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ePortfolio Platform Pilot Project

Report – May 15, 2009

Why Electronic Portfolios (ePortfolios)?

Portfolios have long been recognized as a way for individuals to showcase a body
of work, particularly in the arts. Traditionally, a portfolio was a hard-copy collection of
prints, sketches and photos with only the individual’s best work displayed. Crockett
(1998) defined portfolios in this way, “A portfolio is a collection of evidence . . .
evidence of a person’s skills and abilities. . . a story told (about the person) by the careful
selection, organization, and presentation of the evidence (p.1).” Crockett describes 4
types of portfolios:

 Working portfolios, which are an individual’s collection of evidence. It is the

place where you keep samples of all your accomplishments – safely. This is
where you store vital evidence such as transcripts, certificates, etc. as well as
products of your school and community life.
 Display portfolios, created from the comprehensive working portfolio, to
display your work selectively. You would not want to show the entire
contents of your comprehensive working portfolio, because a viewer would
have difficulty making sense of so much material. Here, you would select and
even edit your documents in a thoughtfully organized presentation.
 Special portfolios, created for a very specific purpose, such as a job interview.
You would organize it similarly to a display portfolio, and you might make
changes for each Interview.
 Project portfolios, which show a process of growth by using evidence of early
efforts to learn something, followed by documents that show improvement
and then mastery. (p.8)

Other types of portfolios include:

 A Foundation Portfolio, which establishes goals for a project portfolio and

creates the physical holder for documents.
 A developmental portfolio, which is a name for a specific kind of project
portfolio. A developmental portfolio is a holder to collect documents that
show growth and improvement – the documents demonstrate that you are
developing and growing in your skills. (for FCSC 1010 use by Quoss, 2001
and expanded by Weigel, 2004)

Student Portfolios
Internationally, student ePortfolios are used by educational institutions for student
assessment related to particular courses, department-specific outcomes, general studies
competencies, and accreditation requirements (Jafari & Kaufman, 2006). In 2009, The
ePortfolio Consortium listed 894 institutional members, nearly 60% of them American
colleges and universities (Clark & Eynon, 2009). A recent issue of Peer Review was
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devoted to the uses of ePortfolios for assessing learning outcomes. Citing from
AAC&U’s Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) Project,
the use of ePortfolios “builds on a philosophy of learning assessment that privileges
multiple expert judgments of the quality of student work….(p.4)” Core assumptions
include the following:
 to achieve a high-quality education for all students, valid assessment data are
needed to guide planning, teaching, and improvement. This means that the work
students do in their courses and co-curriculum is the best representation of their
learning;
 colleges and universities seek to foster and assess numerous essential learning
outcomes beyond those addressed by currently available standardized tests;
 learning develops over time and should become more complex and sophisticated
as students move through their curricular and cocurricular educational pathways
within and among institutions toward a degree;
 good practice in assessment requires multiple assessments, over time;
 well-planned electronic portfolios provide opportunities to collect data from
multiple assessments across a broad range of learning outcomes and modes for
expressing learning while guiding student learning and building reflective self-
assessment capabilities;
 assessment of the student work in e-portfolios can inform programs and
institutions on their progress in achieving expected goals and also provide faculty
with necessary information to improve courses and pedagogies. (p.4)
In short, student portfolios support the core instructional mission of the University of
Wyoming. Their use could be supported by Erika Prager and the College Assessment
Coordinators, with a key faculty assistance role by the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and
Learning. Any platform adoption should focus on single-sign on and data sharing through
Banner/SIS.

Faculty Portfolios

Faculty portfolios were first used as teaching portfolios (Anderson, 1993;

Edgerton, Hutchings & Quinlan, 1991) and were created in hard copy notebooks. They
frequently included personal teaching philosophy statements, syllabi, instructional
materials developed by the faculty member, student evaluations, responses to evaluations,
peer evaluations and other documents that gave a picture of instruction.
More recently, particularly as institutions have moved toward the goal of
becoming paperless, faculty portfolios have migrated to ePortfolios. Some institutions
now use these to replace tenure and promotion notebooks, sending password-protected
access to the outside reviewers and within-institution reviewers at all levels. In some
cases, where the data is stored on university servers, secure websites are created with
links to the faculty ePortfolios.
At the University of Wyoming, faculty ePortfolios have the potential for use as
faculty teaching portfolios (perhaps supported through the Ellbogen Center for Teaching
and Learning), for tenure and promotion, to create standardized Curricula Vita that could
be published to departmental web pages, and/or as a replacement for current department
and college annual updates (particularly if reports could be generated). In all cases
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above, Academic Affairs, Faculty Senate, deans and directors would need to be involved
in the portfolio structure creation and to assist with faculty buy-in. Ideally, faculty
portfolio data could interface with Banner and other key instructional technology adopted
by the campus.

