The Stanford University Electronic Learning Portfolios project

This paper describes a learning-technology task-force project of the Stanford University Learning Laboratory carried out in conjunction with other academic institutions and with industry, to enable students, faculty, staff, and industry professionals to significantly enhance their personal learning. Called the Electronic Learning Portfolios (E-folios) project, it is intended to help individuals capture, organize, integrate and re-use the results of learning experiences encountered throughout their careers. The authors believe that E-folios can contribute significantly to improvements in personalized, collaborative learning while also supporting a variety of student learning styles. E-folios are ubiquitous, portable electronic knowledge bases that are private, personalized and sharable. They contain and represent one´s own formal and informal learning experience. At the same time, E-folio content can be selectively shared, thereby creating an unlimited constellation of larger communities with common understandings and experience. Such communities can range in scale from pair relationships to teams of several persons through to enterprise-wide frameworks.