Success Factors

What are the key outcomes of the initiative?

Outputs - Case Studies

Access to HE, Abingdon and Witney College

The e-portfolio was introduced to learners taking the Access to HE course. The e-portfolio was intended to build up a more complete picture of their accomplishments to date and encourage them to see these events as a reflection of their ability to pass the Access course and complete a university education.

Visual and Performing Arts, University of Brighton

The Visual and Performing Arts programme at the University of Brighton took the opportunity of myWORLD to see if the PETAL tool could help the university respond to its commitment to providing PDP tools for its learners. The e-portfolio was intended to support both standard CV building and the process of documenting a piece of work that learners are creating.

Viticulture, Plumpton College

As part of the Viticulture BSc, students in their final year can take a 10 point Career Development module. Rather than producing a standard CV, the e-portfolio was introduced to encourage learners to reflect on their personal skills and establish the habit of collecting and selecting evidence to support their job applications.

Access to Art at Brighton

The Access to Art course has enabled artists with learning disabilities to develop their arts practice. By using PETAL, learners could create an e-portfolio of their work which could be promoted to galleries and be shared with case workers and advocates. As well as recording their progress, the e-portfolio could act as a valuable prompt for their future goals and ambitions.

Chartered Management Institute (CMI)

The Thames Valley Professional Institutes Partnership (TVPIP) and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) saw the potential of e-portfolios to support professionals' continuing professional development. Maintaining an e-portfolio could allow members to record their CPD, set targets, and demonstrate how they've applied their skills. The resulting e-portfolio could be used to organise evidence to encourage applications for Chartered Management accreditation, as well for other CVs, job applications or own marketing.

Observations and Issues

Some of the common themes which arose from the case studies included:

Despite the logistical difficulties caused by the size and complexity of the project, the project was able to describe a scenario for e-portfolio use from each of the case studies and uncover many learning points about the introduction of e-portfolios into learning and teaching contexts.

In terms of learner experience, the main finding was that the software was difficult to use and in some aspects did not work sufficiently to complete the intended tasks. This was made worse because learners had high expectations of the technology in terms of functionality and usability. The ability to customise and personalise presentational work in particular was of particular importance.

There were clear issues with the general IT literacy/capabilities of the participants with learning disabilities. However, the participants generally enjoyed the sessions and were clearly excited about the prospect of gathering together examples of their work for display to others. As with the visual arts students, the shortfalls in flexibility with regard to presentation output were the most critical issues. The use of video as a means of capturing participant input was also trialled and proved successful, both in terms of eliminating some of the accessibility issues and in capturing a more 'realistic' reflection of the thoughts and experiences of the participants.

The extent to which the case studies had been able to achieve their aims was restricted by the technical difficulties. Some tutors had specified real, practical outputs in terms of employment or accreditation. However none of the case studies progressed to the stage where learners used the tool to achieve their goal. In part this was due to technical difficulties which resulted in a late start so application deadlines were missed. It was also due to technical difficulties in creating the final presentations: the instability of the system and its lack of flexibility to create different presentation templates or allow for learners to customise the look of their own presentations.

Some of the project leaders reported that their involvement in the project had had a small impact on their role within their institution. Those at Abingdon and Witney (Access to HE) and University of Brighton (Visual and Performing Arts) were able to engage in institution-wide discussions about the possible role of learner personal development planning as a result of their involvement in myWORLD.