IUB receives grant for ePortfolio

In a world where grades weigh largely on success, students may not be able to fully express their past achievements to future employers. \nUntil now.\nIU will soon see the addition of a valuable student resource in every University branch across the state. IU has been granted over $500,000 to develop a new service called ePortfolio that will be available through Oncourse for the 2005-06 school year.\nThe ePortfolio program will enable students to demonstrate personal achievements on the Web to express more than just the transcript of their college education, according to a press release.\nEPortfolio, when available at IU, will be linked to Oncourse, said Christine Fitzpatrick, deputy communications officer for the office of the vice president for information technology at IU- Purdue University Indianapolis.\n"It will be the first (piece of software) we (IU) will develop as part of the Sakai Project in the next few years," she said.\nThe Sakai Project, as defined by their official Web site (http://www.sakaiproject.org/sakaiproject), is a collaboration among several higher education institutions to develop and share software. According to the press release, ePortfolio will be based very similarly to the functions of the Sakai Project. \nBrad Wheeler, associate vice president for research and academic computing, said he believes ePortfolio will be valuable in providing another tool for students to convey achievement to anyone from future employers to potential graduate schools.\n"It will largely determine what we define as achievement," he said. "Students will be able to choose what they want to expose in a portfolio and to whom… may it be a speech they gave, a video or a paper. It could be digital, audio or textual."\nWheeler illustrated the true function of the new program in seeing past letter grades. He said using a student's ePortfolio will provide people student-selected work to better understand their abilities. Wheeler also noted students can choose to create different portfolios for different people and functions.\nBeyond a resource for self-expression and aid in job placement, Wheeler said there is ultimately another function.\n"It's a new frontier to teach and learn," he said, referring to the construction and production of ePortfolio by the University.\nWheeler said IUPUI has committed two years to the introduction and classes in preparing for the production of the program. He thinks the University as a whole could benefit in observing what goes on in Indianapolis.\nAnd soon, in Bloomington, that same type of operation will be seen. The team of people in charge of creating and building ePortfolio has a specific mission in mind for IU.\n"From the technology organization, our mission is to support academic programs," Wheeler said. "We want to accomplish it, in a way, as national, so students can use it for applying to grad school, using the their portfolio as portable."\nWheeler hopes everyone will take advantage of the new software when it becomes available.\n"We're building the software to build this tool -- it's up to students, faculty and staff as to how it will be used"