Student Centered ePortfolio

An interesting post from Kev Brace over at JISC Regional Support Centre West Midlands. It talks about models and resources:

http://kev-brace.blogspot.com/2009/07/student-centered-eportfolio-space.html

ePortfolio 2009 - London

The 2009 ePortfolio conference is a major international event bringing together practitioners from all over the world. The conference is organised by the European Institute for E-Learning and will be held at City University, London on 22-24 July.

The conference seems to be packed with useful sessions and experts in the field such as Dr. Helen Barrett who's eportfolio group I've been following for some time now: http://groups.google.com/group/web2eportfolios/about?hl=en

A programme is currently available on this page:
http://www.epforum.eu/lfl2009/conference/programme


To see the enormity of the conference take a look this eifel event attendee location map: http://www4.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?user=a5770c6f - quite literally the 4 corners!

Visible Learning

It is taken for granted that students learn from their experiences during education from staff. However, at Washington State University staff learn from their students.

Staff learned that students are:

INNOVATIVE in their use of technology, doing much to help us understand the power and potential of new tools.

RESOURCEFUL in their strategies to use academic work to understand their communities and the world.

RIGOROUS in tracking their own learning progress.

SAVVY at recognizing great learning opportunities beyond the classroom.

PERCEPTIVE in their use of peer feedback as a critical resource for deepening their learning.

CREATIVE in selecting strong data and evidence in unexpected areas to understand and explain their own academic growth.

Read more about it here: https://my.wsu.edu/portal/page?_pageid=177,298566&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

This clearly shows that students are more than capable of reflective learning, and producing some very positive output.

Posted by Ray Tolley on the eportfolios-and-plts group

PebblePad Update Version 2.3.3

PebblePad has just released an update available for self hosting institutions to download and install.

There's quite a long list of fixes and enhancements, but I've listed a very brief summary here:

• Bug: Entering more detail about an activity in the experience asset without entering an
  activity title results in the details being lost
  Fix: It is now not possible to add more detail without entering an activity title
  
  
• Bug: Entering HTML into a comment produces an error
  Fix: HTML is now accepted and is displayed as plain text in a comment
  
  
• New: Added last viewed to rollover on recipient list
  Displays the last time a recipient has viewed an asset in the asset synopsis pad
  
  
• New: Support files other than index/default.htm(l) for websites
  This allows exports from Sakai to be imported as websites
  
  
• Bug: PebblePad stores the local path of uploaded files as the file name when uploading from
  some browsers, this causes error when exporting
  Fix: Local path information is removed during upload
  

The full 13 page PDF is available here: PebblePad Release Notes V2.3.3

PebblePad >> To Go >>

PebblePad have several new ways to get onto PebblePad on the move:

• Use PebblePDA the program designed to operate on Windows Mobile PDA’s and Smartphones
• Use Pebble SendR the java-based file upload tool compatible with most mobile devices
• Use Pebble Mobile to access a very simple version of PebblePad via the browser on any mobile device

I've had a go at the last option, which brings up a clean interface with simple HTML links that work. It doesn't look great, but the fact is when you're on the move you just want it to simple and quick.

I'm not able to test out the other options on my current phone, but when I get my hands on one I'll report back.

More details here: PebblePad Mobile

In response to Bill's question, I have an iPhone which isn't too accepting of files uploaded outside of Apple's iTunes. This would be possible with another 'smarth phone' or PDA.

Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing - Guidance Notes for Students
Pete Watton; Jane Collings; Jenny Moon
April 2001

This pack looks mainly at reflective writing for work-based/experience modules but can be applied across the board. Essentially it is an informative paper with some background theory on reflection and a few exercises with case studies. Overall the pack seems quite useful and manages to provide a good overview of reflection in a way that most students are able to understand. It makes use of material that students may relate to, such as a reference to reflection in Harry Potter:

‘Harry stared at the stone basin. The contents had returned to their original, silvery white state, swirling and rippling beneath his gaze.

“ What is it?” Harry asked shakily.

“This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “ I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.”

“Err,” said Harry who couldn’t truthfully say that he had ever felt anything of the sort.

“At these times” said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “ I use the Penseive. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into a basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.’ ( Rowling 2000)

Guidance on reflection

A great informative guidance sheet for students at Hull University (Chris Pinder) on reflection. Although it's geared towards a paper based portfolio the underlying principles are still the same. This may prove useful when developing our own guidance. It's simple and concise:

http://www.hull.ac.uk/studyadvice/LearningResources/StudyGuidesPDFs/reflectlr.pdf

Reflective learning video

Just found a really good video about reflective learning from a students perspective. It seems quite creative and gets the message across in 3mins! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWVte5Iwr28

Teaching & Learning

After my the second IP session with Glenn's group I had time to discuss portfolios with Glenn. We had an interesting discussion about the aim of ePoftfolios and difficulties I may encounter with teaching and learning aspect of reflection. The conversation addressed the priority of teaching and learning within a research led institution, and whether the current climate of economic uncertainty and reduction of research funding would lead to trend towards a focus teaching and learning.

One of interesting points made was that a lot academics have no formal teaching qualifications. This raises the question of formal teaching qualifications/training are required in order to teach a subject in HE; one could argue that being a specialist in a field is sufficient to teach it. Should academics be informed about teaching practises? Is the role of the academic in HE to teach or to deliver information and support the learning process?

I need to look at ways in reflective learning can be taught or supported. Essentially, this is what is required for ePortfolio use.

Trial run - flexibility of webfolios.

I have contacted Prem Kumar and Glenn regarding a trial run of PebblePad ePortfolio with the a group of IP students.

As mentioned in the IP session 2 post below the students generally produce low tech, but very effective presentations. I believe changing this element of the IP sessions would be counterproductive and students would simply get bogged down with 'having' to use technology for technology's sake.

I propose a solution where the students supplement their IP sessions by recording their learning, just as they do with the paper based portfolio forms handed out at the session, but electronically. The aim of this would be to create a record of all IP case studies over the duration of the course.

The students will be using the webfolio tool in PebblePad to record their learning and populate it over the year. The ability of being able to merge/add one webfolio into another means that students can create individual webfolios for each year specifically for IP and then merge them into one webfolio covering all years. In addition to this students can create an overall webfolio for the MBChB course and populate with the IP webfolio, the SSA webfolio as well as other webfolios created for other modules/subjects on the course.

The webfolio can then be exported into a HTML format at the end of the course for the student to keep for future reference. There may also be a opportunity for the Medical school to keep/archive a copy of each students work for future reference, audits etc.

The ability to embed one webfolio into another brings the opportunity to create a felxible eportfolio. As stated above, webfolios can be created for each module/subject on a yearly basis. These yearly webfolios can then be either drawn together as an overall webfolio for the module over the duration of the course, or be compiled to give an view of learning during an academic year for whole course, i.e. embedding webfolios from each module/subject for a particular year into MBChB 1 for example. As well as this, students would be able to create a custom eportfolio for a specific purpose; for example, bringing together webfolios from different years and modules to show a particular learning path/story.

Each of the boxes in the simple diagram below represents a webfolio. The idea is that students pull together specific webfolios into any particular sequence they require; like building with Lego bricks, you decide what parts you need for any particular model.