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Portfolio information: personally or

institutionally managed?

Simon GrantJISC CETIS

ePIC Conference, London2012-07-10

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summary – who looks after it?

learners should have the maximum rights organisations need to keep vital records

(“org” includes companies and educational institutions) this carries over into interoperability

Leap2A for learner-centred information SIF, XCRI (MLO), HEAR (EuroLMAI), HR-XML, …

the options for management and communication take-home messages:

no one simple solution common specifications would help some ideas on how to move forward

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learners' interests

(well-known here, include...) manage own personal information and reflections manage own products and outputs of learning share management of shared work view all org-held information including assessments view all personal network information

including business and social networks control information flow to 3rd parties

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organisational interests

personal details of learners who is enrolled on courses; progress and attendance assessment results & related student records/information systems (wikipedia) learner achievement documentation (HEAR) audit; HESA returns graduate destinations short and longer term

for alumni networks for internal feedback and official returns

Key Information Set – (HEFCE site)

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interoperability landscape

Leap2A for learner-centred view a version of IMS ePortfolio also exists in NL

SIF mainly for schools “Schools / Systems Interoperability Framework”

XCRI (and MLO: EN 15982) for course advertising “Exchanging Course Related Information”

the HEAR (and EuroLMAI: EN 15981) “Higher Education Achievement Report”

parts of HR-XML are relevant “Human Resources ...”

various specifications for learning resources

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the options

1. everything is managed by the organisation2. learners arrange their own systems, and send to orgs no

more information than they need3. separate systems for different purposes

but there is overlap of relevant information so how should these be coordinated?

link from personal to organisational? link from organisational to personal?

let's look at each option...

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1 everything managed by org

the institution or company gives the learner some space for a personal portfolio and other personal work

good point: learners don't have to manage systems but – org may not be trusted

what can the learner take out? how does the learner control access? what gets passed to the next organisation?

maybe OK only if you really trust “the system” and do organisations trust each other, anyway?

and anyway, it goes against learner responsibility

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2 learners manage all their own

send to organisation only what they need no problems with transfer, permissions or trust but learner has to manage the hosting and difficulties may include:

how does the learner submit work for assessment? how does the learner get information from the org? how does the org get the needed info from the learner?

one big problem: institutions cannot officially rely on linking to individual learners' sites

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3 can separate systems relate?

if either alone has so many problems, what about having both doing their own things?

but at present they are both running in their own different ways, leaving several challenges to overcome

consider information that would need to flow from learner to learner from learner to org from org to learner from org to org

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from learner to learner

several social networking systems tend not to represent much portfolio information when they do it is not in any standard format

however they are such big businesses that influencing them is a huge challenge

communication between learners may be done through org system e-portfolio tools often have this built in but often the permissions are not made explicit

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from learner to org

learners need to be able to do work in their own space and transfer to org for assessment etc.

but there is no recognised standard format for this for high-stakes summative assessment the organisation may

need to take copies of works or evidence and store it org needs to know things about the learner

the learner may already have this recorded for other purposes but again, no easy data standards bridging across so time wasted copying and pasting; transcription errors; out-of-

date versions … inefficient administration learner frustration

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from org to learner

organisations need to provide learners with records of what they have done, validated by the organisation that's the point of the HEAR and similar ideas but the HEAR format doesn't fit a portfolio directly

learner may want learning materials and resources but they may have restricted IPR as well as having no obvious way of connecting to other records

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from org to org

learner is entitled to control flow of personal information but there is no current way for e-portfolio permission

systems to be inserted in between the organisational systems

and orgs seem to prefer having information directly from the other org source not via a learner with a motive to embroider or gloss over facts

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take home # 1

being naïve doesn't help the situation is genuinely difficult there are several unmet challenges there are no simple solutions

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take home # 2

there is at least one thing we could work on join up the specifications create a standard format that unifies information relevant to

people in many common situations to allow easier joining up of the systems

that is probably not the only thing, though try to communicate and coordinate different efforts

ideas on joining up

define common information structures applying across lifelong engagement (portfolio plus)

clearly label each chunk of information provenance: who is the author or person responsible rights: who has what rights over it permissions: what the rights holder allows others to do with it this needs to be done at a fine granularity, and its language and

terminology must be widely agreed provide better, simpler, clearer, easier mechanisms for

referring back to the rights holders for confirmation / validation / permission

Thanks...

... for your attention ... for any feedback you may be able to give

either now or to me at asimong@gmail.com