ePortfolio

What is a Portfolio?

Long before the ePortfolio was the portfolio, a document used by artists to present their best work, compiled by learners to demonstrate their achievements as well as professionals to gain recognition of their experience. Today, in the UK alone, almost 500,000 people get a qualification by creating a portfolio compiling evidence of their professional experience. To understand the power of ePortfolios it is important to understand what could be done with paper-based or mix-media portfolios as well as the unique value of the digital portfolio, beyond the transformation of paper-based into paper-less portfolios.

Portfolio Types

For a long time one made the difference between developmental, assessment and showcase ePortfolios. Although there is still some valididy in these categories, the frontiers have now blurred and expanded with the lifelong and lifewide ePortfolio as well as the concept of personal and organisaltional learning environments (POLE).

What is an ePortfolio?

In its short and dynamic history, the ePortfolio has rapidly moved from the status of simple paperless portfolio to sophisticated ePortfolio Management Systems and now social software. Today, the explosion of new social practices emerging from the use of new media, such as social networks and what is commonly referred as Web 2.0, tends to blur the frontiers of ePortfolios.

What are its components?

an ePortfolio is more than a mere "paperless portfolio." It is a bout an information system architecture where the "paperless portfolio" is being produced and consumed by different information systems. Ultimately it is about the manifestion of a new dimension of one's identity: the digital identity.