I had heard of e-portfolios before we were given this assignment, but I only had a basic understanding of them. Coincidentally enough, I just had a friend recently who was laid off, and I remember receiving his mass email out to all his friends to let him know of any employment opportunities they may be aware of. I know when people usually do send out such emails they will include their resume as an attachment, but he did it a little differently. He actually had set up his own website by purchasing the domain of his name, and he included a website link which I checked out. Like I said, I had heard of e-portfolios, but had not really seen one in action. His site was really cool and very multimedia interactive with photos, a few videos, his resume, experience, etc. And I remember thinking how nice this would probably be to a prospective employer because they don’t have to deal with actual physical resumes. I used to work for a recruiting agency years ago, and I remember having to scan hundreds of them in a database and run an OCR software on them. ugh, no fun at all. So this really solves that issue as there is nothing to store except an electronic file.
I think the most interesting article I read was the one about a university electronic portfolio project. They described a portfolio as “a collection of work developed across varied contexts over time” and how the “electronic format allows faculty and other professionals to evaluate student portfolios using technology, which may include the Internet, CD-ROM, video, animation or audio”. Sorry another quote, but I think it’s relevant. “Electronic portfolios are becoming a popular alternative to traditional paper-based portfolios because they offer practitioners and peers the opportunity to review, communicate and assess portfolios in an asynchronous manner.” I had to look up asynchronous myself, and it means “of, used in, or being digital communication (as between computers) in which there is no timing requirement for transmission and in which the start of each character is individually signaled by the transmitting device”. Still not exactly sure what it mean, but it’ll dawn on me.
The article went on to say that colleges are starting to create and use e-portfolios as a means of evaluating a student’s learning or progress. The author many reasons why to use an e-portofolio, and one of them really stood out to me being that it was related to computer skills a student would gain in the process of creating one of these portfolios. The article said “students gain valuable computer skills while creating and editing their portfolio”. Also, the ease of storage and access of an e-portfolio is that much greater than that of a traditional portfolio because you can simply store it on a flash drive and access on any computer at your convenience.
In regards to the student e-portfolio at a university, the article said the main things to include were: Student Information, Table of Contents, Learner Goals, Rubrics, Guidelines, Artifacts, Instructor feedback, Self-reflection pieces. It stressed the importance of self-reflective pieces because “a portfolio without reflections is just a multimedia presentation or an electronic resume”.
All in all as web design students, I think this is definitely something we will be exposed to over and over again, and it’s definitely something we need to become as familiar and fluent with as possible. I look forward to creating mine later on in my educational career at AID.
http://academic.regis.edu/LAAP/eportfolio/basics_what.htm
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