ePortfolio History
ePortfolio History
The ePortfolio or (OSP) initiative is an education community collaborating on the
development of the best non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software
available. The OSP began as a project in January 2003 to make the University of Minnesota’s
electronic portfolio system available to the world as open source software. The University
of Delaware and The rSmart Group joined the University of Minnesota in this cooperative
project and released the first version of the OSP in July 2003. The project had two
key objectives: (1) prepare the software that had been in use at UMN for more than
5 years for other schools to use; (2) develop a community that would shape the future
of OSP and sustain it in years to come. In April 2003, the first OSP community meeting
was convened at CSU Monterey Bay. Roughly 20 people attended and began to shape the
future of the project with six priorities: 1. Usability and Customization 2. Assessment
and Accreditation 3. Integration Interfaces 4. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Understanding the Open Source Portfolio. Soon after the release, interested people
at institutions all over the world began to download and pilot the OSP. Within a few
short months the OSP community had grown from three institutions to more than 1,000
people in 77 countries. In parallel with this new development effort, University of
Rhode Island and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching got involved
and began to attract leading portfolio thinkers around the country and to shape the
project’s direction. Two very important things happened in December of 2003. The Mellon
Foundation provided OSP with a $518,000 grant that matched contributions from Indiana
University and The rSmart Group for a total of $1M in working funds for the next major
release of OSP and to further develop a sustainable community. At the same time, the
Sakai project (www.sakaiproject.org) was born. Sakai began as a $6.8M project with
$2.4M from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $1M contributions each from University
of Michigan, Indiana University, Stanford, and MIT, and $300K from the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation. OSP and Sakai are mutually beneficial. OSP benefits from
the rapidly maturing community, legal entity, conference planning, and more that comes
from Sakai. Sakai benefits from the rich pedagogy, tools, and community that come
from OSP.
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