A key purpose of ePortfolios is surely to enable the students to take a reflective approach to learning? Yet many of the existing systems appear to facilitate little more than form filling and CV creation. Still, at least one recent development provides some grounds for optimism. Some months ago, Derek Morrison highlighted a number of ePortfolio resources and initiatives that, in his opinion, were heading up this transformation. Derek's article suggested a number of synergies between ePortfolios and Weblogs, and referenced in particular the ERADC site which had:
“…been set up to provide a reference point for interested parties to contribute and learn more about e-portfolios and developments that may impact on the e-portfolio”.
Since Derek's inital article, the ERADC site has evolved to include references to the ELGG Personal Learning Landscape. Created by David Tosh and Ben Werdmuller, ELGG reports to be a fully customisable, mix of Weblogs, ePortfolios and social networking.
ELGG is going through some testing right now, so I've not been able to get my hands on it, however it promises to:
“…provide learners with the ability to control their own learning through the creation of their own online learning communities”.
According to the website, a basic version of ELGG will be available for free, whilst the code will be available as open source for those who wish to host or customise it further.
A concern, however, is that in common with enterprise class VLEs, in the rush to implement something which enables them to declare they are 'ePortfolio oriented', institutions may already have locked themselves into agreements and less satisfactory solutions which prevents them migrating to something which, on the surface at least, looks considerably richer and more powerful than most putative ePortfolio solutions.
Nevertheless, Tosh and Werdmuller's work looks very interesting and deserves to be more widely recognized and utilized.
