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.
- A series of archives, owned by individuals (a content management system or a data base) which can contain example of previous personal work, reflections, connections to other archives and network members (mentor, coach, colleagues, etc.)
- A series of views (profiles) or presentations accessible by third parties, built from the documentation collected from the archive. These views can be built intentionally by selecting the most appropriate elements from the archive (e.g. to find a job) or they can be produced automatically (e.g. by a public statistical office surveying the competencies available in a territory).
- A series of services provided to ePortfolio owners / consumers, such as job-hunting / recruiting, accreditation of prior learning, management of intellectual capital, etc. based on the profiles of the owner / consumer and the context where they are being used.
At this point it is important to make a clear distinction between an ePortfolio system and an ePortfolio. An ePortfolio nothing more than a document which was perfectly defined in 2003. According to the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (USA):
- an ePortfolio is “a collection of authentic and diverse evidence, drawn from a larger archive representing what a person or organization has learned over time on which the person or organization has reflected, and designed for presentation to one or more audiences for a particular rhetorical purpose” (NLII, 2003 -- the emphasis is from the editor).
A portfolio can be a document produced to obtain a qualification, a job or feedback from peers or support staff. it can also be a simple 'mirror' or dash board used by a person to reflect on his/her learning/development/career.
So, if a portfolio is nothing more than an electronic document, what about the production and consumption of such document? A first class of application that emerged with the development of ePortfolios are ePortfolio Management Systems (ePMS). ePMSs are used to manage a number of ePortfolios in an institution, a community (c.f. the Royal College of Nursing) or even a territory ('c.f. careerwalesonline).
- an ePortfolio Management System is a system used to manage (produce, consume and exploit) elements of individual ePortfolios for a specific purpose - scaffolding learning, assessment, employment, competency management, organisational learning, knowledge management, etc.
There are many different types of ePMS. The most well known are those implemented in educational institutions to support learning and assessment as well as those used to accredit competencies or prior learning and experience. Yellow pages, social networks and HR information systems can be seen as ePMS, in the sense that they exploit the contents of individual ePortfolios.
What caracterises ePMS is that they belong to an institution or a group, not to the individual who is just provided with some kind of personal space. This space is generally closer to the space children are granted when they live with their parents or an employee's cublicle than one's own dwelling. This personally owned space is what we will refer to as the ePortfolio Organiser, which is some kind of personal ePortfolio management system or even a digital identity manager.
The function of an ePortfolio Organiser is to provide individuals with the total and lifelong ownership and control of a space (distributed and heterogeneous) where they will be able to collect all the data that will help them produce as many ePortfolios they will need along their life to communicate with educational institutions, employers, social services, etc.
- an ePortfolio Organiser is a system used by a person to manage his/her personal assets to support reflective learning and practice for personal and professional development.
Personal assets should not be hosted by educational institutions nor employers or social services. Just like personal health records — and health is one of our key assets — it is the person who should own and decide on how they should be exploited.
ePortfolios, ePortfolio management systems and ePortfolio organisers are part of an ePortfolio ecology where technology is supporting a series of conversations between individuals and organisations and communities. Social networks are a key element of this architecture
