Alverno College, Milwaukee
Alverno College has implemented an institutional e-portfolio, known as the Diagnostic Digital Portfolio (DDP), for over eight years. Advertised on its website to propsective students, the DDP is fully integrated into the curriculum with an emphasis on reflection and independent learning. It consists of a number of key performers that a student is expected to complete for each module that they are taking. Students provide evidence of how they have met these key performers (such as video, images, powerpoint) and feedback from tutors. It is hoped that students will use the DDP to look for patterns in their work and their feedback to enable them to have more control over their learning. Sections of the e-portfolio are available to tutors whilst other areas are private and only accessible to the student.
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Florida State University
The career portfolio at FSU seeks to "prepare students for the world of work through planning, reflection, skill development, and portfolio documentation". Students use the e-portfolio, based on the BlackBoard system, to build a CV and add references. Learners can link evidence gained in a range of experiences (volunteering, work, academic) to nine key skills such as communication, critical thinking and presentation. The e-portfolio can then be customised and shared as required. Example student e-portfolios are provided as well as some mock e-portfolios for students.
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LaGuardia, New York City
LaGuardia has an extensive website explaining about their vision for e-portfolios which is to "help students examine and reflect on their learning and career goals, smoothing the transition from LaGuardia Community College to the worlds of work and further education. The e-portfolio encourages students to think about their learning in a broad context of family, career, culture and experience. It provides a record of where a student has been, where a student is, and where a student would like to go." LaGuardia sees that the e-portfolio helps link academic, professional and lived experience. Their model is very similar to the ELF Model.
An introductory video explains to students about the purpose and role of e-portfolios in their learning. It emphasises that learners will need to practise developing an e-portfolio and that this is something that will develop with them as the progress their studies. Numerous student e-portfolios are provided as well as guidelines to students about how to structure and content to add to their e-portfolios. Based on BlackBoard's e-portfolio.
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Minnesota: lifelong and lifewide e-portfolio
The eFolio at Minnesota is provided not only to students and tutors at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) institutions but also to all residents and students in the State of Minnesota so they may "capitalize on their learning before, during, and after formal education." Guidance on how to the use eFolio for promotional purposes is provided with student, tutor and promotional examples as well as examplars of how to use the e-portfolio for learning and teaching.
After extensive evaluation of the use of their e-portfolio system, it was found that the key purposes for use included:
- integration of formal and workplace learning
- tracking learning in an academic programme
- development of technology skills for those in employment
- summative assessment.
The e-portfolio was used for:
- educational planning;
- documenting knowledge, skills, and abilities;
- tracking development;
- finding a job;
- evaluation within a course;
- performance monitoring in the workplace.
Surprisingly amongst all users (students, tutors and those outwith education) there was a high proportion who used all these of these functions of the e-portfolio system. However, those in employment tended to use the e-portfolio more for seeking a job and less for tracking development whilst the performance monitoring was used most by tutors. Educational planning was extremely important to the users of the system because:
"Their portfolios are expressions of both who they've been and who they'd like to be. Jeff, a graduate student and systems administrator, thinks of a portfolio as "a picture, a text picture of ones life, past,... current, maybe future... where your dreams are, goals are." As well as representation of capabilities and aspirations, a portfolio serves as a "central repository" of the author's ideas and experiences on which he or she can reflect in making decisions about the future. Because eFolio "prompts [him] to look back," Jeff is better able to make informed choice about the future. "Once I look and see an overall view of all the different things, it is kind of directing me to hey maybe I need to look at different things in my career too, even my teaching." (Cambridge 2005).
From Cambridge's report, users found developing an e-portfolio for promotional purposes challenging because they had to present an integrated representation of themselves from their personal and professional lives. This requires a significant amount of reflection. As Cambridge states:
"Users perceive portfolios as personalized documents for professional purposes, both in tone and content. The portfolio is a genre at the intersection of two spheres of life, more personal than a resume, but more professional than a personal website. While a portfolio can be more "warm and fuzzy" and "informal," allowing the author to assert his or her voice, it must have a "professional edge to it," so that it serves as "professionally tuned documentation."
In Minnesota, it appears there are three stages in the development and use of e-portfolios:
- experimentation - in this stage, the user will explore how to represent their learning and performance.
- living document - at this stage, the learner has an e-portfolio which they perceive to be valuable and will not change its structure signficantly. Updates are made on a regular basis.
- archived - when no longer useful
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St Olaf College, Minnesota
St Olaf College encourages students to use the e-portfolio as an area to collect examples of their work to "illustrate the unfolding meaning of their career. The work is stored and presented as a web site, with links that demonstrate how the student understands the relationships he or she has built among many individual achievements. These portfolios make the CIS interest in "making meaningful connections" concrete. Works of almost any imaginable kind (art, lab reports, film and audio clips, essays) can be included in a web portfolio".
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Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Utrecht University uses an e-portfolio with medical students undertaking a six-week course on the admissions procedures for patients. Students learn how to complete the appropriate paperwork and how to examine patients. Students submit 10 patient reports and are assessed and provided with feedback half-way through the course and at the completion. This meant that students did not have to be observed, could show their development and provide a range of evidence. Challenges included increased workload for students and that students could hide their weaknesses. Due to technical issues with accessing the e-portfolio system, the course has returned to using email and MS Word for summative portfolio assessment in medical education.
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Further Examples
