I had an opportunity to present at our ePortfolio Symposium the other day and gave a brief presentation on what form ePortfolios could take if we were to support them from a lifelong learning perspective. I think one of the challenges for many ePortfolio implementations is that they are bound to individual organisations rather than learners. While some (many?) may offer access of some form after learners have left the organisation - does that access really benefit the learner in the best way possible?
To be successful from a lifelong perspective, ePortfolios must be ‘learner owned and learner controlled’. Implementing this has its own set of challenges. The presentation seeks to identify what some of those challenges may be such as policy, trust, who can or should provide such services, access, ownership, the short lifespan of many of the technologies we are using (much shorter than the length of our careers), standards and interoperability etc.

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To illustrate some of these points I look at a few services on the Web that are being used by learners to enable some form of eportfolio related services then have a look at a services model for ePortfolios based around a model originally put forward by the JISC in the UK.

technorati tags: ePortfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

From the Learning Futures Eiffel team blog here’s a nice introduction on standards to consider for ePortfolios. It gives a nice summary of the major ePortfolio specific standards to consider and importantly, mentions related specifications such as OpenSocial which I believe those interested in ePortfolios should start to at a minimum, become familiar with. From the article:

Today, even if few ePortfolio suppliers are engaged in the implementation of existing specifications, those doing it generally do so within the context of a specific community, using what is called application profiles, i.e. an adaptation of a base specification to the particular requirements of this community. This adaptation adds a level of complexity to the issue of interoperability, as different application profiles of the same base specification do not necessarily interoperate…

Our own experience in this area certainly backs this up. Some time ago, we developed an Employability Skills ePortfolio and used the IMS ePortfolio specification to build it. The IMS specification itself is (well) quite comprehensive to say the least which added some complexity to our work but in developing a profile specifically for employability skills, we in effect lost interoperability with other IMS ePortfolio conformant applications unless they used the same profile as us (highly unlikely).

In the past I have discussed the need for simple to implement standards and concentrated on specifications such as RSS, Atom and microformats. The Learning Futures article references hResume, an interesting format used by LinkedIn. Compare the definition for that with a heavy duty specification and see which one you would rather implement.

technorati tags: ePortfolio, standards,interoperability

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

As mentioned in a previous post, here is the presentation that I did for the AVETRA conference.

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And it’s a good way to test embedding a presentation from Slideshare.

Cheers,
Jerry.

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Yesterday I had the privilege of presenting at the AVETRA conference here in Adelaide. My talk was focussed on ePortfolio policy and interoperability. Over the last eighteen months or so I have been concerned about the lack of a systemic approach to ePortfolios as compared to other jurisdictions (in particular the EU and UK). Most ePortfolio services that I come across in Australia are organisational/institutional applications that are focussed on meeting the needs of the student/institution while they are in that institution. ePortfolios mean many things to different people and there are many definitions and uses for them but what we don’t have here in Australia is something that can be used to cater for lifelong learning.

In the presentation I gave I suggested that perhaps we should simply turn our attention to the Web to see what is available publicly that can be used as an ePortfolio service or set of services. There are many examples around (see Helen Barrett’s ePortfolio and instructions on how to construct one for yourself. Helen Barrett is a great source of information on ePortfolios for those who are interested. The JISC ePortfolio reference model (essentially a service oriented approach) is another interesting model worth exploring.

Of course there are a number of services that are not available on the Web at the moment that would be really useful for a lifelong ePortfolio. For example, accreditation verfication and authentication services are examples. It would be fantastic if I could aggregate my favourite blog services, photo/document sharing services into a spot on the Web that I have created and also include links to services that could validate my claims for awards (degrees, diplomas, certificates etc) that I have.

Hopefully the presentation or the paper that I submitted will be available shortly. It was nice to attend part of the conference at least and make some good contacts who appreciated what I was saying and who may hopefully use some of the ideas to make a difference.

