Table of contents

© Copyright 2010 University of Southern Queensland

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1. Introduction

The use of e-portfolios (electronic portfolios) has increasingly gained attention in Australian schools in recent years, as part of a wider trend across education in Australia and internationally. This report is the final output of the e-portfolio technology activity component of the Technical Standards for Digital Education project. It looks at what the term e-portfolio means in the context of Australian schools, gives a snapshot of how they are being used or planned to be used with learners, and provides some options for future national action to support the use of e-portfolios both within schools and beyond.

2. Activity scope

This activity is part of the Technical Standards for Digital Education project funded by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). This section provides an outline of the scope of the work that was undertaken as part of this activity.

Develop a clearer understanding of current e-portfolio use in Australian schools

Focused stakeholder consultations and analysis of existing intelligence on current and planned e-portfolio usage in Australian schools was undertaken. The following questions were considered in this context:

• How are e-portfolios currently being used and by whom?
• What future usage of e-portfolios is under consideration in jurisdictions?

Identify the key technical challenges for supporting e-portfolios in the Australian schools sector

The primary aim of this work is to better understand the technical challenges facing Australian schools. Key questions that were considered include:

• How to support longevity of e-portfolios so that the investment taken to develop them by schools, government and learners can be maximized?
• How to facilitate e-portfolio interoperability between schools, jurisdictions and other education sectors?
• What technical standards are relevant to e-portfolio implementers and how should they be adopted?

Inform future technical support requirements and activities

Recommendations for future work have been documented as appropriate throughout the activity including potential future work on e-portfolio interoperability, and collaboration opportunities across and between jurisdictions

3. Methodology

Work on the e-portfolio technologies themed activity commenced in 2009 with the formation of a focus group to oversee the work. This group was largely focused on the schools sector, however there were representatives from both the Vocational Education and Training and Higher Education sectors to ensure e-portfolio activities and experiences from those sectors are captured and utilised.

Initial research

The project team undertook initial research prior to preparing the briefing paper which involved internet research and limited consultations with Australian and international e-portfolio experts and advocates.

Development of a briefing paper

The briefing paper provides an initial view of the potential for e-portfolios to be used in Australian schools. A case-study demonstrating e-portfolio usage and highlighting technical requirements for adoption of e-portfolios was developed.

Formation of the focus group

A focus group comprising interested stakeholders appointed by a number of jurisdictions was formed. This group also includes representatives from the VET and higher education sectors.

Survey of focus group

Survey questions were distributed to focus group members to identify and document current usage and trends in e-portfolios as well as to identify technical barriers to adoption. Focus group members were encouraged to consult widely within their jurisdictions when gathering this information.

Documentation of findings

The project team used this information and subsequent discussions to identify patterns of use and technical challenges facing Australian schools wanting to utilise e-portfolios

Confirmation and sign-off from focus group

These findings have been documented in this report.

4. Exploring e-portfolios and e-portfolio usage in schools

4.1 What is an e-portfolio?

Broadly speaking, an e-portfolio (or an electronic portfolio) can be described as a tool or process for gathering information about a learner. The information stored in an e-portfolio could be ongoing work, reflections on learning or evidence of achievement or competency. The vagueness of this definition reflects the lack of consensus on a precise definition of an e-portfolio due to the diversity of applications and usage. Despite this diversity, it is possible to make some generalisations about e-portfolios:

Learner control

Generally, an e-portfolio could be considered a learner controlled space. This means that the learner is responsible for gathering, sorting and presenting information about their learning outcomes. However, this does not necessarily mean that the information accessible from a learner’s e-portfolio is owned by the learner. For younger learners, control over their e-portfolio may reside with a teacher and/or parent/guardian.

Product verses process

In some cases, the process of developing an e-portfolio can be more important that the e-portfolio itself in helping a learner better understand their learning outcomes and learning styles. From this perspective, the e-portfolio can be seen as the product of this process.

Lifelong learning

The information that a learner collects via their pathways through formal and informal education and training and work mean that e-portfolios are well suited to supporting lifelong learning approaches. E-portfolios can continue to be used by a learner to support transitions into further study, plan for career progression and maintain records of their learning outcomes and achievements.

4.2 What are e-portfolios used for?

E-portfolios are used for a wide range of purposes, and from a life-long learning perspective, the role of an e-portfolio is likely to change over time as the learner moves through different stages of formal education and training and beyond into the workforce.

Reflection and planning

As an e-portfolio is used to gather information and evidence of learning and learning outcomes, it can be a valuable tool for reflection on learning outcomes and progress. Another key benefit outlined by advocates is the e-portfolio as a planning tool. This is because it can provide other key stakeholders such as teachers and career counsellors with information on a learner’s history, learning styles and interests. By making these preferences more explicit, it should also help the learner understand their learning history better and make more informed choices about future education and career plans.

