LifeLine Tasmania – e-portfolios for Recognition

LifeLine Tasmania had a recognition process in place that was making everyone’s life hard. Telephone counsellors would do their initial face to face training and then be assessed for some competencies by means of role plays. Then after a year of being a regular volunteer they could go through a recognition process for the gap between the competencies they got during the initial training and the full Certificate IV. This process used to be a complex paper-based system that required evidence such as recording of phone calls, and that is not possible with today’s privacy laws.

LifeLine Tasmania had started to use online discussion, and they were gradually converting paper-based handouts to electronic formats. They were using a basic commercial learning management system. We made the suggestion that an e-portfolio system could be the solution to streamlining the process for the telephone counsellors and the assessors.

The first stage was helping LifeLine to develop the business case for using e-portfolios. This business case successfully received funding from the Australia Flexible Learning Network Innovations Funding program.

The first round of problems LifeLine faced was the learning design and what technology to use.

The focus group that we facilitated

A focus group of telephone counsellors who were interested in getting full certification was formed. The aim of the group was to co-design the final solution. The group explored the problems with the old system, and how the new system could work to make everyone’s life easier. During this stage, we worked with the main trainer at LifeLine Tasmania on new evidence guidelines and presented those back to the group to get feedback and support. The result of this process was a flowchart that outlined the solution, and documents for how the new evidence guidelines map to the competencies.

Technology

LifeLine Hobart have been using a commercial learning management system that was costing around $5000 a year, and the e-portfolio module for this was going to cost another $4000 a year. $9000 a year is a lot of money for a not-for-profit organisation. We suggested they change over to using Moodle with the Exabis e-Portfolio plug-in as their learning management system. One of the positives of Moodle is that there are now a lot of users in Tasmania and a number of consultants who can help them with it.

It’s a real pleasure to have helped LifeLine save close to $9000 a year!

The actual development and implementation was completed by another consultant. Since this project, we have done other pro bono work for LifeLine, and we are looking forward to our next major project with LifeLine Tasmania.