Keywords

1 Overview

Portfolios have been known at least since the Renaissance as a mode of learning and reflection but also as a medium for presenting the outcomes of work processes. The Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) kept multimodal maps, journals and logs that all followed one goal: to document and reflect through texts, pictures, numbers, and a variety of other symbols on his practices as an artist, engineer, scientist and architect in order to gain new insights from this interweaving of information for his further work and the optimization thereof. Da Vinci’s artifacts and collections represent “both faces of reflection”—process and product of learning and writing—to quote Helen Barrett (2011), one of the early pioneers of the portfolio discourse that started in the 1980s in North America (Belanoff & Dickson, 1991). Most of the twentieth century portfolios were still paper-based and as such were often used for presentations in finances (e.g., stock market performance portfolios), the Arts (e.g., exhibition catalogues), and job applications (including CVs career development, and best practices).

Nevertheless, since the emergence of digital platforms (CMS/LMS) in education in the early 1990’s portfolio work slowly but steadily transferred into the digital space being used for multiple purposes and audiences, e.g., a project portfolio in the professions turns into an application portfolio or becomes part of it in order to secure third-party funding for a follow-up project.

This medial transfer and functional adaptation emerged at first in English-speaking countries (e.g., Yancey & Weiser, 1997) and, about ten years later, in additional parts of the world (Baris & Tosun, 2011; Cambridge, 2012). Since then, national and international portfolio initiatives (e.g., EUROPORTFOLIO), and organizations (e.g., AAEEBL) evolved and private IT enterprises (e.g., PebblePad, Scorion, Foliotek) started to pick up upon a growing expectation in education and some professions with regard to strengthening reflective practice through electronic portfolios. In this article, we therefore want to examine what changed for reflective writers and their academic writing practice in the transition from paper-based to digital portfolios.

Probably the most significant change that happened for writers in this transition is the following: the two former basic functionalities of paper-based portfolio work—process-oriented in so-called learning portfolios and product-oriented in so-called presentation portfolios—can nowadays exist all in one digital place and be focused on individually in different pages.

Despite this change, the procedure of portfolio work remains the same due to the overall procedure of systematic reflective practice as developed by Donald Schön (1987). With whatever topic has been set for the portfolio, students:

  1. a.

    collect the traces of their work;

  2. b.

    select the most important artifacts from the collection with regard to their learning process;

  3. c.

    combine and interweave the selected artifacts in order to tell the story of their learning and its outcomes;

  4. d.

    shape and share/present these outcomes with both the audience and the final purpose of the portfolio in mind (Himpsl, 2008), e.g. through a reflective introduction.

Nevertheless, the approach in which artifacts are collected in a single digital space triggers profound changes in the procedures that reflective writers now use. Here are just a few of these procedural changes (Table 1).

Table 1 Procedural changes from paper-based to digital ePortfolios
Full size table

In addition, there exists a difference within the digital realm that seems to have an influence on the writers’ performance strategies, namely between portfolio platforms (mostly CMS-based) and learning platforms (LMS-based): While learning platforms are structured around the fabric of a seminar or even depict the latter directly, portfolio management systems are in use to initiate learner communities where peers with similar goals in their portfolio work are connected with each other.

On a learning platform, the instructor sets up a “classroom” in which course participants follow a syllabus imprinted to the structure of the platform (e.g. through weekly tasks and discussion forums). In contrast, portfolio hubs offer a flexible personal learning environment that can also include tools on demand from a cloud. Here, it is always the creator/owner of the portfolio who makes the decision on how he/she wants to work, all within the restrictions and expectations of a specific portfolio task. Students, through their ePortfolios, connect with each other whenever needed in their own workflow and, as such, create a community of practice. With regard to writing, peer feedback in portfolio work often focuses on the quality of reflective writing in general and the focus on certain levels of reflection in specific. Feedback seems also important on the appropriate multimodal design of ePortfolios with regard to a specific audience.

In order to relieve the mental stress created by the complex nature of writing and reflection—no matter what format of portfolio is being aimed for—portfolio work will often be organized and designed around the different phases of mental recognition (Schön, 1987) and/or rhetorical steps in putting reflection into language and discourse (Bräuer, 2016). Schön (1987) speaks of “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action”, assuming the person will find the right words to differentiate between (a) what he/she is experiencing in the moment of action and (b) what this experience means to the person later on.

