The Evolution of the VLE

I was recently asked if I had written anything on the history of the VLE (aka MLE) in UK schools. As it happened, I had a half-completed paper, based on a presentation that I made last year. Although I did not (purposely) mention ePortfolios within the VLE document, I thought that some readers might be entertained by my personal account of the evolution, or even revolution, that the introduction of the VLE has gone through over the last 30 years.

The .pdf document at 4Mb can be accessed here.

My paper does not pretend to be an accurate history of VLEs for the simple reason that the activities mentioned inevitably were performed in different institutions at different times. And again, it only refers to the work within mainly Secondary education and does not refer to the immense amount of work done by universities around the world as a precursor to the work in schools. (See Wikipedia) I can only go by my own experiences and the results of my research for my Bill Tagg paper of 2007.

E-Portfolios: The Joys of Disruption

Darren Cambridge is a well known voice in the ePortfolio world and has authored or co-authored several helpful books. The YouTube Recording, of his presentation on 23rd August, at one 1hr and 40 mins takes some dedication to follow - I just feel for the people in the audience! What he said was good if not new to many who regularly read this blog.

Early on in his presentation Darren claimed that ePortfolios evolved from paper-based 'Writing Programs' and the need to teach writing skills in the 80's. This flies in the face of the work of Dr Helen Barrett and her identification of portfolio practice based on young children's 'shoeboxes' in the 70's or my own experience of presenting portfolios of work in the 60's for Design and Technology courses.

The presentation was frank and at times honestly brutal in terms of the 'extra' work that staff would need to undertake. What he did not mention, as far as I could detect, was the fact that the ePortfolio system actually helps staff to save time: having access when convenient, being able to provide feedback before a student might find himself 'up a blind alley', being able to quickly route to areas of particular interest, etc. On the other hand, Darren did point out the fact that the ePortfolio allows teachers to see the whole picture of the learner, their interests and background.

As a 'stand alone' presentation I just felt that he presented too many negatives. However, within the context of a larger workshop conference I hope that delegates found more things that excited them and where they could see how the ePortfolio can actually enhance Teaching and Learning.

The term ‘Disruptive Technology’ is only true where it is an indictment of outmoded pedagogies. For institutions that have emerged from the dark ages and have been using Web2.0 technologies and liberated Teaching & Learning styles the introduction of an ePortfolio facility could rather be seen as an ‘answer to a maiden’s prayer’. I’m trying to think of the best antonym to ‘disruptive’ – we need a word that combines supportive, energising, and challenging or provocative.

A Professional ePortfolio

I recently came across the eFolio of Eric Forsyth, Ph.D. - which I soon realised is an example of all that I would expect from a mature educator. Too often we see at conferences incomplete examples of students' attempts at an ePortfolio, of Pilots and sample pages, but rarely something which could dignify professional status.

In particular I like the simple layout and menu system of eFolio which allows different audiences to target immediately on the features that concern them. For those professionals (of whatever age) that have five minutes to spare, I would suggest that you browse Eric Forsyth's eFolio and then reflect on how you and your colleagues could better represent themselves through an eFolio - it is a cathartic experience!

There are so many areas of experience or expertise which, on reflection, we forget to mention. A personal eFolio is just the place to gather all one's personal and professional strengths into one place. eFolio can be added to or edited at any time or, as I have said elsewhere, can be re-formatted for different audiences. eFolio just keeps on growing with the owner.

BUT, if you as a professional could better represent yourself through such an ePortfolio, how much more your students? It seems obvious to me that the safe collaborative environment that eFolio provides is the perfect antidote to a less than constructive FaceBook or MySpace mania.

Example from HE

I have just come across this example of an e-Portfolio which clearly represents my approach to e-Portfolios in HE. It's a wonderful example that all my readers should thoroughly explore.

Obviously I must congratulate Pedro Arista for the quality of his eFolio but more than that, it shows just how professional an eFolio can be and how it can evolve over a period of time.

Pedro, if you read this perhaps you can get in touch with me?

Use of e-portfolios in Social Sciences (Sheffield Hallam University)

A nice but brief review of the implementation of a popular e-Portfolio system! Worth reading if only to spot the additional features that eFolio offers!

As you may see in my comment to the authors, I question how students get access to the other necessary tools which we would expect to find embedded in a good e-Portfolio tool. Yes, older and more able students might be able to find the right tools for polls or questionnaires but why not have them already embedded where even the youngest pupils in schools or the elderly or less-able can access them?

Second Generation ePortfolios?

