The Impact of the ePortfolio Tool on the Process: Functional Decisions of a New Genre.

The affordances of digital portfolios provide a space for students to construct themselves in new ways, to the extent that they are creating content in an entirely new genre—a genre where the placement of content; connections among content; and the ability to communicate via image, color, movement, and sound are as important to making meaning as the alphabetic. It should not be assumed that these new choices are boundless, though with a cursory glance, they seem to be. Often, the tools instructors and students choose play a large role in dictating how students will present themselves and their content; what seems like a limitless number of options is not actually so open, because students will move toward the options that are available within a tool. Therefore, careful evaluation of the tool affordances is needed to determine if best practices within the new genre are truly promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]