Differentiating Electronic Portfolios and Online Assessment Management Systems.

Abstract

This paper addresses some of the issues of definition, between electronic portfolios and online assessment management systems. It is difficult to conduct comparative research on electronic portfolios because of the emergence of very diverse models of implementation, especially in some of the new commercial tools that are available. These different implementations and “definition by default” make the task more difficult. This paper is an attempt to delineate the differences between electronic portfolios and online assessment management systems. As noted in SITE Conference Proceedings since 1997, many Teacher Education programs are adopting electronic portfolios, and in recent years, to meet NCATE 2000 Standard#2, Assessment System. The implementation often resembles more of a grading or record keeping system than the traditional paperbased portfolio. In many ways, the implementation of electronic portfolios is changing the very definition of from past practice. Many electronic portfolio systems involve numerical scoring of artifacts against a rubric, with statistical analysis available to aggregate data collected.