Technology in higher education impacts student learning both in classrooms and daily routines. Whether capturing lecture notes on devices or finding inspiration on digital pinboards and social media, tech is everywhere. While it grants access to knowledge consumption, it can also disrupt how learning is tracked and integrated, potentially robbing new insights of depth and significance. Thus, education providers should implement technology to support pedagogy. Overlooking this adaptation risks missing opportunities to enhance course creation, student support, and long-term success. EPortfolios are a solution to this challenge. They are a pedagogical tool that fosters lifelong learning and creativity. This blog post is your introductory guide to ePortfolios.
Why you should consider an ePortfolio
For higher education institutions grappling with budget constraints, ePortfolios may seem like another expense. However, they are an investment in both your organisational and learner success.
EPortfolios easily align with your institutional goals, fostering long-term learner success by bridging academic coursework and career development. Tailored for success, they track progress, showcase mastery, and evaluate learning outcomes, providing valuable data-driven insights for course design and retention initiatives. Beyond being a digital tool, ePortfolios embody purpose-driven pedagogy, enhancing digital fluency and preparing students for the complexities of the modern world.
You already have an LMS, why do you need an ePortfolio?
While Learning Management Systems (LMS) and ePortfolios may share some surface similarities, they serve distinct purposes with different intentions and outcomes. An LMS primarily revolves around managing the learning that learners need to participate in, with learning designers and educators setting specific tasks. Conversely, ePortfolios are learner-driven, enabling students to choose and share what they want about their learning and use it as a personal space for reflection.
While an ePortfolio and an LMS have different intentions, they do not have to work in silo. In fact, a great ePortfolio should seamlessly integrate with your LMS via LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) or plugins. For example, Mahara integrates easily with the Moodle LMS via LTI and a purpose-built plugin.
What are the benefits of ePortfolios?
EPortfolios have a far-reaching impact on learners, and the benefits extend to internal and external stakeholders. Here are some of the best benefits of ePortfolios.
EPortfolio benefits for learners
- EPortfolios are not a digital archive. Instead, they are a living chronicle of learning experiences. They empower students to curate and reflect on their learning.
- Complemented by open badges, ePortfolios also democratise the acknowledgement of diverse skills and knowledge.
- Engaging with ePortfolios goes beyond capturing academic progress; it becomes a tool for skill development, habit building, and capturing and reflecting on real-world learning experiences.
- Lastly, ePortfolios excel in showcasing learning pathways, credential stacking, and increasing transferable skills.
EPortfolio benefits for educators
- Educators can leverage the ePortfolio as a powerful pedagogical tool for formal and informal learning scenarios.
- Portfolios embody a reflective pedagogy, supporting learners to become reflective practitioners in their careers.
- Used for work-integrated learning, educators gain a holistic understanding of their students' journeys and have the opportunity to provide feedback and support them during their work experiences.
EPortfolio benefits for employers
- From an employer's perspective, ePortfolios provide valuable insights into applicants' employability skills and capabilities and their personality, enriching the recruitment processes.
- Increasingly, ePortfolios are used for appraisal and recertification purposes, making it a vehicle to track and reflect on skills and accomplishments on an ongoing basis.
- As educational programmes increasingly foster work-integrated learning, such as internships and work placements, this ePortfolio type becomes essential for providers to engage with learners. It enables activity logging, reflection, and interaction with workplace mentors, for example through feedback.
The five different types of ePortfolios
Learning portfolios
This type of portfolio monitors ongoing student development by tracking progress over time, emphasising reflection. For example, learners choose whether to document and share insights gained from seminars or illustrate their evolution across consecutive learning experiences. The content added or shared in learning portfolios is guided by the learner's desire to shape a digital identity tailored to their learning purposes.
Assessment portfolios
This ePortfolio is dedicated to assessment and evaluation purposes for specific activities learners are asked to complete and reflect on, for which they will receive a grade. This type is often most tightly integrated into a class and allows for authentic learning activities.
Work-integrated portfolios
As educational programmes increasingly foster work-integrated learning, such as internships and work placements, this ePortfolio type becomes essential for providers to engage with learners. It enables activity logging, reflection, and interaction with workplace mentors, for example through feedback. Serving as a dual-purpose portfolio for learners and educators, it fosters continuous communication while learners complete their work-integrated learning activities. So, this can facilitate efficient tracking of student progress, allowing timely support and positive reinforcement. The platform enhances the learning experience by promoting collaboration between students and education providers, ensuring alignment with educational goals, and providing valuable insights for ongoing improvement.
Showcase portfolio
A showcase or presentation portfolio allows learners to highlight their best attributes through digital curation. Unlike a traditional curriculum vitae, this portfolio goes beyond merely presenting evidence. Instead, it encourages reflective insights. Here, individuals showcase their skills and a narrative on their learning journey. Thus, it offers employers a deeper view of strengths, learning experiences, growth, and work approach.
Professional certification portfolio
Typically aligned with competency frameworks, professional certification was historically a tick-box exercise, stating the progress up to the point of the certification. However, recognising the limited value for professional development, this approach has shifted. Using an ePortfolio instead, evidence and reflective insight are presented that tie achievements and skills better to the work an individual is required to do. The professional certification portfolio allows for conversations around that evidence and reflection, fostering professional development discussions that impact future work.
Notably, these five portfolio types can and will overlap. For example, a professional certification portfolio may intersect with an assessment portfolio - hence the importance of selecting a flexible ePortfolio platform with which different types of portfolios can be created effortlessly. This allows learners to use one tool for different purposes, reducing cognitive overhead for learning a new tool for different activities. Mahara is a great example of such a portfolio platform that offers this flexibility.
EPortfolio platform selection criteria
As noted above, your ePortfolio platform should be flexible. However, there are additional criteria your platform choice should meet:
- Compliance needs such as GDPR for data privacy and WCAG for accessibility should be met alongside established information security standards to satisfy an organisation's requirements.
- Support for LTI to connect to your learning management system.
- Full theming capabilities to ensure it reflects your organisation's brand so learners see it as integral element of their learning ecosystems.
- The file repository supports multiple file types. For example, PDFs, compressed files, multimedia files, and more.
- Progress tracking through competency frameworks or dashboards.
- Built-in reporting engine for learning analytics.
- Administrator settings are also key to conveniently change settings without requiring code changes.
- Scalability to operationally flex with your organisation's and learner growth.
- Self-hosted or managed hosting options in line with your requirements.
There are numerous ePortfolio platforms, but at Catalyst, we believe Mahara is the best ePortfolio solution. Why? Because it ticks all the boxes above and more.
Our Catalyst team has been involved with the Mahara project since it started in 2006. We are the core maintainers responsible for security updates, feature releases, and everything in between. We develop the majority of new features and also offer the development of bespoke features to our clients. We are committed to making Mahara a great platform for you in the long term.
You can try a basic version of Mahara via this free demo. However, if you want to enquire about your organisation's specific goals and how Mahara could help, contact our team.