The Internet has brought an unprecedented level of educational content to a wideaudience, encouraging educators to share curricula and resources worldwide through‘distributed learning’. Distributed learning as an instructional model harnessesprocessing and communication technologies to manage digital contents located indifferent, non-centralized locations, and allows instructors and students to take partin the learning process independent of time and place. Learners across different timezones and different geographical zones can participate in the same courses, and exploreand discuss in great depth by harnessing e-tools. ‘Electronic portfolio (E-portfolio)’is one such tool that enriches both distributed teaching and learning. Both learnersand instructors can create e-portfolios using a Web-based software, which offer themconvenient and interactive space to represent individual learning and competencies.Instructors can use the e-portfolios as personalized ‘Workspace’ to organize digitalrepositories and upload files of any type, and then reference them in presentations orcompositions they design to share with target group or multiple audiences. E-portfoliosallow students to sharpen their computer and communication skills, and offer them awider media to reflect on curricular, co-curricular, and non-curricular experiencesand accomplishments to integrate and enhance their learning. In this regard, thepaper interprets ‘how the E-portfolios factually enrich distributed learning’ andendeavors to offer constructive suggestions to ODL initiatives necessary in India.

The contemporary ‘media mania’ puts forth the third generation Distance Education, wherein Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are exploited, at their optimal level for Flexible Learning, E-learning, Distributed and Interactive Learning. A few decades earlier, during the initial days of the distance learning, the correspondence course system was prevalent, which supported learners with printed materials, dispatched in the formguides and textbooks. With the inventions of radio in 1920s and TV in 1950s, radio-based talks and TV-led audiovisual courses were used as supporting media, in addition to print media. All these processes and procedures constituted the first generation of Distance Education.