Like their paper predecessors, e-portfolios are collections of work used to showcase students' talents and demonstrate progress toward meeting degree requirements. Portfolios have been used for years by certain subsets of students -- such as those studying art and architecture -- but as they move into the digital realm, they are evolving to meet additional needs as well as serve a wider range of students.

Heralded as the "next big thing" in some educational technology circles, e-portfolios allow students to showcase their abilities in a more dynamic way -- through text, graphics, and video -- than a GPA or transcript ever could. And because they are digital, it is easier to share, review and provide feedback.

According to the December 2002 edition of the educational technology magazine Syllabus: "Electronic portfolios have a greater potential to alter higher education at its very core than any other technology application we've known thus far."

The operative word here is "potential," as e-portfolios are still in their infancy and have not yet proven to have a transformational impact on higher education. In fact, they are in very limited use on UC campuses, although UCLA has plans to launch an e-portfolio component to its popular MyUCLA portal.

Where e-portfolios have reached a certain level of maturity at UC and beyond is in teacher education programs. Some UC campuses have been using them for several years and most are currently collaborating with one another to expand their use systemwide.

A Tool for Teacher Preparation

Research indicates that portfolios allow student teachers to take more ownership of their practice, become more reflective of their teaching, and more aware of student outcomes. They have also been cited as useful for assessment and accreditation because they allow for aggregation of work over time, documenting a student's progress toward meeting specific requirements.

For approximately a decade, students in teacher education programs have created portfolios to collect their work as well as reflect on it. These portfolios were typically three-ring binders stuffed with lesson plans, class photos, and children's work.

As the Internet became more pervasive in academia, the limitations of paper portfolios became apparent and many teacher education programs began transitioning to electronic format. Unlike paper portfolios, e-portfolios can accommodate multimedia, such as video of a student teacher in the classroom, and if web-based, can be accessed from anywhere. They are easier to manage as well as share with instructors, peers, administrators or potential employers.

UCSD's Teacher Education Program used portfolios - the three-ring binder variety - for over a decade. The program is now in its second year of requiring that students use an e-portfolio system.

"You can imagine with 50, 75 or 100 students, the pile of three-ring binders gets kind of high," says Randall Souviney, director of Education Studies at UCSD. "About five years ago we began working with a subset of the faculty to develop a web portfolio primarily to ease the logistics of presenting and reviewing them." It took a few years to put all the pieces in place, says Souviney, including developing a support structure for the faculty and students using the e-portfolio system, and assuring them that their information would be secure in the e-portfolio database.

Despite the challenges in implementing an e-portfolio system, Souviney says that there are advantages for students, such as getting faster and more comprehensive feedback from faculty.

"The online portfolio has given us a common object for dialogue to discuss the development of each student's teaching performance," says Souviney. "In the past, assessment usually didn't look too closely at what students were doing well, but rather what they were doing poorly. Now we are documenting both strengths and weaknesses and the progress over the year, which allows us to be more systematic. The downside is that it requires a lot of effort on the part of the faculty to come to agreement with one another on the assessment of the student. I think this is better for the student, but it is going to put pressure on the programs to find additional resources because the workload is going to increase."

Another advantage often attributed to e-portfolios is their ability to help student teachers get jobs at the end of their academic program. However, it seems that this may only be an advantage depending on where you want to teach. For example, UCSD's Souviney said that e-portfolios have helped his students get jobs, but faculty at UCR have said that they have not made much of a difference in their county.

"Last year one of our students sent the web address of her portfolio to a school administrator before her interview and was hired almost on the spot because the administrator was able to see a lot of her teaching prior to the interview," said Souviney. "I think the teaching showcase aspect of the e-portfolio will become increasingly important in the hiring process."

In some school districts, however, e-portfolios are still ahead of their time.

"People who interview teachers have tried-and-true methods for assessing candidates and it will take time to change," says Linda Scott-Hendrick, director of UCR's Teacher Induction Programs.

Brian Reilly, professor in the UCR Graduate School of Education, can attest to that. He has been using e-portfolios in his pre-service teacher education courses for three years, and although popular with the teacher supervisors and many students, Reilly says they have not yet lived up to their potential as hiring tools. He says that it's because his students often get hired well before their portfolios are complete, as well as because existing social practices do not accommodate e-portfolios. [See Reilly's article: Electronic Portfolios in the UCR Graduate School of Education Teaching Credential Program ]

"All of our students produce a portfolio on CD-ROM that they can take to their interview but social practices need to change in order for technology to make an impact on the hiring process," says Reilly. "On the other hand, having a video of yourself teaching is pretty persuasive, if there was any question about your qualifications. The barrier is that people aren't really ready to do it. The process just doesn't seem to allow much time for viewing the contents of the portfolios, but I think it will change in time."

