Short papers from 2025 eportfolios Australia conference

 Short papers from the 2025 eportolios Australia conference are now available. 

There are 8 published papers.

- From foundation to practice-the journey of co-designing an eportfolio that supports reflective, competent occupational therapy graduates. The project was undertaken at the University of Tasmania - Associate Professor A. Hamilton, H. Titmuss, Professor A. Berndt, S. Batur, and C. Hunter. A new programme, so the opportunity to create eportfolio for assessment and learning to support student's professional progress was undertaken. Details the process and principles for programmatic assessment and eportfolio practice.

- Beneath the surface: advocating and influencing eportfolios practice - Dr. I. D'Souza and C. Sapsed from Monash University. Presents the work of educational designers on using an adapted TPACK in humanities and health disciplines. 

- Developing global competencies in agricultural sciences: eportfolio assessments as a catalyst for global citizenship and leadership in agricultural education with T. P. Nguyen, Professor S. Schmidt and Dr. N. Robinson from University of Queensland. Mixed methods survey of students to gauge their perspective on whether eportfolios contribute to supporting professional skills development.

- Authenticity in the age of AI: A framework for eportfolio assessment based on process, provenance and persona by N. Taptama from the University of Queensland. Details a framework to record the learning journey as AI becomes integrated into programmes of learning. The framework includes the PROCESS to capture the learning journey. PROVENANCE as a way to make visible and evaluate students' progress to document, synthesise and appy learning. PERSONA focuses on the unique human qualities students bring to the process.

- Resolution of building resilient eportfolios for online higher degree by research students by M. B. Fisher from the University of New England. Records the processes and journey of PhD and MPhil students using eportfolios to support their learning journey and the supports and strategies required to support them.

- Finding the sweet sport: Portfolios, programmatic learning and student belonging - H. Pate and R. Scriven from Edith Cowan University. Details the merging of programmatic learning with a whole course portfolio to help students engage with learning and build a sense of belonging to their profession.

- Making audience tangible in career-focused eportfolios with Dr. H. L. Chen and Dr. J. J. Tarbox from Stanford University. The application of eportfolios from a career planning and development focus. 

A good collection of papers, providing good concepts to follow through. 

Using AI to streamline constructive alignment and design portfolio-ready tasks

 Notes from a webinar organised by Eportfolio Australia on the topic of using AI to streamline constructive alignment and design portfolio-ready tasks.

The workshop is facilitated by Marty Sison who is a learning designer at Charles Darwin University.

The workshop outcomes are to use Gen AI to draft learning objectives from learning outcomes and content - then learning activities and following on with portfolio-ready tasks.

Steps to engage learners are to create learning objectives, then ensure there are learning checkpoints and follow through with learning portfolios. 

Used a padlet activity to define learning design terms. Then shared how padlet can be used to check if students are meeting the learning objectives by putting their ratings into each week's learning objectives. 

When AI is used, unit learning outcomes and content topics + prompt = learning objectives. Prompts were stored in a spread sheet, which was also formatted to collate the various responses and tables created by CoPilot. Advocated for using spreadsheets as it puts everything in one place. 

Demonstrated how unit outcomes and content can be generated using Copilot running on ChatGPT5.0 including evaluating the AI responses backwards. Then learning objectives for each week can be generated. 

Discussed learning checkpoints for active learning. Important to have assessment, feedback, external, internal feedback and help learners understand these. Should have authentic relating questions and/or concept reflection questions. 

Demonstrated how the connected learning checkpoints and activities can be created using CoPilot. Questions and answers were provided.

The spreadsheet created can then be used in turn to create experiences that can be represented through a portfolio. The learning portfolio helps to make learning visible. It can capture both the knowledge attained and the paths taken, turning multiple ways of representing growth into persuasive evidence.

Learning portfolios can be used as a collection of evidence, triangulated to learning objectives and be am authentic narrative of learning /growth and a persuasive showcase.

Therefore, the learning outcomes + content topics + learning objectives + learning checkpoints + prompt = portfolio tasks to evidence learning.

Demonstrated how the previous items along with relevant prompt helps to generate a range of portfolio assessments. 

For advise on prompt engineering, generally by grounded in your work. Always ask AI to evaluate and rationalise its decisions so that you can track things back. Control the output so that what is generated meets your needs and you do not have to reformate the AI response (e.g. table, column/row contents etc.) . Keep a record of the prompts so that you can recycle them. 

Interesting presentation. Will need to have a good play with our own content to see how the workflow can be adapted to our needs. 

Eportfolios and AI tools: webinar notes

 Attended the Eportfolio workshop - how to get started with AI tools for portfolios. The session was delivered both online and f2f (La Trobe- Melbourne) and organised by ePortfolios Australia and ePortfolios Ireland. 

