There have been many articles written about the variety of ways faculty and students define eportfolios, collect artifacts, write reflections, and use finished eportfolios. However, little has been written about the dynamic process of adopting electronic portfolios in schools of education. This study employs cross-case analysis to investigate implementation of electronic portfolio initiatives in seven schools of education. Case analysis shows the most commonly identified purpose for initiating an eportfolio system to be program evaluation for national accreditation. With program evaluation as the eventual goal of eportfolio development, at least eight design steps of an electronic portfolio process were found to be necessary for successful implementation. These steps are discussed and various methods of implementation are described. Case analysis results further suggest that the final step involving data gathering, aggregation and analysis has been most difficult for these schools to implement. None of the schools represented in this study have yet made use the data collected from eportfolios to make data driven decisions about their programs of study. Suggestions are made for further study into the use of eportfolio data for program evaluation, improvement and ongoing development.
">There have been many articles written about the variety of ways faculty and students define eportfolios, collect artifacts, write reflections, and use finished eportfolios. However, little has been written about the dynamic process of adopting electronic portfolios in schools of education. This study employs cross-case analysis to investigate implementation of electronic portfolio initiatives in seven schools of education. Case analysis shows the most commonly identified purpose for initiating an eportfolio system to be program evaluation for national accreditation. With program evaluation as the eventual goal of eportfolio development, at least eight design steps of an electronic portfolio process were found to be necessary for successful implementation. These steps are discussed and various methods of implementation are described. Case analysis results further suggest that the final step involving data gathering, aggregation and analysis has been most difficult for these schools to implement. None of the schools represented in this study have yet made use the data collected from eportfolios to make data driven decisions about their programs of study. Suggestions are made for further study into the use of eportfolio data for program evaluation, improvement and ongoing development.