Reflecting on Core Activity 2.1

This is a core activity (2.2) for H808 - to reflect on the collaborative discussion of the drivers of eportfolio developments.

For a large proportion of the time working on the drivers table I felt I didn't quite understand the exercise. The examples already completed in the table seemed to suggest that drivers were institutions or organisations, but my gut feeling (before I read any of the papers) was that drivers would relate to needs to support learners, for reflection, for assessment, for career development etc.  I was also confused by the activity directions - in one place it was to identify factors propelling developments in PDP, in another place it required making notes on drivers of eportfolio developments. These are certainly not mutually exclusive, but I didn't feel that they were automatically synonymous.

I was rather unsure how to contribute in an asynchronous forum. I didn't want to just launch in, listing the drivers I'd identified - I thought we were aiming for discussion. However, everyone (me included) seemed a little reticent, and a number of other students expressed that they found the exercise hard to get into or identify with, so I was reassured that it wasn't just me!

Although I found it hard to engage with the task, I felt purposeful, and I hope useful, in contributing to the environment for our collaboration. I set up some wiki pages, including the table for us to complete, and I think I initially imagined that we would somehow conduct our discussions (in the forum), reach a consensus, and then someone or a few people would add this to the wiki. The method emerged that everyone made a contribution to the wiki table, which was definitely more collaborative in its construction, but I'm not sure we really did the discussion part. Perhaps we would have done if someone had entered a driver that others didn't agree with, and the lack of debate suggests we all agreed. I think this is actually quite likely as there are just so many potential drivers, and none of us had read all the papers in order to be in a position to disagree. There seemed to be a supportive, respectful atmosphere developed amongst the group, and I felt that contributions of others were valued.

I think we worked well together in developing a method for achieving the task which engaged everyone equally. I felt that the method we arrived at (each person reading a couple of papers) was a good one. It resulted in different people picking out different features from the same source, and was therefore good to have some overlap.

I felt that synchronous communication would have led to an easier discussion as it would have been easier to notice if everyone was involved and engaged to the level they wanted. Obviously it wasn't feasible for this task (and rarely is for a course with learners in different time zones, in different employments etc). This led me to wonder how you might make group work easier in an asynchronous forum. I wonder if you might ask people to explicitly comment, either on the contribution preceding their own, on a selected prior contribution, or similar. You could ask people to related their own thoughts to their own previous work or to the previous posts in the forum. However, I think it would take a long time for everyone to feel sure they'd contributed as they wished, there might need to be some form of turn-taking protocol (which would be more artificial than a 'normal' face-to-face discussion), and there might be a need for a chair to draw together all the contributions into a final product. And would that product then be a real consensus, or would it just be the chair's view of events?

I think getting discussion going in the asynchronous environment might also be easier when a group happens to have one (or more) vocal leaders (whether emergent, self- or group-appointed). If someone is constantly responding to the posts of others, including questions and comments, it may draw the other posters into discussion. However, the reverse may happen, where the less forthright contributors are able to step further into the background, or even (and worse) feel pushed out. Having such obvious, dominant leaders therefore isn't best for the learning and involvement of each individual participant, although it might be to the benefit of creating a group 'product'.

(Unsurprisingly) no easy answer here I'm afraid!

Wordle for this blog (2)

Just about to go away for a long weekend - a lovely bright early autumnal forecast, and I look forward to lots of camping, walking, climbing and kayaking... but I'll actually miss the course working and thinking!

Before I go, here's the Wordle which has developed. It's clear that there's been a rather increased focus on ePortfolios! To be expected given the course I suppose - but I've surprised myself in how often I keep wanting to post here!

OneNote for an ePortfolio

I am not alone! Other people are using OneNote as an ePortfolio tool. This is pleasing as I was a little worried that the lack of mention of OneNote in the course and associated discussions might mean it was an inappropriate tool choice (despite my feeling convinced that it does what I need it to). It's been good to do a little web research, and find out what other people are doing.

So, firstly I found the OneNote and Education blog - not surprising that they would have something to say about ePortfolios there then. This blog talks about a maths teacher using OneNote to teach classes, give homework, engage students in collaborative assignments, store grades, give feedback etc. Critically, every child in that school has a laptop for their work.

