THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA'S EPORTFOLIO SYSTEM: USEFUL TOOL FOR U OF M AND POSSIBLY FOR OTHER INSTITUTIONS

Paul Treuer’s official title is associate professor in the Supportive Services Program at University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). However, his colleagues at the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI), where he is a founding member, call him the "Portfolio Evangelist."

Building in More Functionalities

During the mid 1990s, Treuer led the team that built the eLearning Portfolio information management tool for the University of Minnesota (U of M) system, which has gained widespread recognition as a highly effective, home-grown ePortfolio system. He admits, however, that it has been "a hard process moving forward" and that the "system is still not what it needs to be. The architecture is basically sound," he says, "but other functions (in addition to a fairly sophisticated system geared for students already in place and fully operational) need to be built in because educators are saying that we have to be able to use it for accreditation purposes; we have to be able to use it for faculty promotion to tenure; we have to use it for assessment."

Tool for Sharing Digitized Information

In its current iteration, the U of M ePortfolio system is, in essence, a tool that enables users to manage an increasingly diverse array of digital information about themselves, says Treuer. "The basic premise upon which our system is built is that the information is granular and that an individual can take one or more elements of information and put it inside a folder and share it with select individuals. And they can create multiple folders for sharing a different array of information for different people."

Integrated with U of M’s SAS

The ePortfolio system has been integrated with the U of M PeopleSoft Student Administrative System and the university system’s authentication database where a student’s transcripts and identification files reside. Such information is dynamic, updated in real time inside the ePortfolio. Members of the U of M community who use the system have administrative control over who, what and when their personal information can be accessed by others and can request that such information be suppressed.

Tool for Student Advisement

The U of M ePortfolio system is also being used for student advisement purposes. In this scenario student advisors get permission to view a student’s academic profile inside the ePortfolio, and students can add to that profile by electronically sharing a variety of self-reported documents, such as academic plans, work samples, and resumes. Advisors at the U of M campuses are provided with an online training manual for how to use the ePortfolio system as well as a two-hour face-to-face training workshop. (Interested parties can go to http://eportfolio.d.umn.edu/staff.html to download this advisor’s manual, as well as view other related resources for faculty and staff.)

24,000 Students and Growing

Meanwhile, usage of the U of M eLearning Portfolio system, which is now at Version 3 since going live in 1999, has grown substantially in the past several years to the tune of 24,000 students. Moreover, the system has become the core code beneath which OSPI is being built.

Moving to an Open-Source Environment

At press time, the U of M ePortfolio code had been cleaned of anything that would prevent wide-spread adoption, says RSmart’s Chris Coppola, who is one of OSPI’s development and implementation-strategy principals. "We are going into our first round of beta testing and have brought in a number of additional schools to start growing the community."

This new ePortfolio open-source code is slated to be made available to the public via the OSPI Web site at www.theospi.org by July of this year. "There are a tremendous number of ePortfolio projects all over the country, and a lot of them are very duplicative," says Copolla. "One of the things we hope this project will do is help consolidate those efforts. If there is an ePortfolio platform available to anyone that is flexible enough to enable institutions to mold it precisely to what they need, then there really is not much of a need to have all these independent projects operating separately. So, hopefully, the work of the community can be better leveraged and this can represent a tremendous savings for institutions."

Why would the U of M make all of its sophisticated ePortfolio system code, which took approximately six years to develop, open to the public? "Like everyone else, they are experiencing tighter budgets and need to extend what they have already done," says Coppola. "They use this widely, so there is support cost in keeping it up and maintaining it and enhancing it over time. They can choose to bear that themselves or, by giving it to the community and staying involved, they can reduce their maintenance and development costs, not to mention the recognition they get for having started this initiative."

Top Five Reasons to Use ePortfolios

(courtesy of the University of Minnesota eLearning Portfolio project )

You control who gets to see part or all of your educational records
You can access your ePortfolio anywhere, anytime (even while studying abroad).
ePortfolio records are backed up nightly; so if your computer crashes ePortfolio records are safe!
You can share samples of your best works in any media you choose when applying for your dream job.
It’s fast! It takes less than a minute to share an ePortfolio folder with anyone, anywhere in the world.