Implementation challenges

[Kathleen Willbanks]

Before the February 25, 2009 ePortfolio Day of Dialogue, attendees submitted these challenges related to selecting or implementing ePortfolio solutions:

* Providing a clean and transparent way to "lock" faculty portfolios
during the review process (so they can’t modify/add content) has
proven more difficult than we thought. We have created a temporary
solution, but it’s not ideal for the long-term.
* Scaling ePortfolios, particularly the reflection aspect such that
the workload for the faculty/instructor does not become too
burdensome. It seems like building a peer community would be an
essential component of any solution. It would be great to see some
models and case studies for how this might be designed and
implemented.
* Faculty buy-in in programs where faculty research and publication
take precedence over teaching especially in large programs where
scale and workload become issues related to changes in the type of
work students do and the attention assessment of this work requires.
* I’m not convinced that amassing these materials necessarily helps
student learning. Sometimes, I think that it’s more work rather
than more learning. This comes from listening not just to students
on my campus, but to my mentee who took a library degree from
UCLA. The question remains: is the added work worth whatever
learning they get out of it? If not, then we are creating more
work with little added value.
* The portfolio process is complicated by different professors
requiring different elements for e-portfolios. This makes sense if
the differences are content-driven, but often they are not. They
are presentation-driven. This creates more busy work for students.
Professors have always had differences in this regard, but the
portfolio process exacerbates this.