Welcome New CoBa Trainees

Dear Dirk, Daniel and Katja,
welcome to the CoBa trainee group
looking forward to meeting you soon
best wishes
Jude

A personal view on portfolios

My portfolio contains a number of items:
- a program in which activities, course and congress are named which are needed to participate in or follow during your training
- a list of personal facts concernig personal accounts, completed and planned parts of the training, place where these parts were done, date of diploma's etc
- a number of lists containing several items to use as a guideline for development on different items concerning organisation, education, communication, managing nurses etc.
- an evaluation list to fill in in advance of the evaluation sessions - to keep track of plans and progression and set practical goals for yourself and methods/ means to do it
- an evaluation of the staff and others concerning the 360 degrees evaluation which is repaeted every time there is an evaluation session
- I admitted a list of practical accomplishments for example the number of central lines I placed
- a space to put the registration/diploma's you get when taking a certain course / participated in a congress etc
- a space for the "short clinical observation forms" (evaluation of a short moment of observation - matter of minutes, evaluates just a small aspect f.e. placing a line)

I only have a paper version, at present.
Especially the list of trainings/courses etc we needed to get done before you end the program was new for me and is a good thing to have.
For us it is not essential to keep a list of practical accomplishement (like IV lines) but I use it for myself as a reminder of what aspect to keep paying extra attention to. The questions which should guide you through a good self evaluation are most often quite broad/ open. It depends very much on the person filling it in how much it is useful, it appears to be very subjective. I find them sometimes vague and not always that useful, although they can also help. I'll see if I can send you some examples.

I do agree with the article - Driessen et al 2007 - "Portfolios in medical education: why do they meet with mixed success? A systematic review"
- don't make it to extended - only feels like filling in paperwork and not as an invitation to think and develop
- provide room for ones own ideas/ marking points
- if you do prescribe make it clear what is meant to be done - list of practical accomplishments, congress followed etc
- I do like the page which askes for specific goals and plans how to do it, although it can be thought to formulative.
- evaluation the opinion of the student through his portfolio against the opinion of his/her tutors is essential!!! Otherwise it will be just work needed to be done and not seen as a learning device (it is difficult to give a good / semi-objective evaluation of your own functioning without comparing it with the opinion of others)

One extra remark: I do think it is necessary for the trainer to actively ask for and check certain aspects. Maybe not the best way but I think in an education programme it is tempting to show your best sides and keep the rest a little bit in the background, while most often these aspects need extra work. Checking helps find the weak points and make them better. .

Best wishes! Annechien

Hello Julien from CYIM in France

Welcome Julien we look forward to working with you on this project

Welcome Raquel and Caroline from Spain

Hello Raquel and Caroline thank you for wanting to be involved with the cobafolio trainee project

e-portfolio SWOT Analysis

Welcome more authors to the blog

Thank you Tobias,Georg and Shelley for subscribing and please feel free to post to this blog
we have a new trainee joining our group this week from Finland - Stepani Bendel
So we now 28 participants in our e-portfolio group here is a list of names and the countries they represent:-
Austria - Georg Roth & Ulrich Thaler,
Bulgaria - Tzvetan Filipov & Nadia Keremidchieva,
Croatia - Ana Vujaklija
Czech Republic - Andrea Vlkova
Denmark - Brigit Riis Anderson
Finland - Stepani Bendel
France - Jean Della Monica
Germany - Utz Bartels & Tobias Ninke
Greece - Pontikis Kostis , Apostolakou Heleni , Nina Maghina
Hungary - Andras Mikor & Tamas Leiner:
Ireland - Ivan Hayes
Israel - Shaul Lev
Italy -Laura Ferla, Christina Santonocito
The Netherlands - Annechien Van Hove
Poland - Tomasz Albrecht
Portugal - Sónia Teixeira & Ricardo Freitas
Switzerland - Christina Passath
UK - Anwar Shah, Nick Lees, Shelley Vamadevan

Thank you Cristina

thank you very much to invite me to discuss about portafolio. I think that it is a very intresting initiative, I agree to do it..and with enthusiasm,also because no study can demonstrate a danger of portfolio for the results of education. I like this initiative..!
Cristina Santonocito (Italy)