Higher education learning portfolio for placements
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This project investigated issues involving the introduction of blogs for reflection; as a form of electronic individual learning plan and e-Portfolio across various Higher Education and Foundation Degree courses within Hull College.
Executive Summary
Hull College is a large general Further Education (FE) College with approximately a 1,300 Higher Education (HE) students. The project explored the use of a ‘blogging’ system to support three way communications and reflection between tutor, students and work placement mentors during work experience. A number of electronic individual learning plan (e-ILP) formats were available. We chose to explore the use of a less structured ‘Blog’ as vehicle as it offered the scope for courses to develop their own course style, while potentially improved both the basic writing and the reflective writing skills of Foundation Degree (FD) students. It was felt that weak writing skills inhibited the change from recording experience to being asked to write reflectively. Writing a blog entry or uploading files was considered easy and students could decide who saw the content. This would enable the student can make very personal reflective posts to marshal their thoughts before sharing later posts with tutors peer group or the wider community.
We used an open source system ‘Elgg’. This is an e-Portfolio based on personal publishing through blogs and other digital products and social networking that can link to tutors, peer groups or simply to others with similar interests. It is both learner centred and learner controlled. Initially conceived by Edinburgh University developers, it is named after a small village in Switzerland! As open source software it has developed a wide user base and a rich set of features or ‘plug in’, including blogs, wikis, bookmaking and presentation areas.
At the time of writing we have 433 student users and over 150 staff users across a variety of HE and FD courses. We also developed a College wide version as part of our dissemination activities. This version is integrated into Moodle, is presently supporting 22 academic and support staff based communities and approximately 90 staff across all sites including Harrogate. One of these communities will be linking with projects for Learning Mentors and Subject Learning Coaches. As Moodle is linked to our MIS system all staff and students have automatic access once enrolled. As yet we have not rolled out for general student use and the HE project version has been kept as a separate facility, however, in the Moodle version two student bodies ‘Club 16-18’ and ‘Learner Voice’ are developing communities.
What we did
Initially, we introduced the concept of using social networking features to various courses in Computing, Foundation Degrees and BSc Computing. Participation was then extended to other subject disciplines.
We introduced the concept to over 400 learners and their tutors and a number of work based providers and provided training to them
We developed a work placement module and modified various features of Elgg to better suit our courses. We developed the training, administrative and technical processes to support wide scale implementation.
We disseminated our project to the wider College and created a core of users across a number of disciplines. We made a number of recommendations to the wider College community on the future use of web 2 applications.
We evaluated the project through interviews with staff, students, work placement mentors; reports from Tutors and analysis of the usage.
Our main findings
Current practice with regard to personal development planning (PDP) and the use of ‘personal reflection’ differed across the College. This was evidenced by the approaches taken by the various courses. Common features were required by the design of the documentation.
The Elgg blog is an unstructured format. Lack of a common format did not affect its use. The dynamic quality of an on line facility and the different responses to that by individual tutors indicates that the College needs a set of recommendations for minimum standards about what students can expect in terms of support for their e-PDP to ensure a consistent approach across College
Using blogs with work placement mentors is probably a step too far for many employers. Although the use of this tool with employers in the way we originally envisaged was of limited success its uses in other forms of distance, work/college relationship should be explored. Consideration should be given to the development of the placement contract through the use of a wiki (an Elgg plug in). The initial development of a placement contract comes at the time when employers feel most committed. Gaining on line expertise and using on line social interaction at the slightly earlier stage may help interactions at the later ‘on the job’ stage.
It is a ‘mistake’ to assume that because many students use social networking they know how to transfer those skills to educational use. We wished at times we had avoided the term ‘social networking’ as it immediately distorted the student concept of what they were to do. Some students could not make the shift from what they knew and understood as a social space to what were asking them to do.
We clearly need to establish an induction plan for students to make them aware of our expectations within a semi professional network in contrast to a social network. For both teachers and learners stress needs to be placed on the relevance of a reflective log for extending and developing analysis and synthesis rather than the technical and social opportunities afforded by the tool(s).
Making a facility such as Elgg available to students does not make it part of the learning experience. A ‘take it or leave it’ approach meant not surprisingly some students left it! Integration into the requirements of the course and its materials is the only effective approach.
Our dependence on the enthusiast in the early stages inhibited our development of staff training as we concentrated on the enthusiasts’ contribution rather than the commitment of the team.
Without in anyway dampening enthusiasm, as a risk exercise it is worth taking a hard look at a course with a very prominent member to consider if the skills and the commitment of the enthusiast is shared by the team and considering before the event how sustainable will this implementation be if this individual leaves.
Our emphasis on the technology put many people off. Whatever the technology, learning, is the primary and vital element and the reason that the majority of colleagues want to be involved. Emphasise the pedagogical or e-learning advantages first and foremost. The technology skills required can be addressed as they are needed to do the job.
In the second year we increased training opportunities but still not sufficient for a number of staff. Continuing support was required. Good IT skills were not important criteria for success for staff, as little more than word processing skills were required what mattered was how well this type of computer mediated communication was integrated into the course and sufficient understanding of what & why it might be used.
Training needs to continue after the initial period to enable reminders about key features and to reinvigorate use. Elgg has a number of features some of which may not be required early in the course when training takes place. Emphasise and relate the training to how the staff and students are using the application so any further training is about making things better for them.