David Tosh

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Creation of a Learning Landscape weblogging and
social networking in the context of e-portfolios
David Tosh Project Manager Elgg d.tosh_at_ed.ac.uk
Ben Werdmuller Technical Director Elgg ben_at_elgg.ne
t
Elgg http//elgg.net Elgg open source
development community http//elgg.net/development
/index.php
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• 1. What are e-portfolios?
• 2. What is the learning landscape?
• 3. Technologies
• 4. Pedagogical value
• 5. Pull it all together

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• What are e-portfolios?
• Should be learner centric
• Portfolios for assessment
• Portfolios for accreditation
• Portfolios for presentation
• Portfolios for employment
• Portfolio for reflection/deep learning
• Portfolio for personal development

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Why e-portfolios?
• For submitting storing assessment materials
• For reviewing commenting materials
• For safe-keeping of materials
• For anytime, anywhere access to materials
• For sharing materials with others, subject to
  permissions
• For creating an online CV
• For reflection on progress development
• Deep learning

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• My e-portfolio is
• My Digital Identity
• A place to reflect about my experiences and
  store artefacts that represent them
• A means to interact with others, resources etc.
• Most importantly, it is mine.
• Ownership is key!

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Poisoning the well
• I made the public statement this week, that
  high stakes assessment and accountability are
  killing portfolios as a reflective tool to
  support deep learning. Those mandated portfolios
  have lost their heart and soul not creating
  meaning, but jumping through hoops!
• (Helen Barrett, 2005 http//electronicpo
  rtfolios.org/blog/2005/04/poisoning-well.html)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Misja Hoebe
• My experience is that because of
  accountability issues (e.g. the reason behind a
  question like "how would Elgg help us satisfy our
  assessment criteria?") portfolio ownership often
  implicitly gets transferred to the institution,
  which inevitably leads to the loss of control by
  the learner. So, more than often the student is
  being asked to answer accountability issues via
  the predefined portfolio formats. No wonder that
  most students don't have very positive
  experiences with portfolios it's not their
  thing. (http//elgg.net/misja/weblog/)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• 1. What are e-portfolios?
• 2. What is the learning landscape?
• 3. Technologies
• 4. Pedagogical value
• 5. Pull it all together

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• The learning landscape
• Incorporates elements of e-portfolios,
  weblogging and social networking
• Is all about creating your digital identity
• Making connections
• Creating communities of knowledge transfer and
  development
• Allows users to become contributors as well as
  recipients

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My Landscape
Weblog
Syndication
File storage
User profile
Tagging
Repositories Such as the Netherlands
Customisation
Access controls
Other Elgg accounts Or systems that
adopt Emerging standards
Social networking
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My Communities
Community members
Development Community
My Landscape
PhD Community
My Music Community
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All together a personal learning landscape
Community space
Personal space
Member 1
Weblog
Access controls
Community 1
Member 2
Member 3
Tags
Community 2
My Personal Learning landscape
LiveJournal Flickr Friendster Etc.
Community 3
Files
Friends
Customise
Contact 1
Learning Landscape
Contact 2
Syndication
Profile
Contact 3
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• The learning landscape
• Connection of learners, resources, tutors
• Sharing resources and experiences
• Applications beyond courses -gt Increased
  engagement?
• More than an e-portfolio system
• The ability to grow as the learner grows
• Creation of learning communities
• View learning beyond the rigid structure of
  degree outlines and requirements
• Incorporating experiences from a variety of
  learning contexts

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• 1. What are e-portfolios?
• 2. What is the learning landscape?
• 3. Technologies
• 4. Pedagogical value
• 5. Pull it all together

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Technologies / Standards
• Blogging
• RSS and Atom
• FOAF / RDF
• IMS e-port spec
• IMS UKLIP
• SSO single sign on
• Social networking
• Extensible architecture

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Further open standards would allow for a global
  learning landscape

A teacher in Germany
A learner in Denmark
A learner in Scotland
A learner in the Netherlands
A teacher in Canada
A learner in Switzerland
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• (Or just an inter-departmental one)

A teacher in Medicine
A learner in Education
An art teacher
A computing student
A departmental secretary
A lecturer in biology
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Each learner connects using
• his or her own interface.
• Each user can customise the look and feel of
  their personal learning landscape
• Each system can have its own local settings (e.g.
  interface language) and local extra features
  while connecting to the global learning landscape

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• 1. What are e-portfolios?
• 2. What is Elgg?
• 3. Technologies
• 4. Pedagogical value
• 5. Pull it all together

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• The pedagogy
• Research on student engagement with learning
  suggests that when students perceive that they
  have choices in how to learn subject matter they
  are more engaged and motivated to move beyond
  simple information acquisition to trying to gain
  an understanding of the subject.
• (Ramsden, 2003 Marton and Saljo, 1984 Kuh
  et.al., 2005 LaSere Erickson and
  Weltner-Strommer, 1991 Entwistle, 1998)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• The pedagogy
• Source information
• Make connections
• Collaborate with others / social interaction
• Reflect on various aspects
• Pull in experiences from all sectors
• Introduces a fun element helps engagement
• Social as well as learning tool
• Create a digital identity then interact!

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape
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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Type of system
• Pre-use survey
• Highly structured 80.5
• Open system 19.5
• Post-use survey
• Highly structured 59.8
• Open system 40.2

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Student quotes
• The things we are supposed to do for it the
• e-portfolio are kind of like assignments and
• no offence but everybody knows, for assignments,
• you give them what they want you give them
• what they want and they give you your mark,
  thats
• basically the way it works.
• (Waterloo/UBC/Edinburgh research 2004/2005)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Student quotes
• Only having one view is really frustrating and
  stressful as
• we need to create our best one as everyone can
  see it.
• I think there are things you want to keep
  private but it
• might be good if you could create a group for
  your close
• friends to share some reflections and then an
  outside ring
• which is for everyone else and it could have
  things like your
• resume.
• (Waterloo/UBC/Edinburgh research 2004/2005)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Student quotes
• What we have been given has been boring and
  restrictive
• we need something that allows us to be more
  creative.
• "An e-portfolio might cause me to look like
  everyone else
• using generic templates etc. How will I stand
  out?
• (Waterloo/UBC/Edinburgh research 2004/2005)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Student quotes
• Learning isnt just about the end product, after
  all - its
• about the process, and e-Portfolios need to
  reflect that. I
• agree with Dave and Michelle (and others, Im
  just too lazy
• to link all of them!) that what makes
  e-Portfolios more
• than just a collection of past work (like
  traditional portfolios)
• is the reflective piece. Im going to add to
  that and say
• that the social aspect of learning is important,
  too. As an
• undergrad, my peers have been and continue to be
• invaluable to me - weve bounced ideas off each
  other,
• studied into the early hours of the morning,
  explored new
• ideas, designed, implemented, and debugged hours
  and hours worth of
• projects and code together. I wouldnt be the
  person I am without them.
• I wouldnt be where I am without them.
• (Student UBC)

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• 1. What are e-portfolios?
• 2. What is Elgg?
• 3. Technologies
• 4. Pedagogical value
• 5. Pull it all together

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Elgg Personal Learning Landscape

• Pulling it all together
• Will it work?
• What is the role of the institution?
• The future of VLEs
• Limited scaffolding - Structure isn't a bad
  thing. The key is allowing the learners to
  control the structure
• Learner-centric, learner controlled
• Increase learner engagement! A key to the
  e-portfolio movement.