Institutional Portfolios

Institutional portfolios are used most frequently to document accreditation

standards, but can also be used for department, college and institutional documentation of
outcomes as part of a curriculum feedback loop. Additionally, they would be useful for
Student Affairs as a way to document student leadership or other co-curricular outcomes,
or could be used by the Research Office. Structures for institutional portfolios are
created so that each standard or outcome is specified and supporting evidence is loaded.
Administrators, designated faculty members, and internal review teams have the ability to
load, access and share information. Outside reviewers are given password access to the
data and have the ability to comment. For accreditation site visits, this mechanism would
allow a different way to share self-study and other documents, allowing the site visits to
be more targeted and beneficial.

Background for the Project

An ePortfolio provider platform review committee was convened by Associate Vice

Provost Rollin Abernethy and met from October, 2005 through October 2007 to carry out
the following charge:
 Review the features, functionality and support issues of various ePortfolio
products that would likely meet UW’s ePortfolio needs for a student portfolio.
 Conduct a high level Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) review (with much support
from IT).
 Make a recommendation on one or two platforms best suited for UW.

Committee members included: Robin Hill, Randy Weigel, Jay Puckett, Kenton Walker,
Kay Persichitte, Kevin Fontana, Larry Jansen, Pamala Larsen, Daniel Ewart, Mona
Schatz, Lori Phillips and Karen Williams. After extensive research, the committee
narrowed their search to four platforms that met the needs for student portfolios:
FolioTek, eFolio Minnesota/Avnet, Open Source Portfolio (OSP)/Sakai through rSmart,
and Blackboard Portfolio for Vista and CE. All four groups were invited to campus for
presentations. Two platforms were chosen for a pilot project: Sakai through rSmart, and
FolioTek through Pearson eCollege. Larry Jansen, Robin Hill and Karen Williams
presented the platform options and their potential capabilities to Deans and Directors
Council on December 18, 2007. Based on input from that meeting, a pilot project that
included student, faculty and institutional portfolios began in spring 2008. It concluded in
May, 2009. It was designed to address
Action Item 67: Common electronic system for updating, reporting, and
tracking professional accomplishments of faculty members and academic
professionals. The Office of Academic Affairs will sponsor a pilot study
examining electronic systems for tracking the accomplishments of faculty
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members and academic professionals in teaching, scholarship, service, outreach,

and extension. Such a system ideally would support student projects, departmental
and college self-assessment, research dissemination, and promotion of student
careers. A key attribute of any system adopted is that it must be interoperable with
the electronic research administration system discussed below. (Creation of the
Future III, p.26)

Project Methods

OSP/Sakai
The OSP/Sakai pilot began in February, 2008 with an introductory conference call
from the hosting company, rSmart, at the ECTL and a site visit in which Janice Smith
met with all interested parties and individually with each portfolio group: Social Work,
Nursing, and Civil and Architectual Engineering. A follow-up meeting was held on April
15th. Jonathan Ngai was hired as a Web Portfolio Developer by the ECTL at the end of
spring semester and immediately attending OSP trainings at Rutgers. By June 4th, Robin
Hill met with the rSmart pilot group – Civil & Architectural Engineering and Social
Work. Follow-up meetings with Engineering were held on June 11th, and with Social
Work (Mona Schatz and Lea Grubbs) on July 11th. Robin Hill and Jonathan Man-Fai
Ngai began work to construct both student and faculty portfolio structures. Jonathan Ngai
and Robin Hill met with Jay Puckett and Tony Denzer, in August to talk more fully about
using a student portfolio in one of Tony’s classes. In January of 2009, Jonathan showed
the completed Civil and Architectural Engineering portfolio to Jay Pucket and a graduate
student, and Robin demonstrated it to the ARE 4600 class. Reminders to work on their
portfolios went out from Robin to the students, Lea Grubbs and the graduate student
assistant in Social Work, and Karen met with Mona Schatz to discuss their participation
and needs. On January 26, 2009, Robin and Jonathan met with Karen Williams to go
over the faculty portfolio structure they had created. Karen sent out brief background
information and instructions to the potential participants, and Robin arranged for and
conducted training sessions in March for all faculty members who were invited to test the
Sakai platform: Bruce Cameron, Kari Morgan, Treva Sprout, Shane Broughton, Jay
Puckett, Tony Denzer, Mona Schatz, Lea Grubbs, Elizabeth Dole-Izzo, Kathleen
McKinney, and Michael Doherty. In March, Jonathan and Robin met with the Social
Work students, led by Suzanne Knapp, who created their MSW portfolios then and there.
Surveys were sent to each faculty member, and to graduate assistants in two of the
departments who assisted the students with their portfolios. Not all completed a portfolio.
Five faculty members, one graduate student and both graduate assistants completed
feedback surveys. Input from Robin Hill provided the following perspective:
On the OSP/Sakai side, the pilot has run a rough course. Volunteer departments,
faculty, and students have been tardy or distracted or busy, delaying both training
and completion. The complexity of the facility led to repeated cycles of learning
on the part of the Instructional Computing Services leadership. Many interesting
development paths, dummy portfolios, and tests have been deferred because of
staff time limitations. The greater OSP/Sakai community has been invaluable, not
in leading us toward a solid result, but in explaining the issues and challenges.
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Development by several universities continues steadily, tracked by a bug-and-

