ABSTRACT
The experience of Thomas College, a small liberal arts college in central Maine, shows that eportfolios represent a potentially powerful tool that can create those explicit, practical connections. Additionally, eportfolios demonstrate great promise for assessment at the institutional level. In the spring of 2007, to test the effectiveness of the eportfolio model as a measure of student learning as identified by the core competencies, students in two senior seminar courses were asked to submit an eportfolio for review by a committee of faculty and staff. As the committee worked through the process of evaluating the student eportfolios, several interesting differences emerged. The calls for assessment of student learning outcomes challenge institutions to identify appropriate means for assessing their effectiveness related to their mission. The challenge for an eportfolio model on any campus is countering the power of the traditional measure of student learning in higher education, the stand-alone course.
