How the University of South Wales Is Using an ePortfolio to Transform Art Psychotherapy and Music Therapy Training
- Tess
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
The University of South Wales (USW) has adopted the MyProgress ePortfolio platform to support its MA Art Psychotherapy and MA Music Therapy programmes, two HCPC-regulated courses that prepare students for clinical practice across NHS, education, and community settings. The implementation marks an expansion of ePortfolio-supported education beyond traditional healthcare disciplines and into the creative arts therapies.
Why Do Arts Therapy Programmes Need a Digital ePortfolio?
Art psychotherapy and music therapy training presents assessment challenges that differ substantially from those found in medicine or nursing. Students develop therapeutic competence through deeply relational, creative processes — facilitating art-making with vulnerable populations, improvising musically in response to a client's emotional state, or interpreting symbolic communication within a psychodynamic framework. Evidencing this kind of professional growth through paper-based methods or generic learning management systems is difficult at best.
The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), which regulates arts therapists in the UK, updated its Standards of Proficiency for Arts Therapists in September 2023. These standards require graduating students to demonstrate competence across areas including clinical assessment, evidence-based practice, reflective capacity, ethical reasoning, and modality-specific skills. For art therapists, that includes the ability to use a range of art-making materials and techniques competently. For music therapists, it encompasses improvisation, structured musical activities, listening approaches, and composition. A purpose-built ePortfolio provides a structured way for students to map their developing competence against these specific standards throughout their training.
What Makes USW's Therapeutic Studies Programmes Distinctive?
USW's Faculty of Life Sciences and Education runs both the MA Art Psychotherapy and the MA Music Therapy as part-time, three-year programmes within the Allied Health division.
The MA Music Therapy at USW is the only blended learning music therapy course currently running in the UK, designed to broaden access to the profession. Both programmes place clinical placements at the heart of the training experience, with students progressing from facilitating workshops, observational and shadowing placements in Year 1 to supervised clinical work with diverse client groups in Years 2 and 3.
This structure, combining shared interdisciplinary learning with individual clinical placement journeys, creates a complex assessment landscape. Each student accumulates evidence from multiple placement settings, supervision sessions, experiential groups, and reflective practice across three years. Managing this evidence coherently, while maintaining alignment to HCPC standards, is precisely the challenge a competency-based ePortfolio is designed to address.
How Does MyProgress Support Clinical Placement Tracking in Arts Therapies?
MyProgress is a cloud-based ePortfolio platform purpose-built for healthcare and professional education, currently supporting programmes across more than 65 universities in the UK, Australia, and the Middle East. Its architecture is designed around competency frameworks rather than generic file storage, which means it can be configured to reflect the specific HCPC Standards of Proficiency for Arts Therapists, including the profession-specific elements that distinguish art therapy, dramatherapy, and music therapy practice.
For USW's programmes, the platform supports several core requirements. Students can log clinical placement hours and activities against programme-specific competencies.
Supervisors, who may be working across multiple placement sites in NHS trusts, schools, hospices, or community organisations, can provide structured feedback directly within the platform. The mobile-first design means evidence can be captured in the moment, which matters when clinical work takes place in settings where returning to a desktop computer may not be practical. Students also use the platform to log and submit their personal therapy sessions, a requirement of both programmes.
Tutors gain real-time visibility into cohort progression: which students are on track, which placements are generating sufficient learning opportunities, and where additional support may be needed.
For programmes preparing students for HCPC registration, this kind of oversight is not merely convenient — it is essential for demonstrating that the programme consistently produces graduates who meet the threshold standards for safe and effective practice.
"We have valued building the bespoke platform with MyProgress and tailoring it to our exact requirements. This has streamlined our workload and enabled us to work more closely with students to support their learning journeys and provide support as needed to ensure robust, safe practice on placement."
Dr. Beth Pickard, Senior Lecturer, Researcher and Music Therapist, University of South Wales
What Are the Broader Implications for Allied Health and Creative Therapy Education?
The adoption of ePortfolio platforms in arts therapy training reflects a wider trend across HCPC-regulated professions. As competency-based education becomes the standard approach for demonstrating fitness to practise, programmes in occupational therapy, physiotherapy, social work, speech and language therapy, and now the creative arts therapies are recognising that assessment systems need to do more than store documents. They need to make competence visible, trackable, and auditable.
For programme leaders considering similar implementations, USW's approach illustrates several principles worth noting. First, the decision to bring art psychotherapy and music therapy onto a shared platform, while preserving modality-specific assessment pathways, demonstrates that a well-configured ePortfolio can accommodate disciplinary diversity without forcing programmes into a generic template. Second, the integration with USW's existing placement management infrastructure ensures that the ePortfolio operates as part of a coherent educational technology ecosystem rather than as an isolated tool.
MyProgress also integrates with leading placement management systems including InPlace and SONIA, as well as learning management systems such as Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle, an important consideration for institutions where arts therapy programmes sit within larger faculties that have already invested in particular technology stacks.
What Should Programme Leaders Ask When Evaluating ePortfolios for Therapy Training?
If you are leading a programme in art psychotherapy, music therapy, dramatherapy, or a related creative therapy discipline, and you are exploring digital ePortfolio solutions, the following questions are worth considering:
Can the platform be configured to your specific regulatory standards?
HCPC Standards of Proficiency include both generic and profession-specific elements. Your ePortfolio should reflect the standards relevant to your modality, not just a generic competency checklist.
Does it support the complexity of clinical placement supervision?
Arts therapy placements often involve supervision from practitioners working in diverse, sometimes geographically dispersed settings. The platform needs to accommodate external supervisors without creating an administrative burden.
Can students capture evidence in clinical settings?
Mobile functionality matters. Reflective entries, session notes, and supervisor feedback should be recordable where the clinical work happens, not only when students are back on campus.
Does it provide programme-level reporting for accreditation?
Demonstrating to the HCPC (or to your institution's quality assurance processes) that graduates consistently meet the standards requires cohort-level analytics, not just individual portfolios.
Will it integrate with your existing systems?
Single sign-on, LMS integration, and placement management system connectivity reduce friction for students, supervisors, and administrators.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which accreditation standards does MyProgress support for arts therapies?
MyProgress can be configured to map directly to the HCPC Standards of Proficiency for Arts Therapists, including the profession-specific standards for art therapists, dramatherapists, and music therapists that were updated in September 2023.
Can MyProgress handle placements across multiple external organisations?
Yes. The platform is designed for distributed clinical education models where supervisors and placement providers are located across different organisations, including NHS trusts, schools, community settings, and private practice.
Is MyProgress only used for healthcare programmes?
While MyProgress was originally developed for medical education, it now supports programmes across nursing, midwifery, veterinary science, allied health professions, teacher education, and — with USW — the creative arts therapies. The platform currently serves more than 65 universities across the UK, Australia, and the Middle East.
How does MyProgress differ from a generic ePortfolio or LMS?
MyProgress is structured around competency frameworks and regulatory standards rather than generic file storage. It provides competency tracking, clinical placement management, multi-source feedback, and programme-level analytics designed specifically for professional education programmes that prepare students for registration with regulatory bodies.
If your institution is exploring ePortfolio solutions for arts therapy, counselling, or other HCPC-regulated programmes, we'd welcome a conversation about how MyProgress might support your students, supervisors, and programme team. Contact us to arrange a discussion.
