Vendor Products
There are a host of products out on the market that specifically provide ePortfolios, and there are supplements to some LMS.
See a MERLOT Collection
of reference materials for this topic.
Before you start your search have a clear understanding of the institutional goals, what type of maintenance and support you need, and your pricing model. By carefully evaluating your campus needs you will weed out many vendors. (See SFSU's Needs Assessment )
The interest in ePortfolios continues to grow partly because accreditation agencies (such as NCATE for education, ABET in the engineering, sciences and technology areas, and the AACSB for business) have become more outcomes driven, requiring examples of student learning as well as an aggregation of assessment data for internal program evaluation. For students an e-Portfolio may serve as an area to demonstrate knowledge and reflect, and it may be a digital repository that allows webpages to be customized and provide access to selective audiences in a secure environment. To a faculty member use of an ePortfolio can increase pedagogy and it may be a way to build rubrics and handle administrative tasks. Institutions may use an ePortfolio system to provide continual collections of data, analyses, and samples of student and faculty achievement.
An ePortfolio system can document student progress and development over time and complex ePortfolio systems are being developed by institutions and software companies to support the collection, organization and presentation of this data. The rapidly changing environment makes planning on how to choose and use ePortfolios a challenge for us all. Below is a short collection of questions to be used for reviewing ePortfolio systems. This script for reviewing ePortfolio products (pdf) is not meant to be a comprehensive list; rather it is a starting point.
See what other CSU campuses are using.
SFSU recently finished their SF State Leadership Activity: ePortfolio Development Report (pdf) (June, 2008). This includes "A Case Study on Selecting an Open Source ePortfolio Tool" wherein they create a framework for the project, populate a candidate pool, select the most appropriate system, and conduct an in-depth analysis of the selected system.
"In the third phase, we conducted our analysis with four systems - CFKeep, DIVA, Elgg, and Mahara. We used a well-established list of attributes from EduTools for assessing all the systems across the board. Each system was assessed and scored for its relevance. Next, we used a weighted scoring approach to produce metrics for all four systems."
See SFSU's feature analysis
See the 2006 WCET's EduTools review of ePortfolio
In 2005-6 EduTools WCET reviewed a variety of ePortfolio products . Seven partners determined the seven products to review and came up with a list of 69 features to be evaluated. The information is from 2005 - 6, however, the data continues to be helpful and the features and glossary provide a good overview.
Important Links
Vendor Products MERLOT Collection
The MERLOT ePortfolio Portal is an educational resource for teaching and learning. Check out events (in Beyond MERLOT) and a fine collection of examples and showcase ePortfolios.
The CSU ePortfolio Liaison Site is a password protected site with resources for the CSU ePortfolio community.
The Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research advances the body of knowledge about impacts of electronic portfolio use on student learning and educational outcomes. CSUs are in cohort III.