The session was presented by Dr. Megan Mize who is Director of ePortfolios and Digital Initiatives in the Digital Initiatives Success Centre at Old Dominion University. 

Alison Miller welcomes everyone and acknowledges Country and the various organisations who have contributed towards this webinar. Helen Chen introduces AAEEBL - Association for authenic, experiential and evidence-based learning. Megan begins with overviewing the AI tools that are already part of eportfolio practice. Slide deck of presentations are found at google docs. 

AI's current role could be to support grammar/syntax, accessibility, colour design and content generation. All of these have been available even before advent of ChatGPT. Introduces ideas of how to leverage Gen AI for faculty to provide more individualised support to learners. Proposed the Riff chatbot as a tool which has potential (as discussed with Leticia Britos Cavagnaro).

Riff chatbot can be useful to help learners how to practice reflection. A demo /try out of Riff chatbot followed for participants to evaluate the tool. The chatbot provides some good prompts on statements which were presented to it - a bit similar to 'ask watson' it repeats back what you contribute but pushes the user to 'dig deeper'. Riff chatbot has option of linking with Moodle. Check this blog for using chatbot to support reflective activity and up-coming book by Cavagnaro.

Then provided an opportunity to try another chatbot - Poe chat. Difficulties getting in through institutional and gmail :( (but did arrive in my institutional after about 10 minutes). Demo undertaken to show capabilities of the chatbot. Prompt engineering is important. Tried the 'colour my site' chat which was set up to provide more targeted information to users. Demonstrated how to set up the chatbot to undertake more targeted responses. An authentic activity not only for teachers but also across many occupations. For example, setting up a bot for a business to answer client enquiries etc. Testing the bot is important to see how it responses to a range of inputs. 

Then provided opportunity to 'build a bot' on Poe. Straight-forward process. Also accessible as IOS or Android app. Poe uses ChatGPT and Claude, so not sure how different the outputs are to just using ChatGPT. Claude has a better privacy policy when compared to many other Gen AI tools. 

Discussed the challenges and the need to test extensively, ensure learners triangulate the outputs, and be aware that 'input = output' holds, and the privacy and ethical issues around using the chatbots. Possibilities for learner driven personalised learning are many. 

Then discussed the ethical concerns with regards to AI and eportfolios, summarised in this blog. Q & A followed with most focusing on practicalities and logistics of using chatbots to support personalised learning.

A good session, providing good examples of how to better use AI to support learning, especially for reflective learning. 

Resource informing eportfolios - PEARL - Publications on ePortfolio: Archive of the Research Landscape

 The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACV)  supports a resource on research in eportfolios - PEARL - Publications on ePortfolio: Archive of the Research Landscape. 

The site collates articles published on eportfolios and categorises them into - descriptive, technological, empirical/affective, empirical/outcomes and empirical/assessment and evaluation. These bring up articles tagged to each category. There is also an advanced search capability allowing for year of publicationl author and journal search. 

The site also has a good overview of the scholarship of teaching and learning 

All in a great resource.

Eportfolio forum 2021 - DAY 2

 Another busy day at the eportfolio forum.

The day begins with a welcome back from Allison Miller. Began with welcome to country and went through various housekeeping items. All slides will be on slideshare

Indepth workshops begin. I attend the session with Dr. Kevin Kelly from San Francisco State University on 'applying universal design of learning (UDL) and learning equity principles to eportfolio projects'. Began with definitions of equity and UDL. Introduced the learning equity framework and UDL and how to apply them to eportfolios. The strategies introduced are not prescriptive but adoption of an equity-mindset. 4 parts - assessment (usig backward design); engagement to be ready to use eportfolios; content needed to suceed; and instructions to give to students so they are successful with eportfolios. Worksheets provided at each part to help make decision as to how to (re)design equitable eportfolio assignments - access, connection and belonging. Went through each of the worksheets and provided examples. Responsed collected on chat. Good examples and discussion ensued. Slides and workshops from this link.

See book for deeper dive - advanced online teaching - creating equity-based digital learning. Also see Carless and Winstone book - technology-enabled learning 

Then a series of digital interative poster and 20x20 (20 slides over 20 minutes) presentations.

First up, I attend another sesison with  Dr. Kevin Kelly from San Francisco State University & Kristina Hoeppner from Catalyst on 'eportfolios through the lenses of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and decolonisation (DEBID)'. Reviewed the principles derived by the taskforce - digital ethics - in 2020-2021 and shared the current taskforce objectives. Important to ensure all learners are welcomed to maximise the affordances of eportfolios. Defined DEIBD (see summary here) and shared strategies to support each. A good initiative, especially for eportfolios as there is little information to support them. Slides on this link.

