ElectronicPortfolio Assessments inU.S.Educational and Instructional Technology Programs

Linda L. Lynch and Pupung Purnawarman TechTrends
In recent years portfolios have served increasingly as a vehicle for individual and program evaluation, as well as for career purposes in many fields including education (Galloway, 2001). Nationwide, teacher development programs are being asked to include their students' artifacts in some form of teaching portfolio that will ultimately be used as an assessment vehicle for students as well as program evaluation tools for NCATE accreditation (U.S.D.E., 1997; Shannon, & Boll, 1996). The electronic version of the portfolio in which all artifacts are digitized is coming into more common use, and is quickly becoming the standard for this type of evaluation strategy in teacher education.
According to Helen Barrett (2001) a solid electronicportfolio can show reflection, evolution of thought and overall professional development if it does, in fact, include all the critical elements. Another advantage of portfolio use for educational technology/instructional technology (ET/IT) college departments and students is that the construction of an electronicportfolio demonstrates the complex thinking and creativity required in constructing multimedia-based and hypertext presentations (Jonassen, 1996).
Students can benefit from electronicportfolio assessment by being required to demonstrate problem-solving and critical thinking skills by experiencing self-evaluation and by maintaining a degree of control over the learning process (Campbell, Cignetti, Melenyzer, Nettles, & Wyman, 1997; Pierson and Kumari, 2000).
One of the major goals of the field of ET/IT is to assist in the preparation of teachers, trainers, and other educators to become proficient with the integration of technology into educational settings, and to play a role in the renewal of educational systems worldwide (Davis, Hawkes, Heineke, & Veen, 2002). Given the importance and value of electronicportfolios, and the growing interest in teachers using them, it might be expected that ET/IT departments in higher education would assist, or collaborate with, teacher development programs in developing and maintaining electronicportfolios. In addition, they might be expected to be modeling this valuable practice themselves.

References

Campbell, D., Cignetti, P., Melenyzer, B., Nettles, D., & Wymann, R. (1997). How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Davis, N., Hawkes, M., Heineke, W., & Veen, W. (2000). Evaluating educational technology: An invited SITE panel. Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education.

Galloway, J. (2001). Electronicportfolios: A how to guide. in J. Price, D. Willis, N. Davis & J. Willis (Eds.) Technology and Teacher Education Annual 2001 (pp. 582-587). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education.

Jonassen, D. Myers, J. & McKillop, A. (1996). From constructivism to constructionism: Learning with hypermedia/multimedia rather than from it. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications

U.S.D.E. (1997). United States Department of Education (1997). [Online]. Assessment of student performance: Studies of education reform. Retrieved November 2, 2005, from