It has been an interesting six months. Beginning in March, I had the pleasure of working with John Ittelson, professor of telecommunications, multi-media, & applied computing at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), and Diana Oblinger, vice president for EDUCAUSE, on the production of three reports on electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This project took me down an educational pathway in which I interviewed more than 50 educators in this field. Two of the reports, "An Overview of E-Portfolios" and "An Overview of Institutional E-Portfolios," are now available in pdf format inside the e-portfolio section of the ELI website located at www.educause.edu/E-Portfolios/5524. The third report, and possibly the most eye-opening in this series, titled "Demonstrating and Assessing Student Learning with E-Portfolios," is in its final editing stage and should be published at the ELI website in the very near future.

Some of this research will be discussed in two presentations being hosted by Professor Ittelson at the upcoming EDUCAUSE conference to be held in Orlando on Oct. 17 through 21. A speaker session titled "E-Portfolios: Academic Potential and Administrative Realities," will be held on Oct. 19, and a roundtable titled "Implementing E-Portfolios," will be held on Oct. 20.

All three of the reports, combined, cover student, teaching and institutional e-portfolio issues and challenges. Student e-portfolios take up the bulk of the research, and one general issue about student e-portfolios, as follows, came across loud and clear.

Many educators feel that the essence of an e-portfolio as a highly individualized self-assessment is getting lost in the development of all these standards-based assessment e-portfolios that are scored and graded by faculty with the aid of special matrices and rubrics. As noted in a recent interview I had with noted e-portfolio expert Darren Cambridge, assistant professor of Internet Studies and Information Literacy, George Mason University, an e-portfolio should be a student’s self-representation about what he/she truly cares about in relation to his/her own learning; it is an individual’s story that can make sense of diverse kinds of evidence that are not dictated by a specific set of outcomes that are pre-determined by an institution or instructor.

On the other side of this notion is the fact that the functions and features of the more structured assessment e-portfolios at the course, program, department and institutional levels are becoming more customizable to the individualized tastes of students, faculty and administrators. Sharon Hamilton, Chancellor’s Professor of English and Associate Dean of Faculties, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis addressed how assessment e-portfolios, in particular, need to be developed. In a paper she wrote titled "A Principle-Based Approach to Assessing General Education Through the Majors," available at www.eport.iu.edu/publications.htm, Hamilton noted that "probably the most significant lesson learned in the development of this approach to assessment is that faculty and students must be involved throughout the process of research and design and the development of the conceptual framework. Additionally, there must be close ties right from the outset between those working on the conceptual development and those working on research and design."

In the end I think it can safely be said that assessment e-portfolios are being adopted in large numbers at colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad as both highly individualized self assessments (spread out and hard to find in single instances everywhere) and as the more controlled versions that represent student accomplishment and self-reflection based on specific standards and anticipated learning outcomes (more easily found in various department and program-level e-portfolio implementations). The challenge is to find a balance between these two types of assessment e-portfolios where student individuality and choice does not get lost and where educators can see whether or not they are really meeting viable learning objectives and hence continuously improving upon their teaching strategies and practices.

Institutional e-portfolios are a totally different animal than student e-portfolios. Here we are talking about large compendiums comprised of accreditation self studies, plus a wide variety of mission-critical information about an institution’s accomplishments and goals, which may include postings of student e-portfolios, as representations of effective learning outcomes, and teaching portfolios, showing best practices and scholarly research - all made public on a website.

The problem with many institutional e-portfolios is that they have simply become these large electronic repositories of information - now converted to the pdf format - that are replicas of the same paper-based information that was once put into filing cabinets during accreditation self-studies and never looked at again until the next accreditation review came along years later. That’s not the promise of institutional e-portfolios, which is to make them vehicles for sharing an institution’s good and bad levels-of-progress information in order to facilitate an ongoing, intelligent dialogue among all of its stakeholders to continuously improve itself.

One of the primary supporters of the development of institutional e-portfolios is Executive Director of the Western Association of School and Colleges (WASC) Ralph Wolfe. WASC and the Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP), which is an alternative accreditation process under the Higher Learning Commission, are the two accrediting bodies that are wholeheartedly pushing e-portfolios as a viable alternative practice to the typical voluminous paper-base accreditation processes.

