), promote feedback interaction (Lee, 2017), as well as increase learner autonomy (Mak & Wong, 2018). Unlike conventional paper-based portfolios, e-portfolios are more effective options for several reasons. First, they can raise learners’ awareness of audience while making their works published and accessible to the public. Second, owing to the unique features provided by different platforms, e-portfolios can provide stimulating audiovisual styles for today’s learners. Last, they are portable, interactive, and permanent. Taken together, the convenient and customized characteristics of e-portfolios allow learners to have authentic audience and explore technical flexibilities for displaying their written works. At the same time, they can provide teachers opportunities to innovate writing curriculum and enrich students’ learning experiences (Lam, 2017).
Although many L2 writing studies have promoted the use of e-portfolios as alternative assessment, little attention is paid to EFL learner perceptions. The use of web-based e-portfolios in EFL writing is considered relatively new (Lam, 2019). In Taiwan’s context, most writing teachers adopt conventional assessment by assigning students a topic and then grade their papers with minimal feedback. Applying traditional methods of teaching and assessment in writing classes in Taiwan cannot satisfy the needs of learners in this modern world. How it can be realized in Taiwan’s college writing classrooms remains under-researched. Addressing these gaps, this study attempts to explore Taiwanese EFL college students’ benefits and barriers while constructing their e-portfolios in a writing course.
E-portfolios for Teaching and Learning of Writing
The use of portfolios is as an approach that combines learning, teaching and assessment of writing together (Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 2000). Compared to traditional assessment, such as timed essay writing, e-portfolios are process-oriented, which can encourage students to demonstrate their learning achievements, reflect on their learning over time, as well as to revise and improve their work (Kongsuebchart & Suppasetseree, 2018). E-portfolio assessment often involves feedback activities, such as self-assessment, peer assessment, and teacher/tutor assessment (Lam, 2013). When e-portfolios are used for self-assessment, they can assist students in taking control of their learning and becoming more autonomous and self-regulated (Al-Hawamleh, Alazemi, & Al-Jamal, 2022; Karami, Sadighi, Bagheri, & Riasati, 2019). During peer assessment, students can learn from their classmates through giving and receiving feedback on their work (Nhi & Mai, 2018). Instructor or tutor assessment, however, can provide learners opportunities to discuss and receive feedback from more competent others as scaffolding (Lam, 2013; Namaziandost, Alekasir, Sawalmeh, & Miftah, 2020). Thus, e-portfolio assessment is considered more student-centered, interactive, and contextualized in comparison with traditional assessment (Lam, 2020).
The use of two common types of portfolios in writing instruction has been well documented in L2 writing literature: learning portfolios and showcase portfolios (Burner, 2014; Lam, 2013). Learning portfolios can be used to keep track of students’ learning and comprise all the writing samples produced by students throughout the course, as well as self-/peer feedback and written reflections. Showcase portfolios, on the other hand, contain representative writing samples selected by students based on course instructions or some stated criteria. Thus far, different conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of these portfolio systems on students’ attitudes and learning of writing. Barrot (2020) examined how Pilipino L2 university students utilized Facebook-based e-portfolios as learning portfolios and found that students were able to raise awareness of audience because Facebook provides a flexible, interactive, and accessible platform to the public. Lee (2018) explored how L2 students developed a sense of ownership, authorship, and scholarship that were motivated to construct and maintain their showcase e-portfolios. Comparing the two portfolio systems, Lam (2013) found that Hong Kong EFL students who worked with learning portfolios favored the approach because they could benefit from peer and instructor feedback for revisions while those who were from the showcase portfolio group felt less positive about the effectiveness of portfolio assessment because they focused on selecting and revising the two best drafts for showcasing. The impact of portfolio assessment on student perceptions remain inconsistent and requires further investigation. Considering students’ needs and suitability of adopting portfolio assessment, this study aims to help EFL students create showcase e-portfolios to demonstrate their best written work.
