What are the Benefits?
An e-portfolio is student centred in principal. It is the student who owns and maintains the content and decides whom to share part or all of it. They are responsible for its design and management.
In addition, students may facilitate:
- Personal Development Planning (PDP);
- Reflection on progress in terms of assessment, learning goals and learning outcomes;
- Skills Development beyond module or programme, for instance information literacy, project management or team building;
- An in-depth articulation of experience including learning, work, and collaboration over an extended period of time;
- A compilation of student achievement, including developmental work (drafts), project work, assignments and feedback;
- The sharing of insights for peer review and the support of peers;
- The identification of future learning needs.
What are the Challenges?
- ePortfolios are best used across modules or programmes to facilitate a deeper level of engagement and understanding. There is a need to build in time for the learner to fully develop an ePortfolio and reap its potential dividends.
- Learners need clear direction to manage expectations and see the benefit that will accrue from creating an ePortfolio and the development of ones’ reflective commentaries or personal review.
- ePortfolios come in all shapes and sizes, so examples and guidance are essential (Lorenzo, G., and Ittelson, J. 2005).
- There is a need to map ePortfolios to assignments and promote peer interactions. This acts as a scaffold and integrates the approach within wider teaching practice.
- Assessing ePortfolios may be problematic if they are presented as part of a summative assessment in totality (for example, how does one validate the authenticity of student work?). The key lies in their formative nature and the ability to develop ones’ approaches and material content (such as communication skills and drafts of an essay) and the feedback that is provided to aid this. Rubrics (Vandervelde, J. (2018), ePortfolio Rubric University of Wisconsin) may offer an ideal means with which to guide learners in developing their ePortfolios. See also UCD Teaching and Learning Brightspace Guides
“ePortfolio use has the potential to yield positive outcomes, but the extent to which this occurs is heavily dependent on the nature of the implementation.” (Scully, D., O’Leary, M. & Brown, M. 2018)