Largely under-noticed (but I have probably missed blogposts on this given that my head has been down…)…
On Nov 3, in time for Educause, the e-Port Consortium released an excellent white paper on e-Portfolios, accessible through:
http://www.eportconsortium.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=6&tabid=35
This paper, a collaborative effort of educators, and university and commercial developers, has something in it for everyone, and will serve as a good summary for people looking to get engaged in e-portfolio work.
The use cases described, the diagrams (being visual – these are my favorite part of any paper) depicting relationships with other systems and standards considerations, and the links to other e-Portfolio projects are all quite valuable.
To get an idea of the depth of the coverage, here is an excerpt from the Introduction:
“The first three sections of this white paper focus on the user perspective and provide a conceptual overview, describe possible scenarios and consider potential benefits. Sections four, five and six focus on the technical aspects of ePortfolios and include discussions on system infrastructure, interoperability and standards, and deployment challenges. Sections seven and eight provide overviews of commercial offerings and a summary of academic electronic portfolio projects. Details from the survey of electronic portfolio projects used for Section eight are in the Appendix. Depending on interest and expertise, a reader can select the sections that are most relevant.”
Kudo’s to the collaborators! We’ll be circulating this widely within UBC, and will certainly be making this available to anyone who participate in our December 5 e-Portfolio Day (more on that in another post).