One ubiquitous learning concept that deserves more attention in today’s digital ecology is the ePortfolio. An ePortfolio is a digital collection of a learner’s work—assignments, reflections, projects, videos, images, or achievements—organized over time and accessible from any device with an internet connection. What makes ePortfolios a powerful form of ubiquitous learning is their ability to support continuous, multimodal, and personalized learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom.

Definition and Key Features
An ePortfolio allows learners to document their progress, reflect on their experiences, and share their work with teachers, peers, or future employers. Unlike traditional folders or notebooks, ePortfolios exist across multiple digital environments and can integrate text, audio, video, hyperlinks, and interactive media. Because learners can update them “anytime, anywhere,” ePortfolios represent a natural extension of ubiquitous learning—learning that moves with the learner across contexts and moments of daily life.

A Practical Example
A strong example of ePortfolios in practice is the platform Google Sites or Mahara. Students working on a long-term project—such as learning a language, developing a science investigation, or building a digital art portfolio—can log their progress weekly through notes, short videos, screenshots, or voice recordings. Whether students are at home, in school, or traveling, they can instantly add new evidence of learning using their smartphone or laptop. Teachers can provide feedback through comments, and peers can collaborate by viewing each other’s portfolios. This ongoing documentation transforms learning into a continuous, reflective experience rather than a series of isolated tasks.

For instance, in my English teaching context, students often record short speaking clips on their phones and upload them to their ePortfolio. Over time, they can visually and audibly track their improvement in pronunciation, fluency, and vocabulary. This aligns with several principles of e-Learning Ecologies: active knowledge making, multimodal meaning-making, recursive feedback, and learner agency.

Useful References:

Barrett, H. (2010). Balancing the two faces of ePortfolios. https://electronicportfolios.org

Google for Education. Student digital portfolios overview. https://edu.google.com/products/sites/

Overall, ePortfolios offer a rich, flexible, and learner-centered approach that embeds learning into everyday life, making them a valuable and underexplored example of ubiquitous learning.