Can an e-portfolio really help?

I have been Chair of Governors at a large High School for the past five years. One of the initiatives we have introduced is for Governors to have direct access with departments in the school. This week I had the priviledge of listening to an revealing discussion between two of the more experienced teachers in one department. They have been responsible for helping develop study and thinking skills across the school. Their reflection was that having done this for a couple of years, they prehaps had disadvantaged their students because whilst they had really become engaged in learning, they may have unwittingly walked out the classroom without the information they needed for their exam.

There were real echoes here with the e-portfolio debate, around the question of just how useful they really are. Is an e-portfolio something that encourages individuals to discover and capture using multi media a variety of learning experiences or is it a means for individual's learning to be assessed for a specific purpose.

Of course there had can be elements of both however if an e-portfolio is being used for assessment there has to be a real sense that records should be opened to others for external scrutiny. There are of course questions about how this is done, but in all the systems we have designed there is always the fundamental pedagogical question that needs to be addressed, which is who owns the portfolio. If it is fully owned by the individual then how reliable is the assessment?

I can imagine the cries for those that espouse the benefits of livelong learning portfolios who will argue the importance of holding your learning documents in one place. However how many of us really need this and furthermore when do we actiually look at work we created in our various historical learning episodes.

If you don't face this fundamental question of ownership then e-portfolios creators will be constantly haunted by the So What question. Is this all about just creating a more interesting storing space than an attic.

We are very clear e-portfolios are there for a purpose. To actively support people with their learning journeys through the provision of interactive learning plans; an easy means to gather evidence and where required to put permissions in place for others to interact with the portfolio.

If they are not we might be reflecting like the teachers about whether we have actually missed the point. Like it or not examinations and assessments exist and well designed e-portfolios can help.

What's the future for m-learning in the next 18 months

The pace of developments in mobile technology means it is hard to make judgements about how this will impact on learning and ePortfolio applications. The only sure thing is that it will have an impact.



Our philosophy has always been to create solutions that can be as ubiquitous as possible so that they can be used across the full range of computer software and accessible from all browsers. We have recently been applying the same approach to mobile devices. As a result many of our clients sites are now accessible from most of the browsers operating on modern mobiles. We have also started to create custom interfaces for some clients that work better on mobiles.


The only challenge we have is with i-based applications like the iPhone and iPad which can be used to access our sites however there is a challenge around uploading files. Put very simply iOS runs browsers in a very tight sandbox, access to files held locally on the device is not possible from a browser. The only solution is to create bespoke “applications” which can be installed on a iPhone/iPad which do allow access to local files. One of our clients has asked us to develop an application to allows users to be able to attach from iOS based devices.


There is much to admire about Steve Jobs. His design principle of keeping solutions simple is one to which we aspire. Our sites should be intuitive enough to use without the need to read a great manual. We however do not want to follow his approach of creating a ‘closed’ community, even if we admire the fact that it has been a great business model.


Consequently the question about what will happen to Apple post Steve Jobs is an interesting one for us. Our current view is that Apple will do the same again in the phone market that they have done in the PC market i.e. become a choice based on design/brand rather than cost and functionality. We are pretty sure that Androids growth will hit their bottom line as they lose market share. It is also conceivable that they will lose income from application sales and iTunes particularly if another music/entertainment supplier comes into this market offering more competitive rates.


We also think that it is possible that Amazon might start hitting Apple hard with the Kindle Fire, although we are concerned that Amazon they have a modified version of an earlier version of Android which would appear to be heavily tied to their "platform" and as such is not open as we would like.


Microsoft release Windows 8 next year will also be significant. This is being designed to run on PCs, Tablets and Netbooks and for the first time not tied into the x86 chip (Intel/AMD) but will be ported to run on ARM processors which are cheaper and less resource hungry.


So what do we think will happen over the next 12 to 18 months? We think there is a real chance that Apple will lose market share unless is does something drastic around the pricing of its products. They have done it before in the portable music player market which they now dominate. There is talk that Apple is currently looking to secure a large supply of 7" screens, the gossip being that they are going to come out with a lower spec iPad to try and stop Amazon and the Kindle Fire becoming a threat. They have the early adopters and now need the mass market.



