E-Portfolios, PDPs
Assessment for Learning
I’m just back from a Netskills workshop Assessment for Learning: Harnessing Technologies. It was a well-structured, varied day involving presentations, discussion and lots of hands-on exploration, which I hadn’t expected. There was stuff I’ve covered before – Bloom’s bloomin’ Taxonomy and TurnitinUK but plenty of other stuff too.
I was partly there to find out more about eportfolios and we spent a fair bit of time exploring Newcastle University’s Generic Eportfolio system which looks quite nice. It’s supposed to be freely available but we couldn’t suss out how and I must follow this up with the presenter. Over on ‘Reluctant Technologist’ (my new blog!) I’m starting to get my thoughts on eportfolios together.
Completely off topic I heard about diigo for what must be the 23rd time this month. It’s a social bookmarking site with loads more functionality than del.icio.us which we already use at CLT (LSE CLT del.icio.us). I’ve been put off so far because I’ve felt it has too much going on… too busy. However, I’m going to take another look as today I’ve discovered it does re-orderable lists which can be easily sub divided with labels (great for training session resources) and groups – lists of bookmarks contributed to directly by multiple users which is something else we’ve had interest in.
Another eportfolio
Has anyone looked at Expo LX or any of the other tools produced by LearningObjects.com? I came across it at IoE Learning Technology Unit. It currently only integrates with Blackboard though the website states that integrations with Moodle and other systems are “on the roadmap”. It’s essentially a tool for creating personal sites including blogs with permissions built-in so it can be used for eportfolios. It might also be of interest to the web team for personal & group sites e.g. for academics, researchers & research groups.
I’m going to download & take a look. No, I’m not, it only appears to come as a Bb building block, so forget that!
Also on the LTU site were some ‘technology tasters’ which included this list of educational uses for wikis which is better than the one I had for our last workshop!
More MoodleMoot
As Steve has comprehensively blogged on this already: day1, day2 I’ll just add a few comments on e-portfoilos and some more stuff coming our way from the OU.
E-Portfolios
These have always been on the edge of my radar but they were highlighted in Martin Dougiamas’ keynote for v2 and again in Niall Sclater’s excellent review of the thinking on the future of VLEs / PLEs. Without really planning to I ended up spending most of day 2 looking at portfolios. The idea with regard to Moodle is that external E-portfolio systems will plugin to Moodle allowing for data to pass from Moodle to the E-portfolio.
So what is an e-portfolio and how might it be used? For me the best starting point is how the OU have named their own home-grown system: MyStuff which is an open source plugin to moodle to be released soon. It is intended as a personal space for students to create, organise & store their ‘stuff’: files, links etc and allows students to make them available to who they wish. The other system featuring highly at the Moot was Mahara (open source from NZ) which seems to go further and includes a CV Builder and social software tools. I liked the way the Mahara team were talking about developing links to other systems such as YouTube & Flickr, so not everything has to be in Mahara.
Integrating Drupal, Moodle and Elgg
Stumbled across this interesting, but old, article that focuses on an example integration of Drupal, Moodle and Elgg, relating to Matt’s earlier post about collaboration with Columbia and Brown. Some interesting ideas here – enabling connections between VLE, portfolio and content management systems, including public facing web sites. I would expect some political implications regarding who runs (owns) what though! If you have time it’s worth reading the discussion/comments too.
Kris.
ALT-C Day 2, part 2
Just to out-blog Steve here’s my second posting of the day. This afternoon I went along and chatted to several poster presenters. Had a really interesting chat with people from Bristol about using podcasting. They have a blog which they’d really like people to post entries on about what they are doing with podcasting. I was telling them a bit about video lectures, podcasts and visualiser stuff we are doing at LSE, so Sarah and Kris do post something on: www.podcasting.blog-city.com
I also chatted some more to Iain at Glasgow Caledonian who works in the Saltire Centre and he might have a solution to our Fedora upload problem. I’ve passed on Marie’s e-mail so he’ll get in touch and he’s going to be at the Open Scholarship Conference in October. I also chatted to the Intrallect people who showed me the latest version of their repository software.
