TACKLING CHALLENGES THE “ STICKY ” e PORTFOLIO SYSTEM

© 2004 A l i Ja fa r i Ali Jafari is Professor of Computer and Information Technology and Director of the CyberLab at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). His ePortfolio address is . IDENTIFYING ATTRIBUTES A t some point, the electronic portfolio, or ePortfolio, will become a fully implemented, successful tool. I am convinced that ePortfolio systems will play a significant role in higher education. However, the process of developing and implementing a successful ePortfolio project—one that is “sticky,” one that works and is adopted by users—will first involve many challenges. Higher education will need to tackle those challenges in order to turn the ePortfolio concept into a working system. In addition, higher education will need to identify those ePortfolio system attributes that will lead to success. But by learning from past experiences with other electronic educational tools and by studying difficulties already encountered in those earlier projects, ePortfolio developers can more easily understand and more readily address potential future problems.