These notes, taken during the course of filming for the University of Edinburgh video case study, provide a further insight into the implementation strategies outlined in the Toolkit case study.

 

Professor Jeff Haywood, Vice Principal, Knowledge Management

Centralised service

Having a central service for e-portfolios that is open to all students enable students to take the initiative. It doesn’t have to come from their academic programme. It enables you to reflect on your journey, what skills you have acquired. It enables you to practice how you represent those to others. That’s what employers value.

There are a number of reasons for having a centralised service for e-portfolios. Professional courses such as medicine and nursing need e-portfolios. Then there is the employability agenda which generates a much wider need for e-portfolios. However, there is no mandate to adopt e-portfolios here; just because we have provided a central service, it does not mean everyone has to use it. Medicine and veterinary medicine their own integrated curriculum with an e-portfolio product built into it. We have a service for the majority of the institution but not necessarily for everyone.

We have accepted a piecemeal incremental and steady rise in the use of e-portfolios, finding courses and individuals that are interested and working with them to build confidence.

 

Implementation

We were early in the field and explored an open source product from the US. For different reasons, that did not go forward. Now we have PebblePad as the central e-portfolio tool. However, this is a devolved institution so it is impossible to say which technologies will fit particular cases. Medicine and its emphasis on continual training was a logical starting point when e-portfolios first arrived in Edinburgh. Education has also embraced the concept.

 

Moving from ad hoc use to an institution-wide initiative is the issue now. We work with individual courses to help them redesign or extend. It is important that any use of e-portfolios is an appropriate one. All our experience shows that such an initiative will fail if forced on anyone.

There are a number of drivers. The HEAR initiative, for example, is under student control. Then there is employability. In the early days there was a view that employers would like e-portfolios but I am not sure that is the case. What e-portfolios bring is enrichment. Their real value is that they enable you to reflect and practise how you present yourself so the end product is deeper. That’s the value to employers.

 

We have accepted a piecemeal incremental and steady rise in the use of e-portfolios, finding courses and individuals that are interested and working with them to build confidence.

 

Student response

We have tested student opinion in two ways. Firstly, there is formal student representation on university committees. The student union have also told us that e-portfolios help students to meet employability requirements. We gather views informally as well. But there are limitations as to our knowledge about how e-portfolios work. It’s a technology that does not slip easily into the curriculum. Let students use it as they wish or as a part of their course – there is a tension between these two approaches. You have to work on embedding a new technology by investing a degree of resource in the first instance which later drops as its use becomes normalised.

 

You can measure success by gathering evidence of usage but academics’ and students’ views on how e-portfolios have been helped are the best measures. It’s difficult to know what the level for success should be: 20% or 90%? Both may be good: you cannot impose use of a tool on everyone. e-Portfolios are one more tool in the e-learning panoply.

 

Key messages

The grandiose idea that there would be one e-portfolio system used across the university is difficult to achieve. You have to accept piecemeal, incremental progress [in an institution of this size]. That way you build confidence. But e-portfolios have not been easy to implement; e-portfolios are a more disruptive technology.

 

So a range of e-portfolios are used here. A single solution rarely makes sense, the best you can do is find a system that meets the needs of different users with the greatest flexibility. The important thing is that you help courses and academic staff use e-portfolios well; such a large implementation generates problems of whether all users will use the technology well. Educational developers are very important in this process. It is very difficult to generalise about student use – we have over 23,000 undergraduates.

 

Try to estimate the scale of demand and serve that, but recognise that academic teams can offer the best support to one another. The total number of people helping to embed e-portfolios on the ground is far greater than the size of the centralised service team. e-Portfolios are a small part of many people’s jobs.

With e-portfolios, the question is how are you going to support the courses, the staff and the learners to use an e-portfolio well so that it’s worth the effort it will take? You have got to have educational developers.

 

Dr Jon Turner, Director of Institute for Academic Development

One of the challenges of a diverse, devolved institution is supporting a range of practice so that a centralised service can respond effectively. At Edinburgh, there has been a restructuring of the university committees: the e-Learning/Learning Technology Committee is now associated with the Senate Learning and Teaching Committee rather than with computing. These different ways of engaging people open up different forums and allow dialogue that ushers in change. Involving deans also helps.