Just this moment I went to a session on e-portfolios from Shane Sutherland at Wolverhampton who have developed PebblePad. A neat tool which is really a personal learning environment as it contains blogs and many other tools which can be shared.
Right, that’s it from me as I need to get my glad rags on for the dinner tonight! Farewell folks!
Moodle & Elgg
A new Moodle plugin that promises
a means to transfer submissions to online assignments from moodle to an eportfolio system, namely elgg
Once elgg improves its user interface this will be worth investigating. Something to keep an eye on definitely
See also WebCT & elgg in this blog
WebCT Portfolio (2)
Further to my earlier comments on the WebCT Portfolio tool in this blog yesterday I joined an online Seminar by WebCT run thru Horizon Live Classroom. [Seminar Archive]
I found it a little dull, partly because I’d seen the tool before at Coventry but also because I find Powerpoint / Audio presentations difficult to stay with for an hour… so i should have gone to real life presentation with Kris 😉
The main question I wanted to ask was about the possibility of a pilot / trial licence as the rather hefty 5-figure sum we have been quoted by WebCT for the Portfolio is a non-starter. I asked my question but it was rephrased as: is it possible to ‘review and test’ WebCT Portfolio? The answer to that is yes – work with your account manager and it will be possible to evaluate the environment. It came across as a ways of us being able to test the system rather than a way of us piloting over an academic year / term. We need to check but I doubt we can do that without buying.
I have to say there was some very positive response from other 70+ participants and only two or three visible ‘raised eyebrows’ when I mentioned the significant 5-figure cost!
Simplicity
Report from Coventry Forum (Part 3)
My overriding feeling after spending a day focussed on WebCT CE6 and the new Portfolio was why does everything have to be so complex?
I really do think we need some simpler interfaces for lecturers and designers to use and CE6 fails to deliver. It may just be a question of time and a need for familiarity but CE6 is overly or badly designed in places… It may be easier than 4x in some ways and perhaps even overall but it is still way more complicated than it needs to be.
WebCT Portfolio
Report from Coventry Forum (Part 2)
A live version of the forthcoming (possibly July) WebCT Portfolio was demoed at the Forum. This is an extra that has to be bought but WeBft are not revealing prices yet. Many participants were interested in its potential for use as an electronic PDP tool.
- Students get an extra tab “WebCT Portfolio” alongside the MyWebCT tab. The portfolio allows students to organise their own material how they wish. They are given a set of Designer tools to do this. The tools include ones we are familiar with (textblocks, content modules – renamed as Binders) and new ones – a blogging tool for example.
- Students can control access to individual elements via selective release. This includes the ability to give access to non-WebCt users (e.g. an employer) by creating upto 3 accounts!! This wasn’t demoed so not sure how this works.
- There’s an Learning Objectives tool (not the right word perhaps) that allows students to create learning objectives then tie work to them as an alternative structure
- Back in WebCT – the best feature – students can select work (e.g. discussion posts, assignments with tutor feedback) and “Save to Portfolio”. Files are created in their file store and they can then organise them how they wish
- Everyone agreed that students would need training in use of this tool.
My overall view is that it is too complicated. For a designer who knows WebCt it is fine, but for students??? I think you can provide templates which might help. It’s definiely worth a more detailed look but my initial feelings are not positive.
Personal Portfolios
One common theme from today’s APD away day was ‘personal portfolios’…. Herve mentioned them in his presentation and is keen to introduce something like the new WebCT portfolio next academic year for students to be able to present themselves and their work; the need for a tool for PDPs (personal development planning) came up in the PhD discussion group I was in (I know Steve has previously shown them the edinburgh system (name?); and in the Blue Skies “e-tutor” session personal profiles & personal planning were central to the ideas generated. These are perhaps not all quite the same but there is definitely some commonality and a possible future area of work.