Alan Hoskin, Pam Grant and myself (Ara Institute of Canterbury) then present our interative poster session on 'analysing user recommendations to inform the selection of eportfolio tools'. The project arose out of our realisation that portfolios were being used all over the institution for all sorts of assessments, but many of the rich pegaogical advantages of formative /collaborative learning were being missed. Our project establlished the diverse approaches used, due to the range of levels of learning and discipline contexts. We now have a series of pilots run and from these and the survey/focus group meetings with teachers, we have developed a draft 'eportfolio selection tool' as a means to help anchor 'eportfolio' discussions to improve how they are used. Poster available from this link. 

The next session is a 'facilitated conversation' with Panos Vlachopoulos, Arda Texcan and Gai Ramesh from Macquarie University on 'the journey of implementing the right digital platform for a student-centred, pedagogy-driven and employability focused lifelong learning'. Conversation menti - which collated questins and answers and contributions from the 6 presenters, ran through the reasons, drivers for the adoption of eportfolio tools by institutions; the support required to bring in a portfolio tool; key considerations for implementation (of Portfolium - student/learner driven rather than assessment driven - part of Canvas LMS); criteria for selection of the eportfolio tool; what were lessons learnt? 

The forum ends with closing keynote with Serge Ravet, Innovation Director from ADPIOS  who speaks on 'From eportfolio to open badges and ... back to eportfolio'. Began the presentation on setting the scene and the evolution of eportfolios, open badges, open badge passport, Bologna open recognition declaration, exploring informal recognition and the creation of the open recognition alliance. The focus for eportfolios was how to make learning visible; for open badges how to make informal learning visible; and open recognition is on how to to make informal recognition visible. Reviewed the journey from 2001 to present. Compared portfolio - archives, traces, past, story-telling with identity - projections, plans, futures, potential. Patchworks and 'digital threads of social fabric' used as metaphors for portfolios. Recognition is in the middle of the learning citizen/learning community and learning society/learning organisation. Argued that portfolios are a good idea but never really 'took off'. -- ' too many portfolios do not convey the authentic voice of the learner; they are more like the ventriloquist's puppets, an illusion of independent life'.! There is evidence of high-impact eportfolio practices (see book ). Open badges (pixels of holographic identity) seen as one way to 'validate' eportfolios. could be co-constructed, resilient, trustworthy, distributed, connected etc. True value of badges is based on trust between the issuer and receiver of the badge, creating 'networks of trust'. So are open badges a nice add-on or a means to reinvent eportfolios? Proposed recognition as a form of knowledge and therfore possible as a way to accredit portfolios and badges. Recognition si symetry between recogniser and regonised and has referees, practitioners, communities of practice, analogic. Whereas certification is asymmetrical between certifier and certified, based on frameworks, assessors, awarding bodys and analytical. Therefore, 'the remedy for lack of recognition is not just 'more recognition' but to empower individuals to recognise. In essence, moving from formal recognition of informal learning to informal recogntion of formal learning. eportfolios could be the 'wallets' and open badges the (non fungible) 'currency of the recognition economy. These add to our social capital. A good presentation provoking thinking on the role, worth, relevance and utility of portfolios. 

Allison Miller closed the forum with information on the 2022 forum to be held at the Univerity of Melbourne via mixed mode (f2f and online). Post forum, the team site will archive the presentations etc. 

Good to touchbase with the eportfolio community. Forum went well apart from small tech challenges presented by the microsoft Teams environment. The presentations I went to were all useful and provided much fruit for thought. 

Eportfolio forum 2021 - DAY ONE

 

Attending and presenting at the eportfolio forum today and tomorrow, hosted this year using Microsoft Teams, by the University of New South Wales.

The conference begins with welcome and housekeeping from conference convenor, Allison Miller. Professor Patsie Polly welcomes delegates to country and UNSW. 

The Professor Louise Lutze- Mann director of education UNSW introduces the speaker for the opening address - Professor Rorden Wilkinson who is UNSW pro-vice chancellor for education and student experience.He sets up the context for the conference, espeically given the experiences of the last year with the move to online learning due to the pandemic. Took a positive perspective on how we need to learn and evaluate the opportunities availed. Provided information on UNSW evaluation of the role of portfolio. 

