EdTechUK

Personalisation

Personalisation has emerged as a key concept in the UK government’s vision for public service sector reform, and facilitating personalisation in seen as crucial to the ongoing development of state provision. Charles Leadbeater has compellingly argued that meaningful personalisation implies not just a choice of services for citizens to decide between (which school or hospital to receive the services of) but the active participation of citizens in designing services; in determining what those services deliver, and how. While personalisation seems to designed to directly address and compensate for social inequalities, both choice and the more radical approach of participation raise serious questions about the extent to which personalisation excludes the already disadvantaged.

Anyone who has heard me talk recently will know that what personalisation means, how we define it, and how we recognise planning and provision which account for it, is something that I'm thinking a lot about right now.  Personalisation is the broader context currently informing UK discussion around e-portfolios, Personal Learning Environments, as well as broader educational provision. As such, how we understand it has the potential to empower or exclude learners. Tomorrow I'll be posting AoC NILTA's position statement over at my work blog,

This approach is hardly radical and won't come as a big surprise to anyone working in the field. My starting point is Point 27 of the recently released UK FE White Paper which calls for “Increasing personalisation so that individual needs and circumstances are built into the design and delivery of education and training”. I'd argue that it is precisely this kind of misguided assurance - that the scope of individual needs and circumstances can be anticipated to the extent that they can be built in to provision and delivered to learners - that leads to exclusionary practice.

Josie Fraser, October 2006 (click for larger version)

Currently, when we look at approaches within education, we can see that the discussion is predominately focused on adaptive personalisation (Ferguson, Schmoller, Smith 2004) (for example registration, tracking, identity management) and customisation (Ferguson, Schmoller, Smith 2004) (choice between predetermined elements of provision). While I'm not dismissing the importance of both of these elements, at all, I would say that a discussion of personalisation that stops at customisation is not good enough. What we also have to factor in, if we are serious about supporting their learning and teaching experiences and recognising their differences, needs and preferences is the acknowledgment of and opportunity for dynamic personalisation to take it's place. 

15 February 2007: AoC NILTA response to DfES Consultation Paper - Personalising Further Education: Developing a Vision

The AoC NILTA responce to Personalising Further Education: Developing a Vision was the last substantial consultation I worked on for NILTA. During my time as their ICT and e-learning development officer, personalisation - what it might mean and how it might look within formal education - was one of my major focuses.

Initial Comments

1. Personalised learning underpins the programme of change outlined in the recent FE White Paper. This includes emphasis on effective assessment of initial learner needs, improving pastoral support, along with developing learner ‘voice and choice’ through participation and representation. The intention is to improve learner engagement, achievement and progression across the board and influence the shape of future provision.

Institutions would argue that significant aspects of personalised learning is already a reality for their learners: that they already have well developed systems in place and a well developed ethos that puts learners and their individual needs at the heart of what they do.

Personalising Further Education: Developing a Vision is a DfES sector-wide consultation which seeks to develop and take forward a shared understanding of personalisation within the FE system.

This response seeks to highlight the definition of personalisation outlined in the consultation document, particularly in the context of electronic environments and to review the proposed changes to current roles, activities and procedures.

2. AoC NILTA supports the assertion made in the document that personalising learning has an integral role in improving quality. Our vision is for the nationwide provision of learning appropriate to and accessible by every individual, that recognises individual learners’ circumstances, and supports their needs and aspirations.  We believe that this cannot be achieved without strategic development of technological solutions in all aspects of an institution’s engagement with the learner, including: recruitment, enrolment, monitoring, support, tutoring, learning and teaching, advice and guidance, assessment and reporting and progression.

3. We regret the lack of emphasis on how ILT will support the aims outlined in the personalisation strategy. Although the use of technology is clearly understood to play a role in the systemic changes necessary to support widespread personalisation, we do not believe that the document recognises the extent to which the exploitation and application of ICT will be necessary to support personalisation. We would be keen to explore the range of ways technology, particularly collaborative and user content-creation tools can be used to support the personalisation agenda and the specific areas identified by the document. We would expect the personalisation agenda to rely on and further support the embedding of ICT and e-learning across all aspects of educational provision and facilitation.

4. We would refer to the recent report of the Gilbert Committee ‘2020 vision: Report of the Teaching and Learning 2020 Review Group’ which identifies ways in which technology might contribute to personalised learning. We believe that there are many benefits that are generic to learners and therefore consistent across sectors.  We encourage the colleagues within the Department to work in partnership across the sectors in developing strategy.

