The Challenges of the ePortfolio as a Multidisciplinary Assessment Instrument

This article presents a case study of the ePortfolio being used for programmatic and professional development assessment of senior-level undergraduates in a diverse professional writing program. It describes the evaluation methodologies used to assess professional writing students’ preparation for graduation and for the workplace as well as the challenges of maintaining “best practices” for assessment. An investigation of these methodologies also reveals the challenges faced by smaller programs that attempt to use a single assessment instrument to measure student work in fields as diverse as public relations, technical communication, print journalism, and convergent media studies, particularly in a climate of shrinking budgets and shifting assessment and portfolio technologies.