Cheers,

Jerry.

technorati tags: e-portfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

At the recent e-portfolio symposium it was interesting to hear the range of opinions on how e-portfolio solutions should be constructed. We had the example of the experienced Web user who preferred to mash an e-portfolio together from existing web services (blogs, wikis, file and imaging services etc) whereas less experienced users preferred institutionally provided applications along with a much greater level of support (see here for more detail).
There has been much discussion on how long to keep institutionally provided e-portfolio content available, how much space to provide etc. A number of organisations placed no limit on the time period that the content would be available to the users but there are no guarantees. During the symposium there seemed to be a reasonable amount of support for a systemically provided solution that could draw on services from around the Web. The main concern, in terms of access to a person’s e-portfolio seemed to be around the longevity of the service. What happens though, if someone hijacks your identity and/or otherwise causes your provider to remove you from the system as recently discussed by danah boyd? How can you recover your identity/e-portfolio once you have re-established your credentials etc? In an e-portfolio that draws upon multiple services this could get quite interesting, depending on where your ‘identity crisis’ is located (ie with one or more e-portfolio based services). There is something to consider here for both e-portfolio providers (using multiple services) and e-portfolio users.

technorati tags: e-portfolio,
identity

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

In the spirit of a certain type of eportfolio, here are some reflections on day 2 of QUT’s ‘Australian ePortfolio Symposium‘. Day 2 was the only day I was able to attend which is a bit unfortunate as my perspective can only be based on my interpretations of that day in the program. What was really interesting was the panel session where a number of brave ‘eportfolio users’ were invited to give their thoughts on eportfolios and what is needed for them to be successful.

A bit of background first. There seems to be growing agreement from a number of eportfolio system owners and some users (not so sure about vendors as I haven’t personally heard any comment on this) that the idea of monolithic eportfolio applications (software offerings that do everything eportfolio that you need) is outdated and we need to consider a service oriented approach. This builds on the ideas being put forwards by projects/groups such as the JISC eportfolio reference model and the e-Framework service oriented approach. This is a notion that I support and its not hard to find a number of scenarios where this would work really well.
Back to the symposium, there was quite a bit of discussion over the merits of system provided or learner owned eportfolios. The user panel provided some interesting perspectives on this. Firstly, it was very clear that there are a number of perspectives to consider. A wide range of opinions was provided from what was a very small number of users (five). The users varied in their experiences of eportfolios ranging from very little experience through to very experienced.

My personal impressions were that the lesser experienced users saw some value in institutionally provided eportfolios while the most experienced user saw very little value in them and preferred to select her own tools from the Web. Having said that though, she recognised the need for some sort of framework for eportfolios as not all users would be in a position to establish their own Web presence in such an articulate, well formed manner. There was a view that only companies such as Google could afford the investment required to develop and provide rich ‘eportfolio’ services. To me this reasoning was quite flawed. True, it takes a lot of investment in either time or money to develop new types of services but when we looked at the services being asked for, it seemed to boil down to relatively mundane Web 2.0 style services such as file sharing, blogging, wiki etc. Not much investment at all is required to mash these sort of services together, whether deployed locally or using services that exist elsewhere on the Web. While some organisations do struggle with filespace issues there are alternatives available for those that are willing to think a bit more imaginatively.

Clearly though, there is a strong sense of drawing on this service oriented approach to bring in the ‘best’ services that are available from the Web and apply them in a manner that suits eportfolio functionality and their users.

The notion that all ‘younger’ students are tech savvy and can apply technologies in different ways that enhance learning is also flawed. A view that I have heard expressed before is ‘just because I am good at using my thumbs to text and know how to use a phone in many ways, thats only to communicate with my friends - don’t expect me to understand how to apply it or any other technology to get better at learning’. I have seen technologists and educators really struggle with how to improve learning through technology so having high expectations of learners to do the same seems a little unfair.

Getting back to the forum, it was clear that users wanted and needed more support if they were going to really embrace and exploit the potential in eportfolios.

Another really interesting perspective raised by one of the users, who is involved now in recruiting, is to consider the requirements of HR recruiters and employers. I think to some extent this can easily be overlooked. In a number of public forums that I have attended on eportfolios, many of the speakers/contributors, while not quite at the ‘lunatic fringe’, are very passionate about their views and so we find much of the debate occurring on what eportfolios should be. The use of them for reflective thinking, personal story, or journey telling often occupies more time than assisting in transitions etc. While reflection and goal setting can be very important elements of an eportfolio, there are many other, valid uses too.

