Significant Context

When studying theology we are always taught to look at any statement in terms of its context ie the culture, the authority of speaker, the capabilities of the listener, the topic in question etc, etc.  And no more so than in today's constructivist mode of teaching and learning.

Following on from a recent NAACE discussion on LinkedIn, I suggested the above graphic as illustrating the inter-connectedness of three primary areas of the Curricula, the Skills & Competencies and the various Motivations that energise teacher and learner alike.  It is my firm belief that not one of these three areas can be considered in isolation but that the specific context within which the learner is placed can unite the relevant portions of each.

A well-organised ePortfolio can very effectively document all of these five areas and also show their inter-relatednesses. - As an afterthough, it is my instinctive nature to expect to see all of these five areas clearly considered within a student's ePortfolio.  A balance of all five will give the reader of an ePortfolio a clear sense of a 'well-rounded' person.

Captivating the young

Too often people like the one in this cartoon think about ePortfolios from a technical standpoint or in terms of HE and FE, or upskilling of the workforce. It’s time we started focussing more on what we should be providing in terms of ePortfolios for our children.

I was pleasantly reminded of this by a long response that I got from Tricia Lockhart:

"As far as portfolios are concerned I share your frustration. Back in 1998 I came across primary schools where the year 6 pupils took with them a disc (almost a portfolio) of their work and skills to the secondary school who did not really know how to deal with it and so many of to-days schools have still not really got there.

"My exam boards talked about portfolios and so I made sure we were ready - only to find that firstly they delayed (because some schools were not ready) and then they gave a straightjacket of a structure or a theme which failed to understand what a portfolio really was (for example, we were allowed no external links yet these indicated the discoveries and hence journey of the students). They gave a context of a time capsule (the standalone portfolio would be found in a hundred years) and then failed to consider the reality of that - would the hardware and software still be decipherable. The logical failings of the task undermined what the students were doing. Imaginative schools and students were held back by rather unnecessary barriers. We had to change their online, working portfolio to make a stunted offline version for the exam board. Variety and opportunity must surely be the key - in a system that screams 'differentiation' why must assessment scream 'uniformity'?

"I worked with a year 4 lad, reluctant to read and write though quite clever and able he really did not have the motivation to navigate through the boring (to him) bits. In his spare time the call of the outside space and football lured him away. There were exceptions (The excellent Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls). However, when he was given the role of a sports reporter, the zeal and attention to detail as he researched what to include, selected what to say and reworded how to say it, recorded then rerecorded (voluntarily saying there needed to be more expression or it needed to be slower) made him look like the most industrious and studious learner. The pride with which he then shared the resulting podcast with grandparents and peers was wonderful and of course was further motivation. This was just an audio production with a picture of the reporter as an image. (Hats and glasses are fun to wear and give some anonymity plus a 'stage name') Other examples I have are the 2 girls who made a news report and had used chroma key so they on their 'studio' chairs were in front with suitable footage behind. Sharing the result widely is so important.

"The way that parents and others can be integrated into the whole process is also important. Over recent years the way our assessments have been a barrier to parents fully understanding what is happening and then needs to happen means we have diluted the help from the most important allies teachers have - parents.

"Yes we need to make students aware of the problems and the need for security but not at the cost of the possible advantages. We also need to get some perspective - local papers of full of the pictures of all children who start primary school, smiling faces and names included. Electronic sources are not the only risk factors."

How I agree with everything Tricia has said above. I believe that the eFolio solution meets all of her criteria. eFolio is user-friendly, configurable to one's own self image and, above all is extremely e-safe and not 'discoverable' by any search engine until such time as the owner wishes to make a page 'public'.

Do other readers have similar stories of bureaucratic failure to deliver what our youngsters need? Are we not missing out by not captivating the young?

Successful student engagement using e-Portfolios

I was recently asked, “can anyone shed any light on the “theory” of successful student engagement using ePortfolios in the vocational area of learning?” And this was my reply:

This is not an uncommon problem, particularly with purpose-designed systems.

The issue, in my opinion is one of ‘ownership’.

1: If the system you are using is just a tool for subject delivery/assessment there is little motivation for the student to do yet more form-filling.

2: In some institutions the e-Portfolio is just used as a content delivery system as a substitution for a VLE which might not be capable of managing the tutor/mentor feedback and peer-review that an e-Portfolio should be capable of managing. And this is where, I suspect, that the popularity of Web2.0 has intruded itself.

3: It is an educationally recognised fact that the e-Portfolio needs to ‘belong’ to the learner. If there is no self-identity, no self-representation that shouts out “This is ME”, there is little chance that any but the most studious will invest time and effort in doing something that is obviously not ‘mine’ but the College’s.

4: The e-Portfolio should contain personal information that helps the tutor/mentor to better understand the learner and thus develops a better student-teacher relationship. The more information that the learner is allowed to include, including rich media, the better the relationship can become.

5: Of course, the organisation, layout and choice of pages and sub-pages, the templates chosen and colour-schemes, of avatars etc are all part of the psychology of ‘ownership’. It is quite often these very obvious presentation choices that immediately tell the experienced teacher much about their students than might be intended.

6: However, perhaps the most important aspect of the e-Portfolio is what tools are embedded to provide formative feedback, peer review, polls, surveys and comments that really begin to support the type of student activity we should be seeing in the classroom, with or without walls.

7: An obvious requirement of e-Portfolio functionality is that the learner needs to be able to control who-sees-what. A good e-Portfolio will allow the control of audiences so that, concurrently, different readers will see different ‘views’ of the one e-Portfolio.

I could go on for ages, but hope this is a start. Please check out my links on the sidebar: