Institution: Birmingham City University - Faculty of Education, Law & Social Sciences

e-Portfolio context: Students on the PGCE Primary and Early Years Teacher training course  carry out a piece of action research during their final teaching practice designed to engage them in a critical and self critical enquiry process. The e-portfolio ‘Mahara’ enables students to present the results of that research as a portfolio of materials serving differing purposes.

Dates of provision: 2010 onwards

Reason for implementation: The module requires that students present their research not as a single report but as a portfolio. This includes:

• a brief report as if created for a journal
• a presentation, including notes, for a parents meeting
• a letter to the children thanking them for their participation and explaining the results in appropriate language.

Using Mahara simplifies the presentation and marking of the portfolio.

Purpose/s: To engage students with the research process and to enable them to appreciate that research is presented to different audiences in different ways. By using Mahara they can both present their research for marking by their tutor and present themselves to prospective employers.

Learning processes involved: Understanding the use to which an e-portfolio can be put, especially in relation to the presentation of a set of materials online. Mahara also enables students to collaborate and discuss at certain points throughout the research process, particularly useful as the research itself takes place during teaching practice when students are not in faculty.

Practice: (Developing)

Students have been introduced to Mahara at the start of the course. Specific sessions have been planned in small groups (max 10) focussing on key skills required to prepare the portfolio and present it for marking (uploading files, designing the screen, managing access rights). An ‘example’ Mahara view has been created by the tutor demonstrating the way in which the portfolio can be organised. The text on the screen is essentially a tutorial on how the view was created. This includes the use of audio, video, photographs and the presentation of MSWord, MSPowerPoint and .pdf files.

Key staff involved: Graham Lowe

Links to examples

The Example view given to students as both an example and a tutorial: http://portfolio.bcu.ac.uk/view/view.php?t=TNfeASIbF5ZypzwYRahx