"The issue is once you have the external events over [such as the accreditation review], how do you sustain ongoing interest?" asks Wolfe. "Part of the issue we are trying to drive - and it is a long journey - is to build a framework within institutions for having conversations about institutional performance beyond the U.S. News and World Report and selectivity indicators. Now, you do not need an e-portfolio to do that, but it makes it a lot easier. And it can make it more public; it can make it more expansive, because you have access to data; it can make it more focused. . . The e-portfolio is a vehicle for public discourse, and it is a way of making ready access to information that has never been available before. It enables the institution to focus on priorities. It enables the institution to reach a much larger proportion of its population."

The Ebb and Flow of E-Portfolios

So it seems that e-portfolios - be they student, teaching or institutional - still have a long way to go. Someone recently said to me that e-portfolios is one of those issues that comes around every few years, gains a lot of momentum, and then dies out for a while only to resurface again. I’m starting to agree.

In June I started my virtual trip into Chinese/U.S. higher education partnerships that have relatively large components of online teaching and learning, starting with stories about Fort Hays State University and then moving to the Stevens Institute of Technology featured in this issue. This work brought me down a fascinating educational pathway in which I dug up lots of articles and reports about China. In addition to the July-August issue featuring a "Notes on China" section with links to what I think are great resources of information about China, I’ve run across some relatively new sources, including the August 22/29 Business Week double issue on China and India, the September issue of Worth magazine on China and India, and the book "China in Motion: 17 Secrets to Slashing the Time to Production, Market, Profits in China, Japan and South Korea," by Mia Doucet (Bankerman Press).

The Business Week special issue has plenty of insightful information, including Bruce Einhorn’s brief article "A Whole New School of Thought" about Shantou University in Guangdong province. Shantou University is another example of how China is transforming its rote-like education traditions to be more like U.S.-style education, including the campus architecture. See www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948488.htm.

Business Week’s Managing Editor Bob Dowling combines China and India into an Editor’s Memo titled "The Rise of Chindia." He introduces the reader to this multifaceted and highly informative special issue by explaining that the stories "reached beyond the fray to envision China, India, and the U.S. evolving into a global triumvirate that will dominate the century. China and India will be both allies and counterweights to America - at the expense of Japan and Europe." See www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/05_34/B3948chinaindia.htm.

Worth magazine covers China and India from an investment perspective, labeling China and India as the world’s fastest growing economies. Worth’s Editor-in-Chief Dwight Cass points to a Goldman Sach’s report in his "Worthy Notions," column, stating that "China’s GDP will overtake the UK’s and Germany’s by 2010, Japan’s by 2016 and ours by 2041. It will be the world’s largest economy by 2050, followed by the U.S. and India." However, in Rebecca Fannin’s "Perilous Paths to China," article, she writes that today "venturing into China through the stock markets is on par with a weekend at the casinos in Monte-Carlo, but not nearly as scenic." This issue is not available online, but you can go to www.worth.com to subscribe.

The China in Motion book is a quick read of practical advice about how to conduct business, including loads of valuable information about social etiquette, when working with Asians. For example, in a section on Chinese table etiquette the author explains that if you finish everything on your plate, your host will think you did not get enough and are still hungry. Also, slurping your soup and burping out loud is not considered impolite. I purchased my copy of China in Motion through Amazon and got it in about two weeks after it was back ordered.

The sub headline above harks back to a column from my college days as editor of the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Anyway, in between the e-portfolios, China research, and numerous telephone interviews, the following managed to float across my computer screen:

If you are like me and missed the much-talked-about PBS special "Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk," a revealing documentary by veteran correspondent John Morrow, you can simply go to www.decliningbydegrees.org and purchase the DVD ($29.99) or book ($24.99). Amazon had the book on sale for $16.47 plus shipping.

The third issue of a new publication about online education called "The Journal of Educators Online" (JEO) is available online at www.thejeo.com. As noted on its website, JEO is an online, double-blind, refereed journal by and for instructors, administrators, policy-makers, staff, students, and those interested in the development, delivery, and management of online courses in the Arts, Business, Education, Engineering, Medicine, and Sciences.

The folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project recently published another interesting report, "The Internet at School," which found, as noted on its website, that "schools are a common location where online teens access the web, although very few online teenagers rely exclusively on their school for that web access. . . Thirty-seven percent of teens say they believe that ‘too many’ of their peers are using the Internet to cheat. And there is some disagreement among teens and their parents about whether children must be web-literate by the time they begin school." See the report at www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/163/report_display.asp.

Last but not least, check out the U.S. Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Requesters titled "College Textbooks: Enhanced Offerings Appear to Drive Recent Price Increases," which notes that increasing costs associated with developing products designed to accompany textbooks, such as CD-ROMs and other instructional supplements, best explain textbook price increases in recent years. See www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-05-806.