Brief overview of the organisation and the e-portfolio implementation journey:

Albany Senior High School (Years 11—13, roll 430 in 2010, 720 in 2011) 

Planning for use

Our use of e-portfolios began as a response to dissatisfaction with conventional assessment. We wanted a way to collect rich data that we could use for evidence of learning and it was a Senior Leadership Team decision initially. Mark Osborne had seen an early development version of Mahara through contacts in the Moodle community and had seen its potential as an assessment tool. He had also seen other e-portfolio tools such as Elgg and the portfolio module in Moodle. We, as the senior leaders at the school, consulted extensively with the community while we explored the pedagogies and assessment tools we wanted to use and e-portfolios were part of this. Parents were extremely interested in any tools that helped to demystify the jargon around what students were learning. The implementation process has to be both top‐down and bottom‐up. One of the key strategies for bringing staff, students and parents on board is to ensure that there is a lot of discussion about what e-portfolios are and why students should use them. Always, always, focused on learning.

Introducing e-portfolio use

Mahara has been used in the school since it opened through the Ministry's http://myportfolio.school.nz hosted site. 

Single sign‐on was set up so students can remember their usernames and passwords and links with our learning management system so students can publish directly to their portfolios. 

All staff and students were given access to e-portfolios and these were integrated into timetabled activities such  as tutorials, impact projects.  If we value them and think our students should use them, then teachers, as lead learners should use them too. 

Mark Osborne spent some time learning how to use Mahara, then ran an initial session with staff on the basics of how to put a simple view together. Once staff felt comfortable with simple tasks, Mark ran a full Mahara taster session with them. Training for the students began with a small pilot group who responded well, and then progressed to a series of larger training sessions that involved all students. A series of how-to videos was recorded and made available to students and staff in order to reinforce the face to face training sessions, but the best strategy of all to help student learning has been to have them teach each other. Students who are confident in the use of Mahara are expert troubleshooters for the rest of their classes. All students at school keep at least one e-portfolio for their Impact Projects, but may also have several more if their teachers choose to use them in tutorials and/or core subjects.

Teachers across a number of areas of the school have made use of e-portfolios, but languages and English continue to innovate in their use of them.

Portfolio-based assessment is key to both subjects, with students crafting collections of artefacts that demonstrate their proficiency in particular assessments.

What we do in Moodle (LMS) and what we do in ePortfolio. How we differentiate the use of the two tools?

Ownership is the key to this discussion. Teachers own the LMS space and the e-portfolio is owned by the learner, so they have different purposes as a result. I don't see the LMS as a tool for content delivery. Martin Dougiamas (founder of MOODLE) sees courses as communities, it is an interactive space, for classes to work in. That is where the richness comes from. The e-portfolio is student-centred, can draw across all areas of the curriculum. You can put your PE course work next to your music and and draw parallels across different subject boundaries, putting it in terms of your own learning.The thing we are struggling with at the moment is that we want to tie it more to the subjects learners are taking. They do their portfolio work currently in tutorials, so the entries lack a bit of context. They have two tutorials a week for 100 mins. The portfolio is most powerful when it is just in time and in context. So we are trying to look at ways to authentically integrate feedback from the subject teacher, in real time and in context.

We are looking for tabbed multipage portfolios that are coming in the next version of Mahara. It is really important to identify the purpose, which could be:

1. working

2. assessment

3. celebration.

The portfolio can be a combination of all three but it is important for teacher and school to decide what they want. We are getting there but have not cracked it yet.

Future use

We're also planning to give parents access to the system in the next few months, so they'll be able to use it to be more involved in their children's portfolios, but also to make their own if they want to. We're also interested in more closely tying the e-portfolio to mobile phones so students can record and upload evidence of learning artifacts directly from mobile devices.

Evaluation

No formal evaluation has been carried out. However, we've seen more of a move toward an on‐going approach to assessment, so more focus on multiple assessment opportunities and recording progress over time. Much more focus on formative assessment, peer‐review and feedback too. 

Integration with policy and strategy

• Staff Professional Development (called Professional Inquiry) uses portfolios and while staff have the opportunity to use paper-based portfolios, most use blogs and e-portfolios. This forms the central documentation for their appraisal too
• All students must complete e-portfolios for the proposal and evaluation stages of their Impact Project. This e-portfolio forms the report that is sent home to parents and caregivers, outlining the progress and achievement made during the project

Implementation journey milestones