E-portfolios

[Lori Holcomb]

E-portfolios are organized examples of student work collected and displayed in digital form. Eportfolios can serve a variety of purposes including showcasing a student's best work, showing growth over a time period or within a discipline, and as a form of authentic assessment. All portfolios are meant to invite conversation between the author and the viewer of the portfolio and allow for feedback and reflection.

Read the following article, "The Digital Convergence: Expanding the Portfolio Model" http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0441.asp?bhcp=1

and explore several of the links within the article to see examples of portfolio use by students and instructors in higher education.

Questions for discussion: What do you see as potential benefits of using eportfolios for students? What do you see as potential benefits of using portfolios from the instructor's perspective? What types of obstacles might we face when beginning to implement eportfolios? Provide an example or idea from the article or related links that seemed particularly useful or worth considering.

Additional resources:

http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/eportfolios.htm

http://electronicportfolios.org/blog/

[Scott Jewitt]

What do you see as potential benefits of using eportfolios for students?
There are many potential benefits to students using eportfolios. First, on a broad note, I think that they allow students to maintain a work-in-progress. That is the portfolio can easily be updated, reviewed, and reflected upon. It also can function as resume of sorts, and be tailored to academics or work. Additionally, students (or whoever) can maintain multiple portfolios, grouped by intended purpose. I also think that the ability to review and reflect upon past work is an excellent chance for someone to notice trends in their own work that they may not otherwise recognize. This self-review may instigate new ideas and will be an on-going process that may spawn new avenues for exploration.


What do you see as potential benefits of using portfolios from the instructor's perspective?
From an instructors perspective eportfolios offer several potential benefits. One immediate benefit would be the ease of access—access to large quantities of work either from one student or multiple students. Also with no hardcopy or paper copies, there is nothing to have to request and wait for, nothing to lose, and nothing to have to return—all the info is available online.


What types of obstacles might we face when beginning to implement eportfolios?
The benefit of access may also prove to be an obstacle in implementing eportfolios. Schools in low socio-economic areas many not have (m)any computers, and following, the students in this area may not have computers at home either. This reminds me of some of our conversations last week on the Digital Divide. Another obstacle that I foresee would be the time and money spent to train teachers that will in turn train students to use eportfolios.


Provide an example or idea from the article or related links that seemed particularly useful or worth considering.
I like the Greenberg article that mentions the three types of eportfolios: Showcase, Structured, and Learning. In my opinion, the Learning eportfolio style is the most conducive to a portfolio that can grow, change, and evolve: be tailored to different objectives (school applications, job applications, etc…) Having too much structure or an end product in mind may be deleterious to the inherent dynamic qualities of eportfolios.

[alison]

The use of e-portfolios really opens up students as well as instructors to so many possibilities. Students have a compiled file of all of their works, which they may not see the value in at the time, but will as they grow older and have vague recollections about something that they once wrote. Many students come to revelations in their writings, and it may not be until later that that revelation will come into play, perhaps in a larger research project. Access to all the things you have written is a pretty cool possession to have, especially when you start that collection early. The opportunity for assessment is not unique to the instructors point of view. Students will be able to go back and judge the progression of their ideas and thoughts as well as their writing capabilities. Maybe you could even have students review and do an assessment of this progression as an assignment to be put in the portfolio. It is always neat to see and reflect on how you have changed. I think that students will be proud of their portfolios, not to mention that they will potentially be useful to them when applying for jobs, college, graduate school, etc. They can even expand on earlier works for a research paper or thesis. I would say the benefits are greater for students who plan to continue their education after high school, but they may still reside as a source of pride to some...at least at some point in their lives.

From a teacher's point of view the value of the e-portfolio is tremendous! You have benchmarks, show of growth and learning (or lack thereof), evidence for your assessments when parents complain students are turning in good work and not making good grades. Also, going off one idea that students could use old papers for jumping-off boards, teachers could monitor this for plagarism (with other student's work) or continual use of the same paper, unchanged. Teachers could possibly use e-portfolios as evidence for growth in their particular class...the same way we use standardized test scores for accountability. Students are on a certain level when they enter the grade and they have progressed to a certain level by the end of it, mastering different usage or techniques, or vocabulary.

Obstacles arise when it comes to implementing the e-portfolios in the beginning. Teachers will likely be confused, and students will be confused as to how to organize, how to contribute, how to edit, etc. After it is all set up and rolling though, I feel that this issue will evaporate. One other challenge will be reaching students who do not have internet access or interest in using it. Another one that I thought of while reading Jason's reply, was what if at some point these become outdated or inaccessable. I know this must be looking a good deal into the future, but the way things are moving, it's a valid concern. Who know?!?!

One idea that I thought was really interesting was the idea of the wiki-portfolio. That way students are in charge of an entire webpage, it is more accessable for input and responses from teachers or classmates, students can go back and edit and it is accesable from anywhere that you can get internet! I think wikis are the way to go, they will likely not be outdated and they don't require any software to run, share, or create! I guess one drawback to this would be its accessability to every or anyone. Students may not feel comfortable putting their writings on the internet, especially if their peers can view and comment on it. Perhaps wikis should be used with a more mature crowd.