Next there is the Language Education and Resource Network which included a conference presentation titled 'Use OneNote as ePortfolio to Increase Interaction and Collaboration', and has made the PowerPoint of the talk available. Again, the focus of this is more on class teaching, collaboration, electronic grading and integrating distance and present learners, than on a more personal ePortfolio, but great to see another example.

There's even a sample ePortfolio available from Microsoft. It includes sections for each individual pupil with homework, quizes and tests subsections, a group work space, and plenty of space for pupils to do their own work as they see fit. It's not a portfolio structure that will work for my own current H808 needs, but nice to see a suggestion.

It has to be said that all of these examples are quite different to how I expect to use my ePortfolio, but they illustrate several important points. Firstly, ePortfolios are many things to many people - there really is no concensus on the term. Secondly, OneNote has the toolset and capacity to assist in the gathering, selection and storing of ePortfolio artifacts. Thirdly, it's a good choice for me!

Still thinking about ePortfolios

Have read two articles today which have highlighted for me the different conceptions of ePortfolios. The faculty, the teachers, the course leader, the assessors, the verification boards, the careers departments, and of course the students, all have differing (and potentially conflicting) needs for an ePortfolio which works for them. The complexity of choosing an ePortfolio is well documented, and the guide from the RSC North West shows the choices include questions of whether the portfolio is for assessment, reflection, presentation (or not pigeon-holed as one type at all - debate here), access, ownership, hosting, Open Source or Commercial tools, security, accessibility and usability... no easy answers here!

Jafari's The "sticky" e-portfolio system: tackling challenges and identifying attributes (2004) seems to focus on ePortfolios as being large, costly, architecturally complex, institutionally provided (or even imposed), systems, which must interoperate with existing LMS, require a robust integrated technology architecture.

In contrast, in a post for the Official Google Docs Blog on Electronic Portfolios in GoogleApps, Helen Barrett shared a link to a high school student's portfolio, created using Google Sites. This allows the user to tell a story about their work, include a reflective narrative, link to all sorts of supporting evidence, in a very user-friendly looking site. No institutional edicts here, and no restrictive structure of a given ePortfolio tool... this lets the student tell it their way. I like this! However, I'd have called this a web site, or a course journal or project record or something - not necessarily an ePortfolio... so this widens the definition for me, and becomes something to which I can personally relate.

Getting organised

In addition to constructing the (unexpectedly epic!) blog post on my choice of ePortfolio below, I've spent most of the evening organising my H808 notes, evidence and ways of recording.

The ease with which OneNote has proven itself in storing/sorting/creating my course work is a large part of what led to my selecting it for my ePortfolio. (I sense a slight element of "if I say I've selected OneNote" enough times I'll start to believe that I made an ok decision, but I'm ignorring that right now!). Anyway, as I've gone along, in only 2 and a bit weeks of study I've accumulated notes on reading, blog posts, forum posts, wiki contributions, wiki edits and structure changes, a MyStuff portfolio (or at least a set of unstructured elements!) etc... This really points to the need to be organised on this course! So, I've spent the evening getting all these things stored in the one place - my OneNote notebook (and yes, it's backed up, off-site).

I feel happy with what I now have, and I think it's a sustainable system, suitably structured and easily accessible, tailored to my study-style preferences... but I do feel that most of what I've been doing in the past few days is organising my course and my activities, and not actually doing much in the way of 'the course'. Ok, I know these are all learning activities, but I mean ones listed in the course units!

Still, feels good to be organised, and to have done a little bit of 'the course' earlier today too.

Choosing my ePortfolio tool for H808

I'm trying to make some more progress towards choosing my ePortfolio tool for this course. In the first week I explored the OU's MyStuff (included with our course registration), and I also considered GoogleDocs, which I am very familiar with using for personal and collaborative working.

