Manchester Self-Directed Learning Environments
This project (MANSLE) was conceived as both a technical development project and a pedagogic evaluation project, and the subsequent development, implementation and evaluation of the project has sought to support and integrate these two strands.
Executive Summary
The overarching goal of the project was to demonstrate and evaluate how e-portfolio web services from a variety of sources could be aggregated to support learners undertake personal development planning and portfolio development activities, and to receive appropriate mentoring and guidance, within the context of the lifelong learning agenda. More specifically the project sought to identify how these pedagogic approaches could be supported through the use of technology with learners on foundation degree programmes within the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance lifelong learning network. In its extension phase, this pedagogic focus has received more attention in the light of a rapidly changing technological environment.
From a technical perspective, MANSLE has shown how a range of e-portfolio web services which have been developed in a range of other JISC projects, as well as those created specifically to support functionality identified within the project which could not be identified within existing activity can be aggregated within a user interface. This approach allowed an extremely rapid software development phase to be undertaken and has effectively demonstrated the utility and power of this service oriented approach to software development.
Within the main phase of the project, each project partner identified an appropriate module within a foundation degree programme in the health and social care context with which to pilot the MANSLE application with learners. Students piloted the use of the MANSLE tool during semester 1 2005-6, with their experiences being evaluated during March 2006. In the extension phase, a more diverse group of users was identified ranging from computing and multimedia to music technology and art. The findings from the extension phase reflect the significant amount of technological change (particularly with Web2.0) that took place during the main phase of the project, and the emerging pedagogic challenges that presented themselves relating to e-portfolio practice in general, and the benefits of Web2.0 technologies.
Many of the pedagogic lessons of the project support the findings of other research in the use of technology to support personal development planning and portfolio development. From a technical perspective significant questions have emerged about the nature and definition of e-portfolio web services, and the extent to which a web service can (and should) exist in isolation from the application or user interface within which it is located. These questions have been further explored in the extension phase of the project, where opportunities have arisen to explore the educational benefits of social software as an alternative to institutional systems like MANSLE.
The project shows that there is significant potential for technology to be used to support learners in lifelong learning. As is true with many other areas of the application of technology to support learning and teaching, the most effective implementations occur where staff have a clear sense of the ways in which technology can effectively support the curriculum, and where it adds real benefit to the student learning experience rather than being seen as an additional activity with no perceived benefit to the learner. For this reason, in the extension phase of MANSLE, much emphasis has been placed on transforming teaching and learning practice. In the partner institutions of the extension phase, MANSLE has promoted the ownership of learning technology by both teachers and learners, and here there are signs that a process of real change has started to occur.