UC Developing E-portfolio Systems for New Teachers and Credential Candidates

At UCR, under the leadership of Dean Robert Calfee, a technology team in the Graduate School of Education's Teacher Induction Programs is developing G*STAR, an electronic portfolio. This development work is made possible by a three-year, $470,000 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) for "The Galileo Program: Building a Technology-Rich Model of Performance-Based New Teacher Assessment." G*STAR stands for "Galileo System for Teacher Assessment and Reflection."

According to the Galileo proposal, the program is designed to "improve the assessment, and therefore the preparation of teachers along a continuum from the Community College level through the post-baccalaureate credential." In addition to UC, the program includes California State University campuses, private universities, community colleges, and the Riverside County Office of Education.

"One of the reasons for using an e-portfolio is to build a continuum of evidence and documentation for the teacher candidate, not just for purposes of assessment but for building an individual teacher's profile and history of professional development," says UCR's Scott-Hendrick. "If we can identify students interested in teaching early in their academic careers and get them started on an e-portfolio, they can continue to document their career trajectories through multiple levels of the credentialing process and hopefully on to National Board Professional Teacher Certification. Throughout, teachers can reflect on their teaching growth and activities and events, providing a continuous stream of professional development."

UCR plans on piloting the G*STAR e-portfolio system on campus this spring in its Teacher Education Program. An earlier version of the electronic portfolio has already been successfully supported and piloted in two local school districts, with positive results, says Zeno Franco, technology coordinator in the UCR Teacher Induction Programs. They found that the e-portfolio personalized the reflection process and created a sense of ownership, as well as made the process more interactive and fun, says Franco.

And Franco found that the teachers in the pilot learned some new skills by virtue of using the web-based e-portfolio system. "We clearly saw that teachers picked up real word technology skills that might not be offered in a college-based class," says Franco. "By using the e-portfolio to develop their own personal work, they became comfortable with using the web. That's definitely a benefit of the e-portfolio system in that the use of technology is embedded in daily practice."

UCR is also active in other e-portfolio efforts. Reilly and the Galileo technical team are also collaborating with their UC colleagues through a TLtC grant that will expand the use of several technologies, including e-portfolios, to teacher education programs throughout the UC system [See TLtC grant proposal ].

Also, Calfee, Reilly, Scott-Hendrick and Franco are working with colleagues on eight UC campuses (including UCSD's Randall Souviney) on an alternative version of the new Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) that will be required of all California teacher candidates beginning in fall, 2003 by the California Commission on Teaching Credentialing. The state commissioned Educational Technology Services (ETS) to develop the TPA system, but the UC campuses are developing the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) through a consortium with other universities including several CSU campuses, Stanford University and Mills College.

E-portfolios for General Campus Use

Although implementation of e-portfolios at UC has been mostly in the teacher education area, there is great interest in their potential for general campus use.

"It's a very popular move nationally to use some set of standards for e-portfolios for accreditation purposes," says Eric Splaver, director of College Information Services at UCLA, who is part of a national effort called ePort Consortium to develop technological standards.

On his own campus, Splaver is in the beginning stages of developing an e-portfolio application to be integrated with the campuswide MyUCLA web portal, possibly by fall, 2003.

"Instead of building a separate application, we are building e-portfolio components into applications that the UCLA community already uses, such as MyUCLA and course management systems," says Splaver. "Owners should feel that their items are exemplary of who they are and what they have done and thus the e-portfolio should be built as a byproduct of the their everyday practices."

Splaver believes an e-portfolio system will benefit the general campus population for a variety of reasons: it will help students keep track of their college requirements and display where they are on the timeline to graduation -- something parents might also find useful; it could facilitate the process of transferring from one college or university to another; and it could be used as an interactive resume in which the student grants access to certain parts of the portfolio to potential employers, showcasing their best work, faculty comments, and overall picture of what kind of employee they might be.

Faculty could also build e-portfolios, says Splaver, to develop a teaching resume for promotion and tenure reviews. A challenge, says Splaver, will be to convince faculty to want to use them.

"Not all faculty will be interested," says Splaver. "The payoff would be knowing that e-portfolios could provide individualized value to the student and they in turn could enhance their own portfolios by providing links to their better students' work."