Considering the differences of mental quality between Schön’s two phases of reflection, this may be a great challenge for many students’ writing abilities. Already Hatton and Smith (1995) identify plain description in early-stage reflection, but discourse with one’s self, including critical reflection later on. Not to mention that language practice, especially writing (e.g., in a diary and/or journal) can further enhance mental operations and trigger deeper insights (e.g., Nückles et al., 2020). If portfolio work is done on paper, students tend to focus much more quickly on the product since changes to the portfolio are difficult to integrate without damaging the existing draft. In contrast, the two phases of reflective practice by Schön (1987) can be used as a mode of scaffolding writing much more diverse in a digital setting of ePortfolios. Here are some possible writing tasks and digital tools to meet the different levels of reflection (Bräuer, 2016, p. 37) rhetorically:

  • “reflection-in-action”

    • Document and describe what you experience in the moment of action (e.g., through cellphone videos posted to a video annotation platform).

    • Analyse the circumstances of your action and interpret your feelings while you are being active (e.g., through comments written directly onto the video annotation platform).

While “reflection-in-action” is happening directly in the moment of action, this reflection needs to be carried out quickly and easily, with as little effort as possible, e.g., through video, photo, audio recordings, quick notes and/or voice messages to oneself, all done with hand-held devices.

  • “reflection-on-action”

    • Assess your reflections so far in the context of your previous experiences with similar actions and in the light of evaluation guidelines on both quality and result(s) of action (e.g., by adding still photos to the portfolio and commenting on them with regard to what happened and how/why it happened with what results).

    • Conclude from what you assessed and evaluated (e.g., in the light of institutional/professional criteria and standards) and plan accordingly for a more efficient action and high-quality outcome in the future.

Since not all students possess the appropriate linguistic resources for the above highlighted rhetorical patterns, additional (scaffolding) tasks, material (sample texts, text patterns) and feedback on early drafts should be offered to the students as a means of writing process facilitation.

2 Core Idea of the Technology

The technology of ePortfolios pushes the idea of networked thinking and learning. Through reflective tools as part of the ePortfolio platform or as an outlet in the cloud, both solo and network writing are possible at any time—if done asynchronously—and for any reason, e.g. developing and swapping ideas, collaborative drafting and formulating, and providing feedback.

Using ePortfolios to collect, shape and share artifacts as a proof of a certain activity necessary to fulfill a requirement or reach a certain qualitative standard can be done by combining digital tools toward a personal learning environment (Attwell, 2007) in two generally different ways of structure and setup: (a) maintained on a digital platform more or less streamlined for electronic portfolios—Ravet (2007) calls this approach ePortfolio management systems; or (b) through individual use of an application managing different share points with a cloud—Ravet (ibid.) calls this ePortfolio organizer. While these share points in (b) are defined by the individual user and therefore create a personally shaped learning environment, the digital platform (either as learning management system or ePortfolio platform) is provided more or less by the institution and therefore predefines a standardized learning environment that is only personal by the means of surface design (e.g., layout) but not the selection and/or combination of tools and tool functionality.

Software used for ePortfolios includes the following:

  • learning management systems (e.g., ILIAS, OLAT, MOODLE): restricted functionalities of ePortfolios (e.g., for individual design, sharing, commenting). Here portfolios are mostly seen as the endpoint of a learning process that happened during interaction on the learning platform. The creation of individual portfolio pages and collections will follow as a second step. This architecture supports a task design where content learning in the course work is more or less separated from individual reflective practice mostly carried out at the end or after the end of the semester;

  • social networking systems (e.g., ELGG): restricted functionalities of ePortfolios (e.g., for individual design and commenting). Here portfolios are mostly seen as the endpoint of a longer process in social interaction. Again, the portfolio will be created as a result of social interaction, but not integrated into social networking;

  • weblog publishing systems (e.g., WORDPRESS): restricted functionalities of ePortfolios (e.g., for individual design, commenting, presenting). Here portfolios are seen as a continuous (chronological), journal-like string of posts where individual posts can be commented on but not overall presentations;

  • eJournal software (e.g. EVERNOTE, ONENOTE): restricted functionalities of ePortfolios (e.g. for individual design, social interaction, presentation). Here, portfolios are seen as a long-term collection of individual note-taking, including little or no final design for presentation;

  • ePortfolio management software (e.g., MAHARA, PEBBLEPAD, SAKAI): provides all functionalities of reflective practice including collecting, selecting, combining, designing/shaping, sharing/presenting artifacts as a proof of a required quality of action/competence.

