ePortfolio Examples

The following article provides examples of 4 different types of ePortfolios: Showcase eportfolios, career eportfolios, learning eportfolios, and structured eportfolios.

Showcase ePortfolio Examples

With so much information on computers, a main beginning point for ePortfolio thinking is to gather and show work that has already been done.

Most simply by setting and distributing passwords for different audiences, a showcase ePortfolio enables the author to share specific examples of work and to control who can see these collections. Even though a showcase ePortfolio looks like just a personal Web page, it is a lot more than that. An example ePortfolio author should know how to frame and manage documents stored on the Internet and be able to control access without knowing how to use HTML or how to build a Web page.

Even though example eportfolios can be freelance, mainly if students are tangibly making their own Web pages, it has been determined that individuals need some help if the ePortfolios are to be good for employment prospects and applying to grad school.

If creating an example showcase ePortfolio is to be a productive learning experience, commentary and reflection are also important. By using and viewing example ePortfolios, students can provide supplemental information to merely their transcripts, and helps guide them toward building on career objectives and experiences outside the classroom.

Career ePortfolio Examples

Students construct their achievements around the recording, reflecting, and evaluating of their experiences in and out of the classroom and the supplying of resumes, references and examples of their work. Of specific note is a “Skills Matrix,” in which a student documents his/her experiences with different examples of work they have done in courses, jobs or internships, volunteer work, activities outside-of school, and their personal interests. While bringing together people with common interests and concerns, showcase example ePortfolios can also be really professional, provocative, and can be intended to move knowledge and experience in a field.

Learning ePortfolio Examples

While showcase ePortfolios are primarily used to share and present accomplishments and structured ePortfolios are primarily used to delineate specific work that will be done, the organization of learning ePortfolios reflects work that is ever-changing.

As the writer’s career focus and level of work changes over time, the structure of work reported will evolve accordingly. For example, the author of the ePortfolio can look back over the old official and unofficial projects to link up new connections. With continual tweaking of the work, it can either end up organized and easy to follow, or almost incoherent, with no real direction.

Learning ePortfolio Examples

Communication services are absolutely necessary to any, and every, learning ePortfolio. For example, like an artist’s portfolio, a learning ePortfolio gives a dynamic context for personal confrontations. Learning ePortfolios offer support to private exchanges between the author and the teachers, mentors, and/or coaches. They help with mutual discussions about current projects for formal and more casual peer review.

The author is enabled to solicit feedback about specific concerns and issues. And learning ePortfolios inspire ongoing reflection that could help the students understand their learning process better. For example, communication and interaction in the learning ePortfolio can include mentors, advisers, and friends, and need not be restricted to the immediate class or instructors. Learning ePortfolios are probably the most challenging resource to develop and maintain because they are ongoing, extend beyond the time frame of specific courses, and involve reorganizing work and dynamic interactions among changing communities of people.

Structured ePortfolio Examples

Structured ePortfolios: A different approach is the use of a structured ePortfolio to found a predefined organization with eagerness of the work that will be completed.

However, structured ePortfolios enable the user to accomplish different tasks, namely using a predefined structure that will enable the user to predict tasks or other defined work that will be completed. In a standard ePortfolio, the demonstration of achievements for the certification or fulfillment of specific requirements is a fairly common goal.

By clearly stating requirements, a structured ePortfolio can competently focus on a student’s time and attention. In addition, the previously defined organization of a structured ePortfolio can make it a lot easier for the work to be consistently reviewed, evaluated, and compared. Opportunities for developing new approaches to assessment are provided by structured ePortfolios, because meeting a requirement or demonstrating a skill is not necessarily the same as taking a specific course.

Examples of a structured ePortfolios can be improved drastically with supported mentoring. Guiding and reassuring students through a succession of experiences will enable them to better expand the skills that they need to show required competencies. Without any support for mentoring, a structured ePortfolio can be pretty much reduced to just a set of directions that a student follows to meet apparently tyrannical requirements.

The difference between ePortfolios and other similar digital systems is that they are more than a record of one’s own history, specially designed to highlight skills, represent work and organize information. They are utilized by students and teachers to collect audio, video, graphics, and textual “artifacts,” like work samples, assessments, resumes, lesson plans, and personal reflections. EPortfolios are common among students and job seekers and they have three main classifications: (1) A developmental student eportfolio, which provide an account of an individual’s accomplishments over a time period, and can be directly linked to student outcomes; (2) A reflective student eportfolio, which incorporate a student’s personal reflections on the content and how it helps the student to develop; and (3) Representational, which demonstrates an individual’s achievements as they relate to specific work or developmental goals. Unique learning, personal, or work-related results can be create by combining the three types.

