In 2002, a troubled Hope High School was reorganized into three smaller, semi-independent learning communities: Hope Leadership School, Hope Information Technology School, and Hope Arts.

Teacher Amy Weigand joined Hope Arts in 2005 and implemented Digication's e-porfolios. She believes they are a better way to collect and catalogue student work, providing storage and ease-of-grading, facilitation collaboration, and motivating students.

She first saw Digication’s Spotlight e-portfolio application while a student at RISD. She took a class taught by Kelly Driscoll on introducing the technology into the classroom. Driscoll and her husband, Jeffrey Yan, another RISD faculty member, had developed the program.

Yan and Driscoll, educators by profession, are a somewhat reluctant pair of entrepreneurs. They both currently teach graduate- level classes at RISD, which is also where they earned their own graduate degrees. Back in 2001, ..."We built something really, really simple,” Yan recalls.

Word of the couple’s pet project got around RISD’s Department of Art and Design Education, and eventually got the attention of the department head, Paul Sproll. In 2002, with Sproll’s encouragement, Yan and Driscoll took their show on the road and founded Digication, which now sells two components that the couple developed: the Campus course management software and the Spotlight e-portfolio solution. Today, more than 450 schools in the United States use the programs; about a third of them are K-12 institutions.

As far as Yan is concerned, schools should not commit to any technologies that require a lot of technical support. He says the deciding factor in any e-portfolio purchase should be ease of use... “Teachers are already overworked. The last thing they need is a 20-hour training session. That’s old-school thinking...”

Due to the No Child Left Behind Act, all RI schools are now required to choose two of four ways to demonstrate proficiency: senior projects, exhibitions, end-of-course exams, or portfolios. Other teachers at Hope Arts have adopted e-portfolios as well; Weigand believes eventually all three Hope learning communities will make the shift.