Success Factors
What are the key outcomes of the initiative?
Tutors reported that they were able to control the student project more effectively, getting a richer picture of the project's progress over time instead of relying only on physical visits.
All course tutors felt that reflective practice had been enhanced and that time had been saved in dealing with work placements.
Student feedback and support has improved via the blog comments and online contract.
The online environment provided ongoing support that was not time and place dependent.
The Project succeeded in establishing a secure social networking system. There are two versions running which are stable and reasonably flexible in meeting needs the College's needs.
The Project aimed to make more effective use of social networking to encourage both reflective writing and sustained writing and are good examples of the development of these characteristics. Active participants seem to encourage others to write more and students with Dyslexia have been among the best contributors.
The blog modules have had far greater success than the e-portfolio module.
The College anticipated that students on A&D and Media courses would make extensive use of the e-Portfolio, yet, disappointingly, their use was modest.
Sufficient use was made to test the technology and Engineering students found that the ability to upload and share technical drawings extremely useful. In both Media and Photography, students preferred their already established Flickr areas. For the less AV biased the Project Team recognised that embedding of AV needed to be addressed in much the same way as they had addressed the Elgg implementation. To the surprise of the Project Team, Engineering really liked the e-Portfolio as it aided the methodological and structured approach to their work. They had 'missed' the 'presentation' module as navigation on Elgg is not intuitive, but intend to use it now they have found it.
Exemplars of working portfolios to use in staff development and staff induction have been produced. There is better understanding of what the various requirements are of an e-portfolio for a number of different curriculum areas.
The Project successfully established a successful methodology for introducing social networking into teaching practice at tertiary level. Elgg is not particularly intuitive and required some investment in time to get the navigational flow easy enough to use. There has been a move from a reliance on 'enthusiasts' or early adopters to having a number of communities of users who find the technology sufficiently usable for them to adopt and incorporate it into their course. Once the problem areas in navigation had been established it became possible for a wider range of users to understand its potential and try it.
What follow-up activity will be/has been carried out as a result of the project?
Participant-centred reports for the individual School were made available and the needs of individual Schools collected to focus further development.
A feedback from staff and students identified training needs and a 'buffet' of mini courses open to all to support the use of technology in learning is now available. Dissemination is continuing. Internally discussion has become more focused on actual requirements.
Discussion is taking place with IT Services on the ways technical support can be provided to students in their own homes.
The opportunity for students to revise and update their portfolio through mobile technology has only been tested at the 'entry' level at the College and it is hoped to explore further the use of mobile devices to support portfolio development in work-based learning at higher education along with the use of wiki as further routes to engage work-based mentoring.
