What is an eportfolio?
An electronic portfolio, also known as an eportfolio or digital portfolio, is a cohesive, powerful, and well-designed collection of electronic documents that demonstrate your skills, education, professional development, and the benefits you offer to a target reader. An eportfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.
There are three main types: developmental, reflective and representational.
- A developmental eportfolio is a record of things that the owner has done over a period of time, and may be directly tied to learner outcomes or rubrics.
- A reflective eportfolio includes personal reflection on the content and what it means for the owner's development.
- A representational eportfolio shows the owner's achievements in relation to particular work or developmental goals and is, therefore, selective.
The three main types may be mixed to achieve different learning, personal or work-related outcomes with the eportfolio owner usually being the person who determines access levels.
Why create eportfolios?
The eportfolio development process encourages all students to become more actively involved in planning, and more responsible for achieving, their own educational goals.
Students also benefit by:
- sharing examples of their work with advisors, faculty, mentors or potential employers,
- mastering valuable information technology skills, and
- demonstrating knowledge, skills and attributes gained beyond the classroom.
As a result of engaging in the eportfolio development process, students must reflect upon and articulate current accomplishments and goals for the future. This reflection also directs attention towards the collection of evidence that directly demonstrates what they know, what they can do and what they value. Having this information in electronic format simply allows students to take advantage of networking possibilities that previously have not been as readily available.
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page last updated 1/30/2012 4:10 PM