On Implementing Web-Based Electronic Portfolios.

29 n 1999, Ray Kruzweil took a look at where technology might be 10 years down the road: It is now 2009. A $1,000 personal computer can perform about a trillion calculations per second. Computers are imbedded in clothing and jewelry. Most routine business transactions take place between a human and a virtual personality. Translating telephones are commonly used. Human musicians routinely jam with cybernetic musicians. The neo-Luddite movement is growing.1 With Kurzweil providing a general sense of the promise of future technology, we focus the discussion on electronic portfolios with our own description: It is now 2009. A webfolio system used extensively throughout all levels of education supports continuous curriculum improvement, allowing all educators to share teaching and learning strategies, learning resources, and assignments with their colleagues. A Web-based system organizes a student’s work and presents it in a student webfolio, displaying not only the artifacts but also the associated assignments and activities. Any authorized webfolio user can assess the student’s mastery of curricular standards. A student’s webfolio starts in kindergarten, continues through college, and archives a student’s lifelong learning and career development. The webfolio also showcases the newest and finest achievements in the student’s life work. While Kurzweil’s opening quote might evoke questions about obstacles on the road to realizing his vision, most university and college faculty would expect Web-based student portfolios to be commonplace six or seven years from now. In comparison, our statements about Web-based portfolios sound pedestrian, with any resulting controversy involving why fulfillment of our vision would take so long given the considerable interest in moving from paper to electronic portfolios and the lack of apparent obstacles, especially technical ones. This was our view when we began implementing Web-based electronic portfolios at two institutions more than five years ago. After more than 4,000 Web-based student portfolios, our experiences at our own institutions and our work with other institutions indicate that the transition is not as easy as it seems. Successful implementation depends on a set of critical success factors, and in academic settings lacking them, expectations must be scaled back until they are adequately addressed. We define a webfolio as a tightly integrated collection of Web-based multimedia documents that includes curricular standards, course assignments, student artifacts in response to assignments, and reviewer feedback to the student’s work. The integrated collection, and how the collection is stored and used, differentiate the webfolio from other paper and traditional electronic portfolios. The webfolio opens up new possibilities for observing and influencing the interaction among curricula, students, and faculty.