Electronic Portfolios: Training, Retaining, Hiring, and Firing –What Your
Electronic Portfolio Can Do For You
Tammy Shutt
Gary Stewart
Austin Peay State University
Introduction
Portfolios have evolved from storing one’s work in boxes or three – ring binders to the electronic format favored today. Portfolios have taken various forms depending upon the target audience of the information contained in the portfolio. More and more, universities have implemented the use of academic/credential e-portfolios as a means of determining candidates’ mastery of subject matter and pedagogy based upon the standards identified for a program of study. Both initial licensure programs and graduate programs have begun to rely upon the e-portfolio to document subject matter knowledge and critical-thinking and decision-making abilities of the candidates progressing through preparatory course work (Paulson, Paulson, & Meyer, 1991). However, the use of professional portfolios in the hiring process has not been researched as extensively as portfolios used to document mastery at the university level. Mosely (2005) states: “This limited research has shown that although school administrators express support for the use of portfolios in employment decisions, they tend to rate traditional hiring tools more useful than the integrated performance measures” (p. 58).
History and Background
“In his use of critical reasoning, by his unwavering commitment to the truth, and through the vivid example of his own life, fifth-century Athenian Socrates set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy” (Kemerling, 2006, ¶1). In addition, Socrates genuinely believed that true knowledge was self reflection even if it turned out to be negative. He taught that we should question our beliefs and seek genuine knowledge, bringing all of our understandings to light as part of self reflection.
Early portfolios contained collections of papers and drawings depicting a person’s work. Those items identified as providing a true measure of one’s talents were included in the collections. Portfolios in the fine arts and photography developed in the 1800s. These portfolios contained collections of work samples a person determined to be his or her best work.
Work related collections and artistic presentations became the focus of portfolios during the 1900s. Portfolios became a common method for documenting and assessing knowledge. Definitions of portfolios evolved into a structured collection of best works. Wolf (1991) declares, “Portfolios provide a connection to the contexts and personal histories of real teaching and make it possible to document the unfolding of both teaching and learning over time” (p. 129). During this time, portfolios began to allow “… students to choose representative pieces of work from classroom assignments and to place them in folders. From the world of art, the ideas and some of the methods of portfolio assessment spread to the world of language arts” (North American Division Office of Education, 2008, ¶2).
Today, electronic portfolios are used extensively as assessment instruments for the admission and retention of students. In an article published in the Professional Educator, Mosely (2005) stated the following: “More and more states now require demonstration in a teaching portfolio of an acceptable level of proficiency on a set of externally defined teaching standards as part of the initial teaching licensure process” (p. 58). Additionally, Balch, Frampton, and Hirth (2006) state: “Using the conceptual framework of the NBPTS standards as a guide, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure consortium (ISLLC) initiative prompted individual states to begin similar performance-based assessments of administrators” (p. vi). The consortium believed “that standards for a school leader’s practice must be immersed in an understanding of teaching and learning” (p. vi).
Portfolios have become high stake assessment tools, determining if candidates have successfully completed a program of study and can be licensed as new teachers or as potential administrators. With this new wave of assessment comes the need for a shift in thought on the faculty part to forego objective testing instruments for a more self-reflective, standards-based assessment tool. Today, assessment is seen as more dynamic and combines the processes of reflection, selection, rationalization, and evaluation (Winsor & Ellefson, 1995).
Rational for Use
Portfolios provide evidence of student growth over time and insight into teaching effectiveness. Portfolios can provide richer information than traditional assessment methods. In addition, electronic portfolios encourage improved teaching and learning.
Inherent in an electronic portfolio system are the knowledge and skills of the students. Guidelines outline the required framework of the portfolio, but the organization and visual design are the responsibility of the student. A portfolio provides opportunities for students to showcase their talents, creativity, and individuality, as well as technological capabilities. (Lambert, DePaepe, Lambert, & Anderson, 2007, p. 76)
Electronic portfolios provide a medium for self expression for students. Student learning can be documented using portfolios as a way to demonstrate levels of proficiency on a set of pre-determined standards. In addition, the portfolio offers a way of visually communicating a collection of works documenting levels of proficiency on identified standards. As a student moves through his or her teacher preparation program, electronic portfolios encourage student critical thinking using metacognitive processes.
