Electronic portfolios or e-portfolios are gaining increasing media attention as potentially highly valuable learning, evaluation and assessment tools for educators, learners and academic organizations.

An e-portfolio is a web-published collection of documents, information, link resources, audio and video clips that showcases the demonstrated abilities, know-how and skills of a specific person to her own selected stakeholders.

Photo credit: Dana Nicolescu

Some academic researchers have ventured as far as stating that e-portfolios “may have the most significant effect on education since the introduction of formal schooling” (Love, McKean, and Gathercoal, 2004).

But e-Portfolios are nothing else than the modern-day digital version of our old-time classroom notebooks, separate physical information containers with finite capacity for each field of study (mathematics separate from literature or science).

Digital e-portfolios (also known and referred to as "webfolios") wipe out all of the above limitations and traits by offering an integrated personal publishing environment in which all topics and interests can be interrelated, there is no limitation to the amount of information and resources that can be added, and which can be selectively shared with faculty, peers, family and friends for many different purposes.

Like an up-to-date web-based content management system, "users can upload files of any type, organize them in folders, and then reference them in presentations or compositions they design to share with a particular audience or multiple audiences. For individual students and instructors, the portfolio system provides a convenient and accessible space and the tools to represent individual learning and competencies."
(source: OSPI)