Communications of the ACM
Electronic Portfolios: a Path to the Future of Learning
A strategy that involves something akin to electronic student portfolios (ePortfolios) is vital to a shift in educational focus from teaching to learning, write Georgetown University's Randy Bass and LaGuardia Community College's Bret Eynon.
If ePortfolios are to maintain an academy's relevance into the future, they must possess at least four basic features. EPortfolios can combine student learning in a wider scope of media, literacies, and viable intellectual work. Bass and Eynon cite ePortfolio projects at various schools that enable students to compile work and reflections on their learning via text, imagery, and multimedia artifacts.
Another essential ingredient of ePortfolios is their ability to engage students with their learning. The authors note that LaGuardia Community College's integrative ePortfolio project has made students more likely "to demonstrate high degrees of engagement in critical thinking, writing, and collaborative learning" as well as pass their classes with higher grades than students in non-ePortfolio sections of the same classes.
A third feature is ePortfolios' ability to enable students to connect diverse learning components of their learning, including the formal and informal curriculum. The final key element of ePortfolios is their ability to provide colleges with a meaningful mechanism for accessing and structuring the proof of student learning.
The Campus Computing Project estimates that the percentage of U.S. colleges and universities using ePortfolios has climbed more than 300 percent in the past five years. Bass and Eynon say that "it is possible that 10 years from now we will no longer even be discussing these collections as if they were a special practice; they might be a pervasive and transparent part of the learning environment."
From The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Comments
Haitham El-Ghareeb
Thank you so much for the article. It is really interesting, however, I was willing to find more about ePortfolio standards. I am engaged in e-Learning and e-Learning solutions for a while right now. We can find standards for learning materials, we can find block diagrams for LMSs. Can you help me find standards to start building my first ePortfolio? I really appreciate your article and your reply. Thank You
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