e-Portfolio Way: Life-Long Learning: e-Portfolio for Adult Education at KIT

Abstract

Education for the life-long learning must adjust to the rapidly changing social needs and must ensure timely life-long learning opportunities to adult learners. Kanazawa Institute of Technology (henceforth, KIT) initiated a new program based on an e-portfolio system to foster and support the life-long learning in the graduate program in 2004. This program was realized with the system called 'the KIT Portfolio Intelligence', which took care of the entire learning processes of individual students through the light of the Plan Do-Check-Action cycle for the curriculum as its fundamental educational concept. The learning processes and achievements as well as the acquired knowledge and skills in courses were logged and archived in the e-Portfolio across the board. Furthermore, the graduation thesis was placed as the final artifact or evidence of the showcase in the e Portfolio. Thus, by working with the e-Portfolio, each adult student set the goal of his/her own and planned the reflected objectives to accomplish the goal. The entire learning process was able to be monitored in the e-Portfolio. Thus, by working with the e-Portfolio, each adult student was able to step-by-step moving forward to his/her goal. This paper reports the experience as well as the effectiveness of the graduate program for adult learners that have been accumulated in the last several years.