E-portfolios; Reaching the Tipping Point?

I was at a Sixth Form College recently presenting our e-portfolio for NVQ assessment and was greeted by the college’s Head of Technical Support, who delighted in telling me that e-portfolios were meant to be the big technological advance of the last decade and this has never materialised. I first asked him whether it was worth my while continuing with the demonstration and then asked him what he meant by an e-portfolio and suggested that the technology that underpinned them, may have advanced over the last decade.


I might also have said that in part I shared his delight to see the ‘old concept’ of what was considered to be an e-portfolio being sufficiently challenged, that it was reaching the tipping point where it was significantly under threat.

This challenge is coming from two sources. One is from the ‘So What’ camp which I have highlighted before. If an e-portfolio is just a collection of artefacts that capture someone’s personal development, with the user being in total control of the data, a) what use it is and b) aren’t there better tools that do this like Facebook and Linked In.

The other source is relatively new but arguably even more significant. Various public bodies, notably JISC have promoted e-portfolios that are developed on open source software. This is fine if these portfolios do not contain confidential data. However if they are being used to support the assessment of competence, where that assessment potentially involves confidential information, there are growing concerns about whether these portfolios are sufficiently secure to hold this sort of data. This challenge cannot be a surprise given the origin of the software.

Our approach is that the correct position of e-portfolios needs to be somewhere in between the ‘two camps’. We believe that it is important that the learner’s feels in control of their data and we take great steps to deliver this, however to be able to support effective assessment there does need to be the ability for assessors to interact with that data in a transparent way. Similarly we also think there are great benefits to be gained from sharing technological developments between our customers, but this has to take place in an environment where the software is secure not open.

As for the demonstration it went ahead and the College is now using the e-portfolio although I remain unconvinced that the lessons from one Department’s hopefully successful implementation will be shared across the College.

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.

Australia; another side of the world?

I have just landed in Australia-it is my first visit. I remember as a child when digging in the sand or the muck there was always the chant in my head that if we dug far enough we would get to Australia. It felt like it was truly the other side of the world. As a I grew older it also started to have the sense of being that place where relatives/friends went out to and often did not come back. This is certainly less the case now, as it has become more of a tourist destination and I have only come out here for ten days. So why come?

Well part of the reason is to answer my own question. There are plenty of signs that this is the right time for the company to come here. Even before the National Broadband Project is in place Australia already has better internet penetration and speed than many countries including the UK. Indeed it leads all English speaking companies. A number of UK e-learning companies are doing well here and CPD for all Australian health professionals is becoming mandatory.

It is therefore a trip filled with genuine prospects-let's hope that I strike Gold?

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. 

End of Ning Free Service

I could not have choreographed it better, indeed it could even look to be deliberate, the day after a posted the previous blog I receive a news flash prompted by the decision to end the Ning free service. Ning is simply a customised social network for any group of users, based on underlying technology from ning.com In its basic form, the Ning is free to set and use but lately the use of it has become more sophisticated and I have certainly seen it demonstrated as a way of creating learning environments.

The controversy now is about the fact that suddenly those who have used it in the belief that it was free are now going to be faced with charges. Ning announced yesterday that three versions of the Ning platform-Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini will launch in July 2010 and the 'free ad-supported product' will be phased out. The charges appear to be prompted by the recognition that the maintenance and development of code is costly. 'Our shift to a paid service model will enable us to focus to a greater degree on enhancing the features, performance and services we offer to our paying network creators.'

It is also significant that the news flash I received links the end of the Ning free service with 'the new approach to personal data management by Facebook.' Keeping users personal data safe is a growing issue. Recently following the award of a government contract we were first faced with demonstrating that we met the stringent measures now set by government for looking after personal data. In this case these measures were set at the highest level because the data belonged to children under 16. We passed because underlying our NOW.net platform is a highly sophisticated tool that allows us 'to control' what individuals can do and see using groups, roles and permissions. Creating and making available such an environment does cost but the benefits it brings of ensuring that individuals data is genuinely secure are worth it.

Open does not mean Free

It is now notable how many times that the Open source 'debate' comes up in discussion as those faced with making decisions about resources grapple with what choice to make about software. Open and free? almost too good to be true so what's the catch?

Well it's not free. The code might be but someone has to work out how to use it. It is just that you swop the dependance on a software house to dependance on the people who develop the code for you. There are lots of companies making good money from deploying and maintaining open source software.

It is a challenge to this company to ensure that all the various pieces of code in our core platform all work effectively work together. No matter how well we test and plan there are sometimes those unseen consequences from implementing one change on other parts of our solutions. Last week it was the new pivot table for reporting impacting on the editor tool we use but only for those using Firefox and Safari.

Fortunately it was a quick fix because we work within a secure and a restricted environment with respect to the code we use. It is difficult to imagine the challenges, where there is the possibility that the code that you have grabbed from a more 'open' environment, you then subsequently discover has changed when you need to make a fix.

It is not surprising that there is a growing trend of organisations who 'purchase' the creation of a solution using open source software are then reluctant to make it available to others.

We support the principles that underlie the Open source movement and our customers frequently share and benefit from changes to our core NOW.net platform that others have requested and funded. However we also recognise that our customers require quaranteed reliability and stability which is why we will continue to be .net and meet that relatively small cost.