E-Portfolio Watch

An eportfolio offers a rich reflective tutor/student feedback loop, which promotes effective learning. The e-portfolio continues to grab the attention of many academics in HE, FE, and Work Based Learning (WBL).  Our recent webinar on WBL¹, which we ran with Stanford University covers this use of eportoflios in some depth. Their  community of practice offers a wealth of useful resources².  Complimenting an existing VLE with an individual learning plan³ (ILP), or adding a link from VLE course to a personal e-portoflio (Mahoodle⁴), are now being recognised as effective practice.  Susi Peacock’s e-portfolio page⁵ at Queen Margarets University, reinforces the need to plan, pilot, and offer a contuining suite of support mechanisms to all stakeholders. This level of support will help to ensure a healthy adoption of e-portfolios.   E-portfolios offer efficient communication channels personalised to the learner needs, that no other “platform” has managed to crack. JISC continues to update the online infokit⁶ on effective practice with e-portfolios, by adding new case studies. See also our comprehensive wiki page on the subject⁷.

Useful links:

1. http://bit.ly/work-based-folios
2. http://epac.pbworks.com/
3. http://moodle.ulcc.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=107
4. http://tdm.info/train/mahoodle.html
5. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/eportfolio/index.htm
6. http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/e-portfolios
7. http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/index.php/Eportfolios

E-Learning lessons from the private sector

My attendance at the biggest UK coporate e-learning event earlier this year promised to be full of pragmatic tips and inside advice from companies¹ still suffering from recessional induced cuts in training² budgets.  What I discovered was a refreshing undercurrent, whereby companies are adopting new technologies, such as; Huddle³ and blogs⁴, to create internal knowledge sharing communites. These types of innovative approaches e.g.Dare2Share⁵, were spreading like a viral ad, as most in the UK are reappraising their underacheiving Learning Management Systems (LMS), or adding (free) Web 2.0 tools into the mix.  Companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers were making significant training savings using live webinar tools⁶ such as Adobe Conenct, or Elluminate.  Technolgoy is being used to save money, improve both business and training effiencies, but it’s needed a recession to literally force this! BECta⁷ in conjunction with the Towards Maturity project⁸ have released two new related reports on Work Based Learning. They both stress the importance of measuring impact⁹ and sharing effective practice¹⁰ to help us all implement and embed ILT effectively.

Useful links:

1. http://www.elearningage.co.uk/
2. http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/
3. http://www.huddle.net/
4. http://wordpress.org/
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtVYkEdGtfo
6. http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/index.php/Synchronous_webcasting_tools
7. http://www.nextgenerationlearning.org.uk/
8. http://www.towardsmaturity.org/article/2009/09/02/what-every-ld-professional-needs-know-about-e-lear/
9. http://www.towardsmaturity.org/article/2009/09/28/towards-maturity-efficiency-indicator/
10. http://www.towardsmaturity.org/article/2009/09/12/evidence-change/

1. 

Creating an ePortfolio with Wikispaces

This is how to do it. Nice & easy. Web 2.0 = PLE. Why pay more, when the web does it for free. And note this is not using any HTML/scripting, it's just editing, copy , paste, insert, link. No more difficult than using a word processor. Neat solution to creating a simple e-folio :oD.. 


I tried the same with my CMALT folio recently using the now defunct Google pages.

HE-dupunks

The blurb of this book caught my eye, initially sounded like a rant to begin with, but looks like a useful read into the future of connected learning via the internetwork. 
"The future lies in personal learning networks and paths, learning that blends experiential and digital approaches, and free and open-source educational models. Increasingly, you will decide what, when, where, and with whom you want to learn, and you will learn by doing. The university is the cathedral of modernity and rationality, and with our whole civilization in crisis, we are poised on the brink of a new Reformation."



DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education

Office Add-in for Moodle

 Just stumbled across this... what a fab idea? Does this mean we can now author some simple  (interactive)  learning objects (i.e. drag & drop) in MS Office & bang them directly up to Moodle?  Or is that a bad idea? Puts the terminology "rapid elearning" in a whole new light :OD

The Microsoft Education Labs team have just launched the Office Add-in for Moodle (or should it be the Moodle Add-in for Office?). This launch builds upon the success of the availability of the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in for Moodle which launched last July.  The idea behind the add-in is simple. Now, when you got to Open or Save a file in Office 2003 or 2007, you can select to ‘Open from Moodle’ or ‘Save to Moodle’ directly. This makes it easier for your users to use Moodle natively, and hopefully will encourage them to make better use of your Moodle installation. (If you have a SharePoint-based learning platform, you get similar functionality in Office 2010) The “Office Add-in for Moodle” Uploading files to Moodle is now much easier.  The Office Add-in for Moodle (OAM) is an add-in for Microsoft Office (versions 2003 and 2007) that allows teachers to open and save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents to a Moodle website. Today, teachers who use Office and Moodle have to switch back and forth between their web browser and Office applications.  With the OAM, teachers can create, open, edit, and save Moodle documents from within the Office applications.  You no longer need to use your web browser when working with Office documents stored in Moodle. So what do you need in order to start using the add-in?  OAM does not require anything to be installed on the Moodle server (note we only tested against Moodle versions 1.8-1.9).  Anyone who is the teacher or owner of a Moodle course can install the add-in and access their documents.  Once installed, the add-in adds two menu items to your File menu (Office 2003) or the Office Button menu: Open from Moodle and Save to Moodle.  In order to browse course files on your Moodle you will need to first tell the add-in the address of your Moodle and the credentials you use to log in.  Once added you can view the list of courses you are enrolled in.  Naturally, students and others can access the content directly from Moodle as they normally would. We focused on teachers and content specialists first, since we know most documents posted to Moodles come from teachers. We’ve gotten some requests already about adding support for students and assignments, but we want to hear from you.  So check it out, and let the EducationLabs team know what you think and if there’s anything you want them to work on.  In order to get this beta tool in your hands right away and to get feedback before this gets fully locked down, we decided to roll this out before embarking on synchronization with other add-ins and other Moodle functionality.  It’s worth browsing on the Education Labs site for other projects recently released www.educationlabs.com Find out more about, and download, the free Moodle add-in Read other posts on Moodle on this blog

View article...

Helen Talks to TED

Helen Barrett talks about eportfolios.  Geoff Rebbeck from Thanet College is quoted in this.  Well done Geoff, your ideas are an inspiration to us all - even to Helen Barrett the spiritual mother of all 'folios!







Meanwhile on a vaguely related ESCalate article; Tracy Johnson, a lecturer in study skills and a qualified personal coach, asks if Personal Development Planning can fit easily into the academic curriculum or whether it resides more comfortably within the employability agenda.

Good CoP

Free book :OD

In 2009 the Australian ePortfolio Project < http://www.eportfoliopractice.qut.edu.au/ > conducted a series of semi structured interviews from 14 online communities across the globe.  This research project was designed to elicit a picture of the types and methods of engagement afforded to these "virtual" eportfolio communities of practice (CoP).  RSC East & West Midlands very own virtual eportfolio CoP < http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rscmeg?hl=en > was discussed in terms of platform types, level of management/ facilitation, and participation engagement.

This type of facilitating and supporting subject specific "forums" either F2F, online, or both, has long been a strength of the JISC  Regional Support Centres, and we were merely continuing the good work already being carried out across the UK by all RSC's.  The very nature of the online domain to support embryonic CoPs presents many new challenges, in terms of maintaining a manageable balance between facilitation, engagement by its members, and choice of platform. We were influenced by local successful CoPs, specifically as the elearning Best Practice run by Helen Walmsley(former RSC member),   http://learning.staffs.ac.uk/moodle/login/index.php  .

This collaborative venture between myself & Ben Williams (RSC East Midlands) also prove that cross RSC projects are essential, by reaping the benefits of sharing effective practice both internally and externally. It is hoped that others may learn from our experiences when considering supporting similar CoPs in their own areas.

See also our wiki page that covers all things eportoflio , plus the excellent EPAC - USA based wiki pages - my original inspiration the http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/e-portfolios

While I'm on the subject of eportfolios, I saw a demo of in-folio the other day.  It's been funded by JISC Techdis and developed (by the RIX centre)with UK specialist Colleges. I was impressed at it's ease of use and straight forward interface. Two years in the making, it goes from strength to strength, and was mentioned that it will be released as Open Source.

They have even developed an innovative image based log in function to assist those who cannot type. This project alone looks like it has potential to made logins easier for many (to eliminate the bane of multiple passwords) : http://www.clippi.com/where.php