| An overview of use |
Exemplar 4
Institution: Thanet College
e-Portfolio context: Each of the College's tutors are given an online Pebble Pad account for personal use. Initial training and explanation of the project is provided to all, backed up with relevant papers shared inside the Thanet community within the VLE. The use of these e-portfolios includes Institute for Learning (IfL) Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS).
Dates of provision: 2007 up to 2010.
Reason for implementation: To offer staff an opportunity to develop and share reflective practice with each other as a means of improving professionalism in the way they work and, as a result, increase capability amongst the teaching body in Thanet.
Purpose/s: Continuing Professional Development of staff. To encourage staff to account for their own effectiveness and thinking rather than take a more passive route through college dictated activity alone.
Learning processes involved: A wide range of processes include upload and creation of assets, reflection, collaborating with others (peers), sharing with line managers for staff appraisal etc.
Practice: (fully developed). The process has come under considerable scrutiny by the College because of tensions between individual CPD and the College requirement to demonstrate its credentials of staff development. This work has demonstrated a bifurcation between two processes and currently they are not joined.
The project has struggled to demonstrate value to the College in difficult financial times, but from this problem has come an appreciation of the need to think about the needs of professional development and staff development as joined activity. It is clear that the two are not mutually exclusive and that, further, professional development conditions the teacher to meet the requirements of staff development provided by the college. Both activities are requirements of the teacher/member of staff. The personal learning space is the clear 'tool of choice' in accommodating this joined approach by allowing all activity to be captured and then marshalled to be used for both purposes. Work to explore this is now taking place nationally with the support of the Institute for Learning. This is an interesting new development. The work exposed for further exploration an almost confrontational moment between college culture, set in staff development that is programmed, deliberate and checked through a compliance system and centrally controlled, and the new possibilities offered by the properties of a personal learning space such as REfLECT. The locus of this work has moved to LSIS and the Institute for learning to explore further how this opportunity might be exploited at national level.
Key staff involved: Geoff Rebbeck, various teaching staff.
Link to a Briefing Paper on how this may work (Meshing)
This paper outlines the pilot for this work and its rationale
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=157923
This video provides an insight into the diverse use of the e-portfolio by staff. It provides 20 statements about the last tiime they used their e-portfolio. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4MWfUAzEEc and the transcript is provided here.