E-portfolios

What are they?

E-Portfolio is a generic term for a wide range of activities and tools which allow the collection of a record of the work of an individual in electronic format. Much use of these tools is focused on personal reflection and growth, but they can also be used for assessment. Usually this is done in the context of formal education or work, but an individual may choose to maintain an e-portfolio for themselves. The work collected in an e-portfolio can be in any digital media format and may be public, private or a combination of the two. Many tools in this space allow users to manage access to their materials in fairly complex ways. At its most developed there is a vision of a digital record of achievement which can be ported from school to college to work and so on. However this is a long way from reality with issues including interoperability and culture a factor.

 JISC infoNet have produced a  useful guide to e-portfolios, and there is now also a new JISC Effective Practice with e-portfolios guide as well, avilable in  pdf or  word.

How can I use them with my students?

An e-portfolio provides a place for students to collect a portfolio of their work both formal and informal. Many also explicitly support the process of review and reflection on this work through tools such as blogs and the sharing or disseminating of this work through social networking type functionality.

Examples

•  The Centre for recording achievement have 103  Case studies of e-portfolios used in higher education.
• Ravensbourne describe  using e-portfolios for art and design students.
• The  ALT newsletter has a case on  Introducing e-portfolios across a paper dominated university.

Where can I get them?

The list of open source ePortfolio systems to date includes:

•  OSPI
•  Mahara
•  Elgg
•  MyStuff
• Open source content management systems that have been adapted to use as ePortfolio systems include  Drupal and  Plone

There are several proprietary e-portfolio tools, the most well known being  PebblePad.

What else do I need to know?

As the use of e-portfolios is becoming an increasingly core part of provision in many institutions there is a lot of debate as to who should “own” an e-portfolio. Whilst most people would be happy to say that they belong to the individual most are hosted on an institutional server and so are tied to membership of that institution. While there are initiatives to develop interoperability standards in this space they are not yet widely adopted. The best source of information on this area is the CETIS  Portfolio SIG.

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