HELPP - Higher Education Learning Portfolio for Placements

Lead Contact: Naomi Hoyland, nhoyland@hull-college.ac.uk

JISC Programme: JISC e-Learning Capital Programme

Lead Institution and Partners: Hull College

Project Dates: March 2007 - March 2009

This case study illustrates Work-based learning, reflection; employability; learning processes

Background & Context

What is the background to the e-portfolio initiative?

Hull College had undertaken numerous trials to develop a VLE until successfully developing Moodle in order to fit with its requirements. At the time, however, Moodle did not offer some of the communication facilities that were becoming available on the internet.

Whilst many individuals had good context specific knowledge in using digital technologies there was little sharing of information and experience between Schools with overlapping curricula.

Social networking tools were recognised as being able to support a variety of collaborative teaching and learning methods. Pressure was developing within the College for an e-Portfolio and an e-ILP (electronic Individual Learning Plans) with very little grass roots understanding of the nature or the potential of these tools. A number of different products were proposed and whilst each had its own champions there was no consensus on what functionality was actually required.

The decision making process involved in securing an e-portfolio for colleges in FE is not particularly straightforward. There can be a range of influences impacting on the decision, for instance awarding bodies, Local Education Authorities and partner institutions in further and higher education may all have different e-portfolio developments in place.

From the outset Hull College believed that a 'one size fits all' product would be most useful from both an administrative and training point of view.

The Project developed as a result of previous work on e-portfolio development by the e-Learning team and a one year Higher Education Academy mini project completed with the course team for the Foundation Degree in Software Design to utilise Elgg as a means of maintaining communication with students, employers and tutors and encouraging reflection during Foundation Degree work placements.

Elgg had been tested in a minor way some years earlier within the College and had been judged to be stable. Elgg has a number of well developed features including; a profile area, a personal reflection space and a portfolio area.

What were the aims and objectives of the initiative?

Aims

The primary aim of the project was to make more effective use, institutionally, of social networking to encourage both reflective writing and sustained writing whilst raising awareness at both the institutional and individual levels of the opportunities for dynamic and positive engagement with students beyond the classroom.

The project also explored the benefits of the e-portfolio facility where images, sound and video could be used to record experience and reflections while critical evaluation could take place both peer-to-peer and tutor-to-student within the same working space.

As the main context of the project was work placements, it was necessary to encourage and raise awareness of social networking to provide three-way communications between student, tutor and work place mentor/employer.

Objectives

Learners, their respective employers and tutors will be aware of the technological advantage of the use of blogs in Elgg to encourage and enhance reflective practice by incorporating tutor and employer comment throughout the work placement.

To assess the extent to which the e-portfolio space has been used by students/employers to share and upload work to be assessed. Will learners, by using the e-portfolio space, be able to enhance the recording of work placement experience via sound, images and video of the work placement?

To develop a download facility to address the interoperability issues between e-portfolio systems, for all the files stored in Elgg and all the blog transcripts; so at a single button press, learners' e-portfolio work can be transferred onto portable media.

To deliver training to learners, employers and tutors in both a face-to-face and online mode and to pilot the system with learners, employers and tutors involved in work placements.

How was the initiative implemented?

The implementation strategy was to have two main phases with a midpoint view and final evaluation. The evaluation plan included the development of a set of questionnaires to answer research questions about the development of IT skills by students. These were created and implemented but ultimately no statistical analysis was carried out. Data was collected by the project team using discussion groups from which exemplars of practice have been produced along with feedback from learners to give the student perspective.

Phase 1 included

• Elgg Server configuration and platform development
• Initial development of preparation of the Elgg interface to deal with work based learning requirements
• Internal promotion, preliminary demonstrations and pilot user recruitment
• Workshop arranged
• External promotion and development of informal external support network (including seeking advice from existing Elgg users)
• Survey design
• Mapping of processes
• Survey of students to assess IT skills
• Implementation
• Stakeholder feedback
• Review

End of first year review resulted in a decision to shift emphasis from tripartite communication to how to better integrate this type of facility into individual course design regardless of work placement availability.

Phase 2 included

• Dissemination of lessons learned and recruitment to phase 2
• Training events - to increase training opportunities for people involved in phase 2 pilot
• Survey of students to assess IT skills
• Implementation at course level
• Stakeholder feedback
• Case studies/video
• Final evaluation