The consequences for individual users in balancing the two faces of portfolio (process vs. product) are clearly visible: ePortfolio management systems are structured in a way that makes it easy for the institution (in education, business, etc.) to initiate a certain focus on either “process” or “product” and/or prescribe the transfer process from “process” to “product” whenever necessary. In this scenario, users will be guided how to interact with their portfolio. This does not exclude individual design and content work but the direct experience of ownership and self-directed learning may be limited. With regard to the tools being involved in the reflective practice, the owner of the portfolio can only use whatever tools are made available through the platform.

In contrast, ePortfolio work via a cloud solution brings much more direct ownership and independence, but also the danger of overestimating the power of either “process”- or “product”-focus for whatever the reason of the individual portfolio may be. In other words: the chance to fail as a learner seems larger by using the cloud-based ePortfolio, including the prospect of learning as a result of failure.

Interaction within larger communities of portfolio users is possible in both cases but more forced upon the individual participant in a platform-based environment. That approach can also force scaffolding through small tasks as a basis to reach in-depth reflection. Cloud-based users may also receive multi-step task arrangements from their facilitators but it is only on a platform where the processing of small-step tasks can be forced by a certain technological setup. The same is true for peer feedback, an important element of reflective practice when “reflection-in-action” should be pushed toward “reflection-on-action” (Schön, 1987). It could well be that users of cloud-based portfolios quit reflecting at an early stage of their work and, therefore, do not really go beyond documenting and reporting whatever they reflect on.

With regard to the audience, access to other people’s ePortfolios is manageable by the creator/owner in both scenarios in similar ways. Nevertheless, in the cloud-based scenario, the audience can be defined more freely, including the danger of failing to choose the right people for feedback on the outcome of reflective practice. While the owners of ePortfolios in institutionalized platforms also could choose their feedback partner freely, they rarely involve people from outside the institutional set-up but most often prefer peers from their class. This creates the danger of unconsciously setting up mutual “feel-good feedback” that is often not very helpful for revision.

3 Main Products and Functional Specifications

In the following, two examples of common software solutions will be introduced and further discussed: (3.1.) Mahara as an example of platform-based technology and (3.2.) OneNote as an example of cloud-based applications.

3.1 Mahara

One of the most common ePortfolio platforms is Mahara, which started as a collaborative venture funded by New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission’s e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF) involving New Zealand Universities in 2006. The project is supported by Catalyst IT, which engages the lead developers and maintainers of the platform (Mahara, 2021). Until 2023 Mahara was an open source but still is a stand-alone system. However, Mahara can easily be connected to learning management systems like Moodle via LTI to support single sign-on. It is browser-based, so no extra application must be installed. In addition to the browser version, there is also an app for mobile devices, which supports quick recording of ideas and impressions with the help of data uploads, audio memos, photos and journal entries. These memos can be processed later in the ePortfolio. That being said, Mahara can not yet be used offline due to its overall browser-based technology.

Mahara is the leading ePortfolio system worldwide. It is used in schools, vocational training, universities and further education all over the world. There is also a large developer community working continuously with Catalyst to improve the system. Every half a year, Catalyst publishes a new version with new features to make sure that Mahara stays current. Because Mahara can be hosted by every institution itself (since 2023 license-based), there are no major problems with data security.

A main feature of Mahara is the focus on the learner. Therefore, it is the learner who is responsible for providing the content that is important to him or her. There are three functional areas in Mahara, which allows the learner to create content, to share content, and to engage with other community members.

