Electronic Portfolios Need Standards To Thrive.

34 More than two years ago, Arthur Levine, author and president of Teachers College, Columbia University, wrote that it won’t be long before “every person will have an educational passport.”1 He explained, “Such an educational passport, or portfolio, will record a student’s lifetime educational history.” Focusing more on learning outcomes than on diplomas that reflect “course seat time,” electronic versions of these portfolios seem the likeliest development of Levine’s vision. Trent Batson, director of Information and Instructional Technology Services at the University of Rhode Island, writing in Syllabus,2 acknowledged that “a general recognition of the usefulness of ePortfolios” already exists and pointed to the resulting momentum the tool is gathering, not just on “dozens if not hundreds of campuses,” but also among vendors and publishers. He declared that “electronic portfolios have a greater potential to alter higher education at its very core than any other technology application we’ve known thus far.” What, exactly, is an electronic portfolio? Most definitions so far have focused primarily on its purpose. For example, Helen Barrett of the University of Alaska Anchorage, a widely recognized expert on electronic portfolio development, defined it as an organized collection of digital and/or analog artifacts and reflective statements that demonstrate growth over time.3 In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Young, senior editor for student issues, described an electronic portfolio as an “extensive resume that links to an online repository of . . . anything . . . that demonstrates the student’s accomplishments and activities.”4 The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) also emphasizes purpose, stating that an electronic portfolio—whether produced by a student, a faculty member, or an institution—is for collection, reflection, and assessment.5 These definitions seem to assume that the tool’s functional aspects are the same as the current capabilities of any Webbased application. In other words, except for availability on the Web and the ability to use digital technologies, these descriptions portray electronic portfolios, by and large, as merely mimicking their paper counterparts.