1. Core activity 3.1 Comparison of functionality of interfolio.com and academia.edu<br />InterfolioAcademia.eduComments PDP and career developmentInterfolio is used primarily for job seeking purposes in the US context–it can be used to request and store confidential letters of recommendation, build an online portfolio of their work, and deliver application materials to search committees or admission offices around the world.Having an academia.edu profile is a way of building an academic network and managing your online presence. Job ads will pop up depending on which profiles you browse or the content of your own profileI would be really interested to find out whether there is an even remotely comparable solution in the UK context – as a perpetual academic job seeker interfolio would have reduced my frustration with “creative” HR departments coming up with various permutations of application forms…Storage You can upload electronic documents but interestingly, the platform facilities a dossier service through which paper-based documents (for instance confidential letters of recommendation are sent)You can upload papers, your photograph and CV and indicate your research interests, provide link to your personal website etc. (Reflexive) learningThe platform focuses on the showcasing aspect of portfolios and does not really leave a lot of space for explicit reflexive learning process – obviously, users might still be engaging in the process of reflection when putting together evidence for the portfolio and coming up with a particular “narrative” of their employment history and achievements, especially as you can include teaching evaluations etc.I am not really sure whether there is much space to incorporate elements of reflexive learning – other than the reflection that would be going on in the process of selecting information to showcase etc. and ways in which the digital identity is managed SharingThe sharing that happens in the context of the platform is very much connected to the process of job-seeking and is all about facilitating exchange of information between institutions rather than individuals. Tehre is a limited “networking and news” functionality The whole rationale of the platform is to offer networking opportunities for academics and so you can search for people with research interests similar to yours etc. You can follow other users and receive updates whenever their status changes. You can send messages to users. There’s also a Twitter and Facebook plugin. The ability to share in a dynamic way is quite crucial for building and maintaining academic networks; at the same time, some people might be concerned “oversharing” – and whether it is worth the risk to for instance publically upload a piece of writing that is work in progressTarget audienceInterfolio is aimed at US job seekers and adapted to the needs of US academic institutionsAcademia.edu started out as a UK initiative, at the moment it seems that it is predominantly aimed at English-speaking sections of academia (UK, US etc.). The default options to include books and papers as evidence for e-portfolio do show that the emphasis is on academic cultures that live by the “publish or perish” mantraThe issue of target audience is important to consider as the US-based seems to be quite a big market but at the same time some of the functionality will only make sense in that context – for instance reference to the use of rubrics in assessment, possibility to generate transcripts etc.Look and feelInterfolio feels very sleek and professional; quite business-like/corporate, depending on the discipline it might be an advantage or a disadvantagePersonally, to me the platform feels a little bit clunky. There is a lot of text on the page but most of the information about the user is located on the left hand side, the middle column is often quite empty and then the right-hand column has been taken over by job ads. The default font size is really small and it is difficult to get a quick overview of the details that somebody has provided about themselves. Privacy Interfolio allows you to store all your important files securely and make documents viewable but not downloadable or available to be copied. You can also decide whether to share your pages publicly, privately or optimized for search engines.By default, everything you publish in your portfolio is public – there is no option to have different layers of security and for instance restrict access to papers which are work in progress and should not be quoted without permission etc. The issue of data protection and security is of high importance, given that users will be storing sometimes very sensitive information in their e-portfolios (for instance confidential letters of recommendation and so on)<br />