Platforms Used for Writing E-portfolios
With the rapid development of Web 2.0 technologies, a variety of web-based platforms have been proposed for creating e-portfolios. For example, Edmodo (Karami et al., 2019), Facebook (Barrot, 2016; 2020; Nhi & Mai, 2018), Google Docs (Tonogbanua, 2018), Google Sites (Dunn Jr, Luke, & Nassar, 2013), Mahara (Chui & Dias, 2017), wiki (Akbari & Erfani, 2018), Wix.com and weebly.com (Lee, 2018), as well as WordPress (Paiz, 2018). Potentials of using these sites as e-portfolio platforms include accessibility to the public, permanent storage, and improvement of information and communication technology skills. Moreover, many have shown how e-portfolios can be used to help learners critically reflect on their writing processes (Farahian, Avarzamani, & Rajabi, 2021), increase learner autonomy (Lo, 2010), improve writing performance (Tonogbanua, 2018), and promote feedback interaction (Al-Hidabi, Kabilan, & Shakfa, 2020). While technologies will continue to change and thrive, educators who wish to integrate e-portfolios may face challenges related to selection of platforms, training procedures, infrastructure, and users’ privacy. Some researchers such as Barrot (2020) suggests that different online platforms should be explored to see how they can offer more “technical flexibilities and audiovisual manipulations” (p. 14) in writing classes. Thus, it is imperative to gain insight into how certain platform can be integrated as writing e-portfolios for EFL students.
Use of E-portfolios in Taiwan
While the e-portfolio approach has been commonly used in first or second language settings, they are under-utilized in EFL contexts, such as Taiwan, where English is used as a foreign language. Learners do not have many opportunities to build up their e-portfolios and practice self- and peer assessment when writing assignments are often regarded as final drafts. In this kind of situation, assessment and learning are considered separate which does not allow students to take on teachers’ feedback and participate in revisions and reflections actively. Rather than making students become demotivated when they deal with the daunting writing task, e-portfolios have the potential to engage students in the writing process.
To date, a handful of studies on e-portfolio implementation for English language learning and teaching were conducted in Taiwan’s tertiary level (Chen, 2005; Hung, 2012; Lo, 2010). Among these, only one study was conducted in a writing class (Chen, 2005), while the rest are associated with other content areas (Hung focused on EFL pre-service training; Lo’s study was conducted in a journalistic English course). Thus, there how e-portfolios can be exploited in the context of Taiwan, especially in EFL writing classrooms, requires further investigation.
Research Questions
To fill the gaps in knowledge, the present study aims to explore how Taiwanese EFL students perceive the benefits and barriers to constructing their showcase e-portfolios. In this study, due to its popular use in Taiwan, a freely available online platform, Wix.com, was adopted for e-portfolio development.
Three research questions guided the current study:
- What are the students’ overall perceptions towards constructing the Wix-based e-portfolios in the writing class?
- In what way does the Wix-based writing e-portfolios benefit the students?
- What barriers do they encounter when creating and maintaining the Wix-based writing e-portfolios?
Setting and Participants
This study was conducted in an intermediate EFL writing course at a national university located in southern Taiwan. The participants were English majors who were required to take English composition courses for two consecutive years (freshmen and sophomores). This study followed two classes of sophomore students (n=29) for two academic years (i.e., one class for one academic year). The students all signed the informed consent form and voluntarily participated in this study. At the beginning of the study, the students were asked to fill out a background survey. Some students indicated that they had experiences creating Chinese blogs in high schools but no one had ever constructed e-portfolios in English and had never used Wix.com before.
Over each academic year, the students practiced five kinds of genre-based essay writing, with a total of seven essay drafts: two process essays, two comparison essays, a cause-effect essay, an argumentative essay, and a problem-solution research paper. For these genre-based essay writing, the students were told to revise twice, once based on peer feedback and the other based on teacher feedback. Evaluation rubrics were provided for these feedback practices (e.g., content, organization, language use, and mechanics). For journal writing, however, they did not need to go through the same feedback process like the essay revision process. Instead, every time when they posted their journals on their e-portfolios, they only received feedback from the teaching assistant or the instructor regarding accessibility and visual effectiveness of their journal posts. Also, they were arranged to read their peers’ journals and leave comments.
In terms of assignment submissions, the Wix-based e-portfolio aims to collect students’ final drafts of essays and journals, while the university learning management system was used for students to upload the first two essay drafts and other process-oriented worksheets, such as outlines and peer feedback. All the writing, except the problem-solution research paper, was performed individually.