Since the initial flurry, and experimentation with MyStuff (which I found clunky, frustrating, and not very intuitive) I haven't done much about developing my ePortfolio. However, we're getting into the meat of some course activities now, and I'm finding I'm producing work which may need to be stored for evidence, and so I need to get on and make my ePortfolio choice. I have to admit here that I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't a course requirement... I can see the benefits of ePortfolios for students, and I would encourage them to reflect on what their work means (though I believe this could be done equally well outside of a portfolio)... I just can't see the benefit for me, now :-S But believe me I want to! I've been able to keep track of my work in previous studying through my own use of a personal wiki, paper notebooks, copies of my papers produced etc etc - it hasn't needed to be combined in an ePortfolio, and my own file structure or searching facilities allowed me to easily locate items should I need to find them. When I applied for my PhD studentship, neither my supervisor nor the department requested a portfolio (or indeed any items of previous work), and similarly when I interviewed for my current job, nor did they. In both cases it was a specific task related to the role that was required. So, they didn't want an ePortfolio...

So, this ePortfolio is just for H808 - I don't expect to use it for ongoing future career. I may be proved wrong later, but if so I can develop one then. For now, I don't need something that can 'live on' beyond this course, and so providers which will follow wherever I go are not necessary.

I do almost all my work on my home laptop. Sometimes I work during my lunch break, and sometimes my laptop is with me away from home and my internet connection (no mobile internet yet), but generally I have access to my laptop whenever I need it. So, I don't require an internet-based solution in order to access it from multiple locations. In fact, what about the times when I don't have internet? Therefore, I think I actually want a locally stored solution.

I feel slightly twitchy about an online solution, with regards to privacy. This doesn't make sense to me as I'm quite happy to have profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and now a publicly accessible blog, etc, but for some inexplicable reason I'm not sure about this. Perhaps it's as simple as 'if i don't need it online, why put it there?'. I think part of the reason is because the ePortfolio includes reflective writing. Somehow that type of expression feels more private to me than the basic details of a piece of evidence, or at the very least I want to choose when and where to share it, like I can with this blog. Okay, okay, I know you can choose when to share your ePortfolio - I said it was nonsensical!

So, what are the choices?
The following have been discussed in the forums, and I have thoughts about at least some of them... (It should be said here that the pros and cons of all the follow (and more) deserve far greater attention than I give here - H808 students can see the comparative table created for Supplementary Activity 1.6 in the course wiki)

MyStuff	Free, supported by the OU. Sort of feel I ought to use it because they have obviously designed it to meet what they consider to be the purpose of an ePortfolio... But too clunky for me. The facility to easily send pages from the wiki or posts from the forum to MyStuff did almost clinch it for me, but since the upgrade of the forum we seem to have lost that functionality, and I now don't have a good reason to go with it. Requires internet access to use.
Mahara	A comprehensive system, also free. Initially I thought it looked to complex, but that's only to set up a server - for an account on the web site it's easy. Requires internet access to use.
PebblePad	Sadly not free, and therefore at my current stage, that's all the consideration it gets from me...
Google Docs	I'm very familiar with using this, but it's obviously not a dedicated ePortfolio. While it has great search facilities and a simple to use folder structure, I suspect I may miss the ability to give a document multiple tags. Also web based, though can sync with an offline version.
Dropbox	Essentially a file backup and synching facility. Not had a play with it, but understand from course colleagues that it doesn't offer any presentation tools, which may hinder its use for sharing my ePortfolio with my tutor etc
Wetpaint	Another web-based solution, not, I think, a dedicated ePortfolio. Feel I'd need to see it in action as an ePortfolio in order to judge

All of which (slightly dismissive) reflection brings me to what I think I have selected: OneNote.

A few hesitations - no-one mentioned this in the course fourms, I need to be sure I can share a presentation portfolio adequately for the course requirements, and it's also new to me, so I'm slightly learning how to use it as I go along.

However, I'm finding it intuitive to use, highly flexible to organise and reorganise, it's searchable, I can store multiple media types in it and I think I can use it to make an attractive presentation. I'm already using it for my course writing and note-taking, so it's easy for me to extend it with a view to ePortfolio use.

Caveat - I still might change my mind! But I think this feels good right now... I'd be really interested to know if anyone thinks it's a good or bad idea!

Wordle for this blog (1)

An H808 course colleague (Sirin) recently posted a fantastic list of favourite web 2.0 toys and tools for learning. One of them, Wordle, really caught my imagination. For those who don't know, "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends" [wordle.net]

I thought I would post a Wordle of this blog, and update it every now and then as the blog develops. So here's what this blog 'looks like' at the moment.



Images of Wordles are licensed .