This presentation is about an electronic student portfolio project, which started in order to compensate for the lack of manpower in a single-instructor program and to facilitate students' self-learning. Students first create paper portfolios as part of the requirements for the language course, which will then be converted to electronic format and stored in their respective folders on the server space. The data include text files of their various writing assignments, audio recordings and video clips of their self-introduction and speech. They will then put the materials together as a web page while learning the basics of a web development tool with a template provided by the instructor.
Creating a portfolio has proven to be an effective tool for encouraging students to go back to some earlier assignments, revise them carefully and integrate new materials into old tasks, which makes them realize how much progress they have made since then, and help them assess and re-assess what they can already do in Japanese. Electronic students portfolios will also save our storage space in our office which could easily be filled with piles of copies of students? work. When students graduate, we can take their work off from the server space and burn a data CD, and students will have a copy of all their work in Japanese on a CD and can show it to their friends and host family in Japan, teachers at other institutions and potential employers as evidence of their various skills in Japanese.
Our institution's experience of the creation of electronic student portfolios will be shared with teachers of other institutions with similar interests, including preparations, steps, software we used, pros and cons of handling assignments electronically, dos and don'ts for various tasks relating to both paper and electronic students portfolios.