E-Portfolio Open Access

By Jonathon Richter (Univ. of Oregon; WainBrave Bernal)

Jeremy Kemp and I presented at AERA last month on the Virtual Portfolio or vPortfolio concept - extending and enhancing the ePortfolio notion into 3D space. The slurl for our work-in-progress spot is here: http://tinyurl.com/ytqjna and we'd really like to collaborate with folks from the Second Life Educators group on ways to build out this idea, literally! :)

While 2D portfolios have traditionally relied, in one way / degree to another on the metaphors of (a) Map, (b) Sonnet, and (c) Mirror - depending upon the purpose of the ePortfolio (who is the audience, who is setting the goals, who is reviewing it - and is it for summative or formative evaluation?) - 3D or vPortfolios may generate new metaphors for collections of student work for the purposes of teaching and learning:

1) the Portfolio as Quest: collections of work can now immerse the viewer in a story, retold when a user ventures through.

2) the Portfolio as built Community: students can "hang out" and create things in a formal or informal setting, making and doing (much like a number of sims in SL - like my home in Chilbo!)

3) the Portfolio as Museum: Students can create a walkthrough (or flythrough) of an interactive exhibit - on a large or small scale.

4) the Portfolio as Marketplace : Students can use an economic scale to see how well the artifacts that demonstrate their knowledge now bear out their own skills.

There may be others out there in SL and other Multi-User Virtual environments - but my belief is that you are using a relatively inexpensive Portfolio Tool with Second Life. There just hasn't yet been a lot of development in any of the above 4 areas - though there ARE examples, of which I would humbly ask folks to submit so we may showcase them at the vPortfolio build on San Jose State's place.

We also are experimenting with the use of SLoodle as a way to capture reflection (via chat and blog tools) so students have a way of narrating why they feel they have met particular standards.

As for 2D, I like Elgg for learner - centered and OSPI for institution-centered portfolios. I've used Adobe Acrobat Writer and HyperStudio (ahem!) as generic tools to create them at Montana State, where I was in a previous life.

TaskStream and Avenet are great proprietary options.

If you or anyone is interested in finding out more about our vPortfolio work, let me know!