5. We are committed to working with the Department and its partners in the delivery of this strategy to ensure that e-strategy is embedded into relevant delivery strategies and projects, and to ensure that the views and needs of the post-16 sector are recognised and accounted for. The deployment of technologies within the context of coherent and comprehensive e-strategy within institutions, and the associated organisational and cultural change are not optional. This is not recognized within the consultation document and we believe that this is a serious omission.

6. We are delighted that participation is seen as a key process of the facilitation of personalised learning. We fully agree with the importance given to this form of engagement – empowering and supporting learners to shape the services they receive, and recognising the important contribution learners can make to improve the quality of educational provision.

However, we are keen that participatory personalisation is not limited to consultation and evaluation, but that the contribution that user participation that empowers learners to take initiative and control is supported in order to realise the government’s vision for a transformed, innovative and world-leading sector.

7. We are in agreement that personalisation has the potential to be an effective strategy for engaging all learners, and could operate as a particularly effective mechanism for engaging vulnerable, disadvantaged and disengaged young people. We are keen to see all learners’ circumstances, needs and preferences adequately recognised and appropriately supported. We believe that personalisation is not simply a matter of determining what learners or groups of learners need – it requires the more complex approach of supporting people in their own exploration and articulation of their needs, both in collaboration with other learners and in their independent contribution to their own learning.

8. We welcome the intention to expand and to harmonise existing provision. More focused support, greater one-to-one time, staff development, introducing and establishing new systems – all of these require the provision of sufficient time and resource. We would expect to see a significant financial commitment to support the systemic extension of services proposed for the sector, particularly in terms of staff development and time.

9. We are surprised by the lack of reference to innovation within the framework. We would expect that the emerging practices associated with supporting personalisation would call for creative thinking and solutions. We would like to see provision for the encouragement, support and sharing of innovative responses to the facilitation of personalisation.

10. “…personalisation has a role in encouraging and engaging those not currently in learning by capturing the views of potential learners and creating learning opportunities in which they want to participate.” (p.8). While we support the proposed relationship between learner views and the opportunities presented to them, it is not clear how or to what degree this is being proposed. We are concerned that personalisation should not be misrecognised as a lever which can be applied in order to elicit a narrow band of response. We believe that if the vision of personalisation is realised – the re-shaping of service provision in line with learner need, ability and preference, in the context of employer and national skills needs – then in addition to the implications for service structure and delivery, evaluation and assessment will have to be significantly reviewed.

11. The document refers to the development of the ‘expert learner’. We support this as a necessary element of success in improving retention and achievement.  We would wish to raise within this the need to consider the digital literacy that learners will need to develop to support their learning, utilising what are for some very well developed digital skills within their learning process.

However we recognize that while many young learners are already at an advanced stage of digital skills and will come into Further Education with a mindset / skill set that will naturally assume the use of e-skills as part of their learning process, other learners have not yet developed this level of digital knowledge and skills.

12. We are concerned that this is not recognised as part of the learner need and therefore as integral to any strategy for meeting learner needs. Teachers need to recognise that digital skills may not equate to digital literacy; learners may be confident but lack the critical skills to support their own learning and future careers. We would also remind colleagues within the Department that there needs to be parity in digital accessibility across the sector(s) and for the individual

13. We welcome the reference to improved assessment for learners.  Personalising assessment, particularly with regard to assessing when ready rather than to a predetermined timetable and the ability to recognize and accommodate a range of evidence and ways of working, has the potential to greatly enhance motivation and achievement.  We are disappointed that the role of e-assessment and e-portfolio is not explicitly recognized within this, as development in these areas will be crucial to the success of this element of the strategy.

14. If personalisation is to be truly meaningful to the individual we need to be actively engaging with e-assessment, e-portfolios, unique learner numbers and with the current and potential practices made possible by web 2.0 technologies.

15. We agree that tailoring the service to the learner must apply to the whole learner journey and not just parts of it.  We encourage the strategy to consider the various elements of the learner journey – initial assessment, student representation, tutor/broker support, student evaluation, more flexible qualifications etc. holistically, ensuring that they are joined up and the danger of silo development is avoided, particularly with regard to the supporting systems and infrastructure.

