Embedding e-portfolios in the teaching and learning process - Resource/Case Study

Embedding e-portfolios in the teaching and learning process - Resource/Case Study

Time was running for the Embedding e-portfolios Innovation Project at the Tasmania Polytechnic when they came to us. The project team had spent the year exploring and experimenting with Mahara. Early in the project, the team had hired us to help them choose which hosting service to use and we had kept an eye on how the project was developing over the year.

They had started to developed the text for “Embedding e-portfolios in the teaching and learning process Resource” in Articulate as a way of documenting and sharing the project learning and acting as a map and guide for teachers thinking about using e-portfolios in the future.

They needed the following things to be done quickly:

  • The content had to be converted into a Learning Object that met the VET e-learning content development guidelines. The first version of the resource was developed in Articulate which outputs the content as Flash.
  • They wanted stories and video interviews with the project team included in the resource.

Once we saw the information we suggested that it would be great to use “Graphical Organiser” to bring together all the content and process in a single whole that could be understood by looking at one image.

All this needed to be done in a period of about 5 weeks while other major projects were coming to end as well!!!

The results from the interviews were amazing and the project came together smoothly.

The story of Graphical Organiser

The workshop to develop the graphical organiser was a lot of fun. It was one those times when it was so much fun it didn’t feel like work!!!

There were 16 different items and stages. We came to the workshop with these on pieces of paper. We then worked with some of the team on a whiteboard to arrange the items and draw the elements. In Nancy Duarte’s book, Slidology, she has a series of pages that are a great selection of the different types of diagrams. We used these as our reference point. When this was resolved we took a photo of the whiteboard and then the diagram was drawn based on that. When it was drawn up in Illustrator, the intent of the hand-drawn diagram was still there and the clients were happy.

The video interviews

There is something we love about sitting down with a video camera (often in small room) and talking to people about their teaching. The process we used is a pretty standard documentary process. We developed a set of standard questions with Graeme and Roger, organised the interviews and travelled all over the small state of Tasmania to do the interviews. When we found some of the great things the teachers were doing, we added new questions and went off-topic.... This is often when the best stuff happened.

Bringing it all together

The graphic, text and video interviews were all brought together using the content management system, Silverstrip, plus some of our custom scripts for exporting the content as Learning Objects. The interviews were edited and organised into the 16 different topics. As the editing of the interviews was completed, we uploaded ASAP so that Graeme and Roger could review and see the material. This was a classic iterative style of project management. This was great for the tight timeframe!!!! The content being online also meant the Graeme and Roger could edit the text right up the last moment of the deadline without having to involve us!!!!

Conclusion

In the end, the project team was really happy with the results and pleased with Sprout Labs’ ability to tackle it in such a relatively short timeline.

We think we have helped produce a great guide for using e-portfolios. We’re hoping the guide will help teachers embed e-portfolios into the core of their teaching and take their teaching to the next level.


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