There are three different kinds of student ePortfolios: 1) development student eportfolio, 2) assessment student eportfolio, and 3) showcase student eporfolio.

Development Student ePortfolio

These describe the preferment and development of the student’s skills over a long period of time. Developmental portfolios include both self-assessment and reflection/feedback elements and are considered works-in-progress. The main purpose is the fostering of communications linking students and faculty.

Assessment Student ePortfolios

These show student’s abilities and skills for specific areas. To grade pupil performance, there may be end-of-class tests. The principal purpose is to appraise a student’s competency as explained by program standards and their outcomes.

Showcase Student ePortfolios.

Provide top quality work and people skills. At the end of a program this type of student ePortfoli is created to highlight the quality of student work. At the end of a degree program this portfolio would typically be shown to potential employers to gain employment.

Hybrid Student Eportfolios

The majority of student ePortfolios are some mixture of the three types of ePortfolios enumerated above. Seldom will you find an ePortfolio that is only used for assessment, development, or showcasing of purposes.

Developmental student portfolios are work-in-progress portfolios, which support the growth of knowledge and competencies over a period of time that could/should be as long as a lifetime. The audience is the author, as well as peers, colleagues or educational staff that support the developmental process. Learning, personal development, and continuing professional development portfolios are in this category.

Assessment student Portfolios can be of extremely different nature, depending on the vision of the assessment; assessment of learning, for learning, or as learning. Assessment of learning, for example, might simply be a collection of items briefly illustrating competencies earned at a certain point in one’s career or education. Organizations that encourage learning through values assessment, this can be seen as continual work progress.

A showcase student Portfolio is a snap-shot portfolio. It demonstrates exceptional work to receive recognition by peers and/or employers. A possible front page of a showcase portfolio could be a resume.

One should note that paper-based portfolios as well as electronic portfolios are what these definitions apply to. Improvement, evaluation and showcase ePortfolios could easily be done with paperless portfolios. The next logical question one should ask, then, is how can this use of new technology lead to something more complex than a digital recreation of previous portfolios?

A response to this question may be digital identity. The usage of different technology is used to sustain the construction and expression of a person’s identity. Education, or learning, is all about the construction of a person’s identity, and this construction is just another social process – hence the role of a social network in modern student ePortfolios and employee ePortfolios.

Even thought the past definitions focus on individual learning, everyone should explore different types of student ePortfolios for a wide variety of learning groups, such as learning communities, learning organizations, and/or even learning regions and cities.

Learning Student ePortfolios

Although showcase ePortfolios organize and showcase achievements, and structured ePortfolios serve to reflect specific work that will be done, the focus of the arrangement of the learning ePortfolio is evolutionary. In response to the author’s changing interests, requirements, and understanding, the organization of work evolves over time as tasks are identified, worked on, and completed. New relationships can be made by connecting past and present projects by the author of the ePortfolio. This continuing reorganization of work can be spontaneous and messy, or well thought out and clear.

Learning ePortfolios are most-likely the most challenging resource to make and maintain because of three reasons: 1) they are ongoing, 2) they extend far beyond the set time frame of specific courses, and 3) they involve reorganizing work and dynamic interactions between changing communities of people.

Probably the biggest challenge in the support of learning ePortfolios is the enabling of the necessary communication services. The history of discussions and interactions is as critical to the learning process as is the evolution of the work itself, because ePortfolio thinking is document/work-centric. The modes many people use currently to communicate, including e-mail, discussion forums, and chat sessions, are not conducive to developing ideas as part of a collaboration. The result of this is that making connections is really difficult and it’s almost impossible to step back to see histories of interactions. The greatest promise for advancing student learning and achievement and supporting new models for learning is, perhaps, held by using ePortfolios to expose the learning process through comments, discussions, feedback, and reflection.

Lifelong Student ePortfolios

Maintaining an ePortfolio beyond a person’s college and/or university years can have some long-term personal and professional advantages, which support both formal and informal lifelong education. Seeing as the job market and economy are ever-evolving, an ePortfolio can be critical in bringing about new employment chances through explaining who you are. When certification and a display of needed skills are required for career advancement and ePortfolio can be a good way to show and maintain information about achievements for professional accreditation.

Personal and professional development can be promoted with ePortfolios, by providing the incentive for continual learning. A major benefit of ongoing ePortfolio participation is the opportunity of maintaining connections with one’s peers and mentors throughout their professional career.

John Halasz taught writing and is currently a professional writer and internet marketer.

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