ePorfolio pilot study & beyond

1. ePorfolio pilot study & beyond Alfredo Gaitan, Rob Manton & Maja Jankowska (CETL) “a vehicle for a learning journey through life” “an additional personal marketing tool” (Owen & Hastings, 2006)

2. Background • Institution wedded to Blackboard • Decision taken 2006 to use Blackboard based ePorfolio

3. Background • Institution wedded to Blackboard • Decision taken 2006 to use Blackboard based ePorfolio

4. Study details • Psychology • 17 2nd year volunteers (all female) • Linked to personal tutor scheme. • Assessed formatively • Computing • 100+ 2nd year students on PDP module • Required to submit assessment using ePortfolio for PDP module.

5. The process 2006-7 * Open to all Level 2 students. Computing Psychology

6. Survey 1 (online): Inventory of Academic/PDP practices & use of electronic resources 21 practices

7. Sample (Survey 1)

8. General picture from Survey 1: Table 1. Frequency of types of PDP practices that can be supported by the Content Collection and eportfolio that are part of BREO (Pre-pilot). 1=Never, 2= Once or twice, 3=Rarely, 4=Often, 5=Very frequently

9. General picture from Survey 1 Table 2. Importance attached to PDP practices that can be supported by the Content Collection and eportfolio that are part of BREO grouped by types. 1= not important at all, 2= important, 3 = neutral, 4= important, 5=very important

10. Specific results (example) Figure 1. Students recording their learning experiences

11. Focus groups 1 & 2 Survey 2(brief summary) • Issues • Blogging tools not yet effective • Security • Insufficient IT skills (e.g. images) • Support and help • Time required • Differences between users • Challenges (for tutors and students) • Features (mostly beneficial), also in interviews • Access anywhere • Archiving (Paperless, safety) • Ease of use (mixed) – ‘gets easier after a while’ • Career • PD (reflection) • Self-presentation/sharing

12. THEMES: Self Discovering interests Developing Self 2. Reflection Descriptive/ evaluative Ongoing/ summary reflection (when) Concurrent (in task)/ subsequent (outside task and tool) (where) Experience (interviews)

13. Experience (interviews) 3. Attitude to PDP: from perceiving it as intimidating towards liking it 4. Career • produce CV, online, flexible CV • anticipating future (awareness of employment requirements) 5. Publish • ‘self presentation’ • to show I’ve done it • to apply for a job, show at interview, send to potential employers

14. Experience (interviews) 6. Share • yes/ no • Sharing technical knowledge • Getting ideas from others (design and structure) • Giving and receiving guidance

15. Different users = different levels of engagement • Kate: didn’t understand it ‘(…) I’m doing my work as normal and (…) as a word document’ • Martha: didn’t realise the potential so haven’t done much with it • Mia: did it at the last minute because I had to • Bob: ‘Not for me – for them younger, inexperienced students’ • Bill: I’m doing what I’ve been told to do • Alice: good only for storage • Lou (mature student): ‘I’m not very IT literate so I’m quite overwhelmed by the whole technology’’ • Tom: easy, simple, saves time • Lee, Ben : good for career purposes, online CV • Ken, Tim: good for PDP • Ina, Jo: exploration and fun finding the way

16. Method of assessment • Computing • Submission of reflective summary to Turnitin Grademark system for online feedback and marking

17. Method of assessment • Psychology • Formative feedback based on given criteria

18. The Good… Content collection/ web folder Integration with VLE Can be extended with custom HTML Good tools to organize received portfolios into folders ..The Bad and the Ugly Poor blog support Image handling confusing Comments only added at portfolio level Permissions problems mean some content not available Blackboard based ePortfolio

19. Changes planned for 2007-8 • Introduce in level one (this is the way we do PDP – make it a habit) • Encourage two way conversation between tutor and student (encourage tutors to engage via blogs) • Encourage use of multimedia elements (or else why bother to do it this way?) – links to video, audio • Use to support dissertation students – store work in progress and facilitate contact with supervisor

20. What actually happened • ~20% of submitted portfolios not fully accessible due to permissions fault • We ended up using blogs to facilitate the two way conversation (worked pretty well, comments added after each article – not possible in ePortfolio) • We used blogs for supporting dissertation students

21. Changes for 2008-9 • Find ways of gathering and storing assessments and feedback (e.g. electronic submissions, Turnitin Grademark). • Change to Pebblepad!

22. The Good… Much better blog support Intuitive to create after initial confusion over naming Good easy to use design choices The Bad and the Ugly Difficulty loading images Not clear how to manage received portfolios (gateways?) HTML customization tricky Pebblepad based ePortfolio

23. Questions????