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.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
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.
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?
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?
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
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.
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.
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