Developing a Distance Learning e-Portfolio System

“A financial portfolio documents the accumulation of fiscal capital or monetary assets. A learning portfolio documents the development of human capital or intellectual assets.” That's how Helen Barrett, who has been researching strategies and technologies for electronic portfolios since 1991, explains the importance of learning portfolios.

Institutions of higher education have struggled for years to find methods to collect and review student work, document student learning for accreditation, and allow students to display their skills after completing a program. Technological advances in recent years have encouraged distance education programs to explore innovative ways to reach these goals. However, due to the nature of distance education, finding an achievable technical solution requires some innovative thinking.

The School of Psychology and Counseling (SPC) at Regent University embarked on such an endeavor and was successful in developing a technology solution. In this article, I will detail the in-house technical design and development of the e-Portfolio system and briefly highlight the steps that SPC went through. I believe that this case history will be useful to other institutions of higher education, and to government and private enterprise as well.

Electronic portfolios (e-Portfolios)

The definition of a portfolio varies slightly depending upon the source referenced and the purpose of the portfolio. According to the Northwest Evaluation Association, a portfolio is:

… a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student’s efforts, progress and achievements in one or more areas. The collection must include student participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection; the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of student self-reflection.

An electronic portfolio or e-Portfolio has a slightly different definition. T.L. Weidmer defined an electronic portfolio as “a purposeful collection of work, captured by electronic means, that serves as an exhibit of individual efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas.” The overall concept is similar. A portfolio, whether electronic or traditional, is a collection of work that an individual designs, creates, and completes to display his or her skills.

Traditional portfolios are usually paper-based and include examples of student work kept in various containers. These may include manila folders, three-ring binders, tapes and videocassettes, and computer disks. This type of portfolio format can create problems. Concerns may include revision and storage of the portfolio material and delivery of the portfolio to professors and future potential employers. A better option to the traditional portfolio is the use of electronic media to create a digital version. As the name implies, in the case of an e-Portfolio the student collects, saves, and stores the information in an electronic format.

There are many benefits and advantages of e-Portfolios, compared to traditional portfolios. With e-Portfolios, students are able to easily revise, edit, and refine their portfolios. Students can store their portfolio items in various formats, including electronic text files, digital pictures and graphics, and digital audio and video files. In addition, keeping portfolio contents in digital form saves space, and an e-Portfolio burned onto a CD or DVD is easy to send to a prospective employer along with a resume. Finally, because it is so easy to retrieve the contents from a Web server, e-Portfolios are a fantastic choice for distance education programs.

Counselor education at a distance

The Doctorate of Philosophy in Counseling Education and Supervision (DPCES) program, a distance education program in Regent University’s SPC, offers students around the world the unique opportunity to earn a doctorate degree in counselor education and supervision online. Because it is a counselor education program, students must complete assignments that include mock and actual counseling sessions, as well as other course projects and presentations. In the past, DPCES students sent these assignments, in the form of PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, or videos on computer disks, CDs, or videotapes, to their professors by e-mail or postal mail.

This process had many challenges. Items did not always arrive on time. Sometimes instructors could not open or play back the media because they did not have the appropriate software or equipment, or because the media had somehow become corrupt. It was difficult for professors to provide feedback to the students. In addition, students did not have a record that recorded their experiences in their program, in a form that they could use to market themselves. The school also hoped to document student learning for accreditation.

In 2003, the DPCES program faculty and the dean of the School of Psychology and Counseling decided to add an e-Portfolio component to their program, in the hope of resolving these issues. However, they quickly realized that there also needed to be a system to assist with training students in media creation and in how to transfer and store their e-Portfolio content. Without such a system, the venture would have to continue to rely on e-mail and the postal service for delivery of student work.

Because the program is online, all resources, including the training materials and the method to submit student portfolios, had to be available from a distance. In addition, because of privacy concerns student portfolios needed to be stored in a secure and confidential location.

