JISC

This project implemented the existing SWEET.net toolkit using the SITS student management system and the PebblePad ePortfolio system as the communicating platforms.

Context Summary

ePortfolios have rapidly occupied the foreground of innovative approaches to learning, assessment and personal development: though all conceptions of eportfolios are far from innovative. ePortfolios differ from other elearning systems, such as VLEs, in that they are more concerned with the personal experience of learning than with an institutional concern for content delivery, subscription to services and tracking use.

Within the ePortfolio, and wider, development community discussions of ‘learner data’ tend to conflate institutional data and eportfolio data as an amorphous whole. These data types should be considered separately and treated separately, whilst recognising that they need to work in harmony to support claims of learning; of progression; of professional competence and of aptitude for new roles. Linking the institutional data domain with the personal data domain remains challenging; an issue made more difficult by protective data gatekeepers. Until data management issues mature middleware services like SWEET.net provide an opportunity for learners to access institutionally held (and approved) data to their personal learning systems for onward use in online CVs; applicational presentations; and career portfolios. Notwithstanding obvious, and longer term, concerns for the meaningful authentication of qualifications, certificates, licences and transcripts; an immediate case for data sharing is the avoidance of unnecessary repeated data entry by the user e.g. name; address; contact details and courses studied. Opportunities for further data transfer and mechanisms for authenticating institutionally approved data may feature in this project through the development of the Role service. SWEET.net has been developed to include group or affiliation data; this data is valuable in securing the space between the individual and the institution. In the case of PebblePad this information would be used to manage teacher controlled ‘gateways’ which allow eportfolio users to ‘publish’ work for institutional purposes. The use of gateways provides an obvious delineation between the personal eportfolio assets and those created for formal purposes (assessment, accreditation, monitoring). The use of group information held by the MIS, accessed by the SWEET.net service, and provided to the eportfolio system, allows teachers to manage multiple/diverse/large groups of learners without a burdensome administrative overhead. In short, the implementation of SWEET.net in the space between the institutional MIS and the personal eportfolio presents an opportunity to gain efficiencies for both the learner and the teacher easing their association with both and reducing potential barriers and objections to wider adoption of eportfolio systems.

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