No longer is the student simply the recipient of information, having become actively involved in constructing meaning by generating and displaying responses to issues raised in a course or program of study. The faculty member no longer simply imparts information, but helps the student construct meaning through facilitation and coordination of the learning environment. (Gathercoal, Love, Bryde, & McKean, 2002, p. 32)
Reflective feedback can be provided to students as they move through the preparation program of study. Formative and summative evaluation results can be provided throughout the preparation of the portfolio. Portfolios foster reflective practice and critical thinking as students clarify goals, determine strengths and weaknesses, and provide documentation of growth.
Mosely (2005) pointed out that principals are likely to use portfolios for hiring purposes. However, there is an emphasis on brevity and efficiency. The vast amount of documentation contained in the academic/credential portfolio will not be useful for the professional portfolio. The professional portfolio can be beneficial if it contains visual evidence of skills and abilities (Guillaume & Yopp, 1995; Jonson & Hodges, 1998; Wiedmer, 1998). The interview process benefits from the use of portfolios because of the reflection required by candidates in the preparation of the portfolio. The interview will likely address the standards used to guide the development of the portfolio in the appropriate discipline. Therefore, it will behoove the candidate to pay special attention to the development of the standards to demonstrate mastery. Additionally, a well developed and in-depth knowledgeable cognitive response which illustrates the breadth of understanding of the standards is essential. Perspective teachers can “…showcase the ability to effectively communicate, plan sequenced instruction, and organize and manage a classroom” (Mosely, 2004-2005, p. 65) in a professional portfolio. Administrators find portfolios useful during the interview process when they address these areas.
Portfolios provide flexibility to students, prospective employees, and current teachers in documenting skills and abilities. The organization of the portfolio is left to the preparer. The avenue of connecting content of the portfolio to various schemas is readily available when using electronic portfolios. E-portfolios can contain a multitude of electronic sources from links to references to videos (Gibson & Barrett, 2003; Gathercoal et al., 2002).
Types of Portfolios
Portfolio style has metamorphosed from a thick, paper rich notebook to an electronic version that allows the inclusion of a multitude of artifacts. The electronic portfolio allows students to document their academic development, performance, and achievement as those relate to the standards guiding the program of study. As students move through their teacher preparation program, academic electronic portfolios can be used as a guide for growth in their chosen area.
Perspective teacher candidates use electronic professional portfolios to showcase their best work as a support during the interview process for a teaching position. The material contained in a professional portfolio should not be as extensive as the academic portfolio.
According to Helen Barrett and Don Knezek (2002),
Portfolios range from highly structured online databases to meet an organization’s need for uniformity and accountability of standards to open-ended formats that foster creativity and a sense of ownership for learners in constructing their individual evaluation rubrics of their work. (p. 1)
Barrett and Knezek continue as they explain the dichotomy between utilizing specific e-portfolio templates which are designed to maintain a high degree of structured outcomes by the students who develop the portfolio as well as designed uniformity between student products. This type of structured uniformity is too often encouraged because of a lack of knowledge by the instructor concerning the complexities of the storage systems and their manipulability or a lack of commitment to the portfolio system. It is a difficult, if not impossible, task to train, guide and model portfolio development and the learning level expected from individuals when the instructors lack a commitment to the process or the knowledge needed to cooperatively assist in the building of the portfolio and then to help guide the process toward a suitable conclusion worthy of standards mastery for the discipline specified.
Additionally, Barrett and Knezek (2002) allude to the belief that the other side to this conundrum is that teachers and instructors should find ways to allow or foster learners to develop their introspectiveness as their portfolio development should be a representation of the student’s individuality and should foster the learner’s intrinsic knowledge of oneself and their personal and professional development with open-ended and creative e-portfolio designs. E-portfolio types vary depending upon the function of the data-gathering system and the purpose for using a portfolio at all. The recent gravitational attraction for e-portfolios in schools for students, then teachers and administrators, hinges on the premise that form follows function. Function in this particular situation is the medium most readily available for storage, retrieval, manipulation, and exchange of ideas, which allow the students to even share the documented evidence of their level of learning and understanding of the skills and concepts evidenced in the Portfolio with other professionals for healthy educational dialogue regarding the quality and refinement needed to adequately reflect a student’s very best thinking.
Student portfolios have been utilized for some time now as one measure of their knowledge and understanding of established skills, concepts, effort, progress and achievement. Initially, portfolios were used as a means to meet NCATE Standards for maintaining established standards for accreditation. However, something happened on the way to market and more and more schools have and continue to adopt some type of electronic storage program device because they have come to realize the limitless potential of the e-portfolio.
