ePortfolio technology in higher education
Date
2018
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The intention of this improvement plan was to provide a snapshot of how other institutions across the country were approaching ePortfolio on their campuses and to discover what technology has the potential to support a student-centered ePortfolio initiative at UD. There is a growing number of technology choices available to support ePortfolio initiatives. Each of these choices has strengths and weaknesses. It is a challenge to choose technology that will support the specific goals of a student-centered program, while still being effective for documentation and assessment “of learning,” as well as “for learning,” in an institution-wide initiative. The exploratory and descriptive nature of the questions in this improvement plan favored a design that included a qualitative perspective in a document analysis. This strategy focused on the activities and events that occurred within the time frame and context of the Catalyst for Learning initiative. Participants from the twenty-four institutions of higher education that were involved in the project meticulously documented their expectations and efforts on a shared website. This centralized website was made available to the public through a grant-funded project as a resource for the academic community to increase the usability and value of ePortfolios in education. The central focus of this study is on the technology and its role in these experiences. The narratives by the participants involved in the Catalyst for Learning project indicated that they aligned their approach to ePortfolio initiatives with their institution’s own unique combination of mission and resources. The details from the narratives reported by the participants identified UD’s goals for the ePortfolio. This knowledge was combined with an understanding of the activities and inputs necessary to create the process of ePortfolios. This synthesis allowed the determination of what technical requirements were needed to produce an initiative that met each of the stakeholders’ goals. These findings make explicit the technology requirements that have the potential to support a student-centered learning experience, at the individual, and program levels, that supports the collection and documentation of evidence of student progress for assessment and accreditation efforts at the institutional level.