For some time now I have been getting increasingly frustrated by the large number of mainly HE institutions who are continuing to promulgate e-Portfolio theory and practice which is increasingly looking some ten years out of date. I have therefore coined the hardly original acronym of 2G eP, pleading for a second generation approach to e-Portfolios, starting afresh from first principles rather than basing ideas on outmoded thinking.

Despite all the intelligence, wisdom and experience of our noble institutions it would appear that educationists are still saying, 'Here is a tool, what can we do with it?' rather than teachers saying to the developers, 'This is what we want to do, get on and give us what we want.' Quite frankly, eFolio can provide all the facilities that an e-Portfolio should deliver but, for now, let's just explore what we do really require.

Part 2

Perhaps the most immediate requirement is for some clarity. There is presently far too much confusion about the separate functions of a VLE and an e-Portfolio. Course management, and information about assessment criteria are surely the responsibility of the institution. Where helpful to the student one might accept that a copy of assessment criteria could be held within the e-Portfolio but with a good VLE that is hardly necessary. Otherwise, the e-Portfolio should be seen as learner-owned, separate to the VLE and the implications of this need to be fully explored.

The argument has been made that the e-Portfolio is inevitably institutionally based as it is designed to meet the needs of a particular course and even a function within that course. This again is 'tool thinking' rather than 'user-thinking' or 'meeting the variety of needs of each individual'. I raise these issues in my document, first published some two years ago: 'Who's hijacking our e-Portfolios?' To sum up a seven-page article in one sentence: e-Portfolio thinking should not be defined by conventional capabilities but by modern teaching and learning theory. In this regard, a better understanding of collaboration, of peer review and the general benefits of web2.0 will begin to influence the way staff manage formative assessments and the general monitoring of student progress.

Another challenge to take-up across all academic stages is that of the FE institutions. If HE can be seen as having a silo-mentality when it comes to e-Portfolios then FE must be considered as doubly disruptive. My paper, 'A Bridge too Far?' considers the whole situation in 6th-forms and FE colleges. It has been argued that FE has a higher percentage of older teachers and lecturers – this may be marginally true but is still no excuse for the serious lack of CPD supported in FE.

The beauty of eFolio is that different views can be presented concurrently to different audiences - and thus obviating the necessity to model one's e-Portfolio according to the needs of a particular course.

The issues of transition or portability appear to be incapable of meeting any satisfactory conclusion and thus the student is tempted to give up and accept that the e-Portfolio is owned by an institution. This inevitably means that as the learner moves on to another institution yet another different e-Portfolio tool may be required with repeated uploading of artefacts. The owner is therefore tempted not to invest any additional time or effort beyond the minimum required. Perhaps one of my main arguments about the ownership of eFolio is the very fact that through the provision of templates and the facility to change 'skins' and fonts etc not only the younger learner but all learners can create an environment that expresses 'This is ME' – that the learner is proud of and wishes to retain.

If HE has troubles concerning vision, if FE has troubles relating to staff training then Mainstream Education suffers from both of these and more. As much as teachers may expect autonomy within the classroom there is still a need for central advice and direction. For the last four years BECTA has been miserably silent on the issue of e-Portfolios and has utterly failed to provide the leadership and inspiration required for a national initiative. At the same time there is a growing demand from the 'Is it free?' brigade who seem to be unaware of the failure of basic DIY e-Portfolios to meet the strict requirements of e-safe management that schools are required to maintain. It is therefore time for some serious 2G thinking.

I can do no better than to refer back to my original criteria, my 'Ten Prime Directives'. But perhaps I can address these in a different order.

'Cosmeticisation' – an ugly word but essential. Users of any age, from the youngest to the oldest, from the most able to the least able all should be able to modify the templates, style, fonts and images which make up their own chosen self-representation. Note that there is a difference between this and 'personalisation' which, for me, suggests the functionality of the software to recognise one's personal learning styles and preferred software, including such t hings as diagnostic and predictive tools.

Lifelong Learning: can only really be an option if the one e-Portfolio can use the above options to 'transmogrify' or change according to one's maturity, culture, social perspective, course of study or even one's favourite football team or current pop-group. It should be capable of changing the organisation and naming of pages and the addition, editing or removal of artefacts.

'Lifewide' has two distinct meanings. It can refer to the range of users, ie the one tool should be capable of being used by a number of different abilities within one class or group. However, it more significantly refers to the fact that any one person has a number of different personas, any one of which the learner may wish to present to a specific audience. For example, I may wish to represent myself to one group as a competent technician, to another as an HR manager and yet to a third as an environmentalist wishing to do work for a charitable organisation.

