Thinking some more about the user experience with ePortfolios. I’m not particularly bothered about sharing personal information or keeping detailed CVs, although I wouldn’t mind tracking my PD in an ePortfolio. I’m much more interested in being able to manage my data, information and deadlines effectively.
That said, I was experimenting with the Bb Expo portfolios yesterday and I must admit I did like the ‘link to friend’ element – in the organisational sense more so than ‘collecting friends’ sense… in that I see that as functioning a bit like a Blogroll so that you can link to interest groups and course groups and such like. I guess, in that, I can begin to see the attraction of Web 2.0 sites like Facebook.
I howled with laughter at this… says a lot for a desirable difference to be made between ePortfolios for education and social networking a la Facebook!
Therein lies another interesting aspect for me – in the sense that for a community to work, it needs to be small enough and particular enough for me to want to take an interest in it. In this sense, the idea of a closed ePortfolio, linked to the Institution is a good one. However, at the same time, I would need the freedom and reassurance that I can easily take my ePortfolio with me when I no longer belong to that community or, really, at any point in time… so that export facility is really important. And, thinking about that video clip, there’s a lot to be said for ’sense and sensibility’ in ePortfolio toolkit construction and the ultimate user experience!