feature wiki and weekly conference calls.
Student and faculty pilot testers have enjoyed some of the advantages, but
suffered many of the disadvantages, of the feature-rich and flexible
XML/XSL/XSD paradigm. Examples: On the advantages side, we were able to
design a faculty publications form with just the fields and choices appropriate to
this institution's institution. (This came at the cost of weeks of investigation and
practice, of course.) On the disadvantages side, the MSW portfolio was
implemented as a wizard (hierarchical structure), because the full portfolio
scaffold is visible to the participant, rather than as a portfolio (a full website, with
appearance controlled by template), which precluded restricting the evaluators to
their own students and other options available only through the portfolio template.

Foliotek

The Foliotek pilot project proceeded in three phases so that the Foliotek partners
could work with participants on each type of portfolio product: student, institutional, and
faculty (eDossier). The student portfolio for the Family and Consumer Sciences group
was the first to be created. Students and faculty teaching the FCSC 1010 and 4010
courses began using the structure in Summer, 2008 and continued to use it through April,
2009. A total of 109 students and four faculty instructors participated in the student
ePortfolio pilot project. Bruce Cameron served as the technical support person for the
department’s pilot, working with the faculty members and students as they created their
portfolios.
The second structure to be implemented was the School of Nursing’s institutional
portfolio. Originally, Nursing planned to pilot graduate student portfolios. However,
their focus changed in September of 2008 to better meet their accreditation needs. After
two conference calls with Foliotek and a change to the pilot contract, the institutional
portfolio was created October 23rd. Pamala Larsen and Mary Burman were the principal
participants in the Nursing pilot.
The third structure to be piloted was the eDossier. We had originally planned to
pilot a faculty portfolio that looked very much like the student structure. However, Larry
Jansen alerted us to the eDossier that was in Beta test with another institution. It went
beyond a general portfolio structure to create a CV, allowed a level of reporting, and had
pieces similar to what might be expected in a tenure and promotion instrument. Larry
Jansen arranged a conference call to explore this option on August 15, 2008. Foliotek
granted access and determined that there would be no additional charge for this shift.
Training was provided for administrators to the site (Anne O’Grady, Evelyn Durkee and
Karen Williams) on November 4th. Deans Ettema and Walter provided names of faculty
members asked to participate. Karen, Lynn and Anne prepared a glossary of terms to
assist the faculty. Karen contacted all faculty members and Larry set up three training
times for them (Karen & Larry attended as well) December 10-12, 2009. Faculty
identified by the deans and invited to participate included George Gladney, Margaret
Haydon, Steve Barnhart, Lou Anne Wright, Eric Nye, Dan Tinker, Paul Heller, Brian
Shuman, Jay Puckett, Fred Ogden, Michael Urynowicz, Stephen Gray, David Bagley,
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Steve Barrett, Suresh Muknahallipatna, Bob Kubichek, David Whitman, Mark Balas, Lin
Poyer, Bruce Cameron, Sonya Meyer, and Randy Weigel. All but three attended training
sessions, and all but ten put information into their portfolio shells.
Additional general information:
Larry Jansen, Karen Williams and Robin Hill developed a survey to allow all
participants to give feedback on the structures. (See Appendix A) Results are
summarized in the next section: Functionality.
The pilot was labor intensive, and it’s important to look at the time that went into
the pilot as a possible predictor of the FTE’s required should any or all of the three kinds
of portfolio structures be pursued. Estimates are below:
Jonathan Man-Fai Ngai: 415 hours
Robin Hill: 180 hours
Larry Jansen: 100 hours in meetings, emails, and administrative support
Karen Williams: Over 250 hours