Amazon is probably the one company that can take Apple on in this space, they have the client base, they have the content, and they have the global reach, their product price point with the Kindle Fire looks spot in to take tablets to the mass market.


It is not surprising HP dropped their touch Pad pretty much after launching it when you consider this market, however there are rumours that they will come out with a new offering and we are pretty sure it will be designed to compete at a lower price point. It was interesting to see they could not sell the touchpad at £400 but they went like hot cakes at £89.


Our sense is that Kindle Fire, when released internationally, will start a new wave of tablets hitting the market that are better priced for mass adoption. Increasingly the PC we all own will be used for serious work where a keyboard and the fine control of a mouse is required with tablets becoming the way we interact with technology in the home environment. Already we find an increasing number of people using their smart phones to “check” things out while in the living room and this would be so much better on the larger screen the tablet will provide. We think the Kindle Fire might have it right, it’s not all singing and dancing but it does do what most of us want for ad hoc use, read my email and check the web while relaxing at home.


With Apple, Goolge, Microsoft and now Amazon all seriously entering this market we could finally see the mass adoption of the tablet in our home and business environments. This could have a major impact on the portability of electronic devises to support learning and assessment.


Let’s watch this space.

First free to use NVQ/QCF e-portfolio; so why are you really doing it?

This Autumn we are announcing that creation of the first ‘free to use’ version of our endorsed e-portfolio for the assessment of vocational qualifications. A first reaction to this announcement might be, why are you in effect throwing away thousands of pounds of development by making it freely available? Well clearly we are doing it in a way that enables us make some income by selling our services, rather than the software, however it remains the case that someone could download our software for free, we would not get a penny back in return for all our work, so why are we doing it?



We are passionate about e-portfolios and have seen the dramatic impact they can have on learner achievement and retention. However we have been puzzled for sometime about why the take up of e-portfolios for vocational assessment remains relatively slow particularly as there are good quality products ‘out there’ including our own.


This is of course in marked contrast to the almost blanket adoption of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) initially through the adoption of products like Blackboard and then through the massive of impact of Moodle the open source VLE.


It is the story of Moodle that has had the most influence on our taking the decision we have. We believe that the attraction of Moodle is not that there are no costs associated with implementing it. Although it is open source and therefore free to download institutions do spend money in making sure that it ‘works for them’. However what institutions like is that they own the software and they are part of a community of developers all committed to improving the management of learning programmes.


We have always been committed to this philosophy and we talk about a NOW.net community of users who we have worked with to improve our core platform.


Indeed we have sought to influence others to adopt a similar approach as a way of improving the offer to learners. I have endeavoured on behalf of this company, to persuade awarding bodies to include an e-portfolio as part of the services they provided through their registration fees. This appeared to me to both to be a good way to develop a stronger relationship with their customer base and to enhance their offer to them. It is interesting to note that one awarding body VTCT has adopted this approach. However they would appear to others who would rather go for short term profits and be making offers to the market, at if anything a more exorbitant price than previously. The new e-hairdressing log book developed by Learning Assistant/City & Guilds is an interesting approach but is it worth nearly £40 extra per candidate on top of the registration.


We do not believe that approaches like this, will encourage the mass adoption of e-portfolios for vocational assessment which is what we are committed to do hence our latest offer.


However the offer of itself will not deliver this outcome. It also needs to be accompanied by the creation of a community of developers committed to the continuous development of approaches to e-assessment required to deal with the inevitable changes in the way vocational qualifications are assessed. We hope you might want to join us. Have a look at the offer www.nvqnow.net and let us know what you think.

E-portfolios and Higher Education; What works?

If you google search e-portfolios and Higher Education it is surprising how many entries there are and how far they go back. Although it is a relatively recent development there are some that go back to the start of this millennium.



