Using E-portfolios for active citizenship, lifelong learning and community resilience

1. Using E-portfolios for active citizenship, lifelong learning and community resilience Sharon Zivkovic, Roger Harris & Peter Willis Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work University of South Australia

2. Our argument • Community resilience - requires diverse community stakeholders collaborating on addressing community issues and opportunities • Requires a trans-disciplinary social learning approach – but difficult to implement • A more integrated and holistic approach to assessment of education for sustainability programs required

3. Tilbury et al. 2005: 38 • … competency-based training and industry-dominated training packages tend to …… fragment the knowledge and skills required for sustainability into compartmentalised, decontextualised and measurable units. … the current TP model may prove inadequate to engage stakeholders in the learning required for change towards sustainability. This would suggest that policymakers should not rely solely on Training Package reform to secure sustainability outcomes. Other integration and intervention strategies beyond Training Packages could be developed and explored.

4. Our approach • An e-portfolio system for active citizenship and community building • Community Capacity Builders (CCB) Community Leadership Program (CLP) • Participants: • acquire skills and knowledge for developing collaborative community capacity-building projects • bridge their projects to strategic plans of governments • participate in community governance activities • Project of state and national significance – fits many priorities

5. What are e-portfolios? • ‘dynamic, developmental spaces representing your professional "self" on the Web’ (PSU) • Challis (2005) highlights their features as: • selective and structured collections of information • gathered for specific purposes and showing/evidencing one’s accomplishments and growth which are • stored digitally and managed by appropriate software • developed by using appropriate multimedia and customarily within a web environment, and - retrieved from a website, or delivered by CD-ROM or DVD

6. Our research • Small seed grant from UniSA • Partnership with the City of Onkaparinga • Desktop research, and interviews with 12 participants trialling e-portfolios through 2012 • Research activities: • identifying the most appropriate software and host • developing a user guide • piloting the e-portfolio • surveying participants and City of Onkaparinga staff • reporting and disseminating the findings

7. 7 Community Capacity Builders’ Hats • In groups, select a community issue/opportunity to work on • Develop a trans-disciplinary strategy for addressing your issue or opportunity by looking at the issue through 7 perspectives: welfare reform; learning; health; business; sustainability; decision-making; collaborative planning • Identify what digital files and other features you could include in an e-Portfolio to showcase your proposed project to a potential stakeholder, or to use your work in a recognition of prior learning (RPL) process • Report back to the main group