Functionality

Sakai hosted by rSmart

Perhaps the most serious problem with the Sakai portfolio instrument is the
current lack of ability to run reports. Robin Hill, an expert in Sakai programming, wrote
the following explanation:

In OSP (Sakai Portfolio), as a portfolio is completed, some data is stored in the database,
and some in completed forms (XML) in Resources.
In other words, for simple questions like these:
1. Which students have provided class work as evidence of competencies?
2. How many papers have my faculty published?
The answer is not recorded in some designated spot, nor is it easily derived from a single
query to a data source through the platform itself. Other universities are also grappling
with this problem.

The Sakai Reports tool, a standard out-of-the-box facility, is cumbersome and somewhat
insecure. It obtains, from the database backend, the Resource identifiers of completed
forms, and then extracts XML from them, to be rendered according to whatever XSL is
provided. The Sakai community is leery of developing the Reports implementation
further, and our hosting company rSmart declines to activate Reports in its current and
future versions. This processing could be done by ISCL staff if we had access to the UW
data stored on the rSmart servers. Currently, rSmart has readily provided, on request, a
full download of UW data that we can install on our own servers, but this is an ad hoc
mechanism.

For true database implementation, here are the challenges:

Security and Processing Load: The insitutional database carries high security (because of
student grades, personnel files, and so forth).
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What privileges carry to the database structures? How can a query originating from an e-
portfolio service integrate with the database access filters? What effect will queries and
updates have on the processing load? Which tables will be involved, and how much can
the requests be anticipated? Stories from the Sakai developers indicate severe system
degradation when hundreds or thousands of students are working on portfolios at the
same time, or even when dozens of them hit "Save" at the same time. Database
integration code-tuning is a live concern.

Design: Student and faculty work and artifacts, as well as meta-data

(descriptive) would form the base data objects. How can data be tracked and integrated
unless all institutional users deploy standard forms with common labels? Should artifacts
such as student (or
faculty) papers be stored in the database? If not, if student (or
faculty) work is stored in student workspaces, how should links to them be resolved when
they are gone from the system?

One approach to reports would be to use a controlled API to reach the database through
existing security mechanisms. An implementation of this by the University of Michigan
builds reporting into the existing portfolio tools, as a feature of the Matrix and Wizard
tool, for instance, so that a single click generates counts or other information. That
method suits their needs but falls way short of flexible reporting with arbitrary queries.

The hosting company rSmart is pursuing a third-party option, the Pentaho software, to be
integrated into their future versions of the Sakai Collaborative Learning Environment.
Pentaho is commercial open-source, and so (like Red Hat), it comes in both free and
subscription versions. UW has been invited by rSmart to beta-test the Pentaho Business
Intelligence integration (the free version is adequate), possibly this summer, and we have
accepted.

Student portfolio

Student portfolio comments below include both student perceptions and the
perceptions of those graduate students or faculty members who worked with students as
they constructed portfolios. Very few (2) students responded to the survey request, so the
comments are very limited. Those who responded indicated that it was easy to load
documents into the portfolio, access view feedback, organize portfolio pieces, and access
viewer feedback. They liked that they could limit who could see the portfolio and who
couldn’t. Concerns expressed were that it was sometimes difficult for outside reviewers
to see what was on their pages, but that Jonathan had assisted with correcting the
problem.

Faculty portfolio

Strengths Concerns
Secure site. Can’t customize; Takes too long to customize.
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Easy to create documents to upload. Some links didn’t work.

Robin & Jonathan were available for training. Uploading took a long time; too much wait
time.
Can send invitations to others to view the Sakai Reports Tool was “cumbersome and
portfolio. somewhat insecure”
Forms were easy to fill out. The creation of links was frustrating.
Fairly easy to write comments. Hard to find documents once posted.
Cold include all of the desired types of Difficult to view work during and after
documents. construction.
You had to load work as the portfolio was
being constructed.
“The process of using the system becomes too
cumbersome and detracts from the effort to
attend to the process of creativity or
presentation of materials.”
Directions were difficult to follow.
Firefox is the preferred net site.
“I would only use this if it were required by the
University.”

