eReturn

Lead Contact: Clem Herman

JISC Programme: JISC e-Learning Capital Programme

Lead Institution and Partners: The Open University - Faculty of Maths Computing and Technology (MCT); Institute of Educational Technology (IET); Learning and Teaching Solutions (LTS); Sheffield Hallam University - Centre for Science Education; University of Salford - School of Computing and Engineering; The Women's Workshop, Cardiff; UK Resource Centre for Women in Science; Engineering and Technology Association for Learning Technology (ALT)

Project Dates: October 2007 - March 2009

This case study illustrates Returning to Work; Women's and learner Perspectives; Lifelong Learning; Community of Practice; Widening Participation

Background & Context

What is the background to the e-portfolio initiative?

Women returning to work after a career break face a number of barriers and often require specialist support and help in getting back into employment. This is particularly true for those who want to return to Science Engineering or Technology (SET) industries where the career structures and workplace cultures still largely reflect the assumption that employees are male and will have an uninterrupted full-time career.

The project was developed out of the RETURN Campaign which had been funded by the former Department for Trade and Industry and co-ordinated by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology (UKRC) between 2004 and 2007.

An innovative aspect of this project was the consortium itself with 3 of the 5 organisations being Higher Education institutions and the other two (Cardiff Women's Workshop and UKRC for Women in SET) being small not-for-profit organisations that were new to the concept of e-portfolios and were keen to explore how these could be used within their areas of work. All 5 organisations had substantial experience of supporting women returning to SET either through distance learning, face to face counselling and advice, mentoring or other forms of advocacy. The remit of the project encompassed capacity building and skills sharing between partners.

What were the aims and objectives of the initiative?

The aim of the project was to evaluate the feasibility of developing a portable version of the Open University's (OU) e-portfolio (MyStuff) for cross institutional use, which would be piloted by women returning to Science Engineering and Technology (SET) after a career break.

Objectives were to:

• Identify the ways in which specific groups of stakeholders that work with returners could integrate the MyStuff e-portfolio into their current working practices (careers advisors, mentors and employers)
• Develop and test models of transferring e-portfolio content from OU MyStuff to other systems used by partner institutions, for example the ViewSET Moodle platform at Cardiff and Goldmine database held by UKRC
• Support 2 groups of returning learners to create and continue to use their MyStuff e-portfolios during and after undertaking an online Personal Development Planning course at the Open University
• Evaluate how learners have used MyStuff e-portfolios to support transition to employment by carrying out surveys and interviews with participants on the course and their mentors/advisers/employers after the end of the course
• Disseminate findings and results to the wider community of e-learning professionals through a series of workshops and seminars

How was the initiative implemented?

As lead partner the OU undertook project management and co-ordination of the partnership, with a strong emphasis on partnership working, building on previous working relationships, so that new developments and decisions about the direction of the project were discussed within the overall consortium framework.

The approach was very much user-focused, above all the project wanted to assess how and in what circumstances e-portfolios could be a useful tool to support women returners to SET.

The first step was to assess the needs of stakeholders by hosting focus groups.

OU carried out technical development of MyStuff e-portfolio software including adapting and updating the original T160 course for returners to SET so that learners on the new T161 course (Return to Science, Engineering and Technology) could use MyStuff to develop their e-portfolios. Cardiff and UKRC carried on their support work with these learners after they had completed the course and offered them further advice and help with returning to employment.

OU designed and carried out evaluation study with two groups of T161 learners to assess their responses to the MyStuff software as well as attitudes to the e-portfolio process that had been adopted within the course.

The project set out to investigate how the MyStuff e-portfolio could be used by learners as they progressed to other institutions or into employment. Therefore issues of interoperability were critical. Experiments were set up to test the transferability and usability of MyStuff data between partner institutions and existing e-portfolio systems.

Finally ALT organised a dissemination event to ensure that the wider JISC and e-learning communities were aware of the project and the issues being explored.