Wix.com
The e-portfolio website, Wix.com, was chosen based on three reasons: (1) ease of use, (2) popularity, and (3) lack of research. First, Wix.com is a ready-made site that allows users to upload artifacts in different formats, such as texts, graphics, audio and video flies. It is user-friendly and does not require any professional computer skills. Wix.com is equipped with design features (e.g., templates, menus, fonts, styles) not only for users to select and apply but also for visitors to post responses for asynchronous communication with the website owner. Most importantly, it can be used on both the computer and mobile devices that allow learners to edit anytime and anywhere. Second, Wix.com is commonly used in Taiwan in various areas, such as company websites, personal blogs, educational promotion, and conferences. Users in Taiwan can easily find Youtube[1] tutorial videos concerning how to build up a personal website through Wix.com before they get started. Last, few studies have explored Wix.com as a tool for teaching writing. The only study conducted by Lee (2018) investigated L2 students’ utilization of Wix.com as writing e-portfolios. Based on these reasons, this study adopted Wix.com as the platform for e-portfolio development.
Procedure
Stag 1: Orientation
For each class, the Wix-based e-portfolio project was implemented for two consecutive semesters. At the beginning of the first semester, two training sessions were provided in a computer lab. A graduate teaching assistant, majoring in Teaching-English-as-a-Foreign-Language (TEFL), was recruited to assist these sessions. To prepare students to set up their e-portfolios on Wix.com, we offered guidelines regarding how students should organize their e-portfolio and arrange its content. Components of the e-portfolio consisted of four parts: (1) About: introduces the student him/herself and highlights the e-portfolio, (2) Writing Projects: include five types of essay genres practiced in this course (Semester 1: process essays and comparison essays; Semester 2: cause-effect, argument, and problem-solution essays), (3) Journal Writing/My Journals: consist of three journals produced each semester, (4) Reflective Essays: present students’ reflection of their learning processes at the end of each semester. These details were provided in the syllabus and PowerPoint slides for students to refer to while creating their e-portfolios. The students were informed of the purposes of creating this e-portfolio, the procedure needed to complete the e-portfolio, as well as the mode of publication on Wix.com. The following steps were used for guidance:
- sign up with Google or Facebook account;
- pick the “category” they like to create (i.e., portfolio);
- pick the “template” they like (which can be just a blank template);
- click on “Edit”;
- add “Pages” to the website (i.e., Home, About, Writing Project, etc.);
- save and publish their works.
Refer to Figure 1 for a student’s Wix webpage design and her comparison essay related to American English vs. British English.
Stage 2: Implementation
From Weeks 3 to 16 of the two semesters, students uploaded their final essay drafts on their Wix-based e-portfolios. Figure 2 is an argument essay posted by Student 22.
In addition to completing the essay assignments, the students had to write three journals and respond to their peers’ journals each semester. The topics of the journal entries were not limited. Those could be: a reflection on a book or a movie, how they survived a busy week, or travelling experiences that they felt like sharing with the class. For their peers to respond to journals, the students were guided to set up a comment box under each journal post on Wix. See Figure 3 below for a journal entry posted by Student 15. In this post, the student wrote about a thriller drama which includes supernatural creatures and describes how oppression in a dystopian society can happen in the possible future. Under the journal post, three students read and responded to the post in the comment box.
Near the end of each semester, the students had to write a reflective essay, focusing on what they had learned from creating and managing their e-portfolios as well as problems encountered and strategies used to deal with these problems. Their reflective essays were all written in English and posted on their Wix-based e-portfolios.
Stage 3: Assessment
In order to implement the Wix-based e-portfolio effectively, I followed Lee’s (2018) three aspects of evaluation—process, product, and post-process. Table 1 was adapted from Lee’s assessment criteria. Process was evaluated through teaching assistant (TA) assessment, self-assessment, and peer assessment. After each feedback, the students needed to revise their work. Product was assessed through completeness and accessibility of writing products, quality of writing, as well as visual effectiveness. Finally, post-process was related to students’ self-reflection on the learning processes and final products displayed.
