E-Portfolios: The Latest Thing on College Campuses
A San Francisco software company is helping fashion college administrators, instructors and students collaborate with each other more quickly and efficiently—and electronically. The company, Xythos Software, recently enlisted the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York as its latest user.
Xythos has developed a tool called the E-portfolio, part of its enterprise document-management suite. The system allows faculty, staff and students to evaluate portfolios in real time. This can work during the admissions process as well as for homework and other projects.
Prospective students can upload their submissions as E-portfolios for evaluation by entire review committees. Xythos will provide file sharing and secure access to network storage, allowing current students and faculty to use the system to submit homework assignments and share course documents.
FIT will use it to enhance the ability of faculty to evaluate prospective students and to collaborate with current students and staff. More than 10,000 enrolled students and hundreds of faculty and staff will have access to the school’s new Xythos-based Web service.
Traditionally, prospective FIT students had to submit physical portfolios containing examples of their work. As a result, the school’s administrators had to meet in a room together to evaluate the students’ work. With prospective students applying from all around the world, the process of evaluating their work was expensive, time-consuming, inefficient and costly, said Gregg Chottiner, vice president and chief information officer for FIT.
“[Xythos] offered more flexibility and ease of use,” he said.
FIT joins Salve Regina University and the University of Wisconsin Madison as Xythos users.
“FIT is leveraging Web technology to improve its own business processes and better prepare students to compete in the fashion industry of tomorrow,” added Ed Miller, chief executive officer of Xythos. For more information, visit www.xythos.com. —Robert McAllister
