E-Portfolio Technologies

E-Portfolios and Traditional Portfolios

An e-portfolio (also spelled ePortfolio) is a digital collection of artifacts collected and organized to show the accomplishments of an individual, group, or organization. A portfolio, electronic or otherwise, may be defined as a curated collection of examples of an individual’s or group’s work in a specific setting, discipline, or medium. A portfolio is traditionally presented through print (photographs, text, illustration, etc.). The contents of an e-portfolio are entirely digital and may include text, graphics, audio, animation, or video contained within a server space for Web presentation, or on a portable electronic storage device such as a CD-ROM, DVD, or flash drive. E-portfolios are created by individuals and groups for a variety of purposes:

• Student e-portfolios may to be used for assessment of student progress and to support learning through guided practice in selecting items for the portfolio and developing reflective statements that accompany each item. Students may also use e-portfolios to present their work to potential employers.
• Professional e-portfolios may be used to showcase an individual’s professional accomplishments. Teaching faculty may create e-portfolios to present their work to current and prospective students, to share their work and ideas with colleagues, or to make examples of their work available to potential employers.
• Institutional e-portfolios may be used to present examples both of student and faculty accomplishments as well as data and analyses for self-study. Institutional e-portfolios can form the basis for a presentation focused on accreditation.

Within educational settings, portfolios are generally used to support development and assessment of student learning and for marketing. Though portfolios have been used in schools for decades, their use in other settings is much older and more established. Artists, models, designers, and writers traditionally keep a book, journal, or portfolio of their work to share with prospective employers or archive and preserve their body of work. These portfolios are typically either a collection of the individual’s best work or they are a collection of artifacts and reflection specifically required by a program, department, or college. Higher education faculty traditionally present portfolios or dossiers of their accomplishments (research, creative achievement, teaching, and professional service) as part of a faculty review process. These portfolios are traditionally used to determine, among other things, whether or not a student is progressing satisfactorily within a program of study, or whether or not a faculty member is eligible for contract renewal, tenure, or promotion. Portfolios for learning are a more recent development.

Portfolios for learning and assessment became popular in the 1980s, particularly in higher education writing programs. K–12 teachers made increased use of [Page 273]student-developed portfolios around this time and continue to use them for learning and assessment in middle and high school. Student portfolios gained popularity in higher education settings in the 1990s and have become common practice, especially in preservice teacher education. E-portfolios, that is, electronically based portfolios in which all artifacts and documentation are stored digitally and made available through computer-based media, became a thing of interest to teachers and university faculty in the 1990s; CD-ROM drives became commonplace and allowed for easy storage and distribution of large amounts of data, providing the space necessary for digital media artifacts such as high-resolution graphic images and digital video. E-portfolios continue to become increasingly common and are particularly appealing to millennial students who are particularly comfortable with computer-based media.

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