Using newer technologies, the school was able to find a solution. The school now has an easy-to-use and inexpensive way to assist faculty, to train students, and for students to create, submit, and store their e-Portfolios.

e-Portfolios in the DPCES program

The purpose of an e-Portfolio depends on the creator and the need for the portfolio. Helen Barrett points out three general purposes for developing portfolios:

•  Learning (Formative) Portfolios, which usually support professional development on an ongoing basis;
• Assessment (Summative) Portfolios, which usually play a role within the formative evaluation process; and
• Employment (Marketing) Portfolios, which students can use when seeking employment.

There are many other types of portfolios, including Working Portfolios and Showcase or Best Works Portfolios, but these were not appropriate to SPC and the DPCES. For the School of Psychology and Counseling, the Learning Portfolio is the chosen format. Students can easily convert their portfolios to Marketing Portfolios once they have completed their studies.

By integrating a Learning Portfolio into the curriculum, students are able to document their learning experiences. Their portfolios house their papers, videos, and other media while providing an organized visual experience for visitors that includes hyperlinks to the students’ work. The Learning Portfolio allows students to reflect upon their work throughout the program. The school benefits from the visual account of student achievement, and by assisting students in obtaining employment.

Development of the e-Portfolio System

In the summer of 2003, the DPCES program coordinator and the school’s Web developer and instructional designer (one person, two titles) began to explore what it would take to add an e-Portfolio component to a distance education program. The technical challenges included developing ways to assist students in creating, storing, and accessing their portfolios. Another technical challenge was assisting faculty with accessing student portfolios for review.

Successfully addressing these challenges involved satisfying several conditions that I have noted previously. First, all technical assistance for students and faculty had to be available to them at a distance. Second, requiring a technology-rich assignment in a distance education program involved a training component – students and faculty in the school do not typically have the technical skills for media production (audio, video, even PowerPoint) and conversion to digital formats. Of course, this training also had to be available at a distance. Finally, student portfolios would contain confidential information including videos of actual counseling sessions. Therefore, the school had to create a secure location for the student portfolios so that only authorized students and faculty could access them from anywhere in the world.

Confidential e-Portfolio storage

The coordinator of the DPCES program, the Web developer, and the instructional designer also met with the University’s Information Technology department to set the requirements for confidentiality and connectivity for the portfolios. With help from the IT department, the Web developer was able to create a secure network connection and to establish Web server space for the e-Portfolios.

The e-Portfolio storage system is a SUN Solaris computer running the Apache Web server in Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) mode. SSL assists in protecting the student’s work during transit and storage. The SSL protocols complete several tasks, including authenticating the client (the user and his or her computer) and the university’s server to each other. This authentication occurs when the user logs into the system. Unauthenticated parties cannot tamper with the student’s e-Portfolio content. In addition, when users transport data between their client machine and the server, another person cannot intercept it; it is only readable by the intended recipient.

The system uses .htaccess files to password-protect access to student e-Portfolios over the Web for viewing or for updating content. The .htaccess files assist with configuring the permissions each user has and the directories they can access on the storage system. (For more information on .htaccess files, see Comprehensive guide to .htaccess by “feyd” (Kumo Tatzu), listed in the references at the end of this article, or the Apache server user guide online at http://httpd.apache.org/docs.)

To view an e-Portfolio, users type in its URL in the format https://portfolio.regent.edu/username, replacing “username” with their school-assigned User ID. The configuration scheme for students is different from the one for faculty. This allows only faculty members to view student e-Portfolios, and at the same time allows anyone to view the faculty e-Portfolios. In other words, students may only view their own e-Portfolios and the faculty e-Portfolios. The e-Portfolio administrator can access any student or faculty portfolio to in order to provide technical assistance.

For a typical user, the Regent e-Portfolio system is very much like a group of folders on his or her computer’s hard drive; however, each folder is actually a directory on the University server. Each e-Portfolio user has a directory or folder named with his Regent University User ID. Users update their e-Portfolio content by creating a connection from their computer to their directory on the e-Portfolio server. WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is the technology used to allow users to connect to the Regent e-Portfolio storage system.

WebDAV, shown in Figure 1, is a protocol that allows multiple users to create, change, and manage files on a remote Web server. The school could have used File Transfer Protocol (FTP), rather than WebDAV; however, FTP would require the users to install FTP software on their computers and there is more of a learning curve involved working with FTP. WebDAV is more user-friendly than FTP, as it provides drag-and-drop functionality. (For more information on WebDAV, see WebDAV Resources at http.//www.webdav.org.)

