E-Portfolio
An electronic porfolio (e-portfolio) is a purposeful collection of sample student work, demonstrations, and artifacts that showcase student's learning progression, achievement, and evidence of what students can do. The collection can include essays and papers (text-based), blog, multimedia (recordings of demonstrations, interviews, presentations, etc.), graphic.
Portfolios are considered as a learning and assessment tool
Student Learning: E-portfolio has been used to facilitate, document, and archive student learning. It is a learning tool for students to clarify their educational goals, integrate and solidify learning through reflection, and showcase achivement to potential employers. By having students reflect on what they learned, how they learned it, and how much they learned, they start to take control of their own learning. As Paulson and Paulson (1991) said, “portfolio is a laboratory where students construct meaning from their accumulated experience” (p. 5). As students select their representative work and reflect on what they learned, they start to make sense of their educational experiences in various courses and derive new meaning out of the process (Banta, 2003).
Assessment and accreditation: E-Portfolio can also function as a tool for faculty to monitor and evaluate program effectiveness.To collectively examine student achievement for program improvement, portfolio can be a useful way to organize, sample, and assess what students gained out of the program. Portfolios enable faculty to not only observe what students know and can do, but also learn how students learn through student reflections.
What portfolio is NOT: A portfolio is not a placeholder for all or random student work. In order to ensure that the portfolio process is educational and that it serves as a way to assess student learning outcomes, instructors need to be mindful about which artifacts need to be included for what purposes.
Available tools (free or low cost)
- b-learning (CANVAS) has an e-portfolio tool.
- Wordpress
- Edublog
- Google Site
Sample practices
- UC Berkeley, Engineering 125 "Ethics in Engineering" (Mary Sunderland): http://engineeringethics.edublogs.org/e-portfolios-2/(link is external)
- UW Stout, e-portfolio assessment rubric: http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/rubrics/eportfoliorubric.html(link is external)
- Spanish BA portfolio example that was used for program-level outcomes assessment: Grau Sempere, A., Mohn, M. C., & Pieroni, R. (2009). Improving educational effectiveness and promoting internal and external information-sharing through student learning outcomes assessment. In J. M. Norris, J. McE. Davis, C. Sinicrope, & Y. Watanabe (eds.), Toward useful program evaluation in college foreign language education (pp. 139-162). Honolulu: University of Hawaii, National Foreign Language Resource Center.
Resources
Web resources
- One quite useful web-based overview of portfolio assessment, with training modules:http://www.nclrc.org/portfolio/modules.html(link is external)
- Helen Barrett’s website: http://sites.helenbarrett.net/portfolio/Home(link is external)
- Reviews of the e-portfolio platform providers: http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/10/12/a-survey-of-the-electronic-portfolio-market-sector.aspx
Journals and presentation archives
- A free online journal that started in 2011: International Journal of ePortfolio: http://www.theijep.com/current.cfm(link is external)
- AAC&U hosted an e-portfolio forum titled “Deepening high impact learning forum”(link is external). All sessions are video-recorded and archived.
- A conference dedicated for ePortfolios—The Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-based Learning:http://www.aaeebl.org/2012conference(link is external)
Professional organizations and listserv
- Association for Authentic Experiential and Evidence-based Learning (AAEEBL): http://www.aaeebl.org/about(link is external)
- Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research: http://ncepr.org/index.html(link is external)
- Electronic Portfolio Action and Communication (EPAC) Community of Practice listserv(link is external)
References
Banta, T. W. (2003). Introduction: Why portfolios? Porfolio assessment: Uses, cases, scoring, and impact. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Paulson, P. R., & Paulson F. L. (1991, March). Portfolios: Stories of knowing. Paper presented at the 54th annual meeting of the Claremont Reading Conference (No. ED377209).