Qualitative study of the impact of an authentic electronic portfolio in undergraduate medical education

Abstract

Background: Portfolios are increasingly used in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. Four medica schools have collaborated with an established NHS electronic portfolio provider to develop and implement a authentic professional electronic portfolio for undergraduate students. We hypothesized that using an authenti portfolio would have significant advantages for students, particularly in familiarizing them with the tool many wil continue to use for years after graduation. This paper describes the early evaluation of this undergraduate portfoli at two participating medical schools Methods: To gather data, a questionnaire survey with extensive free text comments was used at School 1, an three focus groups were held at School 2. This paper reports thematic analysis of students' opinions expressed i the free text comments and focus groups Results: Five main themes, common across both schools were identified. These concerned the purpose, use an acceptability of the portfolio, advantages of and barriers to the use of the portfolio, and the impacts on bot learning and professional identity Conclusions: An authentic portfolio mitigated some of the negative aspects of using a portfolio, and had positive effect on students' perception of themselves as becoming past of the profession. However, significan barriers to portfolio use remained, including a lack of understanding of the purpose of a portfolio and a perceive damaging effect on feedback.