Figure 1 WebDAV allows multiple users to read, write, and update content on a remote server.

Once configured, the student’s e-Portfolio directory looks just like a local folder on the user's computer. Users create the WebDAV connection by adding a Network Place within Windows 2000/XP. For users with Macintosh computers, the process is slightly different, but the concept is similar. Users open their System Preferences, select Network, choose to create a new location, and add the correct settings.

The WebDAV connection allows the users to simply drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste files from their computer to their e-Portfolio space as if they were dragging and dropping files between locations on their desktop. Once a user drops or pastes the files, Apache Web server sends the files over the Web to their storage area on the server. Since the Apache Web server is running in SSL mode, the files are secure during the transfer.

Users can update their e-Portfolios from anywhere in the world with a computer and an Internet connection, allowing for ease of submitting and updating portfolio content. In addition, users can create a network connection on multiple machines, such as their home computers, laptops, or work machines. The faculty can access student e-Portfolios by logging into the e-Portfolio system from their work computers or from any computer with Internet access. Once logged in, the faculty members can select the directory of the student e-Portfolios they want to view.

SPC Portfolio Website

There is a companion Website for students, the SPC Portfolio Website, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 The SPC Portfolio Website serves as an online resource when students are creating their e-Portfolios. URL: http://www.regent.edu/ acad/schcou/portfolios/

This Website was available before the school created the online storage system. It serves as an extensive online source of information for students and contains many resources. Students learn to use the Website as part of an introductory information and training session during their first year doctoral residency. The school’s Web developer / instructional designer, who also serves as the e-Portfolio administrator, provides support.

The SPC Portfolio Website offers a number of services for students when building their e-Portfolios. Students can complete a short tutorial introducing e-Portfolios and their uses and benefits. Students can access their program’s statement of purpose and a list of their program’s technical and content requirements. Technical requirements for the e-Portfolios include no broken links and easy to find navigation. Content requirements for the program include items such as specific assignments and professional documents like resumes.

To assist students in understanding how to create an e-Portfolio, a systematic tutorial explains the basic sequence of steps and the parameters involved. The tutorial covers defining the portfolio’s context and goals, planning the structure of the portfolio, collecting and filtering items for the portfolio, converting items to electronic format, building the portfolio, adding some professional touches, and storing the portfolio. As students complete the tutorial, they can view interactive videos and short lessons. These assist students in understanding the concepts discussed in the tutorial.

The Website also provides a large collection of other tutorials and resources for students as they are creating media for their portfolios. Basic scanning techniques, CD burning, image editing, and Website creation tutorials are available, along with links to many free resources. Some of the resources presented include Websites offering free graphics, image-editing software, and software for creating PDFs. Other links lead to free trial offers, to vendors who offer discounts to students on hardware and software, and to Open Source software.

Additional support is available through a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section, two student guides listing the dos and don’ts for creating an e-Portfolio Website, a checklist for creating Web pages, and a help section. The FAQ section answers many basic questions students may have and provides them with additional information about the e-Portfolio system and the location of resources.

The student guides provide additional advice concerning e-Portfolios. The guides cover many typical problems and overlooked items. Students can use these guides while creating their e-Portfolios and as a checklist when they are complete.

The help section includes a list of common problems and their solutions and also the contact information for the e-Portfolio administrator and the university Help desk.

Problems

The school noticed three problems after adding the e-Portfolio requirement and building the e-Portfolio storage system. First, some students were using older hardware and software, which is problematic when working with newer technologies. Second, there were problems with the compatibility of older versions of the Macintosh operating system (Mac OS) and the system the school was using for remote file transfer. Finally, some students had a difficult time learning the new technical skills required. Each of these problems was a learning experience both for the students and for the school.

