Designing ePortfolio 2.0: Integrating and Coordinating Web 2.0 Services with ePortfolio Systems for enhancing Users' Learning

Source: Journal of Information Systems Education. Vol. 18, Iss. 2;  Summer 2007, pg. 203.

An educational ePortfolio usually contains work that a student has collected, reflected, designed, and published to demonstrate personal learning and growth over time. However, previous studies have shown that traditional ePortfolio systems lack flexibility, peer review, and group collaboration.

Without these features, ePortfolios do not have the benefits of social learning or Communities of Practice. In this paper, we propose a new design that integrates and coordinates emerging Web 2.0 services into ePortfolio systems to enable community-wide annotation, interaction, and collaboration, with the goal of enhancing the learning experience for individuals as well as the community.

We review relevant literatures, theories, and development of traditional ePortfolio systems. We conduct a preliminary survey study to explore users' perceived values in ePortfolio and Web 2.0 services. The survey results show opportunities to design a new generation of ePortfolio systems enabled with Web 2.0. We illustrate and discuss an ePortfolio 2.0 conceptual model, and a system prototype.