The Opening keynote is with Dr. Bill Wisser, director of the Teaching and Learning Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He presented on 'regrounding portfolios in the science of learning and practice of pedagogy'. Began with two stories. The first on the fear of the unknown and the second how perspective is governed by our known context. Important to remember, learners bring these with them into our classrooms. They are not 'jugs to be filled' but teachers need to connect with what they bring with them amd extend their horizons beyond what they normally or already know. Revised cognitive theory of learning (input, sensory register, working memory, long term memory, attention, encoding retrieval, chunking etc.). Connected these to expertise and how experts process their information. Novices use algorithms but experts use heuristics. Portfolios have a role as it allows learning to be processed/organised and then re-collated and shared (to teach is to learn). Need to shift from modeling coaching and scaffolding to also articulation. reflection and elaboration. Moving from being able to do to being able to share/teach. Important to not just allow for the performative aspect of learner but also to capture the learning journey. Assessments should be not only of learning but FOR learning. 

After a 'ice-breaking session (using Bingo) and morning tea, the  'Intensive' workshops begin and I select the workshop with Megan Haskins from University of Denver & Kristina Hoeppner from Catalyst who facilitates a conversation on 'digital ethics and portfolios: what next?' Provided details on a task force looking into digital ethics and progress to date. Shared resource on the complexities of eportfolio ethics. Then breakout rooms formed to discuss how ethics used currently; how these used; what barriers have been encoutered; and additional resources may be of benefit. Good discussion in our group around privacy, IP, ownership of eportfolios, resources/guidelines to support the many small but important aspects of adminstrating eportfolios, and providing a robust eportfolio platform for learning. A short 'timeout' followed for participants to reflect on issues and come up with any questions. Q & A followed. 

Then a series of short sessions. I attend the session with Aslihan McCarthy (La Trobe) and Kate Mitchell (University of Melbourne) (presenter) on 'constructing a symphonic self in a post-pandemic world: the case for eportfolios'.Usually eportfolio are seen to be tools for accredition, assessment and educational outcomes. The focus in this presentation is on well-being(emotional) and resilience. Defined the symphonic self as how individuals form coherent aligment across their various selfs - network self, identity/s etc. Important to help students develop capacity to tackle both global and personal challenges and view and value their life narrative both within and outside of work - plus the boundaries between the personal, professional and civic. The symphonic self can be incorporated into eportfolios as they are a 'living portal' (Nguyen, 2013). The eportfolio needs to be a process, not product; be flexible for agency and creativity; reflection should be at the core; structures should scaffold, be integrative and inclusive and be ongoing and iterative. At a practical level, pedagogy of the portfolio is central (including digital ethics); curriculum includs integration and implementation beyond the degree and provision of an infrastructure to support the portfolio. 

Next session with Dr. Jennifer Masters and Jacqui Patten from PebblePad with presentation on 'connecting with the profession: Using PebblePad to map learning activities against professional standards'. Introduced the PebblePad function to 'map my learning'. Professional standards are used as framework for professional qualifications and ongoing Professional development. Progressive learning experiences contribute to the attainment of these standards. Course development often hinge on these standards through the alignment of explicit learning activities. Students need to understand how to collect, collate and show the evidence of meeting standards. Shared an example and demonstrated how this works in PebblePad using capability blocks. Important if using to have the standards visible. 

Last session for the day for me is with Shari Bowker & Dr. Christine Slade from University of Queensland with 'assessment and feedback using eportfolios: shifting to a new paradigm of practice'. Reviewed the challenges associated with feedback, proposed a new paradigm for feedback with focus on student feedback literacy. Then applied these to eportfolio design and support the development of feedback literacy through eportfolio compilation. Usually, feedback provided part way through course and then another occasion just before final summative assessment. Often feedback given and nothing else happens, or a sandwich model for nice feedback on both sides of stronger feedback!. Feedback should be a spiral to support ongoing learning. Summarised research on feedback including constraints imposed by large class numbers, lack of time, students' reliance on teachers (rather than other forms of feedback). Their study wanted to shift students to become active participants in feedback. Feedback literacy includes the interelated aspects of making judgments through appreciating feedback and managing affect and taking action once judgement is made (Carless and Boud, 2018). Educators have to support by helping students appreciate feedback, practice making judgments, support sutdents to manage affect and enable them to take action. Eportfolio can support these by working through longitudinal feedback on journals, support evaluation and defining of self-evalutation, have reflective prompts and design multi-stage or iterative sequences of tasks to help students action feedback. Action plans may be useful as well. Check their previous workshop for more detail. 

Using microsoft teams as the platform for the forum seemed to work well. Just a couple of glitches with presenters on Apple Macs who are unable to see their presentation when they share screen. Also they are unable to see the chat. 

Mahara - eportfolio platform - is 15 years old

 This blog records that Mahara has turned 15. There is information on who instigated the development of Mahara and its wide reach now in the world of eportfolio platforms.

The blog has a video with recordings of representatives from around the world, who use Mahara.

