7 Easy methods to Create E-Portfolios

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E-portfolios have gotten an increasingly important way for college students to point out what they know. But their value doesn’t end after graduation.

E-portfolios, which are created in lots of alternative ways — from simple blogging platforms to specifically designed software and services — can assist transition students from academia to different jobs and roles within the workplace. It’s this ability to track a user’s evolution from academic to professional and beyond that led Safiya Noble, a professor on the University of Illinois, to settle on Pathbrite as a learning and representation tool for her students.

Noble teaches classes concerned about digital technology. She can be an advocate for using digital technology in education and has always used some sort of electronic environment wherein students can reflect and share and discuss their thoughts.

The University of Illinois does offer some e-portfolio options to its students. The difficulty, Noble said, is that that many such systems are behind the university firewall, and therefore cannot be used after a student graduates. “One of several things that i used to be frustrated by was that there have been such a lot of rich discussions that scholars were sharing [on university e-portfolio platforms],” said Noble. “When they had finished the category, they may not come into the category space and use those [tools] again. Students would say, ‘i’ll really see how I could use those things at the job,’ but they would not have access since the tools were behind the university firewall.”

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Lots of Noble’s colleagues utilize blogging platforms, and her students share ideas and collaborate on Facebook, among other social networks. Noble considered these and other options as e-portfolio platforms, but all of them fell in need of her and her students’ needs for one reason or another.

Noble have been following Heather Hiles, the founder and CEO of Pathbrite and a noted education thought leader, and saw that the Pathbrite platform was developing in a method that was aligned with Noble’s ideas concerning the capabilities an e-portfolio should provide.

Notably, said Noble, the Pathbrite feel and look is clean and complicated, to the extent that today’s tech-savvy students have come to expect. “Students are used to beautifully designed spaces online,” she said. “They know what looks good and what’s going to be an aesthetically pleasing representation of themselves. Pathbrite is clean, it’s beautiful, it is easy to navigate and appears great across a lot of devices — the iPhone, tablet, what have you ever. In case you are using a touchscreen, you may go through it with finesse.”

Because e-portfolios usually are not general across all majors on the university at this point, Noble is operating with students to get them to grasp the price of portfolios which could follow them not just through their college years but through their professional lives in addition. She said she emphasizes how e-portfolios can be utilized to showcase best work and as evidence of progress. “I needed to start performing some work with students to get them to comprehend the worth of portfolios, especially when it comes to seeing how far they’ve got come.”

Christopher Gray, Pathbrite’s chief product officer, told InformationWeek Education that among the benefits of e-portfolios — whatever environment they’re getting used in — is their ability to symbolize a continuum of labor in order that different elements and experiences along that continuum could be connected. To boot, because e-portfolios are frequently stored within the cloud, users — and people who desire to connect to them or assess their work — can access them anytime and anywhere.

Pathbrite integrates with online learning sites which includes Kahn Academy, enabling users to drag in badges earned there. Noble said her students also integrate discussions and sharing from Facebook, expanding interesting discussions happening to people who aren’t on Facebook. “Students have Facebook groups, but not everyone within the class was on Facebook,” she said. “i may see how students could use these portfolios, and that i saw they may pull everything into Pathbrite so that they did not have to speculate themselves so personally on Facebook in the event that they didn’t favor to.”

Noble said something she wish to see in future versions of Pathbrite is the power to integrate more seamlessly with learning management systems reminiscent of Blackboard.

Noble started using Pathbrite together with her students within the spring of 2012, and now that she has seen the flexibility of portfolios she’s waiting for gauging the advantages of the system when used from the start of freshman year right through graduation and beyond. “i need my classes to assist get students ready for his or her first and second and third careers,” she said, “and never just be a box that they check off.”

Follow Deb Donston-Miller on Twitter at @debdonston.

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