The Secret Lives of ePortfolios: Text Network Analysis and the Future of Algorithmic Hiring

Introduction

University departments and programs have been requiring portfolios of one kind or another from students for decades. Portfolios (whether physical or digital) are a collection of artifacts: class assignments, papers, graphics, programs, achievements and narratives. Initially, these were print, and, typically, were utilized in program assessment. Circulated within universities, early portfolios were ideal data on which to evaluate curricular effectiveness. For example, programs at the author’s university have long required students to compile portfolios for the university-wide assessment, conceived of as an iterative, evidence-based process. Were students learning what educators wanted them to learn? And how would the university know? Many publications from that period concentrated their attention on the assessment process itself, and the way that faculty can “score” or “read” portfolios in order to transform largely textual evidence into quantifiable data of student success. As portfolios shifted to online “ePortfolios,” though, the possibilities for these expanded to include multimodal artifacts chronicling student achievement, and the audience for portfolios expanded to include recruiters and prospective employers. The “ePortfolio,” when utilized like this, offers students a chance to consciously shape their education and to communicate their aspirations to future employers (Cordie et al 2019). Now, many programs require students to produce ePortfolios during their undergraduate careers, and some even have courses devoted to portfolio development.

As students are encouraged to think of ePortfolios as chronicling their professional development as lifelong learners, third-party platforms have emerged that allow people to keep and maintain portfolios for free or for a low cost. For the most part, the cost of these platforms tracks with the multimedia requirements of the portfolio. Artists and videographers, for example, might utilize something like SquareSpace, while coders might use GitHub pages to build a portfolio of their work and skills. People with more text- and resume-based portfolio needs can look to a variety of free hosting services with templates, such as Wix (see below), WordPress or LinkedIn, which allows users to upload content or links to the its profile interface. Finally, all of these platforms can also host the digital badges and certifications that come with lifelong learning beyond the undergraduate degree.

Figure 1.

ePortfolio using Wix, a free web-hosting service and webpage editor

At this point, then, ePortfolios move from their initial roles as instruments of student achievement and program assessment to “career ePortfolios,” “a specific type of portfolio that is created by a student to showcase their best academic work and unique attributes that may not be demonstrated on a traditional resume or during an interview” (Bonsignore 2013). Liberated from their “in-house” use, ePortfoloios are being utilized to help students to network with prospective employers. Recruiters might either chance upon artifacts in the student’s portfolio or follow a link to the portfolio through a submitted resume or application. This has a big advantage over the limitations of a cover letter and resume: prospective employees can showcase their professional development and, through the addition of narratives or through the careful curation of artifacts, can utilize ePortfolios to tell their story and narrate the arc of their training. The problem: scholarly work on the utility of ePortfolios has largely been on the value of these sites to students and to institutions. The assumption is that employers will find them important as well and, more importantly, that they will find them important in the same ways.