In recent years, colleges and universities have realized what the public schools have been working to accomplish; the establishment of e-portfolios in the various disciplines of the curriculum other than the traditional curricular areas noted for using portfolios.
Integration of Portfolios
The integration of portfolios by colleges and universities is critical to training educators and administrators for this new century. The implementation and use of portfolios as a means of collection, storage and presenting the documentation as an end of the program ‘dog and pony show’ creates a situation doomed for failure in terms of the dynamic potential of portfolios. Gathercoal et al. (2002) propose that the success of portfolios as viable instruments for demonstrating student growth, change and evolution of thinking, analysis, synthesis and application of their skills and knowledge to teaching and learning across the various disciplines is shrouded by ironies. The first irony involves the teacher educators who, even though they may give lip service to the use of e-portfolios, are hesitant to even put their syllabi and assignments online. Too often, it appears that many college professors actually fall short of walking-the-walk as opposed to talking-the-talk. Their expectations for their students grow more out of a requirement to which they give tacit support at best and passive attention at the least. “The literature available on electronic portfolios has more to do with students using the technology than the faculty using electronic portfolios to enhance teaching and learning” (Gathercoal, 2002, p. 30). Gathercoal suggests that students are often identified as the problem because they lack technical skills to engage in this highly interfaced medium. “Most ironically” states Gathercoal (2002), is that “portfolios are traditionally something done to students; rarely something done with and for students.” Integrating portfolios into any teacher education or administrator training program hinges upon the acceptance and utilization of the program by the faculty as a whole. Gathercoal (2002) suggests that, “a critical success factor for electronic portfolio implementation is a culture where faculty understands their central role in the portfolio process as resource providers, mentors, conveyors of standards, and definers of quality”. Gathercoal continues by stating that “the major obstacle to successful implementation of Web-based electronic portfolios is not student readiness” as some individuals would have us to believe, but “it is the full participation of faculty” which determines the success of electronic portfolio programs. Faculty members must be involved throughout the process and become immersed in the process and belive in the value of the products toward achieving greater understanding of teaching and learning. Additionally, they must be involved in the development of the deeper learning strategies we so often discuss but rarely have the opportunity of witnessing; synthesis, analysis, and application to mention a few.
The integration of portfolios into the various programs at any level of education is easier than this article may have suggested. The major requirements which the authors believe will achieve successful implementation and growth are not new to making other programs successful. First, all participants in the program - students, teachers and administrators must be fully trained in the use and capabilities of the new technologies. Secondly, they must be provided the support necessary to nurture a new program. The third requirement has to do with belief; believing that the value of the program will yield significantly measurable benefits in those areas of teaching and learning as well as higher order thinking skills over other programs. The fourth requirement involves total integration of the portfolios in the teaching and learning process and not some distant end-of-the program event which is often completely disjointed from the actual learning events that occur in the classroom. The fifth requirement involves allowing and encouraging a free flow of information and ideas between the various students and teachers promoting a continuous rethinking and refinement of important artifacts. This allows students and teachers to engage in significant and meaningful dialogue regarding their understanding of knowledge, skills, concepts and the integration and application of what they have developed as artifacts.
Lastly, there must be an agreed upon system of measuring what the portfolios contain which allows for academic freedom and divergent thinking while recognizing the need for establishing mastery of predetermined standards for the discipline. Inconsistent and arbitrary methods of determining mastery of the standards are unfair and are counterproductive. They become the focus for creating confusion and frustration on the part of students and faculty alike.
Assessment Rubric
Development of the assessment rubric is an ongoing process. Inter-rater reliability is necessary in order to provide consistency in the review of student portfolios. The electronic portfolio should be a stand alone assessment tool during pre-service evaluation. Measures of assessing the strength of the portfolio are essential to the development and completion of the portfolio. However, since the electronic portfolio has the potential of being fluid and ever-changing picture of knowledge and understandings of the individual’s educational universe, new methods of assessment are essential to allowing students, teachers, and administrators the academic freedom to go where others have only dreamed of going. With this in mind, the development of a rubric to measure knowledge and understandings which, at best seem foreign to the assessor, must allow for certain academic freedoms while creating only minimal parameters needed to help guide and focus the work while encouraging creative genius.
