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Patti and I were discussing our ePortfolio project the other day, and we were basically throwing back and forth various versions of "the students won't it because (a) they don't have to, and (b) it's not theirs."

The "they don't have to" part could be misconstrued as meaning "their profs didn't make them do it." That won't work, either. The students have to feel that they want to do this. That they have to do it themselves to make sense of what they're learning and doing.

And, it needs to be modelled successfully. If they see their profs as not "having to" maintain an ePortfolio, why on earth would the students do it? It's not some contrived evaluation tool, it's an internally driven amplifier and archiver of the learning (and teaching) processes.

Helen Barrett just posted a piece that describes this much more coherently, and in much greater depth. The mental picture of the graduation portfolio bonfire should be a big reminder about what can happen when there isn't a healthy sense of ownership fostered within students (and teachers). I remember burning my notebooks at the end of grade 9 – they weren't MY notes, so it felt awesome to toss them on the bonfire… Stephen's commentary is worth a read, too.

This is all about ownership. But ownership can't be given, it has to be built by each individual. It would be so easy to just say "it's a requirement to complete this course/program. you must maintain an ePortfolio." But that won't work. It will just lead to a lot of busywork, and one helluva bonfire at the end of the course/program.

I think the more effective (from a teaching/learning perspective, not a sheer volume/metrics perspective) is to model the ePortfolio as a teacher. "This is how I gather my thoughts together to track what I've done, what I'm doing, and where I'm going in my career as a teacher". If it's not relevant to a professional, why would it be relevant to a student?

Offer ePortfolios as an optional service across the curriculum, to every student on campus. If 1% of them start using them as effective tools, it will spread from there. Not instantly, and maybe not in the same cohort, but it will spread.

If it doesn't spread, it's not an effective tool, so let it die on the vine. The goal is to foster critical thinking about experiences, not to force yet another tool on anyone. 

ePortfolio Software used in the Faculty of Education Master of Teaching ePortfolio pilot project

• Pachyderm
  • Patti's sample ePortfolio authored in Pachyderm
  • D'Arcy's Pachyderm ePortfolio
• Drupal – the software that runs the online community of practice

Other ePortfolio Software

• Apple iWeb (an extremely easy and powerful website authoring and publishing program which could be an effective part of an ePortfolio authoring system)
  • Sample ePortfolio authored in Apple iWeb
• D'Arcy's "live" ePortfolio (blog posts tagged with "Noteworthy" – a blogfolio)
• Elgg (a combination of weblogging, e-portfolios, and social networking)

Related blog posts

• BCEdOnline "Unkeynote" Debriefing – an example of reflecting on, and critiquing a conference session.
• Portfolio vs. Dossier – a blog post describing the conceptional differences
• On Teaching Dossiers – a blog post describing "Teaching Dossiers" and how they are different from ePortfolios

Associations and Articles

• Open Source Portfolio Initiative The Open Source Portfolio Initiative is a group of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of open source e-portfolio software.
• Educause e-Portfolio Library An extensive collection of papers, articles, PowerPoint presentations, resources, and examples of e-portfolios.
• The Electronic Portfolio Consortium The Electronic Portfolio Consortium is interested in the development of academic e-portfolio software systems and establishing standards for them.
• e-Portfolio Resources from Future Ed. Inc. A series of white papers on digital learning portfolios.

Photograph by D'Arcy Norman

ePortfolios are both individual and community activities. As individuals document their practice, they perform several internal processes to make sense of what they've done. But, these processes can be amplified if a community of peers (and/or mentors or "experts") is a key part of their ePortfolio process. By sharing reflection, and drawing on reflections and suggestions from a person's community of practice, it would be possible to more effectively understand what is being documented, and to better adapt as a result.

For the pilot project, we used Drupal to facilitate sharing of ePortfolios among members of the (small) community of practice. The software was configured such that individuals could determine who could see the content they published, so they could share personal reflections and comments without worrying about being exposed to the entire class (or the entire world, through Google).