If you track the entries the zenith of activity appears to come around 2007/08 with lots of well attended conferences and a variety of different papers and applications. In the UK the majority of usage in the Higher Education sector appears to be for the purpose of creating Personal Learning Records. This is perhaps because of the approach of the leading supplier.


Sometimes these records are linked to assessment but great play is made on the fact that the record is owned by the learner. They can publish that record to another or allow access to it but ultimately they are in control.


This has perhaps become the nub of the debate in Higher Education. To what extent is an e-portfolio something that is solely owned by the user and therefore can only used for assessment with their permission? Or alternatively can the e-portfolio be used to manage in effect a complex set of relationships as is the case with many work based modules, with permissions set that determine who is allowed to do what with the evidence. These permissions are in effect ‘controlled’ by the assessment strategy that is in place. This use of the e-portfolio in this case can be further complicated by the need to involve others who maybe external to the University.


Take for example a Nurse Prescribing Course where although nurses come into be trained the reality is that much of their learning is managed outside the university. They make visits to different practices and they capture their own reflections on their work in practice. Furthermore they have mentors who then authenticate their work. Potentially this is a costly exercise for the university managing the paper trail and visiting placements etc. However at some Universities this has been replaced by an e-portfolio system. This is particularly by systems that can be easily customised to replicate the complexities of this assessment process.


I have often argued in this blog and elsewhere that what an e-portfolio is not the key issue. The only thing that matters is what the e-portfolio does or how it answers the So What question. So you have got this information electronically stored then what are you going to do with it? And linked to this How are you going to make it easy for the user to extract it so that they can make use of their evidence for a specific purpose?


My sense is and it is part reflected in the google search that not enough time has been devoted to that question. Instead there have been diversionary debates such as ones about interoperability which mask the key questions about what purpose has the e-portfolio being used for and is it fit for purpose. This is perhaps why the google search reveals that there are lots of entries announcing that there is an e-portfolio that you can use and then a long gap before there is any further entries about how it is actually being used.


E-portfolios are the same as any other product they are only used if ultimately it is found to be a useful activity to do.

Don't Lecture Me

This is another e-mail inspired by Donald Clark's blog. His most recent entry refers to a talk he gave called 'Don't Lecture Me' to the Alternative Learning Technologies Conference in 2010.

He encourages you to think about effective learning and whether a lecture is a good way to deliver learning. I think I can count on one hand the lectures that 'stuck' and made a difference. Invariably they were poorly delivered and as I recall I learnt most from watching the responses from students to some of the remarks the lecturer made. Invariably the best learning experiences took place in seminars, particularly where there was an academic involved whose real skill was in managing the learning interactions. I recall a Dr Coulson, then as probably now a leading expert on Cardinal Newman, who had the ability to create a learning environment in which all contributions were valued and 'supportively' examined. As a result his seminars were always full to the brim.

Now my best learning continues to takes place in small group discussions but is now augmented by the ability to drop into videos, blogs, websites and forums. For example my current learning is primarily focused on open source solutions and their application to learning. I have not attended a lecture yet about this subject nor ever thought about doing so.

I do not think I am unusual in adopting this approach although I still expect to receive the usual prospectus from our local college full of courses that are based on lectures. I was also reminded about how far we have to go by a discussion yesterday with an NVQ verifier/assessor about the relevance of electronic systems to NVQ assessment. They clearly have a 'paper-based system' in place through which they have managed to 'perfect' a process that takes a learner successfully through to their Level 2 qualification. They are a Grade 1 training provider so it is difficult to argue with them but heaven help any learner who wants to stretch themselves and take an alternative path; or the one who can see an easier way of capturing what they have done on their phone rather than in a paper-based description.

It could still be a long time before the lecture-based pedagogy becomes redundant.

The E-assessment question

Don Clark recently made an entry on his blog http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/ entitled ‘E-portfolios – 7 reasons why I don’t want my life in a shoebox’. Apparently it followed a presentation he had made at the ‘e-Assessment question’ conference. He stimulated a debate with over 70 responses that has been of a higher quality than most that take place at e-portfolio conferences, where, in my experience, people often tie themselves up in ‘interoperability knots’.



