Mapping UK eportfolio developments within a European context

This chapter outlines the European context of lifelong learning and educational cooperation across member states and the relationship of eportfolios to current development. It focuses specifically on the priority given to portfolio developments in Higher Education in the UK through reports and policy documents and particularly through the extensive funding distributed via the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education and Further Education Funding Councils (JISC). The chapter provides an overview of current eportfolio use and points to future trends for technical and pedagogical development, drawing on the extensive JISC project archive, which covers examples from many disciplines and for a range of purposes. The authors are JISC expert consultants in eportfolios and have an in depth knowledge of completed and ongoing work in this area. In this chapter we present a model that we developed by analyzing current practice and a matrix for identifying eportfolio developments in relation to purposes and learning processes, useful also for mapping key areas for future work