Foliotek hosted by eCollege

Student portfolio

Student portfolio comments below include both student perceptions and the perceptions
of those faculty members who worked with students as they constructed portfolios.
Student data came from Family and Consumer Sciences students in FCSC 1010 and 4010
over three semesters, from returned surveys, emailed comments from the students to
faculty instructors, and emailed comments to the department head. Many of the concerns
have already been addressed by Pearson eCollege in the upgrade that will begin on May
28th (see Appendix B for details of the revisions).

Strengths Concerns
Easy to customize. Slightly more complicated to give outside
reviewers access.
Easy directions. All student users appear in one list, making it
difficult to run comparative reports.
Easy to provide viewing access to others.
Good site security.
Easy to load documents.
Easy to view work during portfolio
construction.
Easy to organize portfolio pieces.
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eDossier (Faculty Portfolio)

Faculty surveys and additional email responses by faculty members yielded

information on perceived strengths and weaknesses of the eDossier for faculty use.
Summary statements (when multiple individuals made a similar comment) and specific
quotes from faculty members are noted below:

Strengths Concerns
Nice for a student to generate a resume easily, Not user friendly.
but not useful for a faculty member.
The training session made it easy to use. Can’t “cut and paste” publications directly.
Easy to load documents. Can’t easily run meaningful reports on only
what’s important.
Could use it for tenure and promotion. A universal CV could be done more easily
without the portfolio.
Has easy to follow directions. Can’t easily put more than one event under
each activity.
The site is secure. Cumbersome and “tedious to constantly change
the range and types of categories that need to
be there.”
Use becomes more obvious with practice. Harder to view work as the portfolio is being
constructed.
Could be used for yearly performance Harder to organize the portfolio pieces.
evaluations.
Cut and paste didn’t work well.
Back button didn’t work when navigating
forms.
Couldn’t delete files in View Dossier window;
had to go back.
Directions were difficult and poorly worded.
Only HTML or XML output format for
exporting; “useless”
Couldn’t open Power Points when portfolio
was completed.
Can’t remove unused headings in the CV.
Long upload time for documents.
Couldn’t customize the portfolio.
Hard to edit details.

Recommendations

It is appropriate during these times of budget planning to make decisions asking:

what is core to the University’s mission, what is a high priority activity that supports the
core, and what is an enhancement? The adoption of an electronic portfolio platform
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should be no exception. In addition, it is important to acknowledge up front that any

decision regarding the use of electronic portfolios (particularly for faculty use) will
necessitate a culture change on our campus; as such, an implementation phase of two-
three years will be necessary for education, mentoring, and development of faculty and
administrator (deans and department heads) buy-in.

ePortfolio Platform Alternatives

1. Adopt Sakai hosted at the University of Wyoming for all three types of portfolios:
student, faculty and institutional.
Benefits
 UW controls the data
 Structures can be customized, edited, etc. to fit UW’s needs on an ongoing
basis
 Reports can be customized
 Data can interface with Banner, OIA and other key technology systems
 IT can provide support to the platform
 Site would be secure and there would be password access for outside
reviewers.

Costs/Issues
 The need for additional servers
 Need for additional personnel: 1.5 FTE for programmers, .5 FTE for a
system programmer to support the hardware, and .5 FTE for a database
analyst to support the database. I’d also argue that there would need to be
a full-time person to work with departments and individuals much as
Larry Jansen and Robin Hill currently do on the course management side.
 Cost would be $1,943,811.66 over five years during a time of budget
shortfalls – may be hard to justify at this time, but could be a long-term
goal.

2. Adopt Sakai hosted through rSmart.

Benefits
 The student portfolio is already part of the Sakai course management
package.
 Faculty portfolios and institutional portfolios can be constructed using the
portfolio tool.
 Sakai through rSmart is the lowest cost solution at $513,493.56 over five
years.
 Users can invite reviewers using secure passwords and designated times of
access; the site is secure.
Costs/Issues
 IT personnel requirements would include a .5 FTE person to work on
interfaces, etc.
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 Additional personnel would be required to write the code, train

individuals, etc. Robin Hill has the expertise, but it would require more of
her time than her current position allows. She has had Jonathan Man-Fai
Ngai assisting her for approximately 6 hours per week during the pilot.
This would not be sufficient for a full implementation, particularly if more
than student portfolios were being used. At least .5 FTE would be needed.
 Data would be stored on the rSmart servers.
 Currently, Sakai does not have a functioning reporting system.

