What is an ePortfolio?
A Portfolio is intended to enhance the student experience by providing a means to capture experiences (academic and non-academic) and demonstrate the resulting relationships. A portfolio is an organized collection of academic and non-academic artifacts and reflections that capture a student’s journey towards the achievement of personal, academic and professional goals and curricular standards. On this journey, students carefully select pieces of their best work that show the quality and variety of their academic activity developed over time. Additionally, students may include a piece in progress and reflect on their goals towards meeting the desired personal, professional and/or academic outcomes. A portfolio also allows students to draw connections between their academic and non-academic work in meeting these desired goals and outcomes.
Portfolios allow students to:
- Take responsibility for their personal, academic and professional (career) development.
- Develop greater awareness of how they learn best.
- Gain better insights into strengths and areas of development.
- Review personal progress of goals and learning outcomes and exhibit evidence of learning to demonstrate their development.
- Identify and select evidence of their learning, development and achievements through academic and non-academic experiences.
- Develop their personal, academic and professional (career) brand and identity over time.
- More effectively articulate their skills, strengths, competencies and development to different stakeholders such as prospective employers.
The portfolio can take on many creative forms in print or digital formats to house artifacts and reflections and share them with faculty and the workplace. In our digital age, a student can document their learning journey through an electronic portfolio – an ePortfolio.