At the moment, we are reviewing Mahara. In 2022,  we will be updating the version of Mahara available. We will then carry out a pilot to evaluate if Mahara is able to meet the needs of one of our degree programmes. The premise of Mahara is to allow people to collect, collate and showcase their learning. Some of our teachers and students have struggled with the 'openess' of Mahara in the past. So this time around, we will work on creating a template to help teachers and learners use Mahara in a more targeted way.  

My thoughts are that many of our programmes do not need a full-blown eportfolio platform. Many programmes use portfolios as a form of assessment in a few courses. In many case, the portfolio is more of a report than an actual portfolio. The use of other tools are therefore more appropriate when collection of evidence is relatively small and showcasing of the work is text-based and in the form of an assigment. Collection and collation can therefore be completed using word-processing platforms. An eportfolio platform is more suitable when whole programme collection of learning evidence across courses is required. Collation of evidence of learners meeting graduate profiles may be another aspect matched to the use of eportfolio platforms. Therefore, it is important to establish the main objective of the portfolio and match the tool, rather than use an eportfolio platform for everything.

               

Educational technology research and development journal - good contemporary articles

Doing a catch up on reading in preparation for putting together a short book on the topic of 'practice-based learning via distance learning' or similar title - perhaps 'digitally enabling 'learning by doing' in vocational education and training' or 'technology-enhanced learning: Supporting learning by doing'.

One journal I am able to access via the Ara institutional databases is 'Educational technology research and development' published by Springer. There is a 1 year wait for access to articles which I can live with :)

The focus of the journal - as the only scholarly journal in the elearning/educaitonal techology field focusing on R & D, makes the articles pertinent, given one of the chapters in the proposed book will be on 'how technology enhance learning' may support the future of work/future of learning for practice-based, experential type learning.

The journal is into it's 68th volume!! so rather a lot to catch up on but I am concentrating on articles published in the last decade as educationaly technology type R & D, does have a 'use by date'.

There is a US of A slant in the articles, given the editors and most on the editorial board are also from the US of A, and the journal's affliation is to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. See this link for useful resources (higher education) to cope with Covid-19 challenges.

A useful resource for all who work in the technology-enhanced learning area.

Microcredentials - slideshare from Professor Michael Brown (Eire/Ireland)

Here is a slideshare from Professor Mike Brown's presentation on microcredentials picked up this morning via LinkedIn.

Although the information has a country slant (in this case Ireland) the information is relevant and easily contextualised to other national systems.

Slides 14 and 15 show a quadrant of the types of ways microcredentials may be useful. The axis are whether the credentials are credit bearing or not and whether they are 'bundled' or 'unbundled' which I take to be whether the credentials are part of a larger qualification or stand alone. Associated with microcredentials, is the notion of badging. The EU seems to be exploring this concept in a bid to provide badging with recognition and also to bring them into regulatory control.

To be relevant, both bundled and unbundled are options depending on individual learners/organisational/national needs. Whether bundled or not, stacking is still the prevalent approach of qualification systems to addressing the recognition of microcredentials.

The NZ Qualifications Authority recognises microcredentials. The details are found on this site. The register of microcredentials in NZ  show a collection registered by Otago Polytechnic, a private provider and a few Industry Training Organisations (ITOs). 

So some activity in this area as addition of microcredentials into the qualifications ecosystem is one way to be more agile in meeting future of work and fast changing industry needs. The challenge is to avoid a plethora of microcredentials whilst balancing the need to be flexible! 

ob3 - ocean browser 3 - examples of application

For several years now, the midwifery programme at Ara Institute of Technology, have used a platform called OB3 - or Ocean Browser 3 - to keep in contact with their students through a highly blended learning environment. There is an Ascilite paper from 2014, detailing the approach. A more recent 2017 Ascilite paper, provides examples from the opthamatrist programme at Otago University. At the moment, I am working with another programme to embed OB3 into their teaching. This programme will be highly blended as well and have a large amount of text based anchored discussions and learning activities. Approaches which match well with OB3's current capabilities.

Basically, OB3 works well with text based discussions because the discussions can be carried within the content, rather than separately as with other LMS. This ability to bring activities into the content, creates a seamless and user-friendly experience for both teachers and students. One drawback is that the webpages generated can become quite long, requiring scrolling through copious texts. One needs to be part of the whole discussion to be able to keep track of all the threads, springing forth from either teacher embedded questions, or from students adding discussion points through the document.

OB3 allows for quick upload of a range of content, including multimedia - pictures, videos and podcasts. Both teachers and students are able to upload and share these items. This process supports a co-constructivist form of learning. An important aspect is that students need to be scaffolded into the OB3 approach, otherwise, the content becomes overwhelming. However, if students participate through the process, they 'take ownership' of the content, leading to engagement and deeper learning.

OB3 allows students access to their content post-qualification. An eportfolio type add-on will be available next year.