3. Adopt Foliotek for all three kinds of platforms.

Benefits
 Foliotek has structures for student, faculty and institutional portfolios that
can be customized based on UW needs with different pricing structures
allowing phased adoption:
o Institutional portfolios are available for $2500 per structure.
o eDossier (faculty) portfolios are available for $55.44 per user
(1000 users) or $70/user (less than 500 users)
o Student portfolios would be available for $547,8883.75 over five
years ($22 per user)
 Students would have the option of paying to continue using their
portfolios after graduation. Foliotek would provide services, including
levels of help-desk support.
 Students and faculty could have a single sign-on access.
 The site is secure, and reviewers could access by invitation with a
password for a designated time frame.
 Report functions exist.

Costs/Issues
 Additional customized reporting would need to occur to fit UW needs,
particularly for the eDossier.
 Data would be stored on Foliotek servers.
 A .5 FTE person would need to be hired by IT to work on interfaces, etc.
 While Larry Jansen has the expertise to assist with trainings, mentoring,
etc. institutional and faculty portfolios would fall outside of the Outreach
School mission. (This may also be true of the student portfolios for Larry
Jansen or Robin Hill since they would not be through the eCollege course
management system.) At least 1 FTE would need to be hired.
 Data from the pilot may or may not be able to migrate, since data were
stored using eCollege/Foliotek. Their contract has changed.

4. Adopt only student portfolios through eCollege/Foliotek, permanently or as a

bridge while other platform decisions are being decided.
Benefits
 eCollege already provides a course platform used by UW (both online UW
through the Outreach School and eCompanion through the CTL)
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 A base structure was developed during the pilot using competencies and
reports that could be adapted for other departments/student assessment
purposes.
 A student sign-on already exists through online UW.
 Services, some trainings and some help desk support are provided by
eCollege.
 It may be possible for students who use Foliotek through eCollege to
individually contract with Foliotek after graduation and continue to access
their portfolios, but that point would need to be clarified.

Costs/Issues
1. Faculty and institutional portfolios are not available through eCollege.
2. Data is stored on eCollege servers.
3. The cost is $30 per student per year.
4. Ongoing costs would include an IT person with .5 FTE to work on
interfaces, etc.
5. Student portfolios cannot be used after graduation, and are somewhat
problematic to access for students when not currently enrolled in an
eCollege course.
6. If student portfolios were being used for USP assessment or by
departments not currently using the eCollege course management system,
additional personnel (at least 1 FTE) would be required. These kinds of
portfolios would potentially be outside of the responsibilities of the CTL
or the Outreach School (and therefore beyond the scope of Larry Jansen’s
or Robin Hill’s current job responsibilities, despite their considerable
expertise).

Additional implementation ideas:

1. Implement student portfolios as the first priority. Begin with a
“bridge” contract with eCollege for Family and Consumer
Sciences until a university-wide adoption decision is made. At that
point, negotiate a data migration if another platform is adopted.
Allow Civil and Architectural Engineering and Social Work to
continue using the structures already developed through the
rSmart/Sakai contract as a bridge while the Sakai course
management platform is still in use.
2. Allow the School of Nursing to continue using the Foliotek
institutional platform. The cost is minimal and they see a real
benefit to its use for their upcoming accreditation visit. If UW
decides to adopt a different platform, the data could be migrated
once a structure was created. At that time other departments could
be shown the Nursing institutional portfolio, and other groups
could work to create their own structures.
3. The faculty portfolio will require the most work. Right now, if a
faculty portfolio were adopted, either platform would take
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considerable work before a structure could be adopted for campus-

wide use. Perhaps a logical way to proceed would be to start with
a teaching portfolio, while Faculty Senate and other groups could
begin work on a standardized UW CV, standardized update form,
and a University Regulation regarding the use of ePortfolios for
tenure and promotion.
4. The cost of student portfolios could be covered through a fee,
similar to or in addition to the computing fee all UW students
already pay. If even half of the cost of the student portfolio could
be covered in this manner, the rest could be covered by
departments or colleges.
5. Following meetings with Dorothy Yates, Associate Vice President
for Research, it is clear that any platform adopted for portfolios
will not be a duplication of InfoEd, the research platform recently
adopted for UW. Some data sharing should be able to occur with
assistance from IT and the portfolio platform provider.
6. After meetings with Pat Wolfinbarger, Michael Erin Lyman, and
Dan Ewart it was determined that a portfolio was not the best tool
for UW Public Relations projects.
7. In any case, IT needs to be the home for the adopted ePortfolio
platform so that structures can be supported, data migration can
occur, and other technology-related functions can be integrated.
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References

Anderson, E. (Ed.). (1993). Campus use of the teaching portfolio; Twenty-five

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Clark, J.E. & Eynon, B. (2009, Winter). E-portfolios at 2.0 – Surveying the field.
Peer Review, 11 (1), 18-23.

