Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Viewpoint
ePortfolios: Hot Once Again
4/16/2008
My recent conference itinerary:ePortfolio conference - March 28 at Eastern Connecticut State University, co-sponsored by NERCOMP (Northeast Regional Computer Program) and the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (CTDLC). It was "sold out."
ePortfolio conference - April 9 in Newport, RI, co-sponsored by IBM and RINET (Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology). It was focused on the statewide ePortfolio requirement for high school students in RI but drew attendees from around the country.
ePortfolio conference - April 11 at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, NY, co-sponsored by the New York Times, planned originally for 150 to 200 attendees it but got close to 600.
Not only were these conferences all within a 2-week period of each other; they were all within a 160-mile-wide region, and all receiving more attendees than planned. What's going on? People are realizing that:
- ePortfolios are not one thing, but many things, and can be applied for purposes in all academic activities. "ePortfolio" is a multitude of similar-function applications all sharing a name.
- All campuses need at least one and perhaps many ePortfolios of varying capabilities.
- ePortfolios are a native technology for Web 2.0 and the semantic Web.
ePortfolios have infinite capacity and potential to "academize" the Web because they are based in learning and assessment theory and are not primarily management tools (even though they do manage data). Primarily, they are learning spaces, and the Web is all about new learning spaces.
The learning management system may seem like the quintessential academic technology application, but instead the ePortfolio is. Both will be transformed by the distributed nature of the Web (data and functionality residing in multiple places), but the learning management system will start to lose its identity as a unified system when it is distributed to operating system functions or Web functions, while ePortfolios will retain their identity even when distributed because ePortfolio is glued together and its development guided by learning theory.
ePortfolio is the learning technology of this age.
There is no institution of higher learning in this country that lacks some kind of ePortfolio. Why, then, is there not the Blackboard of ePortfolios?
Precisely because of the nature of ePortfolios. Since ePortfolio technology varies across a much broader spectrum of technologies and purposes than do learning management systems, any company or open source community would need an equally broad spectrum of separate applications to dominate the market. That hasn't happened yet.
But, Web 2.0 may change that market equation. An ePortfolio for learning can be constructed to use Social Web technologies as a coherent set of learning experiences. As these technologies begin to reside in a multitude of Web sites, the ePortfolio at a campus needn't support all the functionalities, but can simply serve as a way into the ePortfolio cloud. The campus ePortfolio can be a stepping-off point for the suggested series of learning experiences on the Web: It can channel, aggregate, archive, and analyze.
Recommended Reading
- Georgia Tech Helps Develop Web-based Tool To Improve Blood Supply
The Georgia Tech College of Computing, working in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has developed a Web-based tool for tracking blood safety. The program is expected to help developing countries improve the adequacy and safety of their national blood supplies through better monitoring and evaluation.
- Mississippi State Implements Reflex Virtual Management Center
Mississippi State University has implemented Reflex VMC (Virtual Management Center) from Reflex Systems. The application allows IT administrators to monitor a virtual infrastructure and enforce business and IT policies.
- Stanford Law School Launches IP Litigation Clearinghouse
The Law, Science & Technology Program at Stanford Law School has launched the Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC), an online database that offers comprehensive information about intellectual property (IP) disputes within the United States.
- Texas A&M Health Science Center Adopts Banner Administrative Management
The Texas A&M Health Science Center has selected the Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) from Sungard Higher Education to help unify its geographically-dispersed community and to enhance and expand services and communications to its growing student enrollment.
- NCCC: Data Cleansing Key To Managing Growth
Community colleges are in a good spot in some ways during the economic downturn, as tight family budgets drive up the appeal of the community college option. But along with the rest of higher education, most community colleges also face shrinking IT budgets and tighter resources. That makes it that much harder to handle the growing enrollment numbers that some community colleges are seeing.
- Finjan: Layoffs Could Drive IT People To Become Cyber-Criminals
Security vendor Finjan predicts that the current economic downturn could herald a sharp rise in cybercrime during 2009--driven by the rise in the number of IT people being laid off. According to a report from the company's Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC), more unemployed IT personnel will be tempted to seek "new and easy income by purchasing and using crimeware toolkits that are sold by professional hackers."
