myWORLD
e-Portfolios are a step towards learner-centred, self-directed, peer-to-peer education and personal learning environments (PLEs). The myWORLD project will test e-portfolios software in 10 education, training and development sites, and evaluate these case studies and their impact on learners and institutions.
What are e-Portfolios?
Portfolios, in education and personal or professional development, are collections of documents and other objects that can be shown as evidence to support claims a person makes about what they know, what they have achieved, and what they can do. Portfolios came into common use in UK education in the 1980s for assessment of coursework with the introduction of the GCSE and for the assessment of competency-based vocational qualifications. Portfolios have become the standard means of evaluating prior learning and prior experiential learning.
As for e-portfolios, a common starting point is that they are simply electronic versions of physical portfolios that contain digital objects instead of physical objects. They are, “… the new generation of the old 3-ring binder” or, “… a self-selected multimedia presentation of student work”.
e-Portfolios are growing in importance and have come into wide use as an assessment method. Portfolio research and development is expanding. (Bailey et al, 2004,) There are important international developments in basic skills and adult continuing education (e.g. European Certificate in Basic Skills project) and the Europass portfoli. Bold claims are made: portfolios are crucial for lifelong learning in a knowledge society and even, “...the future of learning” itself.
Reflective Learning and Identity
Whether such claims can be justified, it is recognised that portfolios can be an aid to reflective learning and that reflection has value across the disciplines as a means of developing skills. Reflective learning and reflective practice are hallmarks of professionalism in many fields, particularly Health and Social Care, Education, and Medicine. Both building and presenting a collection require reflection: “Portfolios allow you to ... reflect on what you learned from doing the work.” (http://www.eportfolio.org/eportfoliomanual.pdf). Penn State says, e-portfolios are, “... personalized, web-based collections that include... reflective annotations and commentary related to these experiences. (http://portfolio.psu.edu/about/index.shtml). Portfolios also make explicit and facilitate the representation of identity. Identity can be weakly or strongly conceived. A weak conception of identity concerns the problem of associating an identifier (e.g. a name or ID number) with an individual and then associating that identifier with data. A strong conception of identity covers things like gender, race, age, ethnicity, vocation, class, embodiment, pleasures, communities, family, friendships, religion and so on; who am I, really? Reflective learning is dependent on strong identity issues however, with the advent of the Lifelong Learning Record in the UK, e-portfolios have become part of the national identity card strategy and are expected to support weak identity concepts also.