1. Portfolio information:
personally or
institutionally managed?
Simon Grant
JISC CETIS
ePIC Conference, London
2012-07-10
1

2. summary – who looks after it?
 learners should have the maximum rights
 organisations need to keep vital records
 (“org” includes companies and educational institutions)
 this carries over into interoperability
 Leap2A for learner-centred information
 SIF, XCRI (MLO), HEAR (EuroLMAI), HR-XML, …
 the options for management and communication
 take-home messages:
 no one simple solution
 common specifications would help
 some ideas on how to move forward
2

3. learners' interests
(well-known here, include...)
 manage own personal information and reflections
 manage own products and outputs of learning
 share management of shared work
 view all org-held information including assessments
 view all personal network information
 including business and social networks
 control information flow to 3rd parties
3

4. organisational interests
 personal details of learners
 who is enrolled on courses; progress and attendance
 assessment results & related
 student records/information systems (wikipedia)
 learner achievement documentation (HEAR)
 audit; HESA returns
 graduate destinations short and longer term
 for alumni networks
 for internal feedback and official returns
 Key Information Set – (HEFCE site)
4

5. interoperability landscape
 Leap2A for learner-centred view
 a version of IMS ePortfolio also exists in NL
 SIF mainly for schools
 “Schools / Systems Interoperability Framework”
 XCRI (and MLO: EN 15982) for course advertising
 “Exchanging Course Related Information”
 the HEAR (and EuroLMAI: EN 15981)
 “Higher Education Achievement Report”
 parts of HR-XML are relevant
 “Human Resources ...”
 various specifications for learning resources
5

6. the options
1. everything is managed by the organisation
2. learners arrange their own systems, and send to orgs no
more information than they need
3. separate systems for different purposes
 but there is overlap of relevant information
 so how should these be coordinated?
 link from personal to organisational?
 link from organisational to personal?
 let's look at each option...
6

7. 1 everything managed by org
 the institution or company gives the learner some space
for a personal portfolio and other personal work
 good point: learners don't have to manage systems
 but – org may not be trusted
 what can the learner take out?
 how does the learner control access?
 what gets passed to the next organisation?
 maybe OK only if you really trust “the system”
 and do organisations trust each other, anyway?
 and anyway, it goes against learner responsibility
7

8. 2 learners manage all their own
 send to organisation only what they need
 no problems with transfer, permissions or trust
 but learner has to manage the hosting
 and difficulties may include:
 how does the learner submit work for assessment?
 how does the learner get information from the org?
 how does the org get the needed info from the learner?
 one big problem: institutions cannot officially rely on
linking to individual learners' sites
8

9. 3 can separate systems relate?
 if either alone has so many problems, what about having
both doing their own things?
 but at present they are both running in their own different
ways, leaving several challenges to overcome
 consider information that would need to flow
 from learner to learner
 from learner to org
 from org to learner
 from org to org
9

10. from learner to learner
 several social networking systems
 tend not to represent much portfolio information
 when they do it is not in any standard format
 however they are such big businesses that influencing
them is a huge challenge
 communication between learners may be done through
org system
 e-portfolio tools often have this built in
 but often the permissions are not made explicit
10

11. from learner to org
 learners need to be able to do work in their own space
and transfer to org for assessment etc.
 but there is no recognised standard format for this
 for high-stakes summative assessment the organisation may
need to take copies of works or evidence and store it
 org needs to know things about the learner
 the learner may already have this recorded for other purposes
 but again, no easy data standards bridging across
 so time wasted copying and pasting; transcription errors; out-of-
date versions …
 inefficient administration
 learner frustration
11

12. from org to learner
 organisations need to provide learners with records of
what they have done, validated by the organisation
 that's the point of the HEAR and similar ideas
 but the HEAR format doesn't fit a portfolio directly
 learner may want learning materials and resources
 but they may have restricted IPR
 as well as having no obvious way of connecting to other records
12

13. from org to org
 learner is entitled to control flow of personal information
 but there is no current way for e-portfolio permission
systems to be inserted in between the organisational
systems
 and orgs seem to prefer having information directly from
the other org source
 not via a learner with a motive to embroider or gloss over facts
13

14. take home # 1
 being naïve doesn't help
 the situation is genuinely difficult
 there are several unmet challenges
 there are no simple solutions
14

15. take home # 2
 there is at least one thing we could work on
 join up the specifications
 create a standard format that unifies information relevant to
people in many common situations
 to allow easier joining up of the systems
 that is probably not the only thing, though
 try to communicate and coordinate different efforts
15

16. ideas on joining up
 define common information structures applying across
lifelong engagement (portfolio plus)
 clearly label each chunk of information
 provenance: who is the author or person responsible
 rights: who has what rights over it
 permissions: what the rights holder allows others to do with it
 this needs to be done at a fine granularity, and its language and
terminology must be widely agreed
 provide better, simpler, clearer, easier mechanisms for
referring back to the rights holders for confirmation /
validation / permission

17. Thanks...
 ... for your attention
 ... for any feedback you may be able to give
 either now
 or to me at asimong@gmail.com