UC Week 10
15th of April 2010
This session consisted of:
- discussion of digital portfolios
- examination of digital portfolio resources
- setup and experimentation with the Mahara open source electronic portfolio within Moodle
Digital Portfolios/ePortfolios
The Queensland Government Smart Clasroom defines a digital portfolio as:
” a purposeful collection of learnings over time that documents personal, academic and professional development. It is a visual guide that maps where you have been, where you are going and how you plan to get there. In this context, a digital portfolio is a tool to communicate what you know and can do.”
They are described as:
“a time capsule for condensing learning over time, demonstrating the efforts applied and progress achieved for specific goals. They also provide a platform for presenting capabilities to teachers, accrediting bodies and potential employers.”
So, they have a use for everyone in the education system, and outside of the system for collating and presenting the “evidence” of an education.
Portfolios are by no means a new concept, however the use of digital technology allows them to contain an essentially infinite array of material – the creativity and ability of the student and the teacher are really the only limitation (if we ignore cost, time and other humdrum things).
There are (were) some arguments that “old fashioned” portfolios are preferred to digital portfolios. Not every environment will suit them, but more and more commonly it is the expected way to present yourself to the world. Two of my friends (BC and BH) who work in the digital animation and cartoon industries rely on these heavily. (hey, this looks like one of those public/private overlaps…). They previously had this type of content on CDs which they distributed, but the web based portfolio is far more effective.
There are different conceptions of the role of digital portfolios and thier role in education, as presented in the diagram below.
eportfolio
The simplest conception is that it is just a place to archive the things that are created in the course of learning – just like a folder on your computer; a “digital scrapbook” which can be accessed later on. Other conceptions include:
- the portfolio as the vehicle for assessment – things placed within the portfolio over a period of time are assessed. The improvements over time in the content are a record of achievement
- student achievement can be linked to learning outcomes at the unit and university levels, but this serves quality assurance purposes of the institution more than the student
- these are usually controlled by the institution and can be “lost” to the owner when leaving
- the portfolio as a “showcase” representing the best achievements of the owner – the owner selects those things which best demonstrate their abilities; this can be different for different audiences
- the portfolio as a space for learning – containing the objects as above, but with other spaces for collating ideas, works in progress, resources and tools and for collaborating with others
This last idea is formalised nicely by EDUCAUSE:
“Rather than a static repository, an electronic portfolio is a dynamic and interactive tool of a learners’ digital collections of their own learning artifacts, supporting interaction with other learners, employers, counselors, mentors, teachers, and others for lifelong learning and professional development.”
They offer a range of resources (127 at last check) to support the use of digital portfolios.
With the range of purposes that a digital portfolio could be used for, many students maintain several for different purposes. A digital portfolio which allows all of these in the one platform is the “holy grail” – Mahara could be the answer?
Mahara
Mahara “is an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework. Mahara, meaning ‘think’ or ‘thought’ in Te Reo Māori, is user centred environment with a permissions framework that enables different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed. Mahara also features a weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities.”
University of Canberra is currently rolling out Mahara as a component of Moodle. I have just trialled it briefly, but it looks and works really nicely – the link from the unit Moodle site logs you in automatically – a very nice touch that reinforces the link with Moodle.
mahara
Mahara has several features which address the various conceptions described above, especially in terms of owner control over the portfolio:
- It has features of a social networking site, with various ways of finding and managing “friends” and groups – they can all have different levels of access to your content.
- It has a place for writing a resume, listing goals and skills and then places to store the finished documents.
- It uses a concept called “views” to allow the owner to organise the content in the portfolio – different views are set up by the owner to address particular requirements, and those views are then made available publicly or to specific friends or groups.
- Views also have a “secret URL” which can be distributed and used as a hyperlink to that view for anyone who isn’t a Mahara user or group member (i.e. potential employers) when you don’t want it to be easily found by the public.
- The owner can even set the dates for which access is available.
- Selscted or all content/views can be exported as stand alone websites or as
LEAP2A standard format. “You can later use this to import your data into other LEAP2A compliant systems, although the export is hard for humans to read.”
- I am a bit nervous about this as it seems to be a completely separate standard to the SCORM or IMS discussed in my previous post.These type of things will only work if they are universally adopted – remember VHS and Betamax???
An upcoming development is the expected addition of a “submit” button in Mahara which submits a view as an assessment item in Moodle. The opportunities here are great, with assessment tasks potentially being comprised of the student presenting work which they believe meets the assessment criteria selected from their portfolio. That work could then be also used in a different view to advertise their skills to potential employers or share their ideas with other students. I am not sure how portfolio items could be used in multiple submissions, as university policy doesn’t allow the same work to be submitted for more than one assessment – that’s one for the policy people I think.
It looks like the Mahara/Moodle connection is in good hands, with the Moodleman = Maharaman.