3.1.1 Create

This is the learner’s private area within the system. Here, the learner can collect all kinds of artifacts that he or she thinks are important for personal development. Quick notes can be taken in a journal. The artifacts can be arranged or rearranged on so-called pages to show and reflect the learning process. To support diversity and creativity Mahara offers a wide variety of different content types, which can be used to create content (e.g., text, image, external media, open badges, Google apps). There is no predefined layout. The learner can adjust the size of the content and place it anywhere on the page. If there are several pages with content relevant to the learning process, these can be combined into a so-called collection. Learners can also create to-do-lists with goals and tasks to manage their learning journey and be reminded by a system-built schedule.

3.1.2 Share

Because feedback is important to improve one’s reflective writing skills, learners can share their ePortfolio within the Mahara system. Here, learners have full control over who they share their ePortfolio with and for how long. While sharing the ePortfolio the learner can continue working on it. The person who provides feedback can follow the learner’s progression and adjust her or his feedback throughout the learning process. If the ePortfolio is being set up as required by the institution, it can also be submitted in the end. When the ePortfolio is submitted, the learner isn’t able to do further editing. Accordingly, Mahara can be used for both formative and summative assessment.

Due to the many design possibilities, it is important not to be blinded by the visual appearance of a page during the feedback process, but to always read the content critically. On the other hand, the many possible multimodal design options provide a powerful learning opportunity with regard to reader-based layout. One restriction of Mahara, though, is that feedback can only be given in a comment field which is located at the bottom of every page. Commenting within the text is not possible and therefore persons providing the feedback need to be able to clearly describe and explain why and how they want the writer/owner of the portfolio to revise.

The sharing of the ePortfolio does not have to be limited to Mahara users. Creators/owners can also make their ePortfolio accessible to people outside the platform, for example by using a secret URL. This way, the ePortfolio can also be used for bridging the gap between education and profession, e.g., through portfolios as job applications.

3.1.3 Engage

Within the Mahara system users can engage in groups:

  1. 1.

    Learners can create their own tandems and teams for working together on specific topics. Here they can create pages and collections collaboratively and further discuss and develop them.

  2. 2.

    Classes can be organized by using the “Groups” function of Mahara. This way, the teacher can provide templates for reflective writing either through “best practice” portfolios or text patterns for certain levels of reflection.

Both methods can help the students to improve their reflective writing skills based on their individual skill level. A useful feature here is the “Plans” function, which was released with version 19.10. Here, the teacher can design and publish various tasks for different skills levels. This way, the student can choose the task that suits his or her level of skills. Each task can be provided with a deadline of completion which often helps students to monitor their progress. Furthermore, instructions and literature on reflective writing can also be provided within the group setting. Open questions or problems with reflective writing can be discussed in the group forum.

Reflecting on and developing one’s learning process should be a lifelong commitment. Therefore, it is important that the ePortfolio, which was created during the study at the university, can still be accessed and continued after graduation. Mahara offers the possibility to export one’s data in the formats HTML and LEAP2A. In order to continue working on the ePortfolio outside Mahara, it is necessary to import the LEAP2A file into another ePortfolio system (e.g., within the profession).

Based on classroom observations and coaching reflective writers in writing centers, the following research on Mahara ePortfolios can be provided with regard to task design and writers’ motivation:

Small writing tasks focusing on individual aspects of reflection seem to help writers to come to grips with the complex task of reflective practice (Arimond, 2020). If those smaller reflective tasks will not just be prescribed isolated from each other but with strong interconnections, the quality of reflective writing can be bolstered even more (ibid.). If both single tasks and task arrangement lead to an experience of fulfilled learning, students will be intrinsically motivated to work on their portfolios for a long period of time, including portfolios that bridge several semesters or perhaps facilitate the entire course of study and even reach into the profession in form of application portfolios and portfolios of continuing education. In other words, writing for changing purposes and audiences can be highly motivating since the authors experience purposeful, authentic communication (Arimond et al., 2018).

3.2 OneNote

Even though the tool that will be focused on in the following paragraph is not an ePortfolio technology per se but a tool for note-taking, the emergence of OneNote in the portfolio practice of students is a striking example for the powerful influence of digital technology on the decision-making process of present learners. While institutions of higher education currently prefer ePortfolio platforms such as Mahara, stakeholders should, at the same time, haven an eye on their students’ needs and choices when making decisions on the future direction in the development of personal learning environments, ePortfolios included.