Table 1
E-portfolio Assessment Criteria
With regard to process, three kinds of assessment were conducted: TA assessment[1], self-assessment, and peer assessment. First, concerning TA assessment, since most of the students had little experience in constructing e-portfolios, the researcher worked with my teaching assistant for identifying problems after the students posted their work on their e-portfolios. These problems included inappropriate color contrast, inaccessible URL links, missing items on the menu, overlapped texts and pictures, etc. During each semester, a few rounds of TA feedback were carried out in the whole class meetings to help raise students’ awareness of these problems so that they could have some ideas about how to improve their e-portfolios. In addition, the students were guided to conduct self-assessment and peer assessment near the end of each semester. Self-assessment was carried out first, followed by peer assessment. Evaluation forms that included three indicators (i.e., completeness and accessibility, visual effectiveness, and quality of writing) were used as a guidance for students to check and evaluate. In response to TA and peer feedback, the students needed to revise and edit their texts posted on the website.
Of note is that since the Wix-based writing e-portfolio serves as a showcase portfolio which features students’ best work, displaying their growth and development as learners and writers, it does not aim to evaluate students’ writing assignments a second time. Instead, it focuses on the development of e-portfolio, focusing on how students create their space and visualize their works with different multimodal components such as texts, images, and videos. Since delayed evaluation was used, grades were not given to any of students’ written work until their e-portfolio was published via Wix.com. Unlike previous studies (Lee, 2018), the students in this study were not asked to choose their best writings for final evaluation. Instead, they were told to post all the final drafts of each essay together with their journals and reflective essays.
Data Collection and Analysis
This study aimed to investigate EFL college students’ perceptions, benefits and barriers while using Wix-based writing e-portfolios. Multiple data sources were collected, including the detailed accounts throughout the e-portfolio assessment process (i.e., through TA feedback, self-assessment records, and peer feedback) and the post-process (i.e., through a questionnaire, interviews and reflective essays). Near the end of the course (the 2nd semester), the students were interviewed individually to understand their thoughts about the use of e-portfolios. Each interview was conducted in Mandarin Chinese and lasted approximately 15 to 20 minutes. All the interviews were audio-recorded, fully transcribed and translated into English. During the interviews, students’ works displayed on their e-portfolios were used to elicit more responses. In addition to the qualitative data, an end-of-course questionnaire written in English was used to gather students’ feedback on the e-portfolio creation and assessment (12 items) with a 5-point Likert scale of agreement (see Table 2 for the questionnaire items presented in the Findings and Discussion section).
To answer the first research question, questionnaire data were analyzed, including both closed-ended and open-ended items. Regarding the second and third research questions, students’ reflective essays and interview data were analyzed with content analysis and then compared with the questionnaire responses to understand students’ perceived benefits and barriers to using the Wix-based e-portfolios. Content analysis involves identifying, coding, categorizing, classifying and labeling the primary patterns/occurring themes in the data (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002).
Research question 1: What are the students’ overall perceptions towards constructing the Wix-based e-portfolios in the EFL writing class?
In this section, results based on two aspects of the final questionnaire are reported: (1) closed-ended items, and (2) open-ended items. From the closed-ended items (5-point Likert scales), many students indicated that they benefited from creating and maintaining the Wix-based showcase e-portfolios. Items 1 to 8 received relatively high ratings from the participants, mentioning that the Wix-based e-portfolios allowed them to collect and showcase their work in a creative way (Item 1; M = 4.4) and that they felt a sense of achievement after the e-portfolio was completed (Item 2; M = 4.4). They noted that they were able to reflect on what they had practiced over one year (Item 4; M = 4.2). They considered Wix e-portfolio as a good learning experience and they’d like to share their Wix e-portfolios with others (Item 5; M = 4.2). Items 3 and 7 also revealed that the students enjoyed reading and commenting on their peers’ journals on Wix(M = 4.3 and 4.2 respectively). Overall, the participants felt that they owned a space that allowed them to collect and present all of their written works (Item 8; M = 4.1). See Table 2 for details.