Essential to the development and administration of any rubric for the electronic portfolio is a cadre of well-trained individuals who are not only knowledgeable of the electronic venue but are also believers. Believers are those individuals who are, themselves, willing and active participants in electronic portfolio learning. The implication here is that the believer is not only someone who loves the game and attends every event and understands the rules and mechanics involved in making the game work, but is immersed in the universe of rethinking and reshaping the game, its rules, and understanding the limitless potential of the event. Additionally, the believer becomes an active participant who learns as well as teaches in the new game allowing for a more in-depth understanding and a clear picture of the reshaped artifact. The reliability of the rubric must be universally applied to all students. There will be different rubrics for the different areas of pedagogy and different levels of expectations for the depth of understanding and the clarity of making associations with standards and with helping to solve or bring clarity to real world issues. Reliability for such a rubric rests on two pillars. The first is the cadre of professional evaluators and their knowledge of the electronic portfolio and their level of commitment to the process as we have already mentioned. The second pillar relates to training the cadre to think as one in the assessment process and also to rely upon, trust and value the professional opinions of fellow believers.
The assessment rubric is designed to measure the students’ growth in knowledge and performance over time. Therefore it is essential that the developer of the portfolio make continuous efforts at changing and remolding the content as their understandings of their knowledge changes. For this to be a reality there must be consistent and on-going expectations by teachers for students or administrators for teachers for growing their electronic portfolios. The best way to accomplish this is through the daily or weekly utilization of the electronic portfolio as an expected part of the teaching and learning process. If the e-portfolio is treated as most schools traditionally treated the accrediting manuals they produced and dispersed to school personnel, the portfolio will be a dusty relic on the shelf until it is resurrected for the curtain call at the end of a grading cycle at best and usually at the end of the season in reality. Validity is tied very closely with reliability in terms of how the e-portfolios are used and the mind-set of those responsible for allowing students to utilize the system’s potential throughout the teaching and learning process by not only allowing the student to get in the water and splash about but by actually getting in the water and making the explorations with tem. The same is true for teachers and administrators. Simply to ask, tell or require teachers to engage in the process of developing professional e-portfolios may get you minimal results and those will probably be superficial at best. However, the exploration with teachers and administrators swimming side-by-side allows for helping each other achieve their destination. Additionally, it gives all participants a unique perspective of the journey and what was learned along the way. It also gives credibility to administrators and courage to teachers to go beyond the realm of expectations and eventually into uncharted regions of thinking and reasoning. The believers must be immersed along with their charges in order to understand where they have been in making determinations about the validity of the work completed.
Conclusion
“In the history of human development, our tools have often shaped the outcomes of our tasks” (Barrett & Knezek,, 2003, p. 5). Thus is the case with the e-portfolio as a means to expand and reshape the capacity of those who learn the secrets and potential of this marvelous tool. The two greatest challenges facing educators as e-portfolios are adopted and even expanded to include all students or during the refinement process are, as Dr. Mary Diez (1994) describes them, creating their own maps and being allowed to see their own work. The first challenge involves the development of devices, policies, assessment rubrics, etc., which will be intended to provide much needed structure to the process, especially the assessment aspect of the model. The challenge involves the ability to provide the structure without stifling the student’s creativity. We, as educators, must be willing and trusting of students to allow them the freedom to exercise their creative nature and go to places of unique creativity which promotes their unique genius. Dr. Mary Diez (1994) refers to this notion as allowing them the freedom and even promoting the concept of “Creating their own maps”. Once they are allowed and even encouraged to follow this almost structure free process, students will eventually develop the capacity to look at their work in unique ways; linking their work to new thoughts and ideas and developing the capacity to restructure their knowledge to mirror their changing and growing perspectives of reality concerning what they know and how it can be applied between and across disciplines. Mary Diez (1994) refers to this intellectual capacity as “Seeing their work”. Educators are bent on defining the parameters of student learning especially as it applies to new technologies that they themselves often lack the understanding to adequately instruct and guide others thorough the learning and growth aspects of an evolving portfolio in the hyper-web environment.
It is also essential that educators realize that portfolios are something altogether different from assessment management systems. Barrett and Knezek (2003) cautions against the “weakening effect through careless imitation; the failure of research to validate the pedagogy, and the co-option by large-scale external testing programs” (p. 6). It is also essential that professional educators understand that technology is currently and will continue to drive the level of sophistication and depth of determining exactly what portfolios are and do and will become. Barrett and Knezek further caution all educators about the distortion factor of the original intent of portfolios by the new online systems that may be “careless imitations or distortions of the original purpose of portfolios” (p. 6) and that the “use of portfolios as high stakes assessment may be further evidence of the co-option by large-scale external testing programs” (p. 6).
