5 Things to think about when choosing an ePortfolio

I am often asked about resources for students specifically about what they can use for creating a place for reflection. I have been looking at ePortfolios for years. Not just as a space for reflection but also as a space for capturing the skills and experiences of time at University. It doesn’t matter what that is, whether you are 18 or 80, if you spend time to learn, then you will change. The main thing is that you change, and that you have spent time and money to reflect and experience new things. Although most students don’t think about it until they are in their final month of their final term. With this in mind, I have put together what I think are the five most important things to think about when choosing an ePortfolio

1. Transferability

Imagine you have been diligently adding to your collection of work for the whole time you have been at university and when you leave you to find out that you also have to leave all of that work behind. Not good. Look for a tool that allows you to take your work with you, including comments from others who may have commented or added to your collections.

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2. Ease of use

It is all very well having an amazing tool that has all the bells and whistles, but if you have to be a computer scientist to use it, it is more or less useless. Also remember that it needs to be easy for the user, not for the institution. Easy to use means that you don’t have to think about it, it is intuitive.

Image via Pexels @Laylow

3. Privacy

You have the right to privacy. One of the ways that we can learn is through reflection, and many of our thoughts can be private and be useful. Look for a tool that allows you that right.

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4. Compatibility

This means that you can add the tools you use already. If you spend a lot of time posting to social media, maybe there are some things there that you can use to add to your collection. Choose wisely and think about what you are doing on social media to see if you can add any of those posts to your ePortfolio.

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5. Delete-able

Don’t choose a tool that won’t allow you to delete content that you don’t want anymore. If your account can’t be deleted then the content will remain forever and sometimes, that is not appropriate for you. In some cases, because you have linked content from other platforms, they can be hard to unlink, make sure your tool makes this easy.

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_{There are obviously more than five considerations but if you are being encouraged to use an ePortfolio then these are five very important things to think about 🙂}