Desire2Learn ePortfolio

Joehn Pallisetr is a UK based teacher who is enthusiastic about e-Portfolios. He blogs now on a group he has set up on Google. If you are interetsted in e-portfolios I recommend that you join.

We wanted to provide students with more appropriate ways to store andpresent evidence of their learning, achievements and planning; we developed and introduced ePortfolios.

We soon recognised that although the ePortfolio itself was really useful, it was the ePortfolio process that was even more valuable.

I came at things from a Personal Development Planning angle and this has influenced my thinking on ePortfolios.

So why have I rambled on?  Simply to encourage people to interpret the‘P’ in ILP, as ‘Process’.

In the right environment the social networking potential of the learning landscape and eportfolio-related tools are features that facilitate and enhance the making of connections and the linking together of people, ideas, resources and learning… (pp. 30)

here is certainly a lot more worthwhile reading in the full handbook which contains contributions from over 100 of the world’s leading experts.

Now Microsoft has added a set of tools, described in detail here, to support use by the scientific community.

It includes a virtual research environment (VRE) to allow research teams to share data, an authoring tool to capture metadata during the authoring process, a hosted e-journal service, a repository

In many ways, the site is a standard Web video portal. What's unique is that the Flash-based video files have an extra interactive layer that lets viewers insert text on top of any clip as easily as if they were typing an instant message, and it displays that comment whenever someone else loads the video.

In order to allow this kind of collaboration, Alex and the guys at Soundcloud could have used a standard player and tossed a comment stream below it. Instead they decided to expand the player and allow commenters to add notes directly inside on the waveform itself. The result is pretty cool. People can post tracks and receive a flurry of comments attached directly to the waves.

The player spans the full width of the screen, so it’s easier to set the playhead at the exact spot you want. Commentor’s avatars appear in the bottom of the player, and their comments pop up on hover.

Instructors start the process by defining assignments for their classes and “registering” them with the program

The student works the assignment and produces a solution in any number of media and venues, which might include the student’s ePortfolio (we define ePortfolio broadly)

The student combines their work with the program’s rubric (in a survey format)

This will give every student the opportunity to store files, create learning groups with forums and dicussions, create multiple blogs, and even create their own “learning dashboard” similar to netvibes or pageflakes.

I have no misconceptions that this will probably end up getting a small handful of students in trouble.

The new release expands integration with the Angel Learning Management Suite and includes new usability features

ANGEL ePortfolio 2.1 is even easier to use

Tight integration with the ANGEL Learning Management Suite (LMS) enables instructors to implement ePortfolio activities and assessment from within a course

provides students enhanced usability

We would like to see an environment that encourages e-portfolio practices, and that could be some government support in understanding the inter-operability issue

However, there remain concerns over the degree to which "reflective" work in an e-portfolio is assessable. There also are fears that such portfolios could be vulnerable to "cut and paste" plagiarism and invented narratives and reflections. Privacy is another issue, raising questions over whether assessors should have access to the entire e-portfolio and who owns it once a student graduates.

An e-portfolio is a process as well as a tool to capture different competencies and capacities

I have developed a design theory on how to build social portfolio software.

A social portfolio should:

1. Support student ownership
2. Enhance peer learning
3. Focus on ease of use

What makes Mahara different from other ePortfolio systems is that you control which items and what information (Artefacts) within your portfolio other users see.

Learner control over content access would be one of my essential criteria in selecting an e-portfolio system.

Create ePortfolios with the Amazing Acrobat 9

When we think of a traditional portfolio used in education, we may think of a collection of related papers, photos, pamphlets, or brochures organized in a folder or binder. Perhaps it’s a collection of materials that we compile over time to reflect progress and achievement. Now imagine if we add an electronic spin to the traditional definition and focus on the idea of a PDF portfolio; one that you could use to easily weave content together in a portable file format to use, share, and print whatever you need when you need it. That is the essence of the Acrobat portfolio

In traditional electronic portfolios an author is usually restricted to a one-size-fits all approach. This may be an HTML, PowerPoint, or MS Word style portfolio, each with its own features and limitations.

Imagine being able to search and having one of those search returns be a tag within a video that takes you right to that context within a longer sequence.

So a tagged section in essence IS chunking the videos. But in the case of Vimeo it's user chunked.

Tagging also makes possible a true mash-up. If I am easily able to tag a section of a video, reference it externally and pull that stream through some type of API on call / on cue -- wow.

Networks within academia will become embedded into the applications delivered from academia.

Just as Facebook grew though the academic community out to the masses, there will be a class of applications, with detailed knowledge of the needs of education, hosted within Universities, supporting teaching and learning and research, but integrating with distributed services from applications all over the internet.

The point is that people will be using ePortfolios for their own purposes.
It’s not just something that they’ll be told to use in a formal
educational setting.

So, young people
will choose to use ePortfolios in their leisure time; to use them for fun. Which
you would almost never do with a CMS—I suspect almost no one chooses to
use a course management system on their own time for fun.

The more engaged,
the more time on task, the more that a person puts into something, the more
they learn—this g'es along with all the data I’ve seen over the
years.

There are times when something comes along that everyone
talks about, something that really changes things. ePortfolios, of course, is
one of those things, but it’s different in its very nature.

What’s
happening with universities in this knowledge age is that the boundaries between
the university and the rest of the world have pretty much dissolved. We are
now a learning culture, or a knowledge culture.

ePortfolios are not a higher education application. It’s not a K-12 application.
It’s a cultural application.

In a recent conversation with the lead developer of Desire2Learn's new ePortfolio system (www.desire2learn.com), I was pleased to hear that the system, which offers infinite management combinations for content and permissions, can also present the user (student or faculty member) with ratcheted-down options and therefore a simpler interface. A user can be set up to use just a minimal essential set of options.

Users still may not use Desire2Learn's ePortfolio system while they sit on a deck overlooking the water, but they at least have the option of a lower threshold for using it for their academic work.

Is the edupunk ideology saying that the use of social media in commercial learning management systems is an assault on the very philosophy of learning 2.0?

Ideologies shouldn’t be rigid should they? Rather they should be adapted and used in pragmatic ways don’t you think? If you’re a trainer embracing learning 2.0, who gives a rats ass where it lives.

If you have a population of learners who have already adopted tools (such as blogging and social bookmarking) for themselves that are different than the corporate tool (the LMS) do you ask them to move?

If your population has not adopted a tool yet, do you have a responsibility to the individual to show them tools that can live beyond their engagement at the company?