Table 2. Results of Closed-ended Items
|
Items (based on ranks) |
Mean |
S.D. |
|
1.Compared to the school’s ecourse2, Wixallows me to collect, store, and showcase all the written work in a more creative and personalized way. |
4.4 |
0.56 |
|
2. I felt a sense of achievement after the Wix e-portfolio was created. |
4.4 |
0.72 |
|
3. I like to read my peers' journal posts on Wix. |
4.3 |
0.83 |
|
4. The Wixe-portfolio allows me to reflect on all of my written work over the past year. |
4.2 |
0.7 |
|
5. Overall, the Wix e-portfolio was a good learning experience and I'd like to share my e-portfolio with others. |
4.2 |
0.66 |
|
6. Feedback from the teaching assistant was helpful in improving the quality of my Wix e-portfolio. |
4.2 |
0.62 |
|
7. I like to read my peers' comments on my journal posts. |
4.2 |
0.82 |
|
8. The Wix writing e-portfolio helps me to develop a sense of ownership (i.e., owning my space for collecting and showcasing all the written work I have created). |
4.1 |
0.66 |
|
9. Conducting evaluation with my peer helps to improve the quality of my Wix e-portfolio. |
4.1 |
0.69 |
|
10. Conducting self-assessment was useful because it could improve the quality of my Wix e-portfolio. |
3.8 |
0.82 |
|
11. Publishing all the written work on Wix motivates me to write better. |
3.6 |
0.93 |
|
12.In the future, I will continue to write posts on my Wixweb page. |
3.2 |
0.97 |
In terms of feedback practices, the students gave higher ratings to TA feedback (Item 6; M = 4.2), followed by peer feedback (Item 9; M = 4.1) and self-assessment (Item 10; M = 3.8). In the last two items, some students reported that publishing all the written works on Wix motivated them to write better (Item 11; M = 3.6) and they would continue to write posts on Wix (Item 12; M = 3.2).
With regard to the open-ended questions in the final questionnaire (i.e., How do you like the Wix e-portfolio project in this course? Do you think that the instructor should continue to encourage the class to create their own Wix e-portfolios in the future?), all the students were satisfied with the e-portfolio creation experience and suggested that the e-portfolio project can be implemented in future writing classes. See the excerpts below for example:
Student 5: I think it would be great to continue this activity in the future because Wix
provides space to show one's personality through the layout, choice of background and picture demonstration, I really enjoy viewing others' work on their sites.
Student 11: I really like to use Wix to present my works. So I think the instructor can encourage the class to use it in the future.
Student 12: It's a good experience. Knowing how to create a website can be useful in our career.
Students responded favorably regarding constructing their e-portfolios to present their work. This result was also reported in prior studies (Kongsuebchart & Suppasetseree, 2018). They felt positive that they could showcase their work in a creative and personalized way and also value the opportunities to view their peers’ websites and appreciate their e-portfolios. Furthermore, as was noted by S12, the e-portfolio can demonstrate their webpage editing skills which can be an advantage for future career.
Regarding the students’ responses to feedback practices, they seemed to benefit more from TA feedback compared to peer feedback and self-assessment. This finding is consistent with Namaziandost et al.’s (2020) result regarding the effectiveness of tutor feedback. This can also be discussed with Lam’s (2013) finding which revealed that students who used showcase portfolios had concerns about the quality of peer feedback because they considered teacher as an authoritative figure who is more capable of giving fair judgement on their writing than their peers. These might indicate that EFL students tend to incorporate feedback from the more capable ones rather than their peers when conducting portfolio assessment. Lam and Lee (2010) advocate that students should develop metacognitive skills (e.g., self-assessment and awareness-raising tasks) since these skills can help them evaluate linguistic features of a piece of good writing and enhance their rhetorical awareness during portfolio assessment.
Research question 2:In what way does the Wix-based writing e-portfolios benefit the students?
To answer this question, I analyzed the reflective essays written by the 29 students as primary data and referred to the interview responses as secondary data. Aligned with the questionnaire responses presented above, the analysis of reflective essays and interviews revealed that the majority felt positive about the e-portfolio experience. Different kinds of positive adjectives were used to describe this learning experience, such as “cool”, “fun”, “interesting”, “special”, and “unforgettable.” In the following, five themes related to how the e-portfolio project benefited students in learning of writing will be revealed. These themes include: (1) allowing students to collect, review and share their works with others, (2) developing ownership and authorship, (3) seeing improvement and feeling empowered for writing, (4) cultivating digital literacies skills, and (5) enhancing scaffolded learning.
1. Allowing students to collect, review, and share their works with others
Similar to the questionnaire results, several students (n = 18) indicated that creating the Wix-based e-portfolio allowed them to collect, review, and share their work with others. In their reflective essays, the students constantly compared Wix.comwith the school learning management system and they preferred to use Wix.com as a site to construct their e-portfolios due to its convenience and accessibility to the public. See the excerpts below:
From the above, we can learn that Wix-based e-portfolio allowed the students to reflect upon and review their written works, which was also noted by Lam (2019). As Student 6 indicated, she was able to see her writing improvement while maintaining her e-portfolio over time. To her, the Wix e-portfolio was like an alternative access to revisit her written works. Also, according to Student 14, the e-portfolio was accessible to the public and could be easily shared with anyone outside of class. These are also aligned with Chen’s (2005) findings, suggesting that e-portfolios are convenient and involves frequent reading and writing.
2. Developing ownership and authorship
While reading and re-reading the students’ reflective essays and the interview transcripts, I noticed that almost all the students (n = 27) commented that they felt that they owned a space to post their writings and felt a sense of achievement after completing their e-portfolios. They referred to their own Web spaces with terms, such as “my space”, or “a secret garden”, “a corner”, which allowed them to showcase their final essay drafts and journals. Excerpts which reveal students’ excitement and responsibilities as authors of their e-portfolios are presented below:
Students 11 and 28 revealed their aspiration as authors of their Wix-based e-portfolios and that they were satisfied with their own writing space.Due to the sense of ownership, some also mentioned that owning a public space made them become more aware of readers and they needed to take responsibility for what they posted and often tried to improve the quality of their writing:
These indicate that with the increase of audience awareness, students paid more attention to word choices or spelling errors while posting their work, which was also revealed by Mak and Wong (2018).
3. Seeing improvement and feeling empowered for writing
Numerous students (n= 23) noted in their reflective essays that by presenting their final essay drafts on e-portfolios, they were able to see their writing improvement. See the following excerpts:
These responses indicate that Wix e-portfolios allowed the students to keep track of their progress and reflect on what they had learned, consistent with previous studies (Namaziandost et al., 2020; Nhi & Mai, 2018).
Moreover, all the students reported that they felt empowered for writing while engaging in journal writing and commenting activities. They mentioned that they enjoyed journal writing on Wix since it was less formal compared to essay writing, and it gave them freedom to choose their topics and decide what and how they wanted to share their life experiences with others. Also, journal commenting allowed them to have more interactions with their peers and understand how others tackled with real-life issues. They regarded journal posting and commenting on Wix.com more interesting and interactive than uploading their journals on the school learning management system:
The excerpt shows that Student 15 was engaged in journal writing, reading, and commenting. She knew more about her classmates through reading their journals (e.g., dramas or movies they recently watched). The majority also noted that they would continue to write journals on their e-portfolios since Wix provides a space for them to practice English writing by keeping a diary. This was also consistent with the finding of Chu and Dias (2017) regarding an EFL student’s cross-culture-related reflective writing practice through posting journals on her e-portfolio.
4. Cultivating digital literacies skills
Almost all the students (n = 28) indicated that they felt empowered not only as writers but also as designers of their Web spaces. They commented that they developed digital literacy skills other than writing. The students were impressed by the features on Wix which prompted them to incorporate texts, images, music, pictures, videos, and comment boxes. Bearing the audience in mind, the students were engaged in designing their webpages with different layouts, styles, and colors that fit their essay topics. The following excerpts show how students managed to improve their web design to make their essays more appealing to readers:
Student 13 mentioned how she designed her first essay (a process essay) in a magazine style that depicts three stages of chimpanzees’ growing process: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (see Figure 4). Due to the features on Wix, these students were able to visualize their final essay drafts in a creative way beyond assignments. They were proud that they acquired digital literacies skills by turning their essays into something unique and personalized.
5. Enhancing scaffolded learning
Several students (n = 22) indicated that they benefited tremendously from the feedback processes, particularly TA feedback and peer feedback. Through feedback provision, the students not only learned about how to make their e-portfolios more appealing and readable to the audience, but also appreciated that the feedback helped them to notice problems and errors.
Conducting TA assessment and peer assessment could be considered as a community of practice. While TA assessment allowed the students to receive feedback from a more experienced other (i.e., teaching assistant), peer assessment provided the opportunities for students to learn from their peers and critically evaluate their work. As Student 24 mentioned, doing peer assessment was like having another pair of eyes to detect your “blind spots”. He appreciated that his peers gave him practical suggestions that allowed him to strengthen his e-portfolio.
Consistent with the questionnaire results presented under research question one, students’ reflective essays and the interview data showed five aspects of benefits as reported above. Similar to Barrot’s (2020) finding, Wix-based e-portfolios function as an “enhanced rhetorical space” because it allows learners to increase their awareness of the audience, the feedback process, and the writer’s responsibility through creating e-portfolios. This platform also allows the students to take multiple roles: a designer, an evaluator, a decision-maker, and a reflector, shifting them from individual to interactive writing process. For example, Student 22 mentioned that “I will try to make sure my essays are clear, proper, and logical. Otherwise, my readers may get confused…By comparing my Wix and others, I can discover lots of brilliant ideas from my classmates.”
Research question 3: What barriers do they encounter when creating and maintaining the Wix-based writing e-portfolios?
Synthesizing multiple data sets for analysis (reflective essays, questionnaire responses, and interviews), three aspects of barriers were found: (1) technical difficulties, (2) time taken to edit their posts, and (3) learner issues. Details regarding these three issues were described in Table 3.
Table 3. Barriers encountered during Wix-based e-portfolio implementation
|
Aspects |
Descriptions |
Frequency |
|
1. Technical issues |
- Unfamiliarity with Wix features - Editing & typesetting - Appropriateness of Wix as an e-portfolio platform - Lag or sudden shut down - Display on Wix changes across different devices |
7 5 2 1 1 |
|
16 |
||
|
2. Time issues |
- Time taken to edit posts and develop the e-portfolio |
9 |
|
3. Learner issues |
- Lack of confidence and anxiety publishing their works |
7 |
Technical difficulties
16 out of 29 students reported technological difficulties during the implementation of Wix-based e-portfolio. The majority of problems revolved around unfamiliarity with Wix features (n=7) regarding how to get the post published, or how to add a comment box below the journal post. However, after consulting their peers or the teaching assistant, these were no longer their problems. Other minor issues reported include editing and typesetting (n=5):
Two students mentioned their concerns related to the appropriateness of using Wix as an e-portfolio platform. One student expressed problems such as sudden shut down and lag caused by uploading. Another student indicated that Wix pages are missing from Google search and lamented inconvenience for editing with Chinese characters that were used as translation for some English words or phrases.
Last, one student complained that the display on Wix often changes across different devices (e.g., from a laptop to a desktop) which makes editing difficult:
Time issues
Time taken to develop the e-portfolio was also reported by a few students (n = 9). They indicated that in the first semester, it took them a while to explore the functions and learn how to edit on Wix.
Some even noted that the entire editing process was time-consuming and they made a lot of efforts to become familiar with the features on Wix.
Learner issues
A few participants (n = 7) noted that publishing their works online made them constantly think about their design and worried if their design was not good enough or incomplete. One student noted her lack of confidence in webpage design, while the other one showed her fear of missing any elements in her post:
Altogether, three aspects of barriers were revealed in the current study: technical issues, time issues, and learner issues, which were also reported in prior studies (Hung, 2012; Dunn, Luke, & Nassar, 2013). The technical issues found in this study resonate with the findings of Barrot’s studies (2016; 2020) which also showed learners’ challenges in formatting and compiling their posts as well as their concern regarding the appropriateness of Facebook as a platform. Compared with Facebook, Wix.com can be more complicated since students in this study had to learn how to construct their webpages from scratch and adjust their webpages so that the display can fit different devices. However, creating e-portfolios on Wix.com can allow readers to stay fixed on a certain webpage and focus on what they want to read. This is the feature distinct from Facebook, where readers may be distracted by news feed due to the scrolling function.
From the given data, it seems that developing a Wix-based e-portfolio requires time and involvement. To tackle with this issue, studies suggest that time management and self-regulation skills are needed since these can prevent students from being overwhelmed during the editing and revising process and sustain their writing development over time (Al-Hidabi et al., 2020; Karami et al., 2019; Lam, 2013).
