Insights into electronic portfolio interoperability

1. Insights into electronic portfolio interoperability Simon Grant Independent consultant Information Strategists EDEN 2005 Annual Conference, 20.-23.6.2005, Helsinki, Finland

2. Interoperability • If e-portfolio systems are to be used for lifelong learning, they should interoperate • Several specifications have been suggested • How can an e-portfolio system be built or made to be interoperable?

3. Outline agenda menu • Do the definitions make sense? • Do we share understanding of the items? • What is interoperability? • How items are represented by specs • Europass instruments • E-portfolio systems architecture • Interoperable skills and competences

4. E-portfolio items (1) • Achievements • qualifications; certificates; awards; prizes; etc. • Products • works; things created, tended, managed • Competencies (by whatever name) • knowledge; skills; attitudes • achievements/products can be evidence

5. E-portfolio items (2) • Goals • a sense of direction as in action planning • Activities • past: as record to present and reflect on • future planned: as part of action planning • Evaluations (formal) • of activities or products

6. E-portfolio items (3) • Interests • what personally motivates, including values • Assertions • by self or others, testimonials, free format evaluation by others • Reflections • as part of PDP; self-evaluation

7. E-portfolio items (4) • Organisations (reference) • point of reference for several things • Affiliations • details of relationship with organisations • Other people of significance (reference) • mentors; friends; people that wrote assertions

8. E-portfolio items (5) • Identification • names, addresses, photos, date of birth… • Relationships • many highly significant between items • metadata • not an item in itself, but a record of: rights over any item; dates of creation, revision

9. E-portfolio items review • Is there anything that doesn’t fit in those? • Do those categories distinguish properly? • between things of different form/structure • How do these relate to lifelong learning?

10. What is interoperability? • Portability of e-portfolio records; OR • Different systems concurrently offering and using related services • To be useful, interoperability specifications must be based on real practice • What are your scenarios? • What services are implied?

11. Semantic interoperability • Can the item of information in one context be meaningfully interpreted in another? • think of particular PDP scenarios… • Role of type vocabularies • to distinguish semantically different things with the same or similar structure • Could items with types form a sufficient basis for making useful distinctions?

12. Current specifications • IMS LIP • 2001: large and complex • UKLeaP (BS 8788) • 2004/5 attempting to make LIP usable • IMS ePortfolio • draft 2004, final 2005 • HR-XML

13. What do we want of a standard? • Various trade-offs • Simple – complex • XML – RDF • well-defined – flexible • monolithic – segmented (“speclets”) • early (untested) – late (tested) • Development / revision: easy or hard?

14. Europass instruments • http://europass.cedefop.eu.int/ • Europass CV • Europass Diploma Supplement • (Certificate Supplement is not personal) • Europass Language Passport • Europass Mobility

15. Europass issues • Europass representation challenges • Who is working with Europass instruments? • How and why? • May there be a future need to generate the Europass instruments from an e-portfolio system?

16. E-portfolio systems architecture • Distributed nature of item storage • items held by originating institutions? • Need for aggregation/distribution • future concept “PIADS”: personal information aggregation and distribution service • See WS4RL • http://www.elframework.org/projects/ws4rl

17. Learning design & materials repository service 1 Personal Development Planning Web Service 2 3 4 5 6 7 Educator Learner Personal Learning Environment Personal Information Aggregation & Distribution Service database 8 database 9 database Key: WS call other (may be WS) WS return WS4RL diagram

18. Skills interoperability • What happens when institutions describe skills in different ways? • evidence here does not connect over there • But uniform standards not feasible • Need a “meta-framework” for skills • enable relationships across frameworks • http://www.elframework.org/projects/spws

19. higher-level concept 1 for body 1 (“C”) higher-level concept 1 for body 2 (“C”) Is Part Of Operationalises skill iv as assessed etc. in body 1 (“EO”) i iii iv ii v skill iv as assessed etc. in body 2 (“EO”) vi vii Medium- or low-level shared skill concepts (“C”) SPWS diagram

20. Concluding comments? • Is interoperability feasible now, or when? • Transfer or concurrent use? • What stands in its way? • Is the fundamental approach sound? • Or is there a better way? • Can you take this forward?