In our experience, attention to OneNote by students in higher education has been growing steadily in recent years. Nevertheless, the so-called early adopters to IT solutions seem to have used it from early on and experimented with the different features often in connection with MS Teams. Some may ask themselves here what OneNote has to do with portfolios since it seems comparable in its features with Word or Google Docs. Would we want to suggest Word and Google Docs for portfolio work? Probably not, but on a closer inspection, OneNote is different and therefore has some specific potential for reflective practice as seen further below.

This cloud-based software, often also described as “digital journal” or after the existence of smart/ digital pens also as “scratchpad”, appeared in 2003 as a MS Windows application included in MS Word (until 2019). Later on it was also available for macOS. Since 2020 OneNote can be installed through Office 365 as a stand-alone app for any portable device and can be connected as needed with Word, Excel, or Outlook. Sharing, feedback and any other forms of collaboration with individual peers or communities of practice may be best realized through MS TEAMS while the journal in parts or as a whole can now also be saved on a local hard drive and worked on off-line as needed. Therefore, it is now also possible for an instructor to download performance records once these documents have been submitted by the students. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that the students will keep track of these submissions themselves and use this documentation for making visible the unfolding of their learning path. The nature of OneNote as a journal or scratchpad makes it easy to delete things done.

In another user scenario, OneNote may lure the student into ongoing changes of individual documents which, on the one hand, could encourage continuous learning but, on the other hand, over-emphasize the process over the product. Since there seems to be no rhetorical and practical use in a personal journal to integrate or merge individual pieces of work into a larger context, the ongoing fiddling with individual sketches may turn into repeating emty activity cycles and delaying (or preventing) new insights written down as text.

Since the use of OneNote as a cloud-based portfolio is fairly new, no research can be presented at this point. Nevertheless, a number of practice reports can be found instead, e.g., on interaction between product designers (Noessel, 2015). In this example, sketches will be collaboratively modified by copy/paste, or they can be scaled, shared and/or exported into more elaborate design programs as needed. This demonstrates the potential of OneNote for document-based collaboration, a quality that is not easy to reach at the same level with Mahara.

Another resource (Teaching Hub, 2021) shows a detailed feature comparison between OneNote and Mahara in order to make ePortfolio work more efficient for both students and instructors. OneNote provides less flexibility to design page templates, a feature that seems important for users to make the ePortfolio their own, to create ownership and meaning of their reflective practice. On the other hand, as already mentioned above through the integration of OneNote into MS Teams, individual documents can be used in synchronous meetings for both presentation and collaborative document editing (ibid.). For more detailed information on this system comparison a table (Excel) provided on Teaching Hub (ibid.) can be consulted.

4 Research and Practical Implications

ePortfolios seen as bundles of digital communication tools, either presented on a platform or individually selected in a cloud, seem to provide specific potential for students’ multimodal writing and learning. As described in detail in various chapters of this book, changing digital tools while moving between single writing tasks and combining those tools while working on entire task arrangements enable writers in various competencies (skills) that are all necessary for producing texts and especially high-end portfolios. In addition, ePortfolio should also be seen as “a curated repository that is (…) mediated through interaction with instructors and peers” (Prokopetz, 2021, p. 25) where all actors in using ePortfolios negotiate the meaning of whatever topic they are working on. Due to the limited scope of this chapter, here is a list of references on most recent research topics with regard to reflective writing and portfolio in higher education:

  • Improving independent learning (Madden, Collins, & Lander, 2019).

  • Creating and maintaining independent learning spaces (Mihai et al., 2021).

  • Monitoring different learning/workspaces and the moving between them (Prokopetz, 2021).

  • Team-based transformational learning in shared online workspaces (Whitmore & Thacker, 2021).

  • Collective knowledge building (Mihai et al., 2021).

  • Motivation and higher order thinking (Chittum, 2018).

  • Design thinking made visible and meaningful (Doren & Millington, 2019).

