These guidelines aim at helping you with implementing ePortfolios in your organisation by being a clearing house of existing implementation strategies and relevant know-how for schools, universities, companies and other public or non-profit institutions.
Initially, we provide you with general ideas about ePortfolios by showing you some characteristics of educational settings and contexts of ePortfolio use. Thus, ePortfolios can support competence or skills oriented teaching, they can be used as an instrument for assessment or they can serve as a knowledge management tool. Even though the individual learner’s ePortfolio is more known, as there has been done more research into it,there are group or company ePortfolios as well.
The next section, “Recommended ePortfolio models, concepts and tools”, gives you an insight into requirements before implementing an ePortfolio (EUROPORTFOLIO Matrix), learning processes that can be facilitated with ePortfolios. The embedding of the ePortfolio within (higher) education and organizational settings and its use as a LLL tool is demonstrated via the ePortfolio meta model, while a Taxonomy of ePortfolios shows the manifold purposes of ePortfolios. If you have decided to implement ePortfolios in your institution, you can have a look at the evaluation of ePortfolio software/platforms in order to choose the tool appropriate for your context.
The following section “Approved implementation processes and requirements” can serve as a model for your own implementation. The instructions and checklists mentioned in this section give you guidance through the process of implementation. However, you can additionally have a glance at the challenges you have to face when implementing ePortfolios. The brief list of keywords is aimed at helping you brainstorming and/or considering what you have to care for. Glossaries are a part of this Wiki as well. They were developed by different experts in the field of ePortfolio and will hopefully help you to get acquainted with the terminology.