My conclusion is that the notion of having an e-portfolio as a means of capturing your own identity, when there are other ‘systems’ out there that do this better like Facebook, is clearly absurd. I am daily told (I don’t look for fear of finding information I don’t want to know) what the ‘status’ of my children is that day by their entry on Facebook. It is their representation of ‘who they are’ that day and it is stretching credibility that they will want to look back to review that in 30 years time, other than in embarrassment or in terms of the generality of how they have developed.


It is similarly absurd that today 90% of people assessing the skills of aspirant hairdressers do so by writing down their observation of a haircut and if they do take a picture, it has to be downloaded, printed and then attached into the relevant section of a paper portfolio. The other 10% just get out their mobile phones take a picture of the haircut on their mobile phone, find the learner’s portfolio on the same phone, add the evidence and make a comment.


There are lots of other examples. The time and effort involved in transferring paper portfolios between different people involved in the assessment process; the car journey to authenticate someone’s evidence, when this could be replaced by simply, temporarily, allowing that evidence to be viewed by the witness and asking them to make a comment.


Similarly if you were a member of a professional body faced with a number of regulatory requirements, it does seem to make sense for you to have one electronic record that you can regularly update and use to meet multiple requirements.


A number of entries on Don Clark’s blog acknowledge that e-portfolios can serve this purpose in relation to vocational assessment.


The challenge is to find a way of making the distinction between this sort of e-portfolio and the one that Don rightly attacks. I have no easy answer other than to say that the word e-portfolio will now be virtually banished from my lips for fear of being misunderstood.

Over engineering learning computer solutions?

I would guess that there are still software engineers and developers who harbour the ambition of engineering the human out of more and more processes. You often hear the retorts that a process would work really well, if only people were not involved. Doubtless there are people too, who would like to be engineered out of particularly tasks and procedures to a point where everything is automatic. But is that really a desirable objective?



The car is now massively advanced from the days when cars had to be cranked up to start by hand. You could imagine we will get to the point where it would be possible to point our car at a destination and, with a combination of satellite navigation and automatic controls, get to where we want to go almost without thinking. Is that really what we want? Isn't part of the enjoyment of a car journey and what captures our interest having to make decisions.

Making decisions can therefore be good and it is important to remember this when engineering computer-based learning solutions. Take e-portfolios for NVQs as one example. There are some systems that in essence make the decision for the assessor, if you have this and this, the following is automatically satisfied. There are others which require an assessor to make a genuine judgement. From a learning pedagogical perspective and in terms of motivating the assessor and learner the latter approach must be better. Providing helpful tools and guides is good, as is removing unnecessary paperwork but if we are over-automating any learning process we are in real danger of turning off all those involved in the learning journey. 

Part of the creativity in developing computer software for learning lies in managing that difficult balance, between automating processes to reduce what the learner has to do but not to the extent where the learner becomes disengaged from the whole process.  

Jamie pays attention to Education

So, yes, it is all artificial and unreal and, yes, there would be few other schools with resources like this and the capacity to bring in top people in their profession, but there is something about this programme that means it is authentic. This week David Starkey’s genuine and successful attempt, to find better ways of engaging with young people and the dramatic impact on a young person, of being told that they have an A plus, not least because they know it is deserved.



I watch the programme from two angles. One, as a former leader of a Second Chance School (2CS) in Leeds I am intrigued to see the parallels between that experience and what is taking place in the Dream School. Already the claims that the staffing levels at the 2CS were too large for the young people we were dealing with, is starting to look suspect. They, as does this group, needed that level of support to try and unpick what had happened to them previously in schools, so that they are enabled to start to learn again. The desire to learn and achieve that is apparent in the students at the Dream School, despite all their disruptive behaviour, was also apparent in the young people in the 2CS.


