MANSLE: Manchester Self-directed Learning and ePortfolios
Final report available below
Region: North West
MANSLE sets out to implement, demonstrate and evaluate the educational use of technical e-portfolio, personal development planning and mentoring tools within a range of foundation degrees across the Greater Manchester Region. The project will evaluate a range of open source tools to support work-based learning and student progression within the context of foundation degree programmes. Elements of these tools will be aggregated using a web services approach within a front-end interface targeted at the needs of the target audience.
The majority of the project’s effort will be concerned with incorporating and supporting the use of these systems within the normal practice of teaching and learning on these degrees, and evaluating the process and outcomes. From this we hope to learn the key human and technical issues, and to adapt the approach to the sustained wider scale roll out of e-portfolios across the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance (GMSA).
Aims and Objectives
The overarching aim of the MANSLE project is to support the work of the GMSA and its constituent organisations by developing and piloting a range of technology-based tools to support student learning through the use of personal development planning, self-directed learning and portfolio development tools and to support mentoring relationships within the context of work-based learning foundation degree programmes.
The specific objectives of the MANSLE project are to:
- Undertake a user requirements and needs analysis to identify exactly how users wish to utilise technology-based approaches to PDP, self-directed learning, portfolio development and e-mentoring within the programmes identified within this project.
- Evaluate a range of personal development planning, e-portfolio, e-mentoring and student self-directed learning software tools which conform to web services and interoperability standards and could effectively be implemented and piloted within the project lifecycle.
- Assemble a technical system comprising a user interface to access the selected features of the technical system(s) chosen as a result of the needs requirement and evaluation activities
- Work with staff in partner institutions to design how the system may be implemented within their own institutional contexts and to ensure appropriate workflow and business models are in place to effectively embed and sustain the toolset developed
- Implement the technical system within a range of foundation degrees to support student learning in the context of a work-based programme of study and to ensure that the resulting data and information stored within the system can be effectively interchanged with institutional systems to support student progression
- Assess and evaluate the interoperability of systems and data developed within the project in the context of institutional legacy systems and other emerging open source PDP, portfolio and mentoring systems.
- Evaluate the experience, and disseminate the results via events and publications including scenarios and use cases to other institutions within the GMSA, the North West region and the wider JISC community.
Project Methodology
A needs analysis will be undertaken with practitioners who deliver and support foundation degree programmes across the project partners in order to identify the issues and challenges which learning technologies could be utilised to address as part of the MANSLE project. In parallel with this needs analysis, a technical evaluation of a range of open-source tools including several developed as part of the JISC DEL e-tools projects will be undertaken. A correlation between the needs analysis and technical evaluation will then be completed to identify the most appropriate elements of the range of tools and how these can be assembled using web service technologies to provide a cohesive resource to support work-based learners.
Implications/ Deliverables/ Stakeholders
The benefits to the JISC e-learning programme and NW institutions are that the project will provide concrete experience of JISC developed tools and web-services applied in a real context, and one of crucial importance to the widening participation and work-based learning agendas. If the implementation is successful, then the technology will have been proven for use across the region and elsewhere. At the very least, the project will provide constructive feedback to the system developers and to the overarching eLearning Framework on perceived shortcomings, user needs, interoperability and further development requirements.
We recognise that an essential component for lifelong and work-based learning in 2004 and beyond is the delivery of a personalised virtual learning space for learners and those supporting them at various points in their journey. This project focuses on providing technology that supports independent study, informal non-accredited learning and work-based learning across multiple providers and will seek to specify how these can be supported within a personal ‘virtual’ learning space unrestricted by platform constraints.
Lead institution
Project Partners
Project Staff
Project Manager
Project Team
- Mark Johnson, Technical Advisor, University of Bolton
- Sue Burkinshaw, Pedagogy Advisor, University of Bolton
- Tim Duerden, University of Salford Lead
- Terry Cowham, Open University NW Lead
- Brian Allan, GMSA Lead