Selection challenges

[Kathleen Willbanks]

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

* Selecting a single application is a huge undertaking since none do
everything that everyone wants them to do.
* Some of the issues we are concerned about: Scalability - The
potential of having a large amount of user and still keep the
price down. Permanence - how long will the product exists and for
how long can a user maintain his/her content available.
Versatility - Can the product be used by both Graduate and
Undergraduate students? Size - how much content can be stored and
displayed? Share-ability and networking - what opportunities does
the product offer for others to share their content? Can faculty
edit student’s work? These are so far some of the issues we
currently face when evaluating and testing ePortofolios... Answers
to these during our day of dialogue, would be a successful
indicator of my trip.
* It is difficult to define real requirements and priorities for
ePortfolio solutions on our campus. There is a strong need for
tools to assist assessment and accreditation efforts, critical
campus initiatives to increase student success (and efforts to
faciliate teaching and learning through the effective use of
technology), and "real world" requirements for personal
representation to obtain internships and job interviews.
Prioritizing these objectives and choosing the best tool or tools
is a challenge.
* Each of these applications presents unique challenges. We have not
found one that is intuitive, easy to use, avoid duplication, low
maintenance and meet our needs in terms of measuring the learning
outcomes.
* We use BlackBoard. I’m not crazy about the platform, but it’s what
we’ve used. There’s talk of moving to a different platform.
Preserving the portfolios will be a problem for us and for students.