Reference no: EM133877198

Homework: E-Portfolio

The e-portfolio requires students to reflect on the practice domains of direct comprehensive care and educative practice.Portfolio development prompts you to look back, to digest and debrief, and to review what happened so that you can set new goals and determine next steps. Reflection encourages you to assess strengths and challenges, as well as your growth and development. You are then able to discern between needed areas for further development and what has already been mastered, thereby enabling you to project your future learning goals. These goals will be communicated in your development plan for your next clinical course(s). Reflection through stories within the context of real-life practice situations increases the recall and transfer of learning to new patient care situations, and to better problem solve in the present.

Critical Thinking and E-Portfolio Development

Critical thinking is the underlying process for your e-portfolio development. Critical thinking is a productive, positive way of examining facts in a different context. It forces you to ask the uncomfortable but necessary questions about why decisions are made and assists you in developing methods for continual improvement. You should identify six critical thinking competencies: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation.

The selection of learning events for your e-portfolio provides the opportunity to practice three critical thinking competencies:

1. Interpretation: You decide how the e-portfolio guidelines can be operationalized. (e.g., You determine a learning event that demonstrates the domain processes.) Get the instant assignment help.

2. Analysis: You decide which learning event best demonstrates your learning in relation to the domain processes.

3. Evaluation: You decide how the learning event demonstrates your learning in relation to the domain processes. (e.g., the event represents the first occasion you have performed a skill, and you recognize that more experience is necessary to become competent.)

The remaining three critical thinking competencies are part of reflection:

1. Inference: You reason based on factual knowledge or evidence. (e.g., when your patient grimaces during the performance of a skill, you might infer that your technique created pain for the patient.)

2. Explanation: You apply the experience gained in one clinical experience to the next. It is "thinking about thinking" (metacognition) that will ultimately guide your learning. (e.g., you review your technique to identify the source of the pain and identify strategies to reduce that pain.)

3. Self-regulation: You develop a development plan to enable you to meet your identified challenges. (e.g., you decide to review pathophysiology, discuss the skill with experts, and expose yourself to more opportunities to practice the skill to reduce patient pain and your anxiety while performing the procedure).

It is helpful to know that emotions are a significant element in the critical thinking process. For example, the fear of personal and professional consequence-when you attempt to change practice, question authority, or make a mistake-can be powerful. Rather than avoiding those situations, critically thinking through those fears can provide a powerful growth experience. Emotions are a part of the human experience and provides an opening to allow you to examine values, attitudes and assumptions underlying the emotion. Throughout the program, you are encouraged to consider the emotional components essential to critical learning events. This reflection is key to e-portfolio development.

Phases in E-Portfolio

There are four self-assessment phases used in e-portfolio development for each course within the program:

I. Collection: During this phase, you actively collect materials that demonstrates your understanding of the standards/competencies.

II. Selection: During this phase, you critically analyze which learning event is most influential to your learning. You are encouraged to review the specified standards provided for every process in the required domain. The specified standards are, essentially, the meets or independent level within the end-of-program domain rubrics. Based on the specified standards, select events from your clinical practice and course work to add to your eportfolio that best demonstrates your learning journey for each process in each domain.

III. Reflection: During this phase of e-portfolio development, you will reflect on your learning related to the chosen event. This is where you connect theory with clinical experience, thereby narrowing the gap between thought and action in a complex practice setting.