16. We advise careful consideration needs to be taken regarding the question of access and control of the electronic environments and data contained within them at different stages in the learners journey.  This is particularly pertinent for younger learners as their legal status changes from age 14 to 16 to 18+

17 We fully support the need for synergy and consistency across sectors, ensuring the learner experience is seamless at all stages of their learning journey.  We would encourage further integration across sectors of work such as MIAP to ensure that the data and systems used to support learners are consistent and accessible.  We would also encourage strategies to ensure investment and development across the sectors is equitable to ensure that the resources (particularly e-resources) are consistent across providers.

18. We are concerned by the lack of reference to the data and systems requirements that will need to be identified and developed to support the aspirations for improved student identification and support. We welcome the work of MIAP in developing the unique learner number (ULN). We would recommend a focus on data portability, data ownership and lifelong learning within these agendas.

19. In light of the above comments we stress the importance of strategic review of business processes within colleges and also for the careful planning of ICT infrastructure, taking account issues such as cost of ownership, the need to deliver seamless managed learning environments, simple data transfer and availability and minimizing risks of staff skill shortages.  We believe that personalisation initiatives introduced in the absence of system-wide changes in business processes are likely to fail.

Annex A after the jump.

Annex A

Definitions

Defining personalisation:

“In an educational setting, personalisation means working in partnership with the learner and employer - to tailor their learning experience and pathways, according to their needs and personal objectives – in a way which delivers success.” (p. 7)

We agree that personalisation is not just something that is ‘done to’ the learner – it is a description of a relationship between the provider and the learner where the learner’s experience, needs, preferences and opinions are respected and responded to – a realisation of the rights as well as the responsibilities appropriate to each party.
AoC NILTA has produced a model of Personalisation in Electronic Environments which we would like to extend here in terms of a definition of personalised provision:

Adaptive personalisation:

This refers to the pre-organised provision of a personalised experience. Learners may be able to access the same process from a different location, complete tasks at their own pace, or are presented with a range of tools and access determined by their username. While this offers a tailored experience to each learner, differentiation is based upon the curriculum, the category of learner or the learner as a member of an organisation, rather than as an individual. We can broadly categorise this as institutional provision and procedure.

The Managing Information Across Partners (MIAP) initiative provides a good example of this kind of personalisation – a range of learner information and requirements can be transferred between intuitions in order to provide continuous learner support.

Customisation:

This enables the learner to engage with institutional provision. An example of this within the terms of the document would be a learner choosing which modules to select to complete a course of study, or standing for a recognized student council role.

“The development of Specialised Diplomas as a modular qualification with young people taking different modules or qualifications in different institutions…” (p.17) is a clear example of customisation.

Dynamic personalisation:

This refers to what we regard as learner-led personalisation: support and acknowledgement for the learner to create, write, collaborate and direct content and activity within the contexts of their own choosing. This is the institution engaging with the learner. There is little evidence of how this type of personalisation will be supported within the document, although the intention to equip learners with the skills to negotiate and design their own learning journeys is indicative of this kind of activity.

The AoC NILTA responce to Personalising Further Education: Developing a Vision was the last substantial consultation I worked on for NILTA. During my time as their ICT and e-learning development officer, personalisation - what it might mean and how it might look within formal education - was one of my major focuses.

Initial Comments

1. Personalised learning underpins the programme of change outlined in the recent FE White Paper. This includes emphasis on effective assessment of initial learner needs, improving pastoral support, along with developing learner ‘voice and choice’ through participation and representation. The intention is to improve learner engagement, achievement and progression across the board and influence the shape of future provision.

Institutions would argue that significant aspects of personalised learning is already a reality for their learners: that they already have well developed systems in place and a well developed ethos that puts learners and their individual needs at the heart of what they do.

Personalising Further Education: Developing a Vision is a DfES sector-wide consultation which seeks to develop and take forward a shared understanding of personalisation within the FE system.

This response seeks to highlight the definition of personalisation outlined in the consultation document, particularly in the context of electronic environments and to review the proposed changes to current roles, activities and procedures.

2. AoC NILTA supports the assertion made in the document that personalising learning has an integral role in improving quality. Our vision is for the nationwide provision of learning appropriate to and accessible by every individual, that recognises individual learners’ circumstances, and supports their needs and aspirations.  We believe that this cannot be achieved without strategic development of technological solutions in all aspects of an institution’s engagement with the learner, including: recruitment, enrolment, monitoring, support, tutoring, learning and teaching, advice and guidance, assessment and reporting and progression.