In addition, learner factors such as lack of confidence and anxiety of publishing work reflect students’ apprehension (Hung, 2012). Similar to Barrot’s (2016; 2020) research, the participants in this study experienced social pressure which pushed them to produce quality output for their peers, friends, family, and classmates. As S9 noted, “Because I want to show my work to others, I really work hard on writing my essays and journals.” Students like Student 9 knew that their work would be published online, viewed, and commented on, and so they were willing to spend time editing and revising their posts. From the qualitative data, most students noted that they felt positive about the pressure since it could motivate them to be more cautious of the content and language they used. In Barrot’s research, though Facebook has higher visibility, some students hesitated about using it for writing purposes. Despite the fact that Wixwebpages are missing from Googlesearch as noted by one of the participants, Wix.com allows users to decide who they want to share the web link with. This can somehow reduce their anxiety when they have a control on who can read their work.
In sum, although technology plays a role in the e-portfolio development and assessment processes, it could demotivate some students when they face problems caused by technology. But these findings also suggest that the use of Wix-based e-portfolios had additive values according to the benefits reported by the students. Most students noted that though creating the e-portfolio was time-consuming, they felt empowered and a sense of achievement. Thus, in order to make e-portfolio creation and evaluation effective, educators need to offer opportunities for students to discuss technical difficulties they encounter and provide timely assistance.
This study aimed to investigate EFL college students’ perceptions of constructing writing e-portfolios. The findings showed that most students benefited from the experience of e-portfolio creation and evaluation. Wix-based e-portfolios motivated the students to write better when they became aware of the target audience. Having a sense of audience makes the students more reflective to the interests and needs of their target audience. Through the feedback process, the students learned to notice weaknesses, revise writing, and make their posts more appealing to the audience. The customized and shareable features of Wix-based e-portfolios enhanced students’ linguistic (e.g., fluency and language use) as well as metacognitive strategies (i.e., self-regulation, self-reflection). Students in this study showed positive attitudes toward owning a Web space to showcase quality output that represents their writing achievement with personal styles. This study also identified three barriers related to Wix-based e-portfolio creation: technical issues, time issues, and learner issues. These suggest a need to be aware of learners’ difficulties and provide assistance when a new platform is selected and implemented.
Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are proposed to maximize the utilization of e-portfolio assessment in L2 writing classes. First, the e-portfolio approach is recommended since it can allow students opportunities to create, reflect, and cultivate multiliteracies skills. Second, to avoid learner anxiety, explicit assessment criteria or rubric can be prepared to help students how to improve their e-portfolios. Last, to reduce students’ frustration with technology, guidance should be provided to increase collaboration and consultation throughout the course. Students can be encouraged to screen record technical difficulties they encounter and discuss their problems with their peers or the instructor.
Moreover, limitations of the study will be discussed. First, one of the research limitations lies in the small number of participants (n = 29). Exploring the impact of the e-portfolio assessment on EFL university students, this study focused on a purposeful sample of an intact classes of participants. The findings revealed in this study might not be generalizable in other L2/EFL writing classes that also employ e-portfolio assessment. Hence, larger sample sizes are needed for further investigation. Second, the current study might be limited due to the compulsory nature of the e-portfolio project. In this study, all the participants were required to construct their e-portfolios by posting all of their final essay drafts and journals in order to fulfill the requirements of the course. The pre-determined e-portfolio contents might be too restrictive to understand whether the assessment was valid or not. The findings may be different if the project becomes voluntary and allows students to select what they want to post.
E-portfolio implementation, as shown in this study, can develop students’ sense of authorship and become responsible writers. In addition, it can enrich students’ writing experiences by having a venue to showcase and share their works with others. Although some educators may not consider Wix as an appropriate e-portfolio platform, the convenient characteristics of this website tool can be used to innovate writing curriculum and integrate teaching and assessment of writing.
Acknowledgements
The author is thankful for the students’ participation and associated personnel of any reference that contributed to this research.
Authors' contributions
This research and the manuscript was written by a single author (corresponding author). No other authors are involved in this study.
Ethical approval
I, the author, declare that this paper is an original report of my research that has been written by myself and has not been submitted for any journal. This research followed the guidelines regulated by The Internal Review Boards of National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan and was approved before it was conducted (Approval No.: CCUREC110082502).
Competing interests
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Funding
This research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan (Grant No.: PED1101164).
Availability of data and materials
The datasets in this research can only be accessed by the author to maintain confidentiality of information collected. All of the material is owned by the author and/or no permissions are required.
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