Advantages and Disadvantages of Eportfolio Implementation in Primary Education

: The research presented in this article attempts to capture the views of teachers of elementary education about the advantages, disadvantages, difficulties and obstacles in the application of the portal as a rating and self-evaluation tool by the students. The survey, which constitutes the second part of a major research within the context of master thesis, was conducted in the second semester of 2016-2017 school year using anonymous written and electronic questionnaires, filled in by 215 elementary education teachers of all specialties from the first educational area of Athens. Most respondents are cautious about the benefits of using eportfolio, drawing attention to caution, lack of culture as barriers to its implementation, as well as basic problems such as lack of appropriate classroom infrastructure and the absense of eportfolio-related training.

Regarding previous surveys, there are few documented surveys concerning the advantages and disadvantages on the difficulties and obstacles from using the portfolio (Coutinho & Bottentuit, 2008;Parker et al., 2012;Apostolopoulou, 2012).This article attempts to bridge this gap.

Background
Eportfolio is an online collection of digital artifacts such us documents, photos, videos, music composition, presentations and soon (Abrami & Barrett, 2005) which are designed to support pedagogical processes and evaluation purposes.It is the electronic version of the portfolio.Its most important aspect that students decide what eportfolio will contain (Lorenzo & Ittleson, 2005a).
Eportfolio belongs to the alternative forms of assessment that have been developed as a counterweight to traditional methods, aiming at assessing students' attitudes, skills and performance.
They are what is essentially authentic techniques through which students are intended to meet daily routine and real life (Paris & Ayres, 1994), encouraging reflection and self-assessment and contributing to the development of social and metacognitive skills (Segers, 1999).
Eportfolio actively involves students to the educational process (Canada, 2002;Sherry & Barrett, 2005), while at the same time stimulates their interest as they get familiar with Information and Communications Technology (Barrett & Sherry, 2005;Yancey, 2001).Furthermore, eportfolio is characterized by adaptability to the needs, interests, peculiarities and skills of the students (Abrami & Barrett, 2005;Cooper & Love, 2004;Kilbane & Milman, 2005).Also, eportfolio does not restrict classroom learning (Ahm 2004;Health, 2005), while it promotes student-centered learning (Health, 2005).Skills such as feedback (Lorenzo & Ittleson, 2005), collaborative learning communication can be developed by using the eportfolio (Abrami & Barrett, 2005).Concerning the teachers, eportfolio provides a broader picture of the student (Love & Cooper, 2004), as well as being an effective tool for assessing student's skills, knowledge and assessment in general (Barrett, 2000;Health, 2005).Also, the cost of creation and management is minimal to zero (Health, 2005).
However, many critics favor several disadvantages and organizational problems, among which are the claim that eportfolio requires specialized knowledge on ICT (Spring, 2001), it is a tedious and timeconsuming process, since reviews as well as the final evaluation require enough time (Galanou, 2007), it questions of the credibility of the assessment, along with the difficulty in evaluating (Linn & Gronlund, 2000), it requires logistical infrastructure (Health, 2005;Butler, 2006), it may lead to more students being evaluated for their technological knowledge (Butler, 2006) and can file students and schools according to their socio-economic level (Seely, 1994).

Purpose and research questions
The aim of this paper is to explore the attitudes and perceptions of elementary school teachers concerning the advantages and disadvantages of using eportfolio as well as the difficulties and obstacles -problems of organizational nature of exploitation of eportfolio as a diffentiated means of student assessment and selfassessment.
For this reason, these research questions have arisen: The analysis of questionnaires was done with appropriate Pearson r controls for to establish whether there are statistically significant differences in the percentages between groups of questions, where a level of statistical significance was used a = 0.05 (5%).
The analysis of the questionnaires was done with correlation tables, appropriate Pearson r controls to see if there are statistically significant differences in the percentages between groups.A statistical significance level of a = 0.05 (5%) was used for the controls.
Finally, Crosstabs were tested for possible relationships between particular variables.

Results
The Profile and the Qualifications of the

Participants Involved in the Survey
The table 1 shows the highest percentages of participants' general and demographic data  According to data, statistically significant correlations emerged.Regarding the importance of the eportfolio's benefits, the findings are as follows:

Evaluation of the significance of advantages and disadvantages of eportfolio
(a) a weak positive correlation (0,177) was found along with the qualifications (Table 6) with a margin of error of less than 1% (p = 0,010).In regard to the significance of eportfolio disadvantages it comes: a) a weak negative correlation (-0,161) with a margin of error of less than 5% (p = 0,018) combined with the B level qualification in ICT (Table 9).b) a weak positive correlation (0,155) with a margin of error of less than 5% (p = 0,023) in combination with sex (Table 10).
The European Educational Researcher | 9 Regarding the scale of assessing the organizational nature of problems related to eportfolio use, a relatively weak positive correlation (0.366) with a margin of error of less than 0.1% (p = 0.001) was identified and combined with the upgrading of the quality of teaching and the learning process from computer use (Table 11).Teachers who have stated that the quality of the teaching and learning process has been upgraded through the use of computers, regard the organizational problems of exploiting the eportfolio as very important.

