In this paper we report on research into how an ePortfolio (eP) process can address the critique that teacher  education programs offer fragmented course experiences and too often focus on narrow instrumentalist approaches emphasizing the “how to” and the “what works”. In contrast, we believe that an eP process, systematically developed within a teacher education program, can create a complex and self-renewing system that grows from both individual and programmatic assessment of student learning.

The purpose of this study is to explore the implementation of ePs within three professional programs (Education, Nursing, and Social Work) in one university. We find that learning in ePortfolio is a transformational process where students collect artifacts that represent their passion for becoming a professional. This personifying of students’ learning emerges as they organize, share and reflectively build a professional identity by drawing from roles and experiences related to the profession of teaching. Through an ePortfolio the thinking about becoming a teacher are intertwined with students’ life passions and related content from courses.

In this study we have examined how the eP process, forming networks between students’ learning, instructors’ teaching, and program developments, enables complex understandings to inform professional knowledge. The ability to use a wide range of rich media tools and to share through the social networking architecture of the Mahara eP software has allowed the quality of learners’ experiences to be shared, recognizing that professional knowledge emerges in practice communities in university, school and in the wider community. We are also starting to realize how the Mahara eP platform as an open source technology is offering an affordable, malleable and interconnected technology that we can use in our professional programs where sharing personified professional knowledge, framed with a dynamic audience in mind, becomes the energy of a professional learning system.

This paper draws on an ongoing five-year study on the use of ePortfolios in three professional programs: (1) teacher education; (2) nursing; and (3) social work. The paper will offer multiple definitions of an eP based on: 1) informed literature; 2) the emerging practices within Teacher Education, Social Work and Nursing in one university; and 3) a re-visioning of evaluation processes in teacher education and in schools.