Presentations: Electronic Portfolios

My dissertation research will be in the area of electronic portfolios. I have had excellent success using paper portfolios, and the advantages offered by electronic portfolios appeal to me. As I was starting my doctoral studies at UCF, I compiled a paper-based portfolio for admission purposes. The realization that this should be my area for dissertation research came later.

Since that time, I have presented a workshop on teaching portfolios for the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and presented a paper on electronic portfolios at the Association for Educational Communications and Technology Fall 2004 conference. The paper focused on the challenges of a program or institutional implementation of electronic portfolios. In it, I amplified two existing models: one from Helen Barrett and another proposed by Fogarty, Burke, and Belgrad. My contributions were related to the relevant questions decision makers from the scholarly and technical communities should be addressing at each stage of the portfolio development process. In addition, my co-author and I offered a rating guide for four different electronic portfolio systems we evaluated.

This session was presented as a roundtable session. I was hoping the folks at the table would help me determine if I was missing any important questions. One person's comment made me realize I should explicitly address the need to consider whether or not portfolio authors would need training support. I hope to present this work again and solicit more feedback on my model. I have submitted this paper for the Proceedings, but believe I will also try to publish it in a journal.

Feedback from the participants was very gratifying. My favorite quote came from a woman who had just received her copy of my model. She exclaimed "I like this layout. Oh, holy cow! What you've done here has saved me months of work."