Crockett, T. (1998). The portfolio journey: A creative guide to keeping student-

managed portfolios in the classroom. Englewood, CO: Teacher Ideas Press.

Edgerton, R., Hutchings, P., & Quinlan, K. (1991). The teaching portfolio: Capturing the
scholarship of teaching. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Jafari, A. & Kaufman, C. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of research on ePortfolios.

Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference.

Office of Academic Affairs (2009). The creation of the future: University plan 3,
2009-2014. Laramie, WY: University of Wyoming.

Rhodes, T. (Ed.) (2009, Winter). Assessing learning outcomes: Lessons from

AAC&U’s VALUE Project. Peer Review, 11 (1), 1-35.
 15

Appendix A

ePortfolio Platform Use Survey

(Developed by Karen Williams, Larry Jansen and Robin Hill)

1. For which department did you create your portfolio?

FCS
Nursing
Social Work
Other (please specify)
2. What type of portfolio (s) you create? Check all that apply.
a. Student assessment portfolio
b. Student demonstration/personal portfolio
c. Both a & b
d. Faculty portfolio
e. Institutional portfolio for our department’s accreditation use
3. Were you able to get help when you needed it? Please
elaborate.________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
4. In hours, how much time do you estimate you spent in creating the portfolio?
____creating documents to upload
____filling out assessment forms
____creating links
____creating a customized look
____other (please specify the task or tasks)

5. The following relate to constructing your portfolio. On a scale of 1-5 with 1 being easy
and 5 being difficult, please rate each of the following. Write NA if the item didn’t apply
to your portfolio creation.
_____Loading documents into the portfolio
_____Viewing your work as you constructed the portfolio
_____Accessing viewer feedback
_____Filling out forms necessary for you to rate your submitted work
_____Writing comments to explain your work
_____Organizing your portfolio pieces

6. Were you able to include all of the kinds of items you wanted in your portfolio?
________Yes ________No
If not, what do you wish you had been able to create in your portfolio that wasn’t
possible within the platform you used?

____________________________________________________________
7. Now think about the directions provided to you within the portfolio creation area.
a. How easy or difficult were the directions?
____________________________________________________________
 16

b. Do you have any suggestions for what information would have made the process
easier for you?
_________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
c. If you piloted the Foliotek portfolio, did you watch the demonstration?
d. If yes, how helpful was the demonstration video and why?
_________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
8. Were you able to make the portfolio look like what you wanted? Could you customize
the look of the portfolio?
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
9. How easy was it to give access to others to view your portfolio?
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
10. Were you comfortable with the level of security related to who could view your
portfolio? _______Yes ________No Please explain______________________
11. In what ways will you use your portfolio? Check all that apply.
_____To meet requirements of a course
_____To meet accreditation requirements
_____To market myself to a prospective employer
_____To share my work and ideas with friends and family members
_____Other? (please explain)
 17

Appendix B

Pearson eCollege Student Portfolio Upgrade

(Will begin May 28, 2009)

New Features
 New, streamlined interface for all user accounts:
Foliotek received a facelift. The new interface is not only less cluttered, it also
streamlined the code behind the tool to maximize page load efficiency.

 Email the scores of an evaluation to students:

Instead of students having to log back into Foliotek to see the results of an evaluation
done on their portfolio, those results are now emailed directly to the students.

 Students taken directly to profile for “Force Profile Update”:

If an administrator forces a profile update on their students, students will be redirected
to the profile screen to update their information prior to being allowed to execute any
other functions within the site.

 Ability to lock forms after they have been filled out or evaluated:
If a form is being used in an evaluation, that form can now be specified to “lock”
preventing any additional data from being entered into the form

 Form versioning:
Report Administrators can now run reports on forms based off a date range to see what
data was in the forms for any specified date.

 Name of profile field included in report name when a report has been filtered:
When a report is run and that data filtered by a certain profile data point, that profile
data point is now displayed in the header of the report.

 Comparative Analysis Report:

Programs who use the same scoring levels across many portfolios will be able to
combine the results of all evaluations into one report and see data across those
individual scoring levels instead of only seeing pass fail ratios.

 Students can share personal presentation portfolio with multiple email addresses:
When a student goes to share their presentation portfolio, they can now share with
 18

multiple people at once as opposed to only sharing with one external person at a time.

