Effectiveness of e-portfolios for enhancing students’ job opportunities and learning environment

Abstract

The employability of the graduates of the course becomes comparatively low due to the competitive environment of the fashion industry and the other design graduates from private institutes. Furthermore, the final year students’ project works for assessment were not accessible and third year students could not see their seniors’ work. That was a problem to convince them the quality and the professionalism regarding the final year work. Thus these inconveniences persuaded to develop an EPortfolio concept among final year students. The research question was to identify the significance of E-Portfolios for Fashion Design undergraduates and pass out graduates at the University of Moratuwa. The research study has used qualitative and quantitative methods as a methodology to collect data from level four and level three students to convince the importance of use e-portfolios. The research objectives were: evaluating the employability of graduates who developed and not developed eportfolios within the time of three and half months of the graduation and analyze how 4th year students’ E-Portfolios affect to develop 3rd years’ project development by calculating the student's percentage who achieved ‘above 50’ and ‘lower 50’ mark. The research has found out 100% of students who developed E Portfolios got jobs within one-month time after the graduation and the others acquired three and half months to get jobs. The 3rd year students who looked E-Portfolios of their seniors’ 72% achieved ‘above 50’ mark for their project development and the remaining students achieved ‘lower 50’ mark and it was 28%. The research shows that the e- Portfolio contributes to enhance four aspects of design undergraduates: learning environment as well as job opportunities in terms of developing their personal professional development and effective use of self directed learning