The notion of learner owned is very important, and strongly supported, identifying the user as learner, not student, or even better, author, really demonstrates where the thinking is around eportfolios. We do need to consider other users as well though. When I think of books, authors are important but they have very little value without readers and readers tend to ultimately determine the value of the books. So, while there are some very important introspective elements of eportfolios such as reflecting and planning, we do need to consider potentially much larger audiences if we start to think about those eportfolios that will be used to support transitions (getting a job, moving from one educational environment to another etc). These audiences will have have quite specific requirements and in the case of HR recruiters, may not even be human (that’s not meant to be a slur on recruiters, just that computers can be used to sift through vast amounts of electronic information to do some sort of shortlisting/culling of applications).

So, overlaying these basic services of collecting and organising content, which many gerneric Web 2.0 style services do very well, there needs to be some emphasis applied to presentation of content within specific audience contexts, and this is an area where simply mashing together public generic services falls short at the moment. We have some interesting ways of formatting parts of this content in HR-XML which may satisfy some recruiters or their computers but there is still a way to go. In the symposium we recognised challenges faced around context, language, vocabularies, ontologies etc and efforts made around standardisation and how incredibly difficult that is. Early attempts were too specifc and granular, which made them incredibly hard to implement. Organisations such as IMS are looking at having another go at their eportfolio specification so I look forward to see what happens there.

In the meantime, social networking services are combining with recruiters so maybe we can just sit back and continue to debate what an eportfolio is while the rest of the world gets on with it;)

technorati tags: eportfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

An interesting service from myspace and career one, myspacejobs combines the might of the social networking space with the “country’s fastest growing employment site”. This article from adelaidenow suggests the importance of networking in building a career. Myspace makes a great eportfolio service and no doubt that is what many people around the world are using it for. As it continues to gather momentum we in the education space will continue to debate “really important” policy matters such as ‘how much space should we let them have, or how long should we keep the information, what rights shall we give them etc. Meanwhile all such notions are rapidly becoming irrelevant to anyone seeking a space to promote themselves and their abilities. Of course we can always point to negative uses of myspace and provide gems of advice such as ‘do you really want your potential employer to see pictures you put up of last weeks party etc’.
Feeling cynical today!

technorati tags: eportfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

In an earlier post I asked whether Google could be my ePortfolio. While I can find out quite a bit about me and other people who share my name using a Google search, its not really an ePortfolio application (then again, what is?).

As a participant in a number of social networking services, I have content about me in potentially many of them that would be useful for inclusion into some form of ePortfolio. One of the frustrations that I have is how to combine content from a number of places that I would find useful into some sort of personal portfolio platform. Many services have their own interfaces that are inconsistent with others. Each service that I want to interact with is accessed in a different manner.

Now along comes OpenSocial from Google. OpenSocial specifies a common set of interfaces for accessing social networking applications. The number of services that are listed as committed to it is impressive. Services such as LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo, imeem, slide, MySpace to name a few are all in there. Each of these services could provide an interesting component of my ePortfolio. Having a common set of interfaces should simplify the task of developing an aggregate platform for ePortfolios. Combining this with institutional or systemic ePortfolio implementations would be really useful.

technorati tags: Google, ePortfolio,OpenSocial

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

Interesting post from Tim Hand got me to thinking about this one. From Tim’s perspective, the standards arena seems to have stalled a bit (if I’m reading correctly). When compared to what’s happening in Web 2.0 with new services and technologies just powering ahead. Try to keep up with what’s happening in the world of mashups alone and it’s staggering. There is interoperability (of a kind) everywhere. Developers are connecting up all sorts of apps, data sources etc to deliver new, innovative services. In doing this they are not dependent on cumbersome, complex standards. We recently did some research on standards in the area of ePortfolios and one of the major findings from that was the impact that Web 2.0 was having in that area. It was hard to find ePortfolio implementations (other than vendor software) that were using standards such as IMS ePortfolio but many of the implementers were interested in using RSS and other lightweight specifications in their implementations. They could easily consume content from other sources and also publish/syndicate their content very easily. Simple specs and simple services enable them to include functions from other sites into their ePortfolios (eg using Flickr to hold images of your work). Students also saw services such as myspace and Facebook as better places for them to have their ePortfolio (there were some interesting variations on this though).
So what does this mean for the formal world of standards and specifications. The very nature of the standards process is a slow one. A great deal of work goes into the development of a standard/specification which involves development work, collaboration, reviews, (public) comment, ratification and so on, all of which takes time. Time unfortunately is not ‘Standards’ best friend in the frenetic, fast pace of the Web 2.0 world. As the rate of change increases in both speed and sheer number of new services, it seems to me that the slow paced standards process faces a real challenge to keep up.