Photograph by D'Arcy Norman

Each student (and professor) had their own weblog within the Drupal environment, where they could post any content they wished. If they categorized content as belonging to the "ePortfolio" taxonomy, it would be displayed in a central "ePortfolio" page. This was intended to foster discussion, reflection, review and positive criticism about a student's ePortfolio.

Students could also post content to their weblog that did not pertain directly to their ePortfolio. They could document classroom experiences, share lesson plans, ask questions, or just rant about classroom management challenges. As students shared and commented on the various weblog posts, they would be able to incorporate items from that process into their own ePortfolios, with the ePortfolio becoming a snapshot product of the community process.

Because ePortfolios are used to document and record an individual's practice, they have an archival nature. They form a "permanent record" of a person's activities and progress.

ePortfolios can also have a developmental nature, when the individual (and their peers) review an ePortfolio to create personal development plans, and to adapt future strategies as a result of the documented case studies presented within an ePortfolio.

Boxes in the Basement

Photograph by Penumbra

Pros:

• a personal content management system
• capable of storing nearly any form of medium.

Cons:

• out of sight, out of mind
• not exactly portable or sharable

Ongoing Notebook

Photograph by csb13

Pros:

• portable
• sharable (with small groups)
• easy to use

Cons:

• limited media types
• runs out of pages

ePortfolios have two primary components. The "presentational" component is the visible, shiny product of the ePortfolio process. It is a website, or a presentation, or a set of media produced to document and communicate a concept or event.

But, just as importantly, an ePortfolio has a cognitive component. The individual crafting their ePortfolio should be reflecting on their practice of teaching and learning, critiquing what they've done – what worked? what didn't work? what would they do differently? This cognitive or reflective component is crucial, as it allows the individual (and their peers) to learn from both success and failure.

Dossier vs. "Live Document"

Dossiers

Some traditional ePortfolio projects approach the ePort as a solution to an HR problem – to document capabilities of employees and students in order to streamline institutional business processes. That may be an important and valid goal, but it is not the sole (or even the primary) purpose of an ePortfolio.

Photograph by swanksalot

"Live Document" – dynamic stream/flow

If viewed separately from any institutional context, an ePortfolio is a live document that represents an individual (or, perhaps a group of individuals). A successful ePortfolio project may enable these individuals to document their practice of teaching and learning, and to record snapshots of personal and professional development. It is not a fill-in-the-blanks templated document, as each ePortfolio must be as unique as the individual it represents.

The most dynamic example of a "live document" ePortfolio is the "blogfolio" – using simple weblog publishing systems to allow individuals to easily document and share information, which is then categorized as belonging to the ongoing portfolio. This form of ePortfolio is the least rigid style, as it allows the individual to reuse bits of content already published to their weblog, in the context of an ePortfolio. As an example, all weblog posts tagged with "Noteworthy" on D'Arcy Norman's weblog

The structure of a live flow can be directed, but it is able to adjust to easily conditions (both internal and external) without arbitrary constraints (such as those imposed by an HR department).

Photograph by Mortalcoil

Background Information

The Teaching & Learning Centre has been involved with some ePortfolio-related projects, most notably a pilot project conducted by the Faculty of Education's Master of Teaching Program. This pilot was designed to evaluate the technical and pedagogical implications of an online ePortfolio, as well as a community website, as part of the MT curriculum.

We have also been fortunate to play a lead role in the development of the Pachyderm interactive presentation authoring software, which was used to create the published ePortfolios in the MT pilot project.

What is an ePortfolio?

Some of the issues regarding the description, creation, and use of portfolios are outlined below…

In the process of getting ready for our session on Thursday, I started to put together an ePortfolio for myself using Pachyderm. I’ve done several “sample” ePortfolios before, but not a full-blown attempt. Something about eating your own dogfood… So I gave it a shot. It’s still pretty rough, and the “Projects” and “About this…” sections are still empty, but it’s a start. I need to flesh out most of the pages as well, as I’ve currently just got command+c command+v content migration from blog posts and wiki pages.

