Reflective Social Portfolios for Feedback and Peer Mentoring

This paper describes a process of migration from formal, paper-based, institutionally owned processes towards informal, social, student-centred personal development. In terms of tool use, this journey involves moving from isolated personal silos to flexible online networks which attempts to use social tools to increase engagement with education. We describe here the evidence we have collected and analyzed which shows that social network portfolios allow powerful yet highly granular feedback loops and encourage the emergence of peer support and mentoring networks. The only useful web tools are those which students choose to use. By harnessing the attraction of social networks, we are attempting to claw back a segment of the attention economy from the purely social and direct the focus towards socially-constructed reflection and engagement with education.