Into the future, it will be good to stretch the capabilities of OB3 and to see how the concept can be applied to programmes which are less text rich.

Innovating Pedagogy 2016 report

Via ignatia web, report on Innovating pedagogy for 2016 from a report by Open University and the Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Technology in Singapore.

A short (40+pages) report with following (out of 10 proposed) of relevance to eassessment project.
 - Learning through social media
- productive failure (i.e. learning thorough experience and from making mistakes)
- teachback (learning by teaching others)
- Learning from the crowd
- Learning through video games
- Formative analytics (developing analytics to help students improve)

The 2015 report is more traditional, advocating
- crossover learning (formal connected to informal),
- learning through argumentation,
- harnessing incidental learning
- context-based learning
- embodied learning

The 2014 report covered pedagogies now taken for granted e.g.
- massive open social learning
- learning design informed by analytics
- flipped classroom
- learning to learn
- BYOD
- dynamic assessments
- learning through storytelling
- threshold concepts

The older two reports advocate similar recommendations to the annual US of A Horizon reports. Trawling through the innovative pedagogy reports provide a good historical record of how pedagogy has shifted over the last 5 to 6 years.

We will need to mesh some of the above with the work on vocational education pedagogy. There are good synergies across the above and the work of Lucas, Claxton and Spencer. Summaries of the three pieces of work on this blog:

-vocational pedagogy
- remaking apprenticeships and
- practical guide to craftsmanship.

Plus also work from recent 'Learning a trade' project - learning as becoming by learning to do, think, feel and be within the NZ context of biculturalism for example with Maori trades training.

Each of the sub-projects in the eassessment project will integrate at least one if not more of the 'innovative pedagogies' and apply the recommendations from the various international and NZ vocational pedagogy studies.

e-assessments

A collation of resources on e-assessments in preparation for a project of 'formative eassessments'.

There is an eassessment association in the UK with page with case studies and relevant journals including the international journal of eassessment - open access once you register.

Also a series of future of assessment conferences based in the UK with a vocational education focused series of conference with archives. The eassessment conference for education as a whole was in January 2016.

Australian resources include ebook by Crisp 2011 and an ncver report 2003 on online assessments for vocational education. Resources also from University of Melbourne site.

In NZ, Hazel Owen's blog and slideshare provides an overview of vocational education assessments. Ako Aotearoa has links in their resource guide to assessments and there is information from an etools project from Massey.

Overall, a good deal of information. Many discuss the pros and cons, especially related to summative assessments via digital methods. All also advocate the advantages of 'assessment for learning' via online, virtual / digital methods. So I think we are on the right track. To update the work from the past 25 years, current tools provide for even better possibilities to support the gathering of naturally occurring evidence / assessment for learning, especially to shift away from a predominantly text-based artifacts to multimodal / multimedia evidencing.

update on eportfolios

Working with several teaching teams this semester. The objective being to use some form of 'eportfolio' in 2017 to provide formative feedback to students and then collate evidence collected in to some form of 'showcase' for summative assessment.

So updating my links etc. and understanding of the eportfolio landscape, first blogged on way back in 2005 at the start of my blogging journey.

The spread of tools available for eportfolio type activities has increased. The link to epac provides an evolving list of eportfolio tools and technologies. There are now many 'customised' tools whereas in the beginning, we tended to use wikis and blogs. Although there is still the use of blogging platforms as eportfolios as evidenced through emergedtech's  example of using tumblr in the classroom.

A good overview is found at learning eportfolios providing history of development, types of eportfolios etc. A critique and ideas forward is provided by geoffcain who advocates the connectivist approach to eportfolios.

So overall, lots of choices. We need to establish the fit of learning outcomes / objectives to our standard eportfolio tool - Mahara - as blogged previously and if the fit is precarious, explore alternatives.

Mahara for eportfolios - summary and update

Working with a team of tutors to establish eportfolios. CPIT has had Mahara available for some years. However, as with other portfolio tools / platforms, Mahara comes with a requirement to learn how to use the platform along with support for the students (and staff) on how to construct eportfolios which are founded on reflective practice.

Currently, Mahara is on version 15.04, manual, ebook, guide to using the journal on Mahara, overview of induction session for students and useful info and instructions are available.  Also this link provides guides from versions 1.2 through to 1.9. Flash tutorials and examples - traditional and another one here also good resources.

Pros and cons are discussed along here and  a comparison of mahara with wordpress / google apps provided here.

Overall, a need to establish if we need to go to full blown eportfolio capability or scaffold from paper eportfolio to digital story on powerpoint before moving to Mahara.

Update on blogging platforms

Have been blogging on Blogger for about a decade, so comfortable with what it offers. Compared to newer blogging platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, the layout and format of Blogger, looks staid and conservative.

