Many in the academic world are seeking a tool that will enable them to join the new Grail - the ePortfolio.
I am reminded of the early days of "Competencies" in HR. The underlying idea behind them was that there is no such thing as a job - there is only work and to do work you have to have the technical skills and, more importantly, the personal attributes such as emotional maturity, an innate creativity etc to do the work well.
Very quickly, this good idea got co-opted by the HR priests. As a result, Competencies have become complex job descriptions that focus mainly on technical skills. The attributes got left behind and skills were seen as items that could be acquired by accumulating qualifications rather than learned by experience. Competencies are now a mainstay of keeping the mechanistic system in place. Long live HR and Jobs!
The search for ePortfolios reminds me of the risks of taking the wrong course that we saw with Competencies. The risk is that they will be used to reinforce the conventional thinking about learning which is that learning is all about acquiring credentials from an institution.
So what are the true aspects of a ePortfolio? Where will we find the Grail? First we have to ask "What is it for"?
The ePortfolio is all about providing another person who may wish to hire you, to work with you or to become your friend, with valid information about who you are, about how you think, about your values and about what you know.
The Grail should then:
1. Reveal your personality - Firstly the point is to offer an employer, or a potential partner, the best possible window into whom you are as a person. This is the human side that is critical to work in the real world and that has been stripped out of the competency model.
What you are like as a person is the most important aspect of whether others can work with you. Interviews and CV's do not provide enough rich data to make safe assumption. Psycho and sociopaths do very well in interviews.
Blogging is turning out to be an excellent way of assessing character. Those who have been blogging for years usually cannot help but reveal themselves. Communities of great trust are emerging as a consequence of the assurance that we bloggers can have with each other
2. Reveal your intrinsic knowledge - ePortfolios should showcase not a scrapbook of your best essays at school or your marks but showcase how you are think about issues. It should show your growing mastery in your field.
The academic world is confused here about true knowledge. Your best essay is the tip of the iceberg - the extrinsic knowledge. the gold is in the intrinsic knowledge that can only be revealed in conversation.
For "Learning" is not about the accumulation of credentials. The people who know a lot about something are immersed in it. Whom would you rather hire, a young man who has been fooling around with computers since he was 8 or a man who went to a computer college to get a credential so that he could get a job? Whom would rather hire, a woman who has been designing clothes since she was 12 or a woman who has just graduated from design school but who has never done anything outside of the school context?
My bottom line - There does not need to be a special tool. Get the students blogging.
The answer is not a scrapbook with my best bits - but the ongoing conversation that I have with myself and with my peers.
As with the Grail - it is before us all the time. It was never hidden and it requires no more than to open your heart to find it.
Why is having a blog so important today?
In the real new economy the value of reputation is coming back. If you have a community that think that you are a valuable contributor, if you are seen as a thought leader in your field and if you are seen as a trustworthy and pleasant person - then work will come your way. A static ePortfolio will mean nothing. The flashier it is, the worse it will be.
So my friends out there seeking the Grail - get them Blogging. Get Profs blogging. Use aggregation to feed into courses. Put the effort into evangelizing blogging and stop wasting your time and the universities money by trying to find the Grail in a new Tool. The Tool is here. The Grail is Blogging.
