We have built an eportfolio tool and support service because of the many benefits for students, faculty, and educational institutions. The Assocation of American Colleges and Universities designated eportfolios as one of eleven "High Impact Practices". These practices, including eportfolios, "promote a more intentional, integrated, and inquiry-centred undergraduate experience".
Benefits for Students:
- Reflection on the impact and value of each learning experience that deepens learning, enables future self-presentation, and promotes intentionality in decisions about academic and career pathways
- Integration of learning, progressively through their program (over and above their within-courses learning)
- Display of learning activities for supporters, mentors, and employers
- Development of a non-academic, professional ‘voice’ for self-presentation
- Digital curation skills and web technology skills
- More explicit, demonstrated engagement with their institution after graduation
- Student satisfaction
Benefits for Educational Institutions and their Programs
- Demonstration of activities that contribute to the attainment of Program-level and Faculty-level outcomes
- Artifacts of student work for evaluation of programs
- Showcasing and documentation of experiential learning activities
- A learning experience in itself, at the program-level, that becomes curricular, for-credit or for assessment in credit courses
- Rich qualitative data to help programs and the Faculty understand curriculum pathways
- Exemplars could be used in recruitment [anonymized if necessary
NEXT: 3. Educational Theory - Emergent Knowledge & Skills
It has been of tremendous value for the team members to consult the literature on eportfolios to digest and internalize these research-supported benefits.
The challenge we've found is that while most faculty and program leadership nod their heads in agreement, they do not immediately see the implications for what they do in their roles day-to-day.