Table 12
Linking the upgrade of the quality of training with the use of New Technologies and the Scale of the assessment of the organizational nature of the problems related to the use of eportfolio

Scale of assessment of the organizational nature of problems related to the use of eportfolio
To what extent do you consider that the quality of the teaching and learning process has been upgraded from the use of PCs?

Discussions
As to the first research question concerning the most important advantages of using eportfolio (table 2) the respondents "partly agree" in all the subcategories.
More specifically, 54.9% believe that learning is focused on the student, while 49.3% of the students are actively involved in the evaluation of their progress.
Continuing the first research question about the major drawbacks of eportfolio use (table 3), respondents partly agree (40%) that eportfolio assessment is a laborious and time-consuming process (Galanou, 2007), while they fully agree (56.3%) that appropriate equipment and specialized assistance are required (Health, 2005;Butler, 2006).There is no clear point of view (and I do not agree, nor disagree) about whether eportfolio highlights the student's strengths rather than their weaknesses (39.1%) or the reliability of the student's score (37.7%), but they agree (42.3%) that it focuses on the student's product evaluation and on the diversity of the evaluation criteria by evaluator (32.3%).They fully agree with Seely (1994) that the disadvantage of non-family students (38.1%) is considered a key disadvantage.Generally, seems to be hesitation in the views of the participants regarding the disadvantages as they have been highlighted in international and domestic literature (Butler, 2006;Challis, 2005;Galanou, 2007;Health, 2005;Linn & Gronlund, 2000;Seely, 1994;Spring, 2001;).
Regarding the difficulties (table 4) and obstacles to using eportfolio (table 5), interesting results have emerged.As far as the problems arising from the application of eportfolio in the educational and teaching process is concerned, the 38.6% of the participants greatly agree that lack of a culture and the inability to use alternative forms of assessment is significant, while they very much agree on the teachers' reluctance (39.1 %).They also strongly  Drosos & Tsakiridou, 2003), the limitations of the curriculum (Doukakis, 2006;Fotopoulou, 2012;McMillan, 2004) (McKinsey & Company, 1997) that are often inhibited (Kern et al.,2007, Somekh, 2008).
In the second sub-class concerning the organizational nature, teachers are very clear here as they " very much agree" that lack of adequate infrastructure in the classes (56.7%), the lack of a computer lab in school with the relevant literature (Butler, 2006;Fotopoulou, 2012;Health, 2005;Konstantinidis & Theodosiadou, 2015) pointing to the importance of the above mentioned as a blocking factor of the implementation of eportfolio.

Conclusions
Consequently, based on the findings of the survey, the following conclusions arise.Regarding the advantages of using eportfolio, the majority of teachers are skeptical, as the portfolio is a tool that does not requires the use of paper, which teachers highly consume in recent decades.Teachers, who also have a

