The MANSLE Project

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The MANSLE Project Manchester Self-Directed
Learning and E-Portfolios Building on
experiences to guide new projects Mark
Johnson The University of Bolton
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• E-Portfolio highlights the need for deeper
  thinking about the nature of reflection,
  assessment, monitoring and teacher/student,
  institution/student relationships.
• E-Portfolio technologies afford opportunities to
  reorganise the structures which surround teaching
  and learning. How can we best organise those
  technologies into effective interventions in
  education?
• How did MANSLE fare in this endeavour?

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• Background to (e-)portfolio
• Emergent from a diverse array of drivers
• Competency-based assessment
• Institutional data management and
  interoperability
• Life-long learning
• Life-wide learning

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• Preparation in the e-Portfolio domain
• Methodological Issues
• Technological Issues
• Pedagogical Issue
• Organisational Management Issues

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• Issues in the discourse
• Methodology and Evaluation
• Portfolio is both a human issue as well as a
  technical one.
• How are you going to approach the human issues in
  e-portfolio?
• With what techniques?
• Theres been a lot of broad-based review of the
  technology, but little deep study
• This is of fundamental importance to the
  increasing of knowledge in the domain and is best
  planned in detail from the very beginning.
• Phenomenology, ethnography, action research, etc
  all worth investigating
• What technical innovations might you consider?
• New services to support and supplement existing
  portfolio solutions, practices
• Investigation of new ways of reintegrating
  existing portfolio services

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• Issues in the Discourse
• Technology
• Current portfolio systems (with a few exceptions)
  provide little more than data persistence.
• The area of services to support portfolio related
  activities is under-explored.
• The debate around the use of open internet
  technologies (blogs, wikis) vs big institutional
  systems is very important (bear in mind (1)
  above). Why not use MySpace, or a wiki, or a word
  document on a floppy disk?!
• Embrace the principles of the e-Framework and the
  move away from monolithic systems avoid
  redundancy of functionality.

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• Issues in the discourse
• Pedagogy
• What are the possibilities for reorganising
  teaching and learning with this technology?
• Whats reflection? What are we looking for? Why?
• Re-examine the philosophical foundations for
  existing (paper) portfolio implementations
  (nursing, teacher training, etc).
• Issues over the ownership and control of data.
• Issues over the nature of the purpose of
  portfolio assessment or reflection?

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• Issues in the discourse
• Organisational/Management Issues
• Who needs interoperability?
• How best to make a teaching and learning
  technological intervention (do institutional
  structures get in the way?)
• Issues over ownership and control of data
  balance between student control with ensuing
  difficulties of coordination and institutional
  control.
• Are there technological solutions to this??

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• Recommendations for engaging with e-portfolio
• Study the teaching and learning situation of your
  students, particularly focusing on where student
  progress may be hampered by current
  organisational structures.
• Investigate how those structures might be
  transformed with new technology.
• Investigate the current issues relating to the
  technologies you are looking at.
• Are they monolithic or service-based?
• What are the opportunities for repurposing (and
  particular repurposing component parts of a
  technology)?
• Are they institutionally-based, or
  extra-institutional?
• Consider from the outset the knowledge that your
  project aims to uncover in the domain and be
  aware of whats already been done.
• In particular, methodologies for evaluation are
  of crucial importance.
• Theres been a lot of broad evaluation, but
  little deep study (ethnography, etc).

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• MANSLE Objectives
• Technical
• Evaluate a range of open source tools to support
  work-based learning and student progression
  within this context.
• Explore the repurposing of existing e-Portfolio
  services in a portfolio solution for students on
  health education foundation programmes
• Human
• Report on the organisational and management
  issues relating to the project rollout and a
  broad-based evaluation of student experience.
• Support the development of LLNs through
  evaluating the potential roles of technology to
  support work-based learning

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• MANSLE Tool Overview
• Utilises previously funded JISC projects
• Extracting specific web services to provide
  functionality
• User interface developed to aggregate web
  services
• Four main areas of functionality
• Student PDP area
• Reflection and note tools
• Claims against outcomes or competences
• Tutor meeting and mentoring logging tools
• Inter-linking between various elements

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• Student Evaluation Perceived Benefits
• Organisation
• Control over organising and marshalling resources
• Portability and ease of storage/access
• Easier to correct errors and update things than
  paper
• Information all stored together
• Easily view progress and goals

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• Student Evaluation Perceived Benefits
• Planning and Development
• Revisit work to see progression
• Competencies made me more reflective and focussed
  
• Helped understand reasons for doing things
• Helped identify strengths and weaknesses more
  quickly
• Plan future goals and career development
• MANSLE acted as focus for tutor discussions
• Potential to demonstrate progress / achievements

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• Student Evaluation Identified Difficulties
• Data and Information
• Duplication of effort electronic and manual
  systems
• Links between work on course and work on MANSLE
• Access could only be from set places and at set
  times
• Information overload and not knowing what to do
  with it
• Need enough right information to be able to
  reflect

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• Student Evaluation Identified Difficulties
• Process
• Very time consuming
• Have to be able to record reflections when they
  occur
• Need to be really organised and good at using
  computers
• Not enough time to use as well as work and
  college work
• Technical difficulties

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• Staff Evaluation - Benefits
• Tracking and managing personal academic
  development
• Extremely beneficial in providing structure to
  tutorials
• Perceived as the way forward positive
  experience
• Easier than paper system for tutor to co-ordinate
  and manage
• Developed stronger relationships between tutor
  student
• Excellent for supporting and extending student
  reflection
• Division into 4 areas proved useful
• But initially conceptually confusing

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• Institutional Framing of Portfolio
• The use of institutional structures to coordinate
  the dissemination of student technological
  practice was not effective.
• Students were dependent of their tutors
  support, who were not necessarily as well
  informed as those closer to the project steering
  committee.
• Students were driven by what they thought they
  ought to do, rather than what worked for them

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• Evidence From Student Submissions
• Some students found the tools useful, but many
  saw the exercise as extra work
• Whilst reflections can be seen in the student
  work, in most cases it is more as if the student
  is trying to articulate what they think they are
  expected to say.
• The worry is that we simply found a different
  assessment mechanism which is no better (and
  could be worse) than existing assessment
  mechanisms

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• Implications for Course Design
• Need for structured and effective embedding
• Have to be seen as core element, not optional or
  bolt-on
• Employer perception of e-portfolios compared to
  paper
• Access to e-portfolio, impressiveness
• Ability of technology approaches to meet all
  needs
• Broad range of stakeholders, broad range of
  potential application
• Require clear rationale for role of PDP and
  portfolio within the programme and ensure
  everyone understands their role
• Issues re IT skills (staff and students) and IT
  infrastructure

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• Overarching Lessons from MANSLE
• Correlation between student activity and staff
  understanding
• Explore interlinking between components
• Clarity of role of PDP and portfolio in
  foundation degrees
• View PDP and portfolio as embedded rather than
  additional
• Going e spotlights known issues and adds
  others
• Curriculum and staff development are the keys to
  success

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• Big Questions!!
• Whats Reflection? (and how does it relate to
  portfolio?)
• Whose data is it?
• Do we teach whole learners? (or only
  fragments) and how does this reflect in the
  portfolio initiative?
• What about MySpace, etc?

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• Where to from here
• Use and integration of existing web services
  both internet-based (blogging, etc) and
  institutional (competency management, etc).
• Personal Learning Environments
• E-Portfolio as a solution looking for a problem
  what might be the problem?

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Any Questions ?