I found the process difficult – not because of the software (Pachyderm actually worked really well for this, aside from one minor bug I found) but because I kept thinking “But, that’s what my BLOG is for!” – many of the pages are just vectors for links to pages on my blog.

Patti and I are putting a wiki page together to support our ePortfolio session at Interface 2006 in Lethbridge this Thursday. The session is nominally about the ePortfolio pilot project we’re doing with our Faculty of Education, but I’m hoping we’ll get to have a discussion about ePortfolios (HATE that “e”) in general.

I just added some “What is a ePortfolio?” content, and it feels like it could turn into a thesis pretty darned quickly. Not sure I want to go down that road, though…

The wiki page is really rough at the moment, and woefully incomplete, but we’ll be polishing it up over the next day or so.

Update: The podcast audio file was borked (thanks for the heads up, Brian!) so if you downloaded a 6 minute version, it’s truncated. The whole thing should be 18 minutes long, and is available here. Sorry about that…

So, I’m still not using the computer when I’m “off duty”, but that doesn’t mean I can’t stretch out on the couch with my iPod and TuneTalk microphone and think out loud about stuff after Evan’s gone to bed…

I actually started this podcast as an offline notebook page, on the bus ride home on Friday. Then, I did more thinking about it, and read some of Nona Lyons’ With Portfolio in Hand, and wound up rambling into my iPod…

In this episode, I talk about two topics. First “How do you find time to blog?”, and second “Thoughts on ePortfolios”

Here’s the download, or if you’re listening along in iTunes, you’ve already got it.

Since both started out as offline notebook pages, here are the pages in raw form, as well as cleaned up versions for searchability.

How do you find time to blog?

• Sparked by a conversation with Patti while waiting for a meeting (ironically, about ePortfolios, hence part 2)
• Short answer: “I don’t (find time to blog). It’s an interstitial activity.”
  • in the time-between-time
  • a minute here, a minute there…
  • slowly build up a body of work that acts simultaneously as
    • outboard brain
    • framework for collaboration and dissemination
    • a fluid, practical eportfolio
    • scaffolding for personal and professional reflection
    • indispensable tool for structuring info + knowledge
  • and, if it’s shared, so others can build on what I write
    • value added by each user (comments, trackbacks/links, emails
    • contribute to, and help build/sustain a community of practice
    • reputation building/management – personal, and professional
• semi-formal thinking
  • because it’s “public” it helps to direct streams of thought, to produce tighter, more coherent writing
• it’s become part of what I do – not an additional task
• now, it’s just a part of my thinking process

Thoughts on ePortfolio

• ePortfolio as a slice across all of a person’s online works
  • blog
  • Flickr
  • del.icio.us
  • …
• use an “eportfolio” tag in all of these tools, and use something like SuprGlu to gather pieces together – Small Pieces Loosely Joined
• foster collaboration/review/reflection
• professional development vs. compliance
  • ePortflio as a tool/process – a verb, not a noun. journey, not destination. process, not product
  • should be an optional activitiy – force people to do it, and it becomes meaningless
  • must be flexible – structure, content, design
  • able to opt-out, but you would then lose benefits of community/culture of professional development (but that should be a decision made by the individual)
• ePortfolio as theoretical process
  • critical thinking about what best represents you
  • pedagogical design/showcase
  • can’t be represented by a simple fill-in-the-blanks “template” ePortfolio
• ePortfolio review
  • by peers
  • to foster discussion/reflection
  • how about an “ePortfolio club” where students get together to critique ePortfolios (what goes into them, design, etc…)
• “Mass Amateurization” – where an amateur is able to easily reach ~80% of the quality of a professional, due to increased effectiveness of tools.