ePIC 2011 - 9th International ePortfolio and Identity conference Call for contributions open

Context

The worldwide emergence of ePortfolios is an indicator of the need to review our approach to education and lifelong learning, at the same time demonstrating that it is possible to make learning and assessment more authentic, integrated and recognised. ePortfolios are at the source of a new generation of tools dedicated to valuing and celebrating the achievements of the individual, from nursery school to lifelong and life wide learning. A technology reinforcing the link between individual, organisational and community learning.

This intuition of the transformative power of the ePortfolio was expressed in the vision of the first international ePortfolio conference (2003, Poitiers, France) which called for the provision of every citizen with an ePortfolio by 2010. Despite a sharp increase in the number of initiatives worldwide, the adoption of ePortfolios remains several orders of magnitude below that which social networks have experienced, although both technologies emerged within the same time frame. Why is this? Is it a sign of institutional resistance (most ePortfolios are institutional, while social networks are non-institutional) or a missed opportunity? To step out of this dilemma one might want to consider ePortfolios, like social networks, as different means to the same ends: the development and projection of our identity, both social and professional.

Placing ePortfolios in the global perspective of identity development leads naturally to posing new questions alongside those working in the field of identity and access management, privacy enhanced technologies and trust architectures: being empowered in the construction and development of our identity requires us to be in full control of our personal data and to be able to share it with the people and services we trust. It is one of the main challenges that ePortfolio providers, as well as the next generation of social networks (and services, more generally) have to face. For ePortfolios to deliver their full potential, it requires a trust architecture, which is as of yet at an emerging stage...