Limitations
For the conduct of the survey, simple random sampling was chosen as a selection method to ensure a representative sample.According to Neuman (1997) the representativeness of the sample for a population of less than 2,000 is sufficient for 30% of the population and 10% for 10,000 -100,000.Since the 1st educational area in Athens counts more than 4,000 teachers of all specialties, permanent or seasonal, the desired rate is close to 15%.The 215 questionnaires collected correspond to 5.4% of the population of teachers in Athens.As can be seen from the foregoing, no generalization of research can be carried out.
a) what do participant teachers think are the most important advantages and disadvantages of using eportfolio?b) What do teachers think of the difficulties and the obstacles -problems of the organizational nature of the use of eportfolio?c) How do the perceptions and attitudes of teachers are related to the advantages and disadvantages of using eportfolio, as well as the difficulties and obstacles of using it as individuals?Methods The research presented in this article is the second part of a large-scale research, which was conducted in the context of postgraduate thesis, involving 215 primary school teachers from Athens' first educational district about the use of the portfolio as a tool for evaluating students where the views of teachers about the advantages, drawbacks, difficulties and obstacles to The European Educational Researcher | 3 the implementation of the portfolio are also seen.An anonymous questionnaire was used.The first part of the questionnaire includes general and demographic data.The second part includes elements of exploiting ICT in the school.The third part includes four questions related to the advantages, disadvantages, difficulties and organizational problems regarding the use of eportfolio.The program used for statistical analysis was SPSS v21.For the level of reliability, the Cronbach's Alpha index was used, which showed a high credibility coefficient score (0.809> 0.70) for all questionnaire scales (Bryman, 2015; Coughlan, Duhachek & Iacobucci, 2005).Below are presented the reliability analyzes of the questionnaire scales of this survey.Assessing the Significance of Advantages of Eportfolio: The scale consisted of seven items graded on a 5-grade scale, which evaluate the importance of eportfolio's benefits.The scale reached a high Cronbach's Alpha score (0.886).The results demonstrated that the seven-question eportfolio merit scale is of a very good level of reliability.Assessing the Significance of Disadvantages of Eportfolio: The scale consisted of seven items rated on a 5-point scale, which evaluated the significance of the drawbacks of eportfolio.The scale achieved an acceptable Cronbach's Alpha score (0.702).The results demonstrated that the seven-question eportfolio scale evaluation scale having a satisfactory level of reliability, too.Assessment of the significance of problems related to the use of eportfolio: The scale consisted of nine questions (items) rated on a 5-point scale, which assess the importance of problems related to the use of eportfolio.The scale achieved an acceptable Cronbach's Alpha score (0.790).The results showed that the scale of assessing the significance of the problems related to the use of eportfolio with 9 questions is also a satisfactory level of reliability.Assessment of the organizational nature of the problems related to the use of eportfolio: The scale consisted of five (5-point) rankings which assessed the importance of the organizational nature of problems related to the use of eportfolio.The scale reached an acceptable Cronbach's Alpha score (0.727).The results demonstrated that the scale of assessing the significance of the organizational nature of problems related to the use of eportfolio with 5 questions is of an adequate level of reliability, as well.

(
40.9%), as well as internet connection problems (44.2%) are an obstacle in the implementation of any alternative rating proposal such as eportfolio.In addition, they point out by "very much agreeing" how critical lack of training on the use of eportfolio (60.5%) along with familiarity with ICT (35.8%).The findings of this question are in line with similar research that highlights the importance of knowledge and training (Tsitouridou & Vryzas 2003; Chen & Chang 2006; Cartelli, 2008; Zarani & Oikonomidis, 2009; Christodoulou-Gliouou & Gourgioyou 2009) and problems when ICTs are generally integrated into education without strategical and educational planning (Nikolopoulou, 2009).The high rates of computer labs and Internet connection problems are in agreement higher level of education, certification in ICT and those who consider it necessary to use ICT in education, are very much in agreement with the advantages of using eportfolio.The views of the majority of sample educators on the disadvantages of using eportfolio highlight as main reasons for contribution of non-family assistance, as well as the appropriate equipment required and the specialized knowledge they need to have.Of course, the sample participants who have been certified in the second level of ICT do not consider the disadvantages of eportfolio so worth mentioning.On the other hand, female teachers as well as teachers who do not have a computer lab in their school feel that the disadvantages regarding the use of eportfolio are so worth considering.Regarding the difficulties and obstacles of eportfolio utilization, the majority of respondents rank very high on the scale of assessing the significance of problems in using eportfolio, lack of culture, the avoidance of innovation, the differentiation on the part of teachers, while stressing lack of support from parents and the school community.On the other hand, most teachers perceive lack of adequate infrastructure in the classes and lack of relevant training related to the subject of eportfolio as major problems.The aforementioned are emphasized by the fact that the teachers who claim that the quality of the teaching and learning process has been upgraded from the use of PCs consider the organizational problems concerning the use of eportfolio very important.
The survey was limited to a specific area of Greece, not conducted nationwide.Another issue that may potentially inhibit and give different results to the research is the social stratification of the regions belonging to the 1st educational area in Athens.For example, teachers who work in areas with a high proportion of immigrants and where the technical infrastructure of the school is rare, they are expected to give different responses from teachers working in areas with a high standard of living and the technical infrastructure of the school is much greater.Proposals for further researchDue to research constraints, several proposals for further research arise as such: a) the implementation a similar survey among teachers across the country, b) Pilot implementation in all classes of elementary school in order to explore the advantages, disadvantages or weaknesses, c) Exploring the views of teachers and students who participated in the implementation of eportfolio programs.

Table 1
Data Related to the Profile and Qualifications of the Participant Involved

Table 2
Assessing the Significance of Advantages of eportfolio

the Importance of Problems and Organizational Barriers Affecting the Use of the eportfolioTable 4
Evaluation of the Significance of Problems Related to the Use of eportfolio

Table 5
Assessment of the Organizational Nature of the Problems Related to the Use of eportfolio

Table 9
Acquisition of certification or not ICT B level and the Efficiency Assessment Scale

Table 10
Gender and Scale Estimation of the Significance of eportfolio Disadvantages

Table 11
Linking the existence of a computer lab in schools and Scale Estimation of the Significance of eportfolio