The E-assessment question

Don Clark recently made an entry on his blog http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/ entitled ‘E-portfolios – 7 reasons why I don’t want my life in a shoebox’. Apparently it followed a presentation he had made at the ‘e-Assessment question’ conference. He stimulated a debate with over 70 responses that has been of a higher quality than most that take place at e-portfolio conferences, where, in my experience, people often tie themselves up in ‘interoperability knots’.



My conclusion is that the notion of having an e-portfolio as a means of capturing your own identity, when there are other ‘systems’ out there that do this better like Facebook, is clearly absurd. I am daily told (I don’t look for fear of finding information I don’t want to know) what the ‘status’ of my children is that day by their entry on Facebook. It is their representation of ‘who they are’ that day and it is stretching credibility that they will want to look back to review that in 30 years time, other than in embarrassment or in terms of the generality of how they have developed.


It is similarly absurd that today 90% of people assessing the skills of aspirant hairdressers do so by writing down their observation of a haircut and if they do take a picture, it has to be downloaded, printed and then attached into the relevant section of a paper portfolio. The other 10% just get out their mobile phones take a picture of the haircut on their mobile phone, find the learner’s portfolio on the same phone, add the evidence and make a comment.


There are lots of other examples. The time and effort involved in transferring paper portfolios between different people involved in the assessment process; the car journey to authenticate someone’s evidence, when this could be replaced by simply, temporarily, allowing that evidence to be viewed by the witness and asking them to make a comment.


Similarly if you were a member of a professional body faced with a number of regulatory requirements, it does seem to make sense for you to have one electronic record that you can regularly update and use to meet multiple requirements.


A number of entries on Don Clark’s blog acknowledge that e-portfolios can serve this purpose in relation to vocational assessment.


The challenge is to find a way of making the distinction between this sort of e-portfolio and the one that Don rightly attacks. I have no easy answer other than to say that the word e-portfolio will now be virtually banished from my lips for fear of being misunderstood.