Portability is an essential function if the e-Portfolio is to have any credibility as a lifelong tool. However, most e-Portfolio solutions are institutionally based and repeatedly I have heard tales of frustration that the work a student has done in college on their e-Portfolio cannot be taken with them to their next institution or place of employment. This has often led to older students doing as little as necessary or responding with exclamations such as 'Why should I bother?' However, portability is an essential feature of 'transition' and, from my own experience, can include many movements from one school to another and on to yet another.

ePortfolio Commons

I hesitate to appear critical of an institution or individuals that are making an attempt to promote e-Portfolios. I hope that the authors of 'ePortfolio Commons' will read this post in the constructive manner intended. What first caught my eye was the challenging statement:

"Are you ready for your final semester in the college? Have you started preparation and application for a job and/or further study? How can you enhance your chance of success? Register and join our ePortfolio hands-on workshop to start creating your own ePortfolio to strategically showcase your capabilities and achievements! "

As much as I applaud the efforts of any to get students to realise the value of an e-Portfolio, I feel that the above is a very narrow and 'last century' view of the function or purpose of an e-Portfolio, possibly coloured by the references used. So, perhaps I may be allowed to say "Great! BUT!"

1. The e-Portfolio should not be seen as a last minute 'rush job' but as something built up over many years, certainly starting at the begining of the college course if not before.
2. Job-hunting is possibly one of the least effective purposes for using an e-Portfolio, unless potential employers are really ICT savvy and are willing to look at and know how to navigate an e-Portfolio.
3. One of the greatest functions of an e-Portfolio is as a secure and private space for formative feedback from peers and mentors.
4. Yet another valuable function of the e-Portfolio is that of planning and drafting ideas which can be worked upon collaboratively.
5. Above all, students should be made well aware of the image that they are communicating to others and that the patois of the younger generation or a careless selection of photographs might not be received well by potential employers or university professors.
6. Care should be given to thinking out where the e-Portfolio is to be hosted, by an academic institution or 'in the Cloud'. Both solutions have their problems - which is why I have developed eFolio for UK and European students.

So yes, my feeling is 'get on with constructing your e-Portfolio as a matter of urgency'. But don't think that it is just a tool for showcasing or PDP.

Perhaps I should add that the list of categories by nations is very simple. It might have been that in the UK 10 years ago HE was using e-Portfolios mainly for showcasing and PDP but that is no longer the case. Secondly, e-Portfolios are becoming more popular in mainstream education, even in primary schools. I can give you several examples of different approaches to using eFolio.

Two new documents have been published by JISC and prepared by an illustrious team headed up by Janet Strivens of the Centre for Recording Achievement, dated August 2009.

The first, entitled, 'The role of e-portfolios in formative and summative assessment practices', at 66 pages is both a helpful and informative document, despite it being published in Word format. The second, entitled, 'The Role of e-Portfolios in Formative and Summative Assessment: Case Studies of Practice' at a staggering 175 pages takes a bit of time to digest!

The two documents together make a good presentation of the state of e-Portfolios in the UK within the HE sector. The combined wisdom of the team presents a picture that cannot be ignored.

However, there are still too many anomalies and areas which need to be addressed, such as the time needed to train staff and enable them to be comfortable with this medium that might be quite different to anything that they have experienced before.

My main frustration is that over the last few years little has changed in as much as some so-called e-Portfolios still appear to be little more than a substitutionary VLE, delivering both content and in some cases assessment tools built into the e-Portfolio. Again, some institutions' criteria for assessment are more concerned with the skills required for the construction of the e-Portfolio rather than assessing the content and processes demonstrated and the attitude of the student. Questions relating to the use of Macromedia or any web-tool service, for instance, should be irrelevant to the purpose of assessment for which the tool is to be used.

The fact that most of the e-Portfolio systems are still an embedded part of the institutions' delivery is a serious cause for concern and fundamental to issues of portability and student 'ownership'. One emergent problem is that of security, whereby assessors could remotely gain access to parts of the VLE which was not necessarily part of a student's e-Portfolio. Similarly, (an old 'hobby-horse' of mine) there is some discussion about using different e-Portfolios for different purposes, whereas I would suggest that a good e-Portfolio system such as eFolio can deliver different 'views' to different audiences, concurrently, using much of the same content for different purposes.

Perhaps the key-word relating to the functionality of any e-Portfolio is 'interoperability' - and yet the topic does not appear to be mentioned anywhere in the report. Again, the report and case-studies reflect, in my opinion, a significant lack of acceptance of 'transition' and lifelong, lifewide learning as being an important part of the e-Portfolio concept.