Using social media as e-Portfolios to support learning in higher education: a literature analysis

Siew Lee Chang; Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan

doi:10.1007/s12528-022-09344-z

Using social media as e-Portfolios to support learning in higher education: a literature analysis

J Comput High Educ. 2022 Nov 16:1-28. doi: 10.1007/s12528-022-09344-z. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Siew Lee Chang^{1

2}, Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah Malaysia.
² School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia.
³ Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang, 65145 East Jawa, Indonesia.

Abstract

Although e-Portfolio is acknowledged as one of the powerful pedagogical practices that enhance learning in higher education (HE), not much is known about the types of social media (SM) utilized as e-Portfolios and the benefits for students. This literature analysis, using directed content analysis, aims to explore the above vacuum. The research questions in this study are: (1) In what ways do the SM as e-Portfolios benefit students in HE? (2) To what extent are the benefits of SM as e-Portfolios comparable to those of conventional e-Portfolios? and (3) What are the drawbacks that practitioners and researchers need to be concerned with? Findings indicate that blogs are the most popular SM used as e-Portfolios to support learning, followed by social networking sites and collaborative projects. The study yields 13 advantages and 12 drawbacks when SM is manipulated as e-Portfolios. These findings conclude that the use of SM as e-Portfolios has a great potential in supporting students' learning and development by providing an environment for them to learn meaningfully from their experiences and engage in critical reflections and dialogues that allow them to gain new knowledge and valuable insights and thus, improve their skills. A pedagogical framework for the planning and implementation of SM as e-Portfolios is suggested based on the findings and aims of the papers that were reviewed.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12528-022-09344-z.

Keywords: Evaluation methodologies; Learning communities; Pedagogical issues; Post-secondary education; Social media.

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.