Book Description

Higher education institutions of all kinds—across the United States and around the world—have rapidly expanded the use of electronic portfolios in a broad range of applications including general education, the major, personal planning, freshman learning communities, advising, assessing, and career planning.Widespread use creates an urgent need to evaluate the implementation and impact of eportfolios. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, the contributors to this book—all of whom have been engaged with the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research—have undertaken research on how eportfolios influence learning and the learning environment for students, faculty members, and institutions.This book features emergent results of studies from 20 institutions that have examined effects on student reflection, integrative learning, establishing identity, organizational learning, and designs for learning supported by technology. It also describes how institutions have responded to multiple challenges in eportfolio development, from engaging faculty to going to scale. These studies exemplify how eportfolios can spark disciplinary identity, increase retention, address accountability, improve writing, and contribute to accreditation. The chapters demonstrate the applications of eportfolios at community colleges, small private colleges, comprehensive universities, research universities, and a state system.