Are all ePortfolios created eQual?

The last few days I've been exploring several ePortfolio platforms. Being a techie fan, I love the idea of ePortfolios. I think they are a valuable tool in today's digital world. You can show examples of writing with links to PDFs, embed slideshows, add images, link to presentations, even videos. The content can be organized on different pages for easy navigation. Depending on the platform used, ePortfolios can highlight your creativity as well. That's the fun part!  Some platforms offer different templates geared toward different types of ePortfolios and different styles. You can either drop your artifacts in to a predesigned template or personalize it further using the editing tools.

I had created an ePortfolio using Wix not too long ago. It has numerous templates and allows for a quite a bit of customization. This is the template I edited to create my ePortfolio: template  And here's the link to my ePortfolio: Wix ePortfolio  As you can see I did quite a bit of customizing, but Wix also offers ePortfolio and CV templates you can simply drop your content into. I just like to play around with it. The Wix platform was fairly easy to use and gives lots of choices (almost too many!) if you want to design your own site. They also offer professional design at a cost. Wix provides WixEd which has free videos to help you design your website. Although much of Wix is geared towards business, with a little imagination you can change any template into an ePortfolio. Wix also offers free apps to include in your site, like surveys or Google maps, etc.

The next platform I explored was Weebly. They also have templates you can use, but I just built my ePortfolio from scratch to see how hard it would be. It wasn't bad at all. I like how clean and simple it is compared to the busyness of my Wix ePortfolio. To be fair, I easily could have made that cleaner as well. So here's the link to the Weebly ePortfolio. Weebly also has both free and paid apps, a help center, a blog with recent updates, and more. With Weebly you can also include a blog and a social media stream in your website or ePortfolio. The social media stream is fun! But I didn't like that the logos for social media links were very small with no way to enlarge them. Also, the support page is a bit hard to find, hidden in a drop down menu under your name. Overall, I think Wix and Weebly are comparable - they each have pros and cons. I tried to find another platform, but many charged fees or were just too complicated. Wix and Weebly were by far the most user friendly that I could find.

I planned to find three journal articles that discussed evaluation of professional ePortfolios. However, I could not find much on this topic, but I found a few that related to nursing education and evaluating student ePortfolios. The first article is Electronic portfolios in nursing education: A review of the literature by Green, Wyllie, and Jackson (2014). The authors assert that the process of building an ePortfolio appeals to Millennials, fosters autonomy and accountability for their own learning, and helps link theory to practice (Green, Wyllie, & Jackson, 2014).
I agree with this idea and think that using ePortfolios with students would be a great way for them to learn to build a professional presence as well.

Although I think it would be valuable for students to build ePortfolios, grading them could be challenging. One of the important aspects of ePortfolios noted in the journal article by Green et al. was reflection. Neither Wix nor Weebly had an obvious place for students to reflect on their work. I guess they could use the blog for that, but that would be removed from the actual documents. Norris and Gimber (2013) assert that the process of selecting which documents to put in their ePortfolios is actually a metacognitive process that helps students reflect on what they have learned and use critical thinking to decide which documents would best represent their developing professional persona. With this in mind, perhaps students should blog about how and why they chose artifacts to include in their ePortfolio.

The last article I found reinforced the importance of reflection in the creation of ePortfolios (Gwozdek, Springfield, & Kerschbaum, 2013). The authors emphasize the need to clearly determine the purpose of ePortfolios and to define specific learning outcomes. They include several rubrics, discuss evaluating the impact of ePortfolios, and reflect on lessons learned. The following quote sums up the potential found in ePortfolios:

Both as product and process, reflective ePortfolios have

the potential to promote learning and transfer of knowledge

by fostering the ability to make connections between

learning outcomes (i.e. competencies) and leaning experiences.

3 As repositories of evidence of student work, portfolios

allow learners to take responsibility for documenting

and demonstrating their own abilities over the entire

curriculum. Self-assessment allows learners to consider

this within broader learning domains of their lives 

(Gwozdek et al., 2013, p. e11)

As much as I enjoyed playing with ePortfolios for myself, I think there are even greater rewards in using them to benefit students. With this in mind, I was excited to find the International Journal of ePortfolio  Definitely a resource I will explore.

Maryanne

References:

Green, J., Wyllie, A., & Jackson, D. (2014). Electronic portfolios in nursing education: A review of the literature. Nursing Education in Practice, 14, 4-8.

Gwozdek, A. E., Springfield, E. C., & Kershbaum, W. E. (2013). ePortfolio: Developing a catalyst for critical self-assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes. Allied Health, 42(1), e11-e17.

Norris, M., & Gimber, P. (2013). Developing nursing students' metacognitive skills using social technology. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 8, 17-21.