Transitioning and pathways

Learners require support when undertaking transitions as part of their formal education and beyond ¹. An e-portfolio can be used to support learner pathways and transitions by helping the learner understand their existing skills and knowledge. With appropriate authorisation, it can also be used by teachers and career counsellors to understand a learner's learning history and use this information to make more informed decisions. An e-portfolio may also be used to introduce efficiencies to future course applications processes as well as providing learners with some continuity in their learning across transition phases. An e-portfolio could also be a tool to support learners in understanding their existing skills and knowledge in relation to the skills and knowledge required to adapt to their new environment ².

Table 1: Typical transition points and example e-portfolio usage

Assessment

An e-portfolio is a tool for gathering evidence of learning. As such, it may also be used in demonstrating learning outcomes and competency for assessment purposes. This requires teachers to have access to the e-portfolios of the learners they are assessing. Such access may be blanket access (suitable to younger learners) or access controlled by the learner themselves (suitable for older learners).

4.3 How are e-portfolios actually being used in Australian schools?

The information gathered as part of this activity was largely derived from desktop research, focus group members and other e-portfolio advocates and practitioners who were identified by the focus group. A more comprehensive survey would be required to gather definitive data on e-portfolio usage in Australian schools. However, this activity does give an indication of the broad trends in use, both actual and planned. Our research indicates the technical issues and challenges facing schools and jurisdictions to realise this usage.

Diversity in approaches

There is no central/national approach to e-portfolios in Australian schools, so there is massive diversity in the way they are being defined, used and conceptualised. Some jurisdictions such as Queensland are considering making tools available to teachers for creating e-portfolios with learners across the state. In South Australia, the SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) contains a type e-portfolio which is designed to help learners reflect on and plan their learning and education. Another possibility is e-portfolios being used with students undertaking a specific subject.

At a local level, e-portfolios are also being used with learners in a particular class, with a single teacher.

Tools and systems

There is a wide and growing range of tools and software that can support learners and teachers to create and manage e-portfolios. Free Web 2.0 style collaborative tools can be used to aggregate and manage content which generally lowers the barriers of entry to people wanting to get started. However issues such as access, privacy and ownership need to be considered. The other end of the spectrum is dedicated e-portfolio tools that are provided and hosted by a school or jurisdiction. These tools often address access and ownership concerns, but may not offer the same level of flexibility as more lightweight tools. All options can cause issues for portability of the e-portfolio.

Views on transitions and lifelong learning

Our research indicates that there is general support for a lifelong learning style approach to using e-portfolios in Australian schools and beyond. However, the reality is that e-portfolios are generally tied to a particular system or environment. Options for moving an e-portfolio (requiring export from its current environment and import into a new environment) are generally limited. Although there are potential benefits for learners and other stakeholders in using e-portfolios to support learner transitions, more national cooperation would be required to make this possible.

Examples of jurisdiction-based e-portfolio activities

The following examples provide a brief snapshot of some examples of e-portfolio usage in Australia. The focus of these activities tends to be on reflection and planning and assessment. There tends to be less practical focus on supporting transitions and pathways beyond the learner’s current context.

Smart Classrooms, QLD

As part of the Queensland government’s Smart Classrooms initiative, e-portfolios have been encouraged for use by both students and teachers. Figure 1 outlines a digital portfolio framework which describes how e-portfolios may be used with learners.

Figure 1: Digital Portfolio Framework, Queensland

The diagram is from the Smart Classroom Bytes newsletter, Edition 1

Four key uses of e-portfolios have been identified including portfolios for archiving, demonstrating capabilities, showcasing and learning. For teachers, developing a digital portfolio is also a requirement for accreditation with the Smart Classrooms Professional Development Framework.

Digital Forms of Assessment, WA

A research project into the use of digital representations of work for authentic and reliable assessment in senior secondary school courses is due to be completed in 2010. A key aim of this work is to address the following research question:

How are digitally based representations of student work output on authentic tasks most effectively used to support highly reliable summative assessments of student performances for courses with a substantial practical component?

Future SACE, SA

Approximately two thirds of the senior secondary schools involved in the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) have indicated their interest in the e-portfolio. At the time of writing, 55 schools had students and teachers registered and using the system (approx 6,000 students), 50 schools have been trained and are about to start using it and approximately 60 schools are at various stages of deployment from analysing the e-portfolio’s usefulness at their school to attending training, then commencing use.

The state-wide e-portfolio is also providing an added benefit where students are transferring schools. Students that have been using the e-portfolio at their old school will have all their existing Personal Learning Plan (PLP) work, including teacher comments, available to their new teacher at their new school.  

Feedback from teachers about the deployment process has been positive, particularly the training and support materials provided. The flexible nature of the e-portfolio system has enable schools to integrate the e-portfolio with existing practices.

Digital Portfolio Resources, VIC

The Victorian Department of Education and Training has produced a set of example e-portfolios and has distributed these materials to schools in that jurisdiction. The department has defined the following e-portfolio activities in their documentation:

• Assessment for learning
• Assessment as learning
• Assessment of learning.

