Implementation of eportfolios for 'adult education tutors'

Late last week, the staff education and staff development team held a short meeting to discuss the implementation of eportfolios into the revised Diploma in Tertiary Learning & Teaching (DTLT) which replaces our current Certificates in Adult Teaching (CAT) and Diploma in Adult Education (DAE).
One of the courses for the ‘certificate’ part of the course is a ‘professional portfolio’ which will be run concurrently while students are completing five other ‘certificate’ courses. The ‘professional portfolio’ will involve students reflecting on their journey as they ‘become teachers’. Evidence of their growing skills, knowledge and confidence as teachers may be collated in an eportfolio. Therefore it was a good forum to discuss the rational for implementing eportfolios.
To start with, the team were distributed several articles including one from Educause on portfolios to webfolios & beyond:- levels of maturation. Also this one from Educause which gives a good overview on eportfolios, from a more traditional viewpoint.

I am more interested in seeing the use of Web 2.0 eportfolios as summarised by Helen Barrett in this diagram which builds on work by Derek Wenmouth and Sonia Guilana. Out tutors might not be ready for the big wide world of Web 2.0 eportfolios, but as staff educators, we need to be able to promote examples which reflect the future of education. The implementation of the use of eportfolios in the ‘professional portfolio’ will also eventually be followed on my the use of eportfolios for internal CPIT processes exampled by new tutor induction & probation, ongoing academic staff appraisals, professional development portfolios, websites for staff to showcase their work and promotions. Some programmes are also considering the use of eportfolios as an assessment option. Therefore is it important for the staff education team to model not so much ‘best practice’ but ‘informed practice’.

The educational reasons for using portfolios are varied but recent moves in theories of learning indicate that individuals’ learning are influenced directly via their interaction with the various social cultural arenas the live within. An article which provides good back ground is by Hodkinson, Biesta & James (2008). This article discusses the dualist nature of learning as being based on either individual or social and replaces this view with the use of the ‘becoming’ metaphor to help understand learning as being more holistic. Portfolios are one way to try to record the ephemeral nature of learning, the tacit, ‘informally’ learnt, often not described in learning outcome skills, knowledge and attitudes that constitute authentic learning. Teaching is but one occupation which is often learnt more from ‘conversations in the corridors & staff room’ than from reading books on educational theory. Portfolios (be they e or not e) may assist in helping learners to place credence on some of these encounters & to reflect on whether these conversations lead to improved teaching practice.

ePortfolio seminar at University of Canterbury

Yesterday, I attended a short seminar organised by the University of Canterbury. The University was piggy backing on CORE Education bringing to Christchurch, two of the speakers from the e-Portfolio conference in Wellington. They are presenting at CORE in the morning and then at UC to speak specifically on e-Portfolios in tertiary education.

The two speakers were Dr. Helen Barrett & Dr. Evangeline Harris Stefanakis. We also had chance to have a play with the New Zealand ePortfolio project, Mahara.

Evangeline’s presentation covered a good foundation of how portfolios could be constructed to allow the multiple intelligences in people to flourish. Her book on multiple intelligences and portfolios is one of the best resources on eportfolios. She provided a good number of guidelines of how to set up portfolios, underpinned by good rubrics to ensure that the learning outcomes were met and the portfolio creator’s voice came through. She pointed us to a good resource set up by LaGuardia Community College that provides staff and students with information about eportfolios and examples of eportfolios compiled by students.

Helen’s presentation in Melbourne covered why ePortfolios are the way to go due to chances in which society has been impacted on by globalisation and increasing competition from developing countries. I see that I have been thinking along similar lines but Helen puts a slightly different, more generic slant on the impact of a ‘flattening world’, the development of Web 2.0 and the need for education to keep up with these changes. Her presentation at this seminar focused on the nuts and bolts of eportfolios. A good update for me.

I was heartened with the number of CPIT staff who attended the seminar. Almost half of the audience of just over 30 people, were from CPIT with the rest from the University of Canterbury & Lincoln University. Also, most of the CPIT staff developers and staff educators were at the seminar, another good sign that the use of technology is becoming less threatening and more of a mainstream item. The two years of presenting workshops and seminars in CPIT on mlearning, use of Web 2.0 and eportfolios is starting to pay some dividends. The more people in the institution we can get on board, the faster the uptake will be. CPIT will then become an institution that is open to ideas that students pick up from their leisure activities (using social software & games) and using these to enhance learning for both students and staff.

Web 2.0 & eportfolios

Over the last month or so, Helen Barrett has been exploring and evaluating some newer eportfolio tools. She has started to assess the use of Web 2.0 type applications as generic platforms for the collection and collation of eportfolios. On her last two blogs this month, she has been looking at WIKIs and the concept of elearning 2.0. Her blog for August the 5th looks specifically at the use of Web 2.0 tools for eportfolios.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on her work as she starts using Web. 2.0 applications to build eportfolios. The number of tools available for aggregating various digital items has been growing. At the moment, I am trialing Windows Live Spaces which is in beta at the moment. I am able to transfer photos from my PC on to my own customised Windows Live page quite easily. It is also possible to sent photos in using a mobile phone. The Window’s live page also allows you to build up a blog, store contact details for your friends, archive your music, online games and book list.

At the moment, the page does not download well on to my Treo, I am hoping that it might not be too long before a mobile accessible version is available. The interface is relatively easy to use & there is space for the collection of visual evidence. The blog area provides an area to enter text, so overall, a good example of what is possible for a eportfolio user interface.

The European Institute of eLearning site provides good resources about eportfolios. A good link to eportfolios tools including commercial and open source tools is porvided. I have only had a brief look at the open source ones, some of them are dated but there are many that have ideas that we can work on at CPIT. Some of these ideas will need to be put together when we sort out a Moodle test site as a customised eportfolio site for our students to use.

I am therefore keen to move forward into the next step of our trials. Collecting evidence on a mobile phone & archiving the evidence on various mobile accessible applications like flickr & filemobile seems to be straight forward. We have also experimented with audio & video files from Springdoo. The next step of the trial is to see how we can now collate the evidence collected into a eportfolio. Then apprentices can access their own eportfolio, using their mobile phones to check on the amount of evidence they have collected.