3. We regret the lack of emphasis on how ILT will support the aims outlined in the personalisation strategy. Although the use of technology is clearly understood to play a role in the systemic changes necessary to support widespread personalisation, we do not believe that the document recognises the extent to which the exploitation and application of ICT will be necessary to support personalisation. We would be keen to explore the range of ways technology, particularly collaborative and user content-creation tools can be used to support the personalisation agenda and the specific areas identified by the document. We would expect the personalisation agenda to rely on and further support the embedding of ICT and e-learning across all aspects of educational provision and facilitation.

4. We would refer to the recent report of the Gilbert Committee ‘2020 vision: Report of the Teaching and Learning 2020 Review Group’ which identifies ways in which technology might contribute to personalised learning. We believe that there are many benefits that are generic to learners and therefore consistent across sectors.  We encourage the colleagues within the Department to work in partnership across the sectors in developing strategy.

5. We are committed to working with the Department and its partners in the delivery of this strategy to ensure that e-strategy is embedded into relevant delivery strategies and projects, and to ensure that the views and needs of the post-16 sector are recognised and accounted for. The deployment of technologies within the context of coherent and comprehensive e-strategy within institutions, and the associated organisational and cultural change are not optional. This is not recognized within the consultation document and we believe that this is a serious omission.

6. We are delighted that participation is seen as a key process of the facilitation of personalised learning. We fully agree with the importance given to this form of engagement – empowering and supporting learners to shape the services they receive, and recognising the important contribution learners can make to improve the quality of educational provision.

However, we are keen that participatory personalisation is not limited to consultation and evaluation, but that the contribution that user participation that empowers learners to take initiative and control is supported in order to realise the government’s vision for a transformed, innovative and world-leading sector.

7. We are in agreement that personalisation has the potential to be an effective strategy for engaging all learners, and could operate as a particularly effective mechanism for engaging vulnerable, disadvantaged and disengaged young people. We are keen to see all learners’ circumstances, needs and preferences adequately recognised and appropriately supported. We believe that personalisation is not simply a matter of determining what learners or groups of learners need – it requires the more complex approach of supporting people in their own exploration and articulation of their needs, both in collaboration with other learners and in their independent contribution to their own learning.

8. We welcome the intention to expand and to harmonise existing provision. More focused support, greater one-to-one time, staff development, introducing and establishing new systems – all of these require the provision of sufficient time and resource. We would expect to see a significant financial commitment to support the systemic extension of services proposed for the sector, particularly in terms of staff development and time.

9. We are surprised by the lack of reference to innovation within the framework. We would expect that the emerging practices associated with supporting personalisation would call for creative thinking and solutions. We would like to see provision for the encouragement, support and sharing of innovative responses to the facilitation of personalisation.

10. “…personalisation has a role in encouraging and engaging those not currently in learning by capturing the views of potential learners and creating learning opportunities in which they want to participate.” (p.8). While we support the proposed relationship between learner views and the opportunities presented to them, it is not clear how or to what degree this is being proposed. We are concerned that personalisation should not be misrecognised as a lever which can be applied in order to elicit a narrow band of response. We believe that if the vision of personalisation is realised – the re-shaping of service provision in line with learner need, ability and preference, in the context of employer and national skills needs – then in addition to the implications for service structure and delivery, evaluation and assessment will have to be significantly reviewed.

11. The document refers to the development of the ‘expert learner’. We support this as a necessary element of success in improving retention and achievement.  We would wish to raise within this the need to consider the digital literacy that learners will need to develop to support their learning, utilising what are for some very well developed digital skills within their learning process.

However we recognize that while many young learners are already at an advanced stage of digital skills and will come into Further Education with a mindset / skill set that will naturally assume the use of e-skills as part of their learning process, other learners have not yet developed this level of digital knowledge and skills.

12. We are concerned that this is not recognised as part of the learner need and therefore as integral to any strategy for meeting learner needs. Teachers need to recognise that digital skills may not equate to digital literacy; learners may be confident but lack the critical skills to support their own learning and future careers. We would also remind colleagues within the Department that there needs to be parity in digital accessibility across the sector(s) and for the individual

13. We welcome the reference to improved assessment for learners.  Personalising assessment, particularly with regard to assessing when ready rather than to a predetermined timetable and the ability to recognