Investing in an ePortfolio to support longitudinal assessment in medicine: the journey 12 months on

Using an ePortfolio system to gather evidence of learning across higher education programs is not a new idea but the investment associated with implementation in a large complex medical program has not been fully explored. In 2019, the Medical program at UQ embarked on a journey to facilitate a student driven longitudinal assessment strategy. This aimed to capture students’ clinical learning experiences, offer opportunities for them to reflect on their clinical performance, over time demonstrate achievement of key clinical competencies and make the connections to graduate outcomes. The UQ enterprise ePortfolio system had been piloted successfully across all clinical placement sites during 2018 and was then scaled up to include all workplace-based assessments (WBAs) across the clinical years in 2019. Despite in-depth testing and training of key stakeholders, the expected learning value has
been limited by the technical constraints encountered. The data obtained from 13,774 WBAs in the first semester of 2019 has provided transparency of the varied clinical learning experiences completed by students but has been plagued by technical roadblocks including the inability to effectively identify students at risk of academic underperformance. This raises questions about how to justify resources to invest and achieve a sustainable long-term ePortfolio solution using university enterprise systems.
Keywords: workplace-based assessment, clinical competence, at risk students, investment, longitudinal assessment