At the recent Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence Based Learning (AAEEBL) conference in Boston, Eduventures moderated a panel of experts on the adoption of ePortfolios by colleges and universities. Not only was the session among the best attended at the conference, but it also spawned a renewed interest among our clients for more coverage of this market segment. Part of that coverage includes our webinar on the ePortfolio market that attracted a record number of registrations in the first 24 hours on our website.
What is driving all of this interest? Eduventures sees two clear trends. First, an influx of new vendors into this market segment has made understanding it more complicated for institutions. Secondly, we see an increase in emerging ways of using ePortfolios outside the context of academic advising. To help institutions make sense of this market, we thought now would be a good time to step back and provide more context around each of these trends.
It is important to note that while some of these products continue to focus exclusively on the use of portfolios to demonstrate mastery of academic subjects—as is the case with all apps connected to learning management systems—many other platforms are being updated to support new use cases for students and other stakeholders from non-academic offices. That brings us to trend number two.
TREND #1: There has been a surge of new vendors and portfolio platforms into the higher education market.
To understand the true scope of this market, Eduventures has interviewed a surprising number of vendors. Over 30 vendors now offer ePortfolio products to higher education. Building upon the work started by AAEEBL and its collection of ePortfolio vendor profiles, we also interviewed several companies that serve the direct-to-consumer career exploration market, as well as generic portfolio platforms used outside of higher education. The traditional definition of what an ePortfolio includes is quite simply, “…a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user.” When we look at the market through the lens of this very broad definition, we find many vendors that provide some collection of the evidence of learning in their platforms. Of the 30 vendors we profiled, the vast majority—25—focus their ePortfolio apps on the academic advising phase of the student lifecycle. Three distinct types of ePortfolio platforms demonstrate this traditional focus: standalone products, open source platforms, and portfolios offered as an add-on from learning or student management system vendors. Below is a list of vendors that fall into these three platform categories.Portfolio Vendors with Traditional Focus on Academic Advising
VENDORS WITH STANDALONE APPS | VENDORS WITH LMS/SIS CONNECTED APPS | OPEN SOURCE APPS |
---|---|---|
Digication | Blackboard | Mahara |
TaskStream | Canvas | Foliospaces |
PebblePad | Brightspace | Moofolio |
Chalk and Wire (myMantl) | Ellucian | Elgg |
LiveText | Jenzabar | RCampus |
Pathbrite (Cengage) | Sakai | |
Seelio | ||
Foliotek | ||
Learning Objects | ||
TK20 | ||
HMH Portfolio (SchoolChapters) | ||
Nuventive | ||
Portfolium | ||
Slideroom |