Jessica Lees¹
Kim Allison¹, Tandy Hastings-Ison¹ and Karen Donald¹
1 The University of Melbourne

Background
Health professional education (HPE) focusses on structured teaching and practice of technical and non-technical skills. Increasingly, there is a pedagogical shift towards an approach that develops self-aware, self-regulated and independent thinking future clinicians. Interest in ePortfolio adoption in HPE has been on the rise because of the implications of ePortfolio on developing self-regulated learning and on student agency. 

Summary of work 
The Doctor of Physiotherapy Program at the University of Melbourne underwent a systematic review and reform between 2018-2020, resulting in a refreshed program that included the embedding of programmatic e-Portfolio across the three-year program. The introduction of ePortfolios was scaffolded by staff and student training in self-regulated learning, self- authorship, and the ePortfolio platform as well as assessment and mentoring. 

Results
The first two-years of the program have been delivered and the success and challenges of the approach closely monitored. Training and mentoring sessions indicate that students have greater capacity for self-authorship and self-regulated learning. Students struggled with the concepts of self- regulated learning, self- authorship and the use of ePortfolios to develop these skills. 

Discussion
This study explores the use of ePortfolios to support self-regulated learning and self-authorship in Physiotherapy education. Our experience describes multiple challenges to this approach. To make sense of our findings, we will make comparisons to the literature related to the use of ePortfolios in HPE and suggest solutions. 

Conclusion
The study will be of interest to educators who are considering or who have implemented ePorfolios in HPE. 

Take-home messages
Building skills in self-authorship and self-regulation is important in HPE and ePortfolios lend themselves to developing these skills however introduction of ePortfolio is not without its challenges and needs to be well scaffolded 

Formal evaluation of our approach and student experiences is planned for the next stage of our study 

References (maximum three) 

Batson, T., Coleman, K. S., Chen, H. L., Watson, C. E., Rhodes, T. L., & Harver, A. (Eds.). (2017) Field guide to eportfolio. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities 

Nguyen, L., & Ikeda, M. (2015). The effects of ePortfolio-based learning model on student self-regulated learning. Active Learning In Higher Education, 16(3), 197-209.