Organizing e-Portfolio Contents

Yesterday, I introduced my 14-year-old son to the idea of electronic portfolios. I had already spent the previous day creating my own digital archive (with Google Docs) and website (with Google Sites). I familiarized myself with the way the tools worked as I went along. I also considered some philosophical arguments for the potential of e-portfolios, such as Dr. Barrett's "Balancing the Two Faces of E-Portfolios" and an Educause Quarterly article on a "lifetime personal Web space (LPWS)" (Cohn and Hibbitts, 2004). The latter article by Cohn and Hibbitts raised several questions that I would like to see answered before I become a staunch e-portfolio advocate, specifically:

• "Where is the body of rigorous, research-based evidence that supports the e-portfolio as a pedagogical and presentational tool?" (Or, perhaps more relevantly, what research has been done since their article was published in 2004?) 
• "From a cost-benefit perspective, is it prudent to commit . . . student resources to a time-consuming process . . . ?" (A question I fully expected my pragmatic son would ask me.)
• "Do we know for certain that graduating students who bring electronic portfolios to their job [or college admission] interviews will be more competitive than students who furnish paper-based portfolios?" 

For now, I'm willing to try e-portfolios because the arguments in favor of using them are sufficiently persuasive. My goal in proposing the idea to my son was twofold: to see how he would respond to the arguments in favor of e-portfolios and, assuming he was persuaded, to see what process he would use to create one.

I began by acknowledging that portfolios were not a new idea. I have boxes full of colorful three-ring binders stored in my basement, the accumulated evidence of many years spent homeschooling. I also admitted that creating a portfolio would take some extra time, but I felt it would be worth the investment. I then explained how e-portfolios could be more than just a "technology-enhanced, show-and-tell, glorified resume,"a phrase I'd taken from Cohn and Hibbitts. By setting goals for himself, reflecting on what he was learning, and proposing ideas for what he might do in the future, he could enhance his planning skills as well as his understanding of the subjects he was studying.  At the same time, he would be archiving samples of his work to be used in a showcase portfolio for his senior year.

Finally, I showed him what I had done for my own portfolio with Google Docs and Google Sites. Because I had read that students sometimes have trouble articulating what they have learned, tending to focus on what they have done rather than why they have done it, I gave him a copy of Chrissy Hellyer's "Portfolio Prompts for Intermediate Students" to show him what I had in mind. He glanced at the prompts, turned to his computer, and went to work.

Within minutes, he uploaded all the files creating during two of his courses into Google Docs. Like me, he created a Google site with a home page and several subpages, one for each of the courses. He chose to use the Announcements template provided by Google Sites for his blog, while I am (obviously) using Blogger for mine. Interestingly enough, although he decided on an organization before he had even seen my portfolio, we both ended up organizing our portfolios according to course subjects. For him, it was physics and Latin; for me, it was New Media and Creative Nonfiction. We both felt this was a logical arrangement for an academic work-in-progress portfolio. In contrast, I'm assuming we will organize our presentation portfolios by skill (e.g., writing, research, programming) or theme.

My reason for reflecting on my son's portfolio process in my own reflective blog is that I learned from watching and working with him. For example, I renamed many of my files to make them easier to identify before I archived them in Google Docs; looking at my son's files, I could see immediately how awkward it was for him to have cryptic or redundant file names. As he noted, "it would have been easier to do this from the start, before I created any files." Likewise, it would have made sense to begin his blog at the start of his freshman year and add to it regularly throughout the year; and, I feel I would have benefitted from creating a reflective blog, digital archive, and working portfolio from the very beginning of this professional writing program. Many of the posts I contributed to the Blackboard discussions are now lost to me but perhaps could have been saved if I had been using a blog instead.