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.

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.

Lots of inventiveness and endeavour but is it just re-inventing the wheel?

In the past fortnight I have attended a couple of JISC events. I would imagine although I do not know that this organisation is another candidate to be thrown onto the bonfire of quangoes although in my view it would be a great shame if this was the case. Certainly the event in the North West was a good testimony to their ability to put a large number of IT suppliers for educational purposes and interested delegates in one place and create an interesting dialogue. 

I had a very interesting conversation with David Hopps from Hargreaves Training at the event in Leeds. David is someone who is a real enthusiast for technology but in a very pragmatic way. We discussed the notion of having an e-portfolio with the ability to register candidates at the beginning, manage the learning journey and then spit out the paperwork at the end. As David succinctly put it one input, multiple interventions and one output all managed in the same system. It maybe closer than we both think.

At the event in the North West what was noticeable was the number of learning institutions who were devoting lots of resources to create technology based solutions themselves.

This is entirely laudable, indeed all systems need to be routed back to the learning experience, however you have to question whether such an investment is justified when they already lots of organisations who have invested millions of pounds of research and investment to create solutions that already work well.

I recall a conversation with another training provider who when discussing e-portfolios said we had a go at building one but after they had invested £70k gave up. At least he knew the figure, I wonder how many of the educational institutions at the JISC event who had developed or were developing their own software know how much it has cost them and their funders so far.