A couple of our programmes are now exploring eportfolios, with blogging platforms at the top of the 'try out' list. So a quick update on blogging platforms, their pros and cons required.

thenextweb provides an overview of blogging platforms with this list of 'what has been available' and then a list of what is now available. Beebom also lists the 5 best blogging platforms showing the rise of tumblr.

With some of our programmes, where the visual is important, tumblr may be one way to go. Emergingedtech provides some http://www.emergingedtech.com/2013/01/how-teachers-are-using-tumblr-in-the-classroom/uses of tumblr in education as does avemaria press. So no shortage of ideas and 'how to dos' on the web.

Will explore possibilities this week with one our our tutors and see what fits along with a re-evaluatin of Mahara, the institutional portfolio platform.

Pebble pad presentation - Shane Sutherland

Attended a presentation this morning to CPIT staff on Pebble pad -not an eportfolio - pedagogy, principles and practice by Shane Sutherland, development director.

Shane provided a background on why and how pebblepad was developed and also overview eportfolios. The original premise was to make a easy to use interface , however, this now tweaked and a new version about to be launched. Also, principles of portability followed - allowing students to have continued access to their pebblepad space beyond their studies.

Pebblepad supports creation of eportfolios but is not an eportfolio on it's own, perhaps it is more of a 'personal learning space'. a narrative of learning journey can be archived as it evolves.

eportfolio definition (Sutherland & Powell, 2007)  but important to acknowledge the processes that underly portfolios -- JISC, 2008 - behind any product, or presentation, lie rich complex -----
aka good learning

What makes pebblepad different is to help the reflective learning process using tools - for instance 'thought' - journal, reflective journal, what now?, Kolb's cycle - as a way to encourage the meaning making process.

PLS conceptualised to be a bridge between personally provided and controlled content (facebook etc) and institutionally provided and controlled (LMS). PLS also brings peers, students, tutors together as co-creators of content.

examples of student work at http://pebblepad.co.au/pebblepad.examples.asp

Overall, a glimpse of possibilities, providing learners with an integrated 'front end'.  It will be interesting to test the newer version of pebble pad as the present version does require some intensively/delibrate practice to learn how to use.

Comparing pebblepad to Mahara

Our Centre for Educational Development (CED) manager has organised access to trial pebblepad. The main reason is for CED staff to record their experiences, as they work with teams, to support the programme design process. At CPIT, we base programme design on principles of constructive alignment, starting with the development of graduate profiles. From the graduate profiles, flow learning outcomes which are tightly linked to learning and assessment activities.


I have used Mahara off and on and found the interface to be mostly intuitive. I have been playing around with pebble pad this week and in comparison, Pebble pad has a ‘prettier’ front page and is also mostly intuitive to use. There are more elements to Pebble pad as well, making it more flexible. Parts of Pebble pad are user customisable, so there is less of having to do things for the sake of filling up the space.

Pebble pad, like Mahara, works through the collection of assets/artefacts. A difference is that pebble pad treats ALL entries as assets, whereas Mahara tends to have an area for uploaded artefacts and the other entries (journal/blog, CV) etc. are separate ‘blocks’ that you can choose to display.

There is a sharper learning curve to learning how to use pebble pad because there are so many ways to collect and then display assets. Therefore, it is important to provide examples and opportunities for learners to see the bigger picture. One advantage of Mahara is that you can configure various 'showcases' for your portfolio depending on audience. You can do the same in Pebble pad as well by setting up separate webfolios or blogs but it is less obvious.

A trawl through the www indicates a slant towards pebble pad. Examples include this Australian report surveying TAFEs and universities, indicating more users of Pebble pad (p 17) and eportfolio platforms being the most widely used (amongst Australian tertiary institutes) although more so in universities than their TAFE sector who tended to lean towards using their in-house LMS. And a UK report comparing several eportfolio alternatives, trimming them down to a choice between pebble pad and Mahara and deciding on pebble pad as it would be serviced and the institute did not have to set up their own unit to oversee.
 
 

PIPTA and CPIT allied staff workshops

Did two presentations today. Firstly, a short presentation at Lincoln University, on “harnessing technology to enhance trades learning: mlearning, eportfolios and web 2.0” to the Primary Industry Polytechnic Tutors Association (PIPTA) as part of their annual moderation and professional development days. Most of the tutors work in the agricultural, forestry and horticultural fields. I was interested in my interactions with this group of tutors as it is a group I have had few opportunities to make contact with. Also, good to meet tutors who teach in the dairy industry as one of the groups of apprentices participating in the ‘first year apprentices’ research project are apprentices on dairy farms. An industry characterised by very long hours of work exampled by 4am starts to 6 pm finish and working for at least 8 to 10 days before a couple of days off


Second presentation followed by a workshop, similar to one I presented about a month or so ago at Weltec for tutors from Weltec, Whiterea and Open Polytechnics, sponsored by Ako Aotearoa Central Hub. The focus for today’s presentation slightly different as it is to CPIT allied staff, a varied group of people working in administrative and technical support roles. The presentation introduced concepts of Web 2.0 including the rapid movement towards mobile and cloud computing.

