As learning outcomes and portfolio assessment become increasingly important across the educational spectrum

A new ePortfolio drop box in the ANGEL LMS allows instructors to assign ePortfolio work from within the LMS, making it much easier for faculty to incorporate ePortfolio activities and assessment into course curricula. Tight integration with the ANGEL LMS means ANGEL’s comprehensive suite of native tools extends to evaluation and reporting of ePortfolio activities.

ANGEL ePortfolio 2.1 and ANGEL LMS 7.3 now sport the same user interface and both use ANGEL’s inline HTML editor

User-by-user permissions to view publications give students control over who can access which ePortfolio publications

She noted that an e-portfolio helped students to make connections in their learning over time

You can tell a more holistic story about a person's development than you might by simply looking at an essay.

When we think of a traditional portfolio used in education, we may think of a collection of related papers, photos, pamphlets, or brochures organized in a folder or binder. Perhaps it’s a collection of materials that we compile over time to reflect progress and achievement. Now imagine if we add an electronic spin to the traditional definition and focus on the idea of a PDF portfolio; one that you could use to easily weave content together in a portable file format to use, share, and print whatever you need when you need it. That is the essence of the Acrobat portfolio

Files can be organized into logical collections and linked together in a way that makes it easy to navigate, find, and interact with the contents in a variety of useful and creative ways.

What’s even better is that all of this can be shared with anyone using the free Adobe Reader 9

Acrobat 9 offers some cool new Flash-based portfolio templates.

ePortfolios is not a choice that you make because you can prove that it’s educationally valuable, or that it works. There is not really a choice here: The return on investment is staying in business. Do you want to stay active and viable as an institution of higher education?

It’s something that whole countries are offering to their citizens to store things related to their work, over a career or over the time when they are developing their career.

So universities—especially schools of education around the country—are rushing to implement ePortfolio systems so that they can do the kind of reporting the accrediting agencies are asking for.

What we focus on in this country is more the traditional higher education view of ePortfolios; how it is really great for developing reflective thinking in students, because they can reflect on their own work over time.

what’s driving the market in the US is assessment management

ePortfolios can authenticate what kind of work people do in between the times when they are at the community college studying formally. So, it bridges the gap between informal learning and formal learning.

But that is not potentially the big market. The big market is going to be everyone having an ePortfolio, whether they are in college or not in college.