Eportfolio

Eportfolio

Leslie Davis, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Definitions and background

Over the last two decades, teacher education programs had been developing paper-based portfolios, storing artifacts in cumbersome binders (Penny & Kinslow, 2006). With the recent emergence of technology, electronic portfolios have made the distribution of student work more convenient than traditional portfolios (Hung, 2012). EPortfolios, have been developed as an extension to what is now referred to as e-learning (Balaban, Mu & Divjak, 2013). Educational institutions, as well as potential employers, may realize the full potential of ePortfolios, as information systems, to enable students to become lifelong learners (Balaban et al., 2013). “Individuals create and capture representations of themselves and their professional identity over time for documentation and presentation” (Bolliger & Shepherd, 2010, p. 298).

As an ICT platform, ePortfolios may be utilized through Web 2.0 tools (weblogs, wikis) and specialized software (commercial, open source, learning or content management systems) (Christen & Hofmann, 2008). Pedagogically, ePortfolios depend on student-centred learning, an approach that engages students and motivates them to think meaningfully and strategically (Abrami, Wade, Pillay, Aslan, Bures & Bentley, 2008). Evaluation in the constructivist approach to learning necessitates an authentic assessment, such as a portfolio, that demonstrates “student competency in various domains of learning” (Baturay and Daloglu, 2010, p. 413).