Since beginning at Elon University in 2017, I have been actively involved in the implementation and support of a teacher education assessment process called the edTPA. The edTPA is a three-part portfolio assessment required by law in North Carolina for teacher candidates in the state to be recommended for teaching licensure. Over 800 teacher preparation programs across the country have used the edTPA in their programs to evaluate teacher candidates’ preparedness and their ability to plan, instruct, and assess in a content area (Bastian et al. 2018). Before digging into other topics and areas in the high impact practice of ePortfolios within my Center for Engaged Learning (CEL) blog series, I will provide a deeper overview of the  edTPA and my experience with it to highlight my current work with ePortfolios.  

The edTPA is used to evaluate teacher candidates’ preparedness to provide effective educational opportunities on day one as a beginning teacher for their students in PreK–12 classrooms (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity 2019). A candidate’s teaching performance and their PreK–12 students’ learning are demonstrated in an ePortfolio of the candidate’s work that includes planning and lesson artifacts, written commentaries about the teaching and learning process that integrate reflection based on theory and evidence, unedited video recordings of instruction, and deidentified work samples from their actual K–12 learners. Each teaching content area has its own specific handbook with requirements and specifications for construction and upload for scoring of the ePortfolios against rubric continuums to evaluate and support candidate growth.  

Supporting Teacher Candidates Through the edTPA Process 

We aim to emphasize this latter notion of support to our teacher candidates at Elon; yes, the stakes are high, and your licensure is on the line, but also this process is genuinely intended to be a support system. Left alone to navigate the process of an edTPA, it is a daunting high-stakes assessment for a teacher candidate. In Elon’s Dr. Jo Watts William School of Education (DJWWSoE) our teacher education faculty have worked diligently to plan how to navigate the process with teacher candidates and emphasize the importance of the skillsets it is asking of them.  

We do want teacher candidates to reflect on their teaching and assessment practices and on their students’ learning. We do want them to analyze their instructional choices, then make decisions about changes and next steps. So, we have spent time mapping out integration of edTPA components and prompts through our teacher preparation program—what might an introduction to a “context for learning” look like and how might we help candidates think about the contexts they’re teaching within? When might we ask our teacher candidates to attempt to plan and implement a lesson series to get feedback and reflect on it to improve, before the high stakes cycle in an official edTPA submission? When might we help them practice the academic reading and writing required of the assessment in meaningful ways that could transfer to other contexts?  

How We Support ePortfolio Development at Elon 

We currently use Taskstream as our in-house artifact system to store candidates’ documentation across the teacher preparation program. Candidates then submit their finalized independent work of one cycle of their planning-instruction-assessment model through the ePortfolio system on the Pearson website. And while we (Elon Univeristy and the greater education field) are not looking for perfect scores across this ePortfolio, we are looking for students to have the skillsets and reflective qualities they need to enter a classroom as a beginner teacher. Our candidates’ overall scores and individualized rubric scores indicate they are being prepared with higher than national scores. This is the result of a programmatic team effort we celebrate, as well as continue to reflect upon and refine how we collaboratively best support students to see the edTPA as a process that supports their personal growth.  

Across the last ten years, the DJWWSoE faculty have supported over sixteen unique content-area edTPA handbooks that a teacher candidate might be registered for. These are aligned with our various PreK–12 teaching majors, including Elementary Education, Special Education, Middle Grades Mathematics, High School Mathematics, and more. I serve as the edTPA Coordinator for the DJWWSoE which includes (but is not limited to) the following responsibilities:  

• consulting with the Director of Teacher Education about yearly edTPA administration updates 
• maintaining and distributing updated materials to faculty 
• offering support trainings for students, faculty, community partners and Clinical Teachers 
• supporting teacher candidates throughout their ePortfolio evidence collecting and development process through individualized troubleshooting or facilitating group  support sessions.  

This list highlights how supporting an ePortfolio means knowing whether my support is intended to address content needs, people needs (the faculty integrating ePortfolio use or the students using it), or learning management system needs. 

An Example of ePortfolio Support in Practice 

Or, there may be a scenario where I am supporting an overlap of these different needs. One example of this occurred when I supported a teacher candidate who was reviewing a videotaped lesson with kindergarten students. They wanted to know how to blur a student in the video to protect the student’s identity. They also wondered whether blurring the student would still allow the artifact to be considered “unedited” and meet the portfolio expectation of submitting raw footage. They also wondered how to best discuss the mathematics instructional moves they wanted to reflect upon in the corresponding reflective writing if, for de-identification purposes, they could not name the students they were interacting with in the video footage.

This support need involved helping the candidate think about how to draw upon technology resources and instructional frameworks that might help them highlight their interactions while still protecting their learners’ identities. It also required me to carefully self-monitor my role as a supporter, rather than a “doer,” of the reflection and ePortfolio. 

From edTPA Coordination to High-Impact ePortfolio Practice 

I share this rich history of coordination and our success in the DJWWSoE because I know it aligns with the recent history of ePortfolios being added to the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)’s list of High-Impact Practices. In 2016, ePortfolios were introduced by Dr.Kuh as an official high-impact practice in anticipation of the 2017 book, High-Impact ePortfolio Practice: A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning, authored by Eynon and Gambino. Coincidentally, it was in 2017 that the completion of edTPA by teacher candidates became state law in North Carolina. My deep knowledge of this portfolio and its handbooks means I’m primed to now expand upon that knowledge and compare and contrast it to other ePortfolios, as well as share what I have developed and contributed to DJWWSoE to other arenas.  

The Future of edTPA and ePortfolios 

Also of note, the edTPA is undergoing changes. For now, the same ePortfolio structure is in place, but shifts are on the way. As I think about what those changes may be, it is helpful to map the history of what has been happening. What might happen with the edTPA and its required artifacts, its learning management system, and its status under North Carolina law? And if it is no longer required by law, what other options might be available? In the next blog, I’ll explore the landscape of ePortfolios in teacher education on a broader scale to help consider some of these next steps. 

References 

Bastian, Kevin C., Diana Lys, and Yi Pan. 2018. “A Framework for Improvement: Analyzing Performance-Assessment Scores for Evidence-Based Teacher Preparation Program Reforms.” Journal of Teacher Education 69 (5): 448–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487118755700. 

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity. 2019. edTPA Administration Report. SCALE & Pearson.  

About the Author

Katie Baker is Associate Professor of Education and Associate Chair of the Department of Education and Wellness at Elon University’s Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education. She serves as the 2026–2028 CEL Scholar, where her research focuses on ePortfolios as a high-impact educational practice. Drawing on her experience as the edTPA coordinator for Elon’s teacher preparation programs, her scholarship explores ePortfolios, teacher education, mathematics education, and performance-based assessment.

How to Cite This Post

Baker, Katie. 2026. “edTPA as a High-Impact ePortfolio.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog). Elon University. July 17, 2026. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/edtpa-as-a-high-impact-eportfolio.