Why MyPortfolio?

Students and staff are already set up.
We can set you up in MyPortfolio – this avoids disorientation at the beginning, and ensures that students, TAs and other staff have access. This saves a lot of effort rounding up your group to set up accounts.
MyPortfolio is hosted at UCL.
External services often have business models based on personal data or surrendering intellectual property; this means that staff and students cannot be forced to sign up, and it may be more difficult to arrive at a choice of platform which suits all group members and tutors. In contrast, UCL services like MyPortfolio are governed by UK Data Protection laws. You own your own work, and UCL will not claim that it is our intellectual property nor make use of it without your permission. MyPortfolio isn't commercial, so no adverts will be shown on your pages.
Contemporary kinds of assessment.
The web has brought new forms of academic communication alongside the traditional ones. MyPortfolio lets students author and present in different media (and, where required, work within a group space).
MyPortfolio is good for laying things out.
You can organise different elements and media exactly as you want.
Equity.
Unlike third party environments, UCL can support staff and students using MyPortfolio. This means that staff and students with less technical ability aren't disadvantaged in modules where this isn't a central learning objective.
MyPortfolio is hosted at UCL.
This means that it is governed by UK Data Protection laws. You own your own work, and UCL will not claim that it is our intellectual property nor make use of it without your permission. MyPortfolio isn't commercial, so no adverts will be shown on your pages.
UCL can apply deadlines.
We wouldn't be able to guarantee to do this equitably on third party software outside UCL.
If something goes wrong with MyPortfolio, UCL can make allowances.
If everybody were working on different third party environments, UCL could neither guarantee continuity of service, nor verify any interruptions to that service. With MyPortfolio, if something goes wrong with the service UCL verify this and take measures such as extending the deadline, without having to demand proof from students that there was a service interruption.
In short MyPortfolio helps UCL strike a balance between institutional obligations and the good stuff out there on the wider web.