 Organizations have the ability to have a custom student agreement:

If an organization so chooses, they can now create (write) a custom student agreement
the students are required to accept prior to executing their portfolio registration.

 Administrators can align multiple standards to a portfolio structure at one time:

In the past for both students and administrators, they were only allowed to align one
standard at a time to an element of the portfolio, that process has been streamlined to
allow administrators and students the ability to align more than one standard at a time.

 Profile fields can be hidden from students, but still editable by administrators
For schools that are collecting specific profile data on students where they wish to filter
reports by that data but don’t want students to have access to viewing that profile data,
profile fields can now be hidden from student view.

 Searchable dropdown list when setting up evaluations by course:

Many large schools who have course integration score artifacts by the course those
artifacts are assigned in. A school can now filter through all of their courses when
creating an evaluation by typing in the name of the course/course section. The filtering
is done dynamically as the user types, no dropdowns to choose from.

 Personal presentation portfolio element descriptions: For elements in a presentation

portfolio that are built from assessment portfolios they no longer include the page
instructions for sections or elements unless the student creates his/her own elements)
and included instructions.

 Names for folders created in the Files area are editable:

In the files repository, folder names now allow for the user to rename them.

 A time bar is provided for students when uploading files:

Often times students either have a slow internect connection or are trying to upload
larger file types. A new tool has been provided that informs the user of an estimate on
how much time is left prior to file upload completion.

 Dashboard view for students/faculty/administrators:

Any user that logs into Foliotek is now presented with training videos related to their
specific tasks combined with a list of to do items defined for them to execute to be
successful in completing their portfolio
 19

 To Do items:
All users now have a list of items on their dashboard displaying the tasks they need to
complete in order to be successful in managing their portfolio data. To do items
include, new messaged, upcoming portfolio evaluations, administrator assigned tasks,
and others.

 Help video added for Presentation Portfolios:

A standard video is now included in the dashboard with allows all students to see a 3 – 5
minute clip on how to construct a standard presentation portfolio.

 Save and Close now added as an option when filling out forms
Previously when a user filled out a Foliotek form, they were presented with the option
to “save” and then they would have to separately click “close” these two functions have
now been combined into one action “Save & Close”

 Evaluations page now shows action required:

Prior to this release, when viewing all evaluations in the data grid, an administrator was
unaware which evaluations required an action until they open a particular evaluation.
New functionality allows the user to see in once screen which evaluations require
action.

 New dashboard includes help video for first time users:

The dashboard includes three videos for all users that give basic training on how to use
the system.

 Images uploaded to Foliotek can now be watermarked:

If a program makes use of extensive proprietary images, the institution can define text
for a watermark that will be placed on all upload images for a defined program.

 Option to complete forms based on previous form data:

For Tenure and Promotion schools who often billed data forms from one another, they
now have the ability to do so automatically without having to retype the data.

 Student can now be allowed to add standards even when an organization pre-aligns:
If an organization has pre-aligned standards to an element of the portfolio, you can still
set the elements structure to allow for students to do additional alignment to the
portfolio.

 Ability to extend license for multiple students has been added:

if a school has the need to extend the portfolio license for multiple students at a time,
 20

this can now be done through the administrator user interface.

 Filter feature added to portfolio form report:

Data in the portfolio form report can now not only be filtered by date, but by program
defined profile fields.

 In admin accounts, student program information now appears before personal info:
When viewing a student’s information, the program profile data now appears above the
student’s personal data.

 Faculty now get one email with all students listed to be evaluated:
When a faculty member is assigned the duty of performing evaluations on 30 different
students, they now receive only one email informing them of the evaluation they have
to complete as opposed to an email for every student in the evaluation.

 Can now add personal portfolio as a file in assessment portfolio:

Students can now add their personal portfolio into their assessment portfolio without
having to export the data first.

Appendix C
Current and Future State of OSP/Sakai

1. An official page, mostly links to others:

http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/OSP/
OSP+Design+and+Development

2. New features in Sakai 2.6 (this week):

* Improvements to UX
* Ability to edit and delete feedback and evaluations
* Aggregation of Evaluations across sites via My Workspace
* Better group awareness and filtering in Wizards tool
* Ability to apply an OSP Style to more screens of a Matrix
* Ability to control allowed general and item-specific feedback (0,
1, many) in Matrices and Wizards

3. Planning for Sakai 3 (a major upgrade in the user interface, end of

2009)
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/OSP/
Community+Ideas+for+Future+OSP+Releases
21