JISC

The project has now completed. The final report is available from the bottom of the page.

Overview

During Foundation Degree (FD) work placements at Hull College, learners, employers and tutors need to keep in contact with each other in order to monitor progress. For many students, and indeed employers, this is their first foray into FDs and work placement at Higher Education (HE) level. Both students and employers have reported feeling ‘lost’ at times and unsure of certain practices and regulations. Through the use of online blogs and forums using Elgg and Moodle, students and employers experiences will be enhanced via easy access to support from the team and to an online community of peers taking part in similar experiences.

Students often have problems with being asked to write reflectively for their Personal Development Plan (PDP), simply recording what has been done, rather than reflecting on the task. The reflective element will be embedded within the student’s blog on Elgg. They will be able to view ‘prompts’ in the form of interactive, personalised comments and questions from workplace mentors and tutors to help scaffold the students reflective processes.

Weak writing skills can inhibit the change from recording experience, to being asked to write reflectively. Some students will benefit from an e-portfolio facility in Elgg where images, sound and video can be used to record experience and reflections.

Aims and objectives

The aim of the project is to facilitate both student and employer engagement with the reflective and developmental processes of Foundation Degree work placements via the use of online e-portfolios, blogs and forums.

The project will address these questions:

• Has the technological awareness and skill levels of learners, employers and tutors been raised?
• Did the technology enhance the students, employers and tutors experience?
• Did using blogs in a more immediate fashion - incorporating tutor and employer comment as interactive and personalised prompts - facilitate and enhance reflective practice?
• Has the e-portfolio space enhanced the recording of work placement experience via sound, images and video of the work placement?
• Has the e-portfolio space been used by students / employers to share and upload work to be assessed, or have employers preferred to keep the output from work placements in their own domain?
• Has the use of asynchronous discussion forums and the Elgg system enhanced communication between all parties?
• Has the use of e-learning impacted upon retention and achievement levels?
• Can online communication facilities bring to the surface particular issues with work placements?

Project methodology

The project will utilise an existing Elgg-based system, adapted to include an online work-placement brief, developed with HE Academy funding. Elgg will provide e-portfolio space and the blog facility where employers and tutors can deliver comments to enhance reflection for PDP use. The project will also utilise Moodle to provide asynchronous discussion forums, and the online training packages – the college already uses Moodle extensively to deliver online learning.

This system will have a download facility for all the files stored in Elgg and all the blog transcripts, so at a single button press, learners e-portfolio work can be transferred onto portable media. This addresses the interoperability issues between e-portfolio systems.

Training on the use of the online facilities and prompting for reflection / reflective writing will be developed and delivered to learners, employers and tutors in both a face-to-face and online mode. This online system will be piloted with learners, employers and tutors involved in work placements on FDs run at Hull College.

Evaluation will be ongoing throughout the project. The FD that will initially use the system will be in the subject area of Software Design and Development, and will then be piloted on FDs in various subject areas. The participants involved in these courses have a disparate range of IT experience, and each course has a different structure for work placement. Studying how the technology is utilised in these different areas will give a wider sample range.

Participants experiences of using the technology will be evaluated via:

• Reflective blog ‘diaries’
• Questionnaires and structured interviews
• Observation of use
• Case studies
• Management and system information

Interim and final reports will analyse areas where the project was successful, and areas where it was less successful, highlighting the implications and challenges for the sector. The data collected, along with the method of collection and rationale for this will be presented, in answer to the questions detailed above.

Anticipated impact

The project will contribute to the JISC e-learning capital programme in the following ways:

• Evaluation of the project will increase awareness in the wider community of how blogs, forums and e-portfolios can support FD work placements in a Further Education (FE) environment.
• It will provide guidance to the sector on the use of e-learning to support learners and employers involved in FDs delivered in an FE environment.
• Increased awareness of how these technologies can be used to facilitate widening participation through the use of a variety of digital media to record workplace experiences and to use as assessment evidence.
• Support lifelong learning for students, allowing them to store their assessments and reflections on a portable format.
• Build knowledge and skills in the use of e-learning to support learners on HE courses delivered in FECs.
• Use and development of open source, transferable models allows re-use by the wider community.

Lead institution

• Hull College