Whatever the outcomes for defining the use and assessment of portfolios, the value of the system or process of e-portfolio as a measure of what students and professional educators and administrators have learned over a course of study in a particular field or discipline should not be dismissed. Chappell and Schermerhorn state that “regardless of career field, a portfolio is a compendium of materials that document and demonstrate a person’s accomplishments and career readiness”. Given the freedom to exercise their creative genius and through encouragement to evaluate and refine their skills, knowledge and understandings of the relationships of that knowledge to understanding and manipulating the real problems in the world of education, their communities, their country and the world, students, teachers, and administrators could develop the capacity to leap into the vast unknown realm of problem-solving for humanity as a whole and especially for the problems and issues in education. The intellectual freedom to rethink ideas, knowledge, problems facing our schools and society as a whole and to make unfettered leaps into previously uncharted waters of intellectualism could produce some mind boggling artifacts which may be difficult for educators to even understand, let alone assess with any known rubric.
The same unabridged intellectual freedom is also essential for encouraging developing administrators to enter uncharted waters when growing their professional portfolios. Educators must find ways to help students view the benefits of portfolios as opposed to what Paul Gathercoal, et al. (2002) calls the current perspective that portfolios are something “done to students rather than something done “with and for students”. Additionally, for portfolios, in any context, to be successful and viewed by educators and administrators as useful and an essential means of tracking growth and change in the dynamics of the learning and the evolutionary process of understanding and applying skills and knowledge, there must be a systematic and systemic change by educators in supporting e-portfolios, becoming crusaders of the cause through emersion in the process. The value of e-portfolios to administrators in selecting teacher candidates for the 21st century must reflect a belief that it is necessary for the candidates to be knowledgeable at great depths of technology but much more cognizant of what they know and be able to demonstrate evidence which illustrates how they have evolved in the educational and intellectual realm and are able to also provide evidence of that growth through a well developed e-portfolio. Administrators must have the skills and ability to evaluate the levels of the candidate’s growth and development and understand the significance of what they are witnessing in a well developed e-portfolio in longitudinal terms. It must not be enough that candidates present a portfolio packed with different disjointed artifacts that have little or no connection to each other. Administrators must expect candidates to be able to demonstrate their understanding of the depth and connectedness of the various artifacts presented in an e-portfolio and to likewise illustrate and elaborate on their personal and professional growth process as they moved through their professional training programs. This same expectation is essential when administrators are considering other prospective administrators for positions in their schools of tomorrow. This should not be considered a burden to the teacher and administrator training programs at universities. It should be a welcomed opportunity for those programs that profess to being the lighthouses of training for the various teacher and administrator candidates. The opportunity should be viewed as a beacon of light leading us home; a way back to being the masters of our fate in a global world which depends on teacher and administrator training programs to continue to help the profession grow and evolve into the best system in the world. We can ill afford to ignore the calling. The price is too costly and the benefits to the recipients are so immeasurable as to make the opportunity a no-brainer.
Summary
The future of electronic portfolios as a major medium for assessment of work completed by students, teachers, and instructors and to determine what they know and to the extent they understand the divergent meaningfulness of the stated body of knowledge may be just steps away from reality in most public schools, universities and the business world. The value of the information about the individual and their personal and professional development is a resource teachers, instructors and personnel managers can ill afford to ignore. In public schools and universities, electronic portfolios are being used in a number of ways. Utilizing the e-portfolio to assess student best work at the end of a program is a very simplistic and first step approach to the truly powerful ways portfolios can be used. Once teachers, professors and school administrators realize the enormous potential for electronic portfolios in the growth process of the individual in helping the school achieve their organizational goals, then the portfolio will begin to move toward its potentiality. When this happens, tremendous growth will begin to occur in the personal and professional development of singular individuals and in the collective growth and healthy development of the organizational unit. Organizations may find that their students, teachers and principals are beginning to realize a metamorphosis in personal and professional growth which will transform the people into 21st century thinkers and reshape the education world as well as the global nature of education as a whole.
