Projects @ SFSU

An e-portfolio is a digitized collection of artifacts including demonstrations, resources, and accomplishments that represent an individual, group, or institution.

At SFSU, faculty-assigned print-based student portfolios have been common across many disciplines, such as Education, Public Administration, Health Education, and the College of Creative Arts. Departments with credentialing or professional licensure requirements have also actively employed student portfolios. Portfolio adoption trends can also be seen in schools of business, architecture, engineering, nursing and other health related fields.

The portfolio collection can be comprised of text-based, graphic, or multimedia elements archived on a Web site or on other electronic media such as a CD-ROM or DVD. Yet, an ePortfolio is not merely a simple collection—it can also serve both as an administrative and user tool to manage and organize work created with different applications, and to control who may access their work. Eportfolios are seen to encourage personal reflection and often involve the exchange of ideas and feedback. (Lorenzo, Ittelson, 2005)

In 2004, Casey Green's Campus Computing Survey reported that the number of institutions offering ePortfolios doubled from the previous year to include nearly one-third of U.S. institutions, and growth is as rapid in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and Canada.

At SF State, we have a number of student ePortfolio initiatives underway within courses and departments using specific ePortfolio software and students creating sites using their SFSU open web-space.

Portfolio Needs Assessment @ SFSU

In 2005, a campus wide survey at SFSU was conducted to determine whether portfolios, paper based, multi-media, electronic were currently being required. 55% of all chairs or faculty representatives responded with

• 25 departments indicating that they already required some form of portfolios (paper-based or digital), or expressed interest in using electronic portfolios at the course or department levels in the next 12 months. (62% of all respondents);
• 17 departments (68% of those already using portfolios) are already using some form of digital portfolios [Hosted software solutions: Taskstream, E-folio, I-CAP, as well as CDs, DVDs, and websites.]

Many departments still require paper-based student portfolios. Yet increasingly, there are also many digital modes of entering, saving, organizing, viewing, and selectively sharing student work. Some departments already require e-portfolios, with strong emerging interest from others to start pilot programs.

In summary, out of the 25 departments reporting portfolio use, the following primary uses of student portfolios were most often cited:

• Career Development: 13 departments report using portfolios primarily to support student career preparation. Student portfolios are created (over time) to reflect on coursework, experiences and internships, as a bridging tool to prepare for interviews, present writing or other a variety of other work samples, as well as to synthesize research and apply findings to current issues in the chosen field. [E.g.: Senior seminar requirements, capstone “signature” assignments, Internship reflection, graduate research and culminating project presentation, creative and performing arts professional portfolios.)
• Student Assessment: 8 Departments report portfolio use as a primary means of student assessment: tying coursework and student artifact/evidence to stated program goals, state standards or professional licensure requirements.
• Program Assessment: 2 mentioned the importance of being able to audit student performance in portfolios tied to program standards; several others mentioned portfolios, as a way to track groups of students to support accreditation needs through the aggregation of student achievement data.

This data reported included nine undergraduate, five graduate, four both grad/undergraduate, and four credential programs.

Current trends in electronic portfolio software development reflect an attempt to accommodate both the student and institutional needs. Concerns raised by faculty included the need for freedom and flexibility of any portfolio tool to allow for creativity versus a “one size fits all” template. This suggests that each college has unique needs relative to electronic portfolios, with areas of overlap in core functionality that will need to be accommodated.

Academic Technology is working on the next phase of development to pilot and implement ePortfolio solutions.

To learn more about ePortfolios or how you can start an ePortolio pilot

Contact: eport@sfsu.edu