The Relationship Between Electronic Portfolio Participation and Student Success

Electronic portfolios represent an assessment measure with strong potential for providing feedback about student performance to improve curricula and pedagogy, determining individual students’ mastery of learning and providing feedback for improvement, and actively involving students in the assessment process. This study examined the relationship between e-portfolio participation and student success. Despite some limitations, the current study has demonstrated that, after background factors are controlled for, undergraduate students with e-portfolio artifacts had significantly higher grade point averages, credit hours earned, and retention rates than a matched set of students without e-portfolio artifacts. Also, there were significant positive relationships between various measures of e-portfolio utilization and grade point average and credit hours earned among undergraduates, although these results were mixed for graduate students. There were no statistically significant group differences in any of the National Survey of Student Engagement or New Student Transition Questionnaire scales, which serve as measures of student academic engagement.