Documentation:CTLT Resources/Selected TL Topics Paper Vs Electronic Portfolios

Paper vs. Electronic

When it comes to developing your teaching portfolio, you will need to decide on a format: it can be in paper or electronic form – some people do both.

The following are some things to consider:

	Electronic	Paper
Audience	Who is your target reader? Which format is most accessible to your target audience (i.e. most likely to be read)? Which format does your reader expect/want?
Ability to Customize	Most software allows you to make a duplicate copy of your portfolio, resave with a different name, and edit as necessary, as well as modifying the ‘look and feel’ (colours, fonts and so on).	All relevant documents will need to be resaved with changes and then printed off.
Multimedia	Can include pictures, video clips, sound clips, text, images.	Can include text and images.
Portability	Content uploaded directly to the web. Can be viewed from any computer with internet access.	As it is a physical document, it is often bulky, consisting of one or more large binders.
Security	Variable, depending on the portfolio software: you can invite people to view your portfolio, send a link to your portfolio, make your portfolio public, or keep it private.	Portfolio can be viewed by those whom you give it to in hardcopy format.
Ability to demonstrate learning/knowledge construction over time	Yes	Yes
Feedback	Depending on the software used to create the portfolio, others may be able to provide you with feedback and you can choose whether to make feedback visible or not to others.	Feedback cannot be easily incorporated into the portfolio unless you add it as a separate document.
Potential to encourage interaction (collaboration, communication)	Easy to share as a hyperlink. You can choose to release smaller parts of it to certain people and allow others to view most or all of the material on your portfolio site; you may even pre-set a time span during which a given part of your portfolio can be viewed.	Can be shared by lending the physical copy or printing/photocopying more copies.
Flexibility	Yes. Flexibility influenced by choice of software.	Flexible within the constraints of using paper and hardcopy artifacts.
Organizing and cataloguing learning materials	Material can be easily organized, catalogued and modified; e-Portfolio software often includes tools for organizing/reorganizing materials.	Materials can be organized, catalogued and modified within their source files (Word, PDF) or by reorganizing the paper copy.
Sustainability	In addition to keeping your portfolio updated, regular maintenance may be required to ensure hyperlinks are still live and accurate. It is also important to note there are many ways to navigate through your portfolio and that changing one page may have cascading effects elsewhere.	Sustainability depends on the frequency of updates to portfolio content.