ICT Intent

The results of a survey of e-portfolio and e-Personal Development Planning (PDP) practice in UK higher education has been published by the Centre for Recording Achievement on behalf of the Higher Education Academy.   

Things of note:

• Almost all claimed that PDP had now been implemented in their institution and over three-quarters of these were using some form of electronic tool to support the process.
• Almost all those surveys said they had an e-tool to support personal development planning but just over half of those surveyed claimed to have an e-portfolio tool.

The report cites some uncertainty over the definition of an e-portfolio and e-PDP. To quote the report under a table called Electronic resources described as e-portfolios’ :

The most frequently cited (12) was the Blackboard e-portfolio which is bundled with the content system (Blackboard CS), sometimes in use on its own, sometimes as part of an ongoing trial. Next most popular was PebblePAD (developed at the University of Wolverhampton) with 6 mentions. ePET (developed at the University of Newcastle) received 4 mentions but 2 of these were trials. RAPID (developed at Loughborough University) was mentioned twice, but with disagreement as to whether it was actually an e-portfolio system. LUSID (developed at the University of Liverpool) was mentioned by 2 respondents but not regarded as a full e-portfolio system. The WebCT portfolio was being trialled by 2 respondents and 2 more expected to be using it eventually. The Nuventive iWebfolio was being trialled by 1 respondent. OSP was being used in some departments in 1 institution. Six other systems mentioned as being used or on trial were Profile (developed at the University of the West of England); Concord Scioware; It’sLearning (a Norwegian VLE mainly used in schools); Uniservity (a commercial product also mainly used in schools); PROSPERO (developed at Queen Mary, University of London); Mercury Learning Log; and Microsoft Class Server. 10 other institutions claimed that their own internally-developed system was an eportfolio.

To echo the experience of schools, most still regard themselves as being at a pilot stage and have plans to evaluate their experience. Again, like schools this might imply that the suggested benefits of these systems are not yet being seen.

Interoperability in terms of inter-institutional transfer is not yet a high priority. However, there is considerable interest in integration of systems within institutions, particularly between e-portfolios, VLEs and student record systems. In my view, the real benefits of such systems come from the interoperability as this will cause system-wide change. Whilst the individual components my improve efficiency and access, on their own they can only provide incremental change to the existing system. Join them up and interesting things can begin to happen!

Links

Survey at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp?process=f…