I am also interested in the use that Jamie is making of technology - or not. Symbolically Jamie’s first action in his class is to collect all the mobile phones, because of the way that the mobile was seen to be disrupting learning across the school. Computers although always seemingly available are not being used in the learning. This is, with the exception this week of the photography class, where technology was partly used, to deliver the most powerful lesson so far, in which the group demonstrated brilliant skills in producing self images.


It is a fascinating ‘experiment’ and now has me glued although I do not have to wait until next week for what comes next, because there is a blog, website, Facebook page to look at. Where shall I start?

It is time that JISC started to provide responsible leadership for the use of technology for FE/HE.

A couple of years ago I found myself presenting a seminar on e-portfolios alongside the person tasked, for this region, with developing good practice in technology, to support the delivery of FE/HE. He produced a bamboozling presentation on the way you could use technology like google mail and other ‘free’ software to create an e-portfolio.



His diagrams were certainly confusing to someone like me with some knowledge of e-portfolios and software development and it’s only purpose appeared to be, to demonstrate that you could do for free, what nasty commercial companies were delivering for excessive amounts of money. To my knowledge, since his presentation, no one has successfully applied this ‘blueprint’ to produce a solution that is ‘working.’ In contrast one of the FE Colleges there at the same seminar decided to buy into our solution.


It would appear from the programme for the latest JISC event ‘Towards a New Horizon: Using Technology to deliver HE in a Changing World’ that he is still mounting the same campaign. There is a session about e-portfolios which is introduced in the following way;


‘The traditional method of assignment work submission is costly in resources and imposes constraints on staff and students alike. However, most of the workable, E-Portfolio solutions available are prohibitively expensive and often difficult to set up and administer, giving no appreciable saving in cost, effort or resources. But there is another way of approaching this problem, using existing resources and knowledge, which is elegant in its simplicity – email.’


Now I accept that this maybe an introduction to a session that someone other than a JISC member of staff is delivering. However the fact that it is has been allowed to be timetabled by JISC, suggests at the very least that this is being promoted as a worthwhile approach to the region. There is also an implication that those learning institutions that are using these E-portfolio solutions are being irresponsible with public money, not least because they do not deliver any appreciable benefits and there is a simple solution,- e-mail.


I am aware that I am in danger of prejudging the session that is about to be delivered but the notion that e-mail can accommodate all the complexity of groups, roles and permissions that are required to deliver robust and quality assured assessment beggars belief. In that process e-mail has a role to play and we use it for witness testimonies to authenticate work based evidence and confirm embedded practice. However this is not without its challenges. Spam filters have a habit of ‘disrupting’ e-mails particularly where there is a complex chain of communication and addresses.


There is a reason why charges need to be made for the e-portfolios that capture effectively work based assessment. It is because to capture that process and make it simple requires highly sophisticated and well engineered technology.


JISC would serve the sector better by recognising that, rather than by giving airtime to half baked and ill thought through proposals. To return to the theme of a previous blog it is about time they found a way of working collaboratively with companies who have been developing truly elegant technology based solutions for many years.

Turning round the Ocean Going Liner

When I worked in local government we often talked about the challenges of turning an ocean going liner by which we meant the council. We imagined that it was too far big a task, indeed one that was so big that we could not contemplated really making significant changes to the way the Council operated.


I recall the moment well when it dawned on me that although I had managed to persuade TESCO to change their recruitment policies so that unemployed people were in an advantaged position in respect of jobs at their store in Seacroft, it was proving impossible to persuade the Council to adopt a similar approach.


Well we were wrong, because the ocean liner is currently being stopped and the Council’s are shedding services and jobs at an alarming rate. Furthermore those organisations that are dependent on government money, distributed through Council funding, are if anything being more affected.


It is therefore no surprise that today the leader of Liverpool City Council had this to say to the Prime Minister;


"How can the city council support the big society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?,I have therefore come to the conclusion that Liverpool City Council can no longer support the big society initiative, as a direct consequence of your funding decisions."