technorati tags: standards, Web 2.0,ePortfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back

ePortfolios have been around for a long time now and the range and diversity of ePortfolio implementations is, well, staggering. There are a lot of commercial software offerings and most eLearning platforms seem to have a portfolio component. Large numbers of schools, training organisations and higher education organisations have developed their own and some of the larger ones have multiple eportfolio implementations. Some of these are great, particularly while you are engaged with that institution. Some allow you access to your/their portfolio (of you) for a long time after you leave, although who actually owns ‘your’ portfolio could be problematic.

It could be, and is often, argued that many of these ‘formal’ eportfolios do not meet all the requirements of their user base. Take a look at the rich information hundreds of thousands of Internet users are pouring into social networking services daily. Many Internet users would be quite comfortable with the notion that their myspace presence or similar service serves them well as their ePortfolio. Blogs make excellent (components of) eportfolios. Linked to your FLickr account, Facebook and dozens of other Web 2.0 services, you can create a very compelling Eportfolio of yourself. Which of these services should you or could you use? You might be able to find out information about me through Facebook, pageflakes, Windows Live spaces, several personal blogs, flickr, our company blog, Zoominfo, maybe even a myspace account, my EuroPass resume, and any one of dozens of Web 2.0 services I have reviewed over the last 12 months or so. None of these presences have been populated by me to serve as an ePortfolio but it is entirely reasonable that they could have.
Some services, such as ZoomInfo aren’t even maintained by me and are at best, very incomplete, at worst, wildly inaccurate. If I do a ‘vanity’ search on Google, I can find references to me on other services too, along with papers, presentations that I have delivered at conferences and all sorts of other ‘portfolio’ related information. Fortunately (?) for me, I have a relatively uncommon name. However, what if my name were ‘John Smith’, a reasonably common Western name. Trying to sift through Internet content that is ‘me’ would be a nightmare - even coupled with location and time based information it could still be very difficult.
Another problem for me is that I only seem to have existed for a few years - at least on the Internet. For those of us young enough to have grown up in the Internet era this may not be so much of a problem but many of us have done some pretty interesting stuff, that would be valuable for potential employers to know about, a long time before we started publishing it on the Web. I guess that is just another illustration of the radical change we are undergoing as a result of the Web - some of us existed prior to this change as well as existing during it.
For a portfolio service to be valuable to me, I need to be able to store, or refer/link to all sorts of content that may reside locally or on a wide variety of services. I need to be confident that the content will be available and accessible for a long period of time. I would like to present this content, or parts of it, in any number of formats/layouts to different audiences at different periods of time. It is about me so I would like to have some naive notion that I have a semblance of control over what it contains, how it looks, who can see different parts of it and when. Importantly, I would also like to refer to authenticated information about my achievements from time to time. An example would be proof that I completed a degree at a specific University. Of course, this is just one component of an eportfolio. In addition to providing evidence, artefacts, etc, I may also like to use it as a learning tool which means I would like a range of other services to be aggregated, or available at a single place of my convenience using whatever device I feel like at whatever time. I may like to reflect on what I am learning and other experiences or use my portfolio for planning too. This brings to mind a number of tools that I am using at the moment with Google’s increasingly large range of services.
So where does this leave me. To date I have a number of great services that I would like to incorporate into my ePortfolio space but I would also love to be able to link in authenticated, validated content from education/training organisations as proof of some of my achievements.

Cheers.

technorati tags: ePortfolio

Original post by jleeson and software by Elliott Back