24 Journal of INSTRUCTION DELIVERY SYSTEMS VOLUME 24 NO. 1 E-Portfolios: A Nested Assessment Strategy for Accreditation and Accountability G. Alex Ambrose Abstract Higher education has begun to adapt to the information age by responding to society’s current needs and future expectations. As a result, program accreditation, evaluation, and design have become critical survival skills for blended and fully online distance education programs. In this paper, three issues will be investigated: (1) the current philosophical underpinnings of assessment, accountability, and accreditation (2) a strategic methodology and framework for developing an assessment management system (3) a justification for e-portfolios as a proposed solution. E-Portfolios and the proposed nested assessment strategy offer a strategic link to address and to bridge issues of accreditation, accountability, and assessment. Keywords: e-portfolios, assessment, accountability, accreditation, administration, e-assess- ment, program design, program evaluation Introduction In higher education, the differing paradigms between the learner and the institution have led to an imbalanced emphasis between assessment, accountability, and accreditation needs (Barrett, 2005). Administrators need an effective and com- plete assessment management strategy that ac- counts for all stakeholders and closes the loop that links program accreditation, design, and eval- uation to student assessment. This paper seeks to assist blended or fully online program admin- istrators in higher education by providing (1) a description of the current philosophical under- pinnings of assessment, accountability, and ac- creditation (2) a strategic methodology and frame- work for developing an assessment management system (3) a justification for e-portfolios as a pro- posed solution. A reexamination of the situation will identify the current shifts and trends in program accredita- tion, program evaluation, and student assess- ment. E-portfolios will then be defined and de- scribed as a solution for an assessment manage- ment system. Finally, a nested assessment mod- el will be proposed as a framework for program administrators to strategically bridge issues of accreditation, accountability, and assessment in both a top-down, institutional-centered a bottom- up, learner-centered balanced approach. Literature: Reexamining the Situation Accreditation In the modern global workplace in which tech- nology and information are rapidly expanding, both businesses and educational institutions need dif- ferent measures for assessment and accountabil- ity. Accrediting commissions are shifting from an input to output based paradigm, thereby moving from mandating input must statements to demand- ing performance-based student outcomes (Rovai, Ponton, & Baker, 2008). They are moving away from traditional quantitative measures and sta- tistics such as high stakes standardized scores, graduation rates, and enrollment (Marsh, 2007; Rovai et al., 2008). The purpose of accreditation, too, is evolving from external to internal motiva- tors and from minimum quality compliance to or- ganizational self improvement, self study, and self assessment of strategic plans, goals, and growth (Lederman, 2009, Rovai et al., 2008, Willbanks, 2009). In other words, outcomes have become too complex to measure with traditional assessment tools and frameworks. The present accreditation challenge for program administrators remains designing and implement- ing an assessment plan that systematically gath- ers, aggregates, manages, and monitors student