The problem is that there is a captain on the bridge with his trusty lieutenants but there is a huge disconnection between them and the engine room and as a result the boat is paralysed to the point of inaction. It is therefore sad for us to see the pressure on many of the people we have worked with in the public sector, who are now struggling to work out what to do with the services they offer both now and in the future.

A bigger bang for our buck

The United Kingdom Radiological Conference is the UK's flagship scientific conference that brings together 'clinicians, scientists, radiographers, technologists, managers and other professionals to present and discuss the latest developments and challenges in diagnostic imaging and allied radiological sciences.'

I had proposed to the conference organisers that we would deliver a joint session with the Society and College of Radiographers about how the CPD online system, we had developed with them, was being used by radiographers to enable them to apply for consultant and advanced practitioner status.

I was delighted when I received the programme for the event to see that there is now to be a full afternoon session to discuss the emerging models of consultant and advanced practice, with the final presentation by Michael Fell the first radiographer to have successfully applied for advanced practitioner stastus using CPDnow.

The facility to use our CPD online system to apply for different grades within the professional body is proving a great addition and was one of the features that has attracted the interest of the radiographers in Australia.

Hacking over the Careers Service

I recently spent a day with our company Chair Barrie Hopson and other leading experts in Information, Advice and Guidance learning about and experiencing the benefits of agile technology. The purpose was to see whether these group of experts could use this technology to come up with a new tool that would help deliver an effective IAG service. 

Agile Technlogy is full of interestingly named techniques like 'scrums' and 'spiral waterfalls', which have ben developed apparently over many years, although I have not heard of the technique before. Except when they described this approach to building software it did seem very much like what we do. I cannot recall when we last produced a detailed specification for a project and my sense would be that all our customers would describe us as collaborative in our approach, open to change and constantly seeking continuous improvement.

It was therefore interesting to hear about the approach although frankly I am unsure that it will have helped UKCES to make the careers service more effective. This was because the organisers failed to practice what they preached. The developers worked separately rather than collaboratively and only engaged with the practitioners at the end of the day. As a result the whole day ended in disarray and whilst the developers were going on to produce somethg on their own I cannot believe that it will have any impact. An opportunity missed methinks.

Although not for us because we had some interesting discussions in relation to finding homes for our diagnotics that when on the direct.gov site were each accessed by 30,000 individuals every month.

Why JISC struggles to deliver Innovation

One of the other blogs I follow is Don Clark Plan B http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/  There are lots of stimulating entries because as Don says on his introductory page he now has 'enough time to attend, read, listen, watch and comment on anything I want to'. I particularly like the way he 'attacks' sacred cows e.g. the most recent one is the notion that universities justify their existence because they teach critical thinking. The evidence suggests that this is not the case. He also has no hestitation in attacking learning institutions/organisations. I made the following contribution to his blog on JISC an organisation which was set up to inspire 'UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education.'
In my experience one of the major issues for JISC is the way they relate to private companies. They do have a relationship and we have been involved in events that they have organised, but they behave as if they would prefer all innovation to be solely generated from the FE/HE sectors and ignores the way that this sector can sometimes work effectively with and through the private sector.

We have been involved in some innovative work with Huddersfield Univeristy on exploring the use of e-portfolios to make it easier for work based assessors to comment on the work of learners registered on the nurse prescribing course. It is innovative in the sense that we are genuinely exploring whether such an approach makes it easier for nurses to capture evidence and have it assessed. At the moment the 'jury is still out'. We have had some technical challenges with NHS spam blockers but looks like we have now found a way round this.

We recently responded to a JISC request to present innovative projects to their local conference but were turned down on the basis that were 'giving priority to the colleges and universities rather than the private companies.'

 This approach contrasts with the one taken by Learn Direct for example, who in my experience are very effective at harnassing the skills and knowledge of the companies they work with. Indeed we have been involved in a project where three companies have been involved with their own internal team and through collaborative work produced an interesting and highly innovative solution.

 JISC has a key role in developing innovative practice but they will only partly deliver this if they fail to encourage engagement with a sector where innovative practice and ideas are being developed.