It must be said, though, that the insight provided by the studies mentioned above is less specific for enhancing academic writing and writers but more concerned with general consequences of portfolio work for teaching and learning in higher education. Nevertheless, the specific educational value of hypertextuality as a concrete means of multimodality (Kress, 2010) in the process of meaning-making on the writers’ side and decoding and co-creating meaning on the reader’s side becomes strikingly clear throughout many of these studies. In addition, whenever not only students but also instructors work on their portfolios and share those, there is a great opportunity to create strong communities of practice and vital knowledge communities across institutional hierarchies. Here, both students and instructors alike engage in shared digital composition and communication about their choices on digital modes and design based upon their audience’ ability and expectations.

5 Conclusion

This final part will be used for some exemplary recommendations to start and maintain ePortfolio work and to reflect upon it in individual teaching as well as in institutional development (see also Yancey, 2019):

  1. 1.

    No matter what digital applications and tools will be used for creating and maintaining ePortfolios, they should trigger different modes of reflection and, as such, lead to a multiple perspective on whatever activity is being observed. This multiple perspective should be initiated by an adequate task design and supported by appropriate technological structures that stage existing tools toward diverse reflective strategies and the creation and strengthening of a community of practice. Teaching staff (faculty) often need additional training and support for the above mentioned design activities on both pedagogical and technological levels. Opportunities for the latter should be provided by the institution.

  2. 2.

    In order to secure continuous and high-quality participation by the students in the multiple steps of long-term ePortfolio work, multimodal feedback by peers and experts (KI tools included), is needed. This feedback and the consequences thereof should be included in the ePortfolio as a means of (self-) assessment and become the basis for final evaluation and acknowledgement by the institution. Criteria for feedback and assessment, sanctioned by the institution, need to be conveyed to teachers and students (White, 2005).

  3. 3.

    ePortfolios should not only provide artifacts for a currently performed practice but also demonstrate appropriate alternatives for future action. In addition, portfolios should also include proof of an already changing practice no matter what outcome this may have brought about. In order to be able to really demonstrate changing patterns of action, students need to be provided with enough time and opportunities within the curriculum, technology and organizational aspects of the institutional framework.

  4. 4.

    Based on a close monitoring of ePortfolio work “in-action” and “on-action”, teaching staff (faculty) should gather evidence of the existing quality of task design, curriculum and technology. Ideally, this reflection should be carried out with help of a teaching portfolio and would eventually lead to insights with regard to necessary curricular, technological and institutional change. These opportunities for a “learning organization” (Peter Senge) should be coordinated by a steering group which has been assigned by the institution’s directorship. Such a steering group should also be in close contact to the students to further analyze and interpret their unique portfolio-based insights in learning and instruction.

6 Tools List

Tool

Description

References

Cloud-based portfolio (e.g., OneNote)

Portfolio management systems are in use to initiate learner communities where peers with similar goals in their portfolio work are connected with each other

https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/microsoft-365/onenote/digital-note-taking-app

CMS-based portfolio platforms (e.g., Mahara)

Portfolio management systems are in use to initiate learner communities where peers with similar goals in their portfolio work are connected with each other

https://mahara.org

Edubreak

Video annotation platform which can be used for blended learning arrangements: activities being video-taped, posted, peer-commented on and linked with theory and practice. Both process and results of this effort can be arranged and presented in digital portfolios

https://edubreak.de

Foliotek

Student and program assessment tool for monitoring student and faculty activity (competency-based assessment) and for program performance analysis with the longterm goal of accreditation management

https://www.foliotek.com

LMS-based platforms with portfolio feature (e.g., Ilias)

Learning platform is structured around the fabric of a seminar and parallel to that also provide a site for portfolios

https://www.ilias.de

Mahara

Started as a collaborative venture funded by New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission’s e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF) involving New Zealand Universities in 2006. The project is supported by Catalyst IT which engages the lead developers and maintainers of Mahara

https://mahara.org

https://www.catalyst.net.nz

OneNote

Digital notebook allowing to collect and develop ideas, share these with others and collaborate further on

https://www.onenote.com

Pebble Pad

Student-centered learning portfolio focusing on individual learning design, the scaffolding of long-term learning journeys, and on authentic assessment

https://www.pebblepad.co.uk

Scorion

Focusing on programmatic assessment. With the Scorion E-Portfolio, students and supervisors can provide each other feedback within one app. Based on the data entered, the Scorion dashboard provides a precise picture of the progress and performance of a student at any time

https://scorion.de/scorion/