 

Implementation

We have worked on raising awareness – for example, by briefing key committees and also working on the ground, aligning with local needs and initiatives.

 

Where e-portfolios have worked most efficiently is where there has been a real teaching and learning need for which e-portfolios offer a solution. I think there are an increasing number of instances where e-portfolios are proving to have value. We have recently merged with Edinburgh College of Art which has successful developed innovative approaches to formative assessment through e-portfolios.

 

A number of our courses have used e-portfolios very successfully. What is less clear is use of the tool across the institution in a uniform way. One example of where it has worked well in the School of Science and Engineering is on courses involving work with the public where keeping a reflective journal is beneficial. Embedding graduate attributes in course delivery and making connections with professional bodies have also helped to make e-portfolios more attractive to end users. Where it has been taken on most effectively is where it’s not about an application of technology, but a real teaching and learning need and the e-portfolio is the best way to address that need.

 

The biggest thing we can do is to work with staff to help them see that it’s not about implementing e-portfolios in itself, it’s about the way in which an e-portfolio system is used to support different aspects of the students’ learning experience. It’s also important to align strategic priorities and central support services.

 

Key messages

Stick with your choice for five years and build it up. Work with staff to help them see how e-portfolios can be used to support different aspects of the student experience – whether that’s peer or group assessment or informal learning. There is no single uniform approach.

 

Dialogue and discussion around PDP has changed here – there is now much more awareness of how PDP can be supported by e-portfolios. A key element has been a close working relationship between academic staff, careers advisers and e-portfolio advisors.

 

Nora Mogey, Head of Communications, Institute of Academic Development

An e-portfolio is somewhere you can gather together digital artefacts to reflect, organise and share. The most important function is that it enables you to reflect on where you’ve come from. An e-portfolio is a prompt for reflection.

 

Procurement

Our journey involved a long procurement process. It was a long journey. We identified many different stakeholders and needed to encompass a range of different backgrounds and needs. We were driven by pedagogical rather than technical considerations but you cannot know in advance exactly how you will use a tool. It’s a bit like buying plasticene; you cannot articulate beforehand exactly what you will make with it. Students were very important in the decision-making process which ran over a year. We tried out a number of systems before deciding on institution-wide provision of PebblePad.

 

We went about an inclusive a procurement process as we could manage. Students played a very big role and we spent a lot of time trying out different systems. We asked colleges to nominate an evaluator who could articulate their area’s needs. That process took about six months as there were a lot of responses to collate. Then we shared our findings. It was at the end of that that we chose PebblePad . PebblePad provided the balance between what worked for students and what worked for staff. The tool was to be applied across many different communities. If it was too rigid, it wouldn’t fit.

 

Student use and regulation

Students have told us clearly that they prefer not to use the WebCT e-portfolio option. They don’t see that as ‘theirs’ and are concerned, however much we reassure them, that something associated with the VLE and linked to assessment will be private. An e-portfolio involves the distinctive process of choosing to submit or present what is in your private repository. There is no need for staff to know what students store in those repositories; students have signed up to the university regulations covering use of online resources. PebblePad is available to all students and is a hosted service. Students’ e-portfolios are therefore not held on the university’s servers.

 

The Student Association have been key in pushing e-portfolio use. However, I would say student opinion is polarised. Some students reject e-portfolios.

 

Outcomes

Uptake has not been rapid but I expected that – in many ways it is similar to the take up of the VLE. I would now drop ‘e-portfolio’ as the term used for the activities covered by e-portfolios and would characterise e-portfolio use as reflection in a personal online learning space. Learning is something that goes in cycles; you need to constantly revisit where you are and where you have come from. PebblePad is a great way of reminding you about that.

