Success Factors
What are the key outcomes of the initiative?
The Flourish Project has ensured that a significant number of staff at the University of Cumbria have come into contact with an e-portfolio and had the opportunity to experience using one. By March 2009 600 out of approximately 1800 members of staff had a PebblePad account. Every account was created upon request by the user (there was no provision for automatic generation of user accounts). Approximately one third (200) accounts are inactive. Those with inactive accounts were contacted before the end of the Project and asked if they still needed the account and the majority said yes, they intended to use PebblePad in the near future.
As a result of Flourish over 300 student accounts have been created and have been used successfully in the Faculty of Education, the School of Business (as part of the Higher Education Academy/Centre for Recording Achievement Employer Project) and in the School of Law to support Personal Development Planning.
Flourish has also ensured that the issue of e-portfolios for all students is on the agenda of influential committees at Cumbria, as well as being discussed at the Heads' Conference and faculty management meetings.
In some areas Flourish exceeded the objectives outlined in the original plan, examples include the University of Cumbria Teaching Fellowships (made via PebblePad in 2008) in institutional e-portfolios (where PebblePad was used to collect, collate and demonstrate institutional information) and in the Higher Education Academy/JISC Benchmarking Activity.
Flourish has also had an impact on procurement processes at Cumbria. Using the experiences of introducing PebblePad to staff, Flourish project staff were instrumental in designing procurement and deployment procedures intended to encourage and support innovation in e-learning.
What follow-up activity will be/has been carried out as a result of the project?
Further work needs to be done regarding the use and impact of having to use multiple e-portfolios for professional development, particularly when it involves registration with a professional body. Staff have expressed reluctance to use multiple methods of recording their CPD and this has the potential to impact upon engagement with an e-portfolio.
There is also potential for further work to be done on the attitude and IT capability of those 'receiving' an e-portfolio for review or assessment that has an impact upon the extent to which an e-portfolio is used.
Concerns raised by staff regarding the longevity of their e-portfolio suggest that more work needs to be done concerning access and hosting of a personal learning system.
Flourish has highlighted the need for guidance on such issues as information management including data protection, intellectual property rights and publishing of unlawful content that may cause offence.
The Blossom project was a follow on to Flourish. It looked at similar practices of using e-portfolios to support staff CPD across the HE sector. Blossom contacted a number of UK HE institutions for information on how e-portfolios are being used for CPD. The project has produced a number of filmed interviews with practitioners in the area from across the sector.