The resources provide teachers with examples, support materials, tools to support reflection and templates and planning advice.

5. Technical challenges

This section articulates the technical implications for implementing e-portfolios in Australian schools.

5.1 Usage

The way an e-portfolio is used obviously has major implications for the technical solutions that may be implemented. Beginning to use e-portfolio in class can be relatively straightforward, as there are a range of software applications and tools that enable learners to collect information, reflect on it and get feedback.

Web content used in an e-portfolio can be stored anywhere on the web, including video hosting websites (YouTube, Teachertube, Vimeo, etc), blogs, wikis, etc. As such, the process of “collecting” or “gathering” information in an e-portfolio can be conceptual; it does not necessarily mean moving all content into a single repository. The e-portfolio can link to information in its original location.

However, if e-portfolios are to have a longer lifespan beyond the classroom where they are first created, more cooperation across schools and jurisdictions would be required to agree on methods and processes for making e-portfolios more portable nationally. Further consideration on the role of other stakeholders should be considered when implementing and using e-portfolios with learners including career advisors and parents.

Recommendation: Cooperation across schools and jurisdictions are required to agree on methods and processes for making e-portfolios more portable

5.2 Portability

Our research indicated that most practitioners support the notion that an e-portfolio should be able to move with the learner. From this perspective, it is helpful to consider that over the lifetime of an e-portfolio, any software tool/application used to create all or part of a learner’s e-portfolio is only being used at this snapshot in time and will change over time.

This is a vital consideration when selecting e-portfolio software. An e-portfolio should be able to be exported out of a system and imported into another system as required. However, the complication with this requirement is that there is currently no de facto standard for e-portfolios internationally that enable this to happen easily. There is a specification that was developed by IMS Global which has not been widely adopted, and an emerging specification from the UK that should be further investigated.

Recommendation: Despite a lack of consistency in e-portfolio content formats, any e-portfolio system being selected and used in Australian schools should have the capability for both exporting and importing e-portfolios.

5.3 Longevity

The distinction between e-portfolios (the information/knowledge) and e-portfolio systems (the software/tools) should be reemphasised when considering longevity. If an e-portfolio is to support lifelong learning approaches and grow and develop with the learner, it must have longevity. Beyond being in a format that is (reasonably) portable, this also requires consideration of file formats and media types for e-portfolio content. This should also be a consideration for organisations that provide and maintain information on student outcomes such as schools, jurisdictions and government agencies.

Recommendation: User-friendly guidance should be provided to teachers and learners about strategies for ensuring the longevity of e-portfolio content including file formats.

5.4 Access

E-portfolios can contain personal information that learners may wish to protect. Particularly with younger learners, the decision to restrict access to a learner’s e-portfolio may rest with teachers and/or parents and guardians. To ensure that an e-portfolio can be effectively used for learning and teaching purposes while reasonably addressing duty of care concerns and obligations, consideration for addressing access and authentication rules is required when implementing and using e-portfolios.

Control over access to e-portfolio content and the conditions of that access should rest with the learner (owner) and/or teacher, parent or guardian. In practice, implementing secure and flexible access controls can be technically complex, particularly if people are using web-based tools. As such, it is easier to implement a system where there is blanket access, or blanket restrictions. E-portfolio users may also be constrained by the e-portfolio software or tools they are using to create and/or host their e-portfolio.

Again, there is also an element of digital literacy that is required for learners to be able to make informed choices about granting access to their personal information. Other stakeholders such as teachers and parents need to be able to make informed choices on how learner information should be protected and accessed. In this way, an e-portfolio may also be used to develop digital literacy skills.

Recommendation: Holistic approaches for access and authentication issues need to be considered by e-portfolio systems implementers. National collaboration, particularly around trusted access to systems and content would be beneficial.

6. Conclusions

This report finds that e-portfolios have potential benefits for learners, particularly in the following areas:

• Reflection and planning
• Transitioning and pathways
• Assessment

E-portfolio approaches could be utilised to support government policy initiatives including for example:

• Compact with young Australians
• National partnership on Youth Attainment and Transitions
• COAG National Numeracy review.

A number of successful examples of e-portfolio implementations for reflection and planning and assessment processes are readily available. However, other than planning for transitioning and pathways, there is less evidence of practical applications of e-portfolios continuing to be used by learners during transition points and beyond into further education across jurisdictions or education sectors or the workforce.

Although there seems to be a belief that e-portfolios can be used to support transitions, pathways and lifelong learning, there are technical and practical barriers that currently prevent this from occurring in practice. The technical issues outlined in this report highlight some of the difficulties facing implementers of e-portfolios. It may be difficult or impossible to address all of these issues at a local level with limited resources and expertise. However, these technical issues are not necessarily specific to e-portfolios and have also been raised in other focus groups. Issues such as access and authentication controls are also being investigated more broadly in some jurisdictions.

Appendix 1: Focus Group Members

The Technical Standards for Digital Education project is funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).

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