Of interest is the increase, when compared to feedback from presentations from just two years ago, of most people’s general knowledge in using technology in both their work and non-work lives. Social networking is now no longer a total mystery to many people and sites like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are now mentioned so often in general media, that the average person will have at least heard of these although never actually used them.

With each of the above groups, I did a general survey of how many people actually contributed to Web 2.0 sites. There is a 100% response and this may be due to the wider use of consumer focused web 2.0 sites like trademe (buying and selling online), seek (job hunting) and services like internet banking and shopping. Not as many were familiar with ‘cloud computing’ and the move towards ubiquitous computing. However, most had heard about the ipad and net tabs may be the hardware tool which will shift the general population towards un-tethered, cloud-based access to the internet.

Off to Teaching and Learning conference tomorrow where I will present a keynote and a follow-up workshop on ‘Belonging, becoming and being: Learning from narratives of apprentices and trades tutors’. The presentation is on how to leverage off the metaphors of belonging to a workplace, becoming and being to assist tutors to enhance earning opportunities for apprentices, pre-trade students and to help new trades tutors draw on trades skills to become good teachers.

Interactive ebooks with Inanimate alice and istories

An great example of the future of ebooks via Evan McIntoch’s edublog. Inanimatealice has been released since 2006 and currently has 4 out of 10 episodes available for download and viewing/reading. The book details how a young girl grows up to become a game digital designer. Each chapter seems to improve in sophistication as the techniques possible through interactive ebooks are explored and modelled. Also, each chapter increases in length, fro 5 minutes to 30 minutes, with greater use of interactive sections. There is some work still to be done on navigation, for instance if you are part way through an interactive section and are interrupted, when you click on the icon to go back to the relevant bit, you need to repeat the entire interaction. So a criteria I would like to see for interactive ebooks is to be able to dip in and out where ever you want to, like in a real book. 


There is a discussion on the impact of interactive ebooks on publishingperspectives. Interative ebooks will have many possible applications in education. It is also possible to purchase the platform on which inanimatealice has been developed. Istories is promoted as a straightforward way to construct digital stories which include pictures, text, videos, interactive sections and sound/music. Does cost a bit though.

I have been reflecting on the different literacies our staff bring with them and how to better introduce staff unfamiliar with academic tasks like reading education journal articles. The end objective is to encourage a deeper engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning. Will think through a possible project to develop an example of an interactive ebook that can be useful to introduce some of the concepts or theories of adult education. Staff can then build their own versions to share with other staff and this can then be a shared resource we can use for future courses. This ebook could be consolidated using powerpoint or better still using something like voicethread or perhaps even live binders. Live binders featured on Jane Hart’s tools this week and seems to be imminently suited to eportfolios with a show and tell type structure. So there are possibilities to explore for interactive ebook authoring and application.

Ascilite 2009 - day 3 - morning sessions

A sparse crowd this morning after last night's dinner and dance!

Morning began with a brief presentation from Matthew Riddle a Blackboard research grant winner on ICTs in the daily lives of Australian students. Uses Sms and the 'day experience method' to prompt them to record what they are doing and what technology they are using.
I then attended the eportfolios stream which had 4 presentations.John Roder and Mark Brown from University of Auckland on educators' perspectives on PLEs, Web 2.0 and eportfolios. We are moving from web 1.0 / eportfolios to web 2.0 /PLEs. Influenced by thinking from Feng, Siemens, Attwell and Fiedler. Generally many educators know about web 2.0 but do not necessarily use them to the PLE capabilities.
Then Jane Goodyear and John Milne from Massey University spoke on developing competency portfolios with engineering undergrads.used Mahara and began by asking students to find examples or exemplars based on graduate profile. Uptake was low so more work required! Critical factors include to have clear purpose, think transformative, support for reflection, hold into programme and assess.
Up next Beverley Oliver and Peter Nikoletatos from Curtin University present on building physical and virtual learning spaces.Engagement, students and mobile technology, iportfolio And mobile Curtin form the four parts of the learning spaces.
Last in this session, Jennifer Rowley and Peter Dunbar from University of Sydney on integrating eportfolios.Need to collect expression of many music identities, as performers, composers, music teachers etc. Therefore asked students on what they thought should be in their eporfolio. They wanted their eporfolio to reflect their individual personalities and skills / learning.