 

We stress that the e-portfolio system involves choice. You don’t have to use it; our default position is its availability. It is not pushed on staff or on course teams; nothing is forced on anyone. You have to work hard with teaching staff to ensure that they realise the full range of possibilities, especially the reflective potential of PebblePad. That’s a job for an educational developer like me. We enthuse staff by letting them see what they can do with it. Having conversations is important. Depending on what they want, we work with staff to explore the opportunities. Using the ‘strategic push’ tends to be a slow process. The careers and employability skills agenda has, however, been fruitful.

 

The future

The greatest potential for expansion is in promoting reflection. Everyone now has access to an e-portfolio for that purpose. I don’t think it is being used to its fullest extent yet, but things were done in the right order so we are ready to go at scale.

 

If you build up demand and get people really enthused about this but you are not able to scale up to institution wide, you feel a frustration but we have got something that we can run institution wide. We have got really good solid foundations to build on.

 

Key messages

It’s relatively easy for a small department to implement a system. In a large institution you have to focus on automating processes and transferring information. We have put effort into enabling PebblePad accounts to be immediately populated with information obtained from student information systems – that’s what is different in large-scale implementation.

 

When we first started, we tended to view e-portfolios as static repositories when we should have focused on the potential for reflection and self-assessment – for example, ‘Let’s look at the journey I have been on’. ‘I seem to have a gap in my skills here that I need to rectify.’ Ideally this process would be embedded into the curriculum.

The interface is important. If it takes you half an hour to work out how to use it, you are likely to give up. We tested systems thoroughly for usability and accessibility, we really got our hands into the system and tried out the applications before we made a decision.

But the most successful outcomes have been where course teams have thought about what they wanted to achieve. Good examples feed further demand.

 

Robert Chmielewski, e-Portfolio Advisor, Information Services

An e-portfolio allows you to have to a secure and personal online space with the possibility of sharing things, perhaps forced (assignments) or voluntarily (presentations to others).

 

Staff support

To engage staff, we run a range of workshops. We approach staff directly to let them know workshops are running, including heads of department and course organisers. It is difficult to enforce use of technology across the whole institution. We are making progress and our customer base is expanding. Now a lot of people are emailing me.

 

Don’t be tempted to follow single pathways. People teach different courses. Different things will attract different people - for example history of art students are beginning to reflect in e-portfolios on how to explain art to people.

 

Student response

It’s impossible to say where the greatest expansion will be: assignment collection, PDP, online presentations are all processes that e-portfolio users can now engage in.

 

Never underestimate students’ knowledge. They have a depth of technical know-how from using things like Twitter. See this new thing from their perspective. Approach it as a way of solving their problem and explain what the final product will look like.

 

Challenges

Resistance is linked to a limited perception of what the tool can do, so it’s important to find out more about local pedagogic needs. Become their friend and be honest with them. Introduce one aspect that works for them – for example, the School of Law did not see the value of e-portfolios for their context but by using one aspect [the Gateway component in PebblePad], they slowly discovered other areas.

 

With professional courses such as nursing, veterinary medicine, the processes for self-evaluation are already in place. We just had to take them into the digital sphere. A lot of the forms and documentation used in these courses are now submitted online. Postgraduates in law are also now talking to their advisors within the system and these exchanges are recorded and kept as records for supervisors. A lot of what was originally on paper can now take place online.

 

Lessons learnt

Pay more attention to how people perceive the service ie know your customers. Be aware of the real world which is made up of Facebook and other social networking tools. Don’t discredit this sort of thing, use it! For example ask: Are you present on Facebook? (Yes) Would you show this to an employer? (No!) Well, I have something to help you.

 

Key messages

You need to be passionate about it but not solely ‘within’ that space. It needs to be meaningful to the person at the other end. Our advice would be not to simplify things too much.

 

Iona Grant, Undergraduate Student, Asian Studies

You can look back and see how far you have come with your learning. I found it quite useful to say I have managed this at this point and I am aiming for this. When I go to Japan in my third year, I will use the e-portfolio to communicate back to my lecturers at home in Britain.

 

Gordon Thomson, Postgraduate Student, Education

It’s a bit like using a diary, You get as much out of it as you put in. I have a very good bank of information about last year’s honours project that I can go back to and because it’s a reflective journal in my own words, it takes me straight back to that point in time.