What are ePortfolio Scenarios?

The idea of ePortfolio scenarios is to tell a "story" on how an ePortfolio is used in education. The "story" should be told in a narrative way following a common structure so that it is easily understandable. Any ePortfolio user, practitioner, teacher, technologists or a policy-maker is welcome to submit a "story", i.e. scenario about their experiences or plans to use  ePortfolios in an educational setting.

What is an ePortfolio Scenario?

The primary purpose of the "story" is to identify how a portfolio is used, by whom and for what purpose. The main story element should be told from several different perspectives looking at what the different stakeholders do, what are they needs and requirements regarding the ePortfolio.

Central to every scenario is the learner’s perspective of the process. The image below attempts to illustrate some of the different perspectives. In your scenario you can choose the perspectives that are important for your case, however, the learner's perspective is always required.




The people involved in the scenario is a key resource for understanding the full potential of ePortfolios in education and lifelong learning, as well as to help the development of more formal specifications for future ePortfolio applications. Scenarios of ePortfolio usage in all levels of education and training should help us to understand that different types of learners may require different things from an ePortfolio.

Let's exemplify! You can find four examples below or you can take your time and browse through any of the scenarios.

Encouraging Reflection in Medical Education
Country: Netherlands
Type of portfolio: Reflective portfolios

This portfolio is a paper based portfolio used by all students during their 6-year program at the faculty of Medicine. The portfolio started 3 years ago during the academic year 2001. The content, purpose and use of the portfolio are structured more or less in a similar way during these 6 years. There are however small differences. During the first two year the focus of the portfolio is to train students’ ability to reflect on their behaviour. Each student follows in these two years a similar educational program. From the 3rd year on, students have more freedom to choose and create their own education. The role of portfolio changes to a tool to track the development of students’ competences.

Read more....


Career Wales Online
Country: United Kingdom
Type of portfolio: Personal development portfolios,Reflective portfolios

Careers Wales offers Europe's first nationwide eportfolio providing tools for lifelong learning and personal development to provide secure storage and online access for personal information about skills, achievements and qualifications for Welsh citizens of all ages. You can also find information, tutorials and interactive tools support, self-assessment, reflection and action planning.

The National Assembly of Wales envisaged a life-long learning passport delivered online to liberate latent talent from within the community and transform Wales into a "Learning Country".

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My HighCliff
Country: United Kingdom
Type of portfolio: Assessment portfolios,Showcase portfolios

The system has been developed to be used in a school with 1300 students, full time equivalent of 85 teachers and two fulltime ICT support staff since September 2000. The system makes such information as Attendance, Past Reports, Library Loans, Web sites visited, etc. available to both students and parents through the school's portal using passwords. Students are encouraged to use MyHighcliffe on a daily basis, accessing key information such as their timetable, recording achievements, using email, and completing school work in school or at home. The project won the top eLearning award in 2004.

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ePortfolio as an alternative evaluation at University
Type of portfolio: Assessment portfolios

An ePortfolio is used in "Relaciones Económicas Internacionales" (international economic relations), in Business Administration Studies in Economic Faculty at Oviedo University, as an alternative way to assess the students' learning. As an assesment portfolio, this one is filled with the learning artefacts of the students. There are two objectives: improving their capacities to search, elaborate and apply information and in developing their ability to work in groups. For that, the portfolio is a group portfolio related with collaborative learning. The type of activities they have to include are somewhat given, but students have certain freedom in adding anything that could improve the portfolio. Specially, complementary work about the international economic organisations and how to prepare and present the globalization debate, one of the learning activities I organised and is included in the portfolio

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Want to make your own scenario?
Click on Submit a scenario! There are three main parts in the template: General info, Scenario and References.

Only fields with * are mandatory, so you can decide how detailed you want your scenario be. You can find more information about scenario building and about how to fill it in here.