Personnel evaluations in schools have taken a similar route in the past few years. However, the potential for electronic portfolios could move personnel selection, retention, professional development and even personnel adverse actions to a new realm of thinking and processing. Electronic portfolios are not bound by the same restrictions that older versions of personnel data storage and presentation methods have known. The capacity and capabilities of the internet and the plethora of electronic presentation venues creates an unimaginable future for the possibilities in the use of e-portfolios in every area of education. An astute teacher will not overlook the potential of the electronic portfolio for teaching and learning as well as documenting the knowledge and discoveries of her individual student. Likewise, an astute teacher or professor will not be blinded to the possibilities for students and teachers to grow in the learning and teaching process together. This free flow of informational discovery has the potential of reversing the traditional roles of teacher and student. With students and teachers both immersed in this discovery of knowledge together, it could be the student who is able to discover knowledge and truths in new ways that allows the student to become the teacher if but for a little while. The traditional paradigm of teaching and learning may become an extinct way of explaining the teaching and learning process. Additionally, the electronic portfolio used by teachers and administrators as a way of explaining what they have learned and how they have grown personally and professionally may transform personnel selection, induction, professional development, professional growth and even remediation, and adverse personnel actions when needed. However, if the electronic portfolio and its uses are allowed to develop in similar ways to the pattern described for students at all levels of education, then certain traditional constraints may warrant rethinking. This is especially true as it relates to the portfolios being an individual’s picture book of their paths toward finding truths concerning education and themselves. If educators and administrators continue to view electronic portfolios as merely storage units for the things they have created for a topic, subject, or course, then the power of the electronic behemoth can be relegated to the usefulness of a 1970’s typewriter in terms of learning and discovery of truths about pedagogy. If school administrators fail to capitalize on the value and tremendous potential of the electronic portfolio in helping to determine the best selections for teaching and administrative positions, then they are alike to a race horse trying to run while hobbled at the feet. Once the various individuals in positions to help in the growth and development of students and educational professionals along their journey toward unbelievable and unimaginable destinations realize that traditional views of portfolios won’t fit the picture for electronic portfolios, then the possibilities become as vast as the universe of the mind. People working together, learning together and remaking and reshaping teaching, learning, and thinking for students and themselves has the potential of transforming the 1970’s typewriter into a time machine where the language cannot be transposed onto paper. In this new universe of thinking and behaving, the use of current measures of a person’s knowledge and skills for the purpose of determining their suitability for a teaching position will become archaic at best and professionally irresponsible at worst.. Additionally, the potential of the electronic portfolio in the personal and professional growth of the educator or administrator is likewise unclear. When teachers and administrators are unfettered by the traditional paradigms of a finite way or ways of thinking, reasoning, and even working, then schools and staffing schools may realize a similar transformation and in the near future the face of human resources functions could look almost futuristic to one viewing the scenery using current means of seeing and interpreting.
The implications are too numerous to fathom. The potential of the electronic portfolio is limited primarily to our ability to imagine the possibilities and our willingness to step into an uncertain realm where the traditional trappings of pedagogy may seem strange to someone on the other side looking at the ways electronic portfolios are currently being managed. The most serious implication seems to be how we view the teaching and learning process. The traditional teacher-learners roles may not fit the new paradigm where students and teachers work together and discover together often creating role reversals elevating the student to the teacher, if not but for a while. Educators must be willing and able to move into a realm where their knowledge and understanding of the educational universe may be challenged by what the student has discovered. In this new universe of understanding, the students and teacher will grow together and individually to truly enhance learning. Likewise, administrators will find themselves in uncharted waters when they become participants in the same process with their teachers. This alternate universe of learning and growing as individuals and as a collective may be a scary place for the weak hearted professional who finds comfort in traditional roles and being in control of their space. Finally, the implications for individuals making personnel selections which will impact many children and adults in a school and school system are also limitless. Teachers and administrators who are trained by a university immersed in the belief that learning should not be shackled by traditional conventions of teaching and learning and who are willing to allow students the freedom of creativity, may find that what they have been accepting in their classrooms to be completely alien to what emerges from this experience. Additionally, teachers and administrators at all levels must accept that electronic portfolios are fluid resources which can be changed and molded to fit ever-changing understandings of the person’s universe. The electronic portfolio will realize its full potential to the user and the consumer when it is understood that the e-portfolio is not and end-of-the journey event as much as it is a journey journal which is best understood when everybody is a willing participant in the journey itself.
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