Older computers lacked the processing speed and memory required for some of the new software programs. For example, a student needs the Windows XP operating system to log in to the e-Portfolio storage system. However, in order to install Windows XP, the student’s computer needs the appropriate memory and processing speed. Advanced Website authoring software and image editing programs also require significant memory and processing speed to work properly. To assist in preventing further problems, the school added a list of computer requirements, including basic hardware and software specifics, in the program’s handbook and on the program’s Website.

The school also found that some previous versions of Mac OS did not support WebDAV over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This created a problem for those students entering the program using Macintosh computers running those older versions of the Mac OS. Students who are teachers or who work in an education setting often use a Macintosh computer either at work or at home. Newer versions of Mac OS, specifically Mac OS X and later, do support WebDAV connection. Even so, there are still some problems, as Rael Dornfest reports in his article on WebDAV on OS X (see the References listed at the end of this article for details and solutions). To assist with this compatibility issue, students must comply with the updated computer and software requirements posted in the school handbook and on the Website. One option is to locate a computer with the correct operating system when they need to access the portfolio storage system.

Many students entering the doctorate program have only basic computer skills. Teaching students so many new skills from a distance was a problem. The tutorials placed on the Website are helpful. The school has added some additional training based on student questions and concerns. To assist students with creating items such as PowerPoint presentations and Web pages, additional instructional tutorials are now available in the resources section of the SPC Portfolio Website. In addition, the Web Developer and instructional designer created additional tutorials and workshops. Students are able to view taped training sessions and workshops from the SPC Portfolio Website. (See Figure 3.) Finally, there was some confusion when students attempted to create a network connection and log into the e-Portfolio storage system. They did not understand the steps to create the connection, to log in to the system, or to view their portfolios. To address these concerns, the school added training to the residency introduction session, discussing each of these procedures. The school also added systematic tutorials with illustrations addressing the different procedures.

Figure 3 On-demand tutorials, available on the SPC Portfolio Website, provide students with access to online assistance when they need it.

Conclusion

Since the completion of the e-Portfolio storage system, the school has continued to improve the SPC Portfolio Website and other resources for their students. Their goal is to provide students with the resources they will need to complete this assignment, regardless of their location. To assist students further the school made several additions to the SPC Portfolio Website. Immediately after the storage system went live, the school set up a student and faculty login area that includes login information, login tutorials, and a login form. Later, the school added a discussion forum for students to post questions to a community of learners. In addition, the school has been collecting a list of example student, faculty, and staff portfolios available for students to review on the site. In the future, the school plans to add interactive tutorials and simulations.

The process of building the e-Portfolio system has been a learning experience for both the students and the school. The school is addressing the needs of their faculty and students with resources that are new, but they provide excellent solutions to contemporary problems. Effectively developing technology solutions to modern distance education problems is essential. Through the development of necessary online resources to support students and faculty while enhancing the e-Portfolio building process, SPC students are now able to create visually appealing documentation of their work while the school is able to document student achievement. The e-Portfolio storage system and the SPC Portfolio Website have created a successful combination that uses technology to meet the needs of the students and faculty in the DPCES online program.

References

Barrett, H. C. (1998). Strategic questions: What to consider when planning for electronic portfolios. Learning and Leading with Technology, 26,  6-13.

Barrett, H. C. (2001). Electronic portfolios — A chapter in Educational technology; An encyclopedia to be published by ABC-Clio, 2001. Retrieved May 10, 2007, from http://helenbarrett.com/portfolios/encycentry.pdf

Barrett, H. C. http://electronicportfolios.org/metaphors.html. Retrieved June 13, 2007.

Dornfest, R. (2000). WebDAV on OS X. O’Reilly Mac DevCenter. Retrieved May 7, 2007, from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/11/10/osx_Webdav/osx_Webdav.html

“feyd”. (Kumo Tatzu) (2006, January). Comprehensive guide to .htaccess. JavaScript Kit.com. Retrieved May 15, 2007, from http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

Paulson, L. F., Paulson P. R., & Meyer C. (1991). What makes a portfolio a portfolio? Educational Leadership 48(5), 60-63. (EJ 421 352)

Weidmer, T. L. (1998) Digital portfolios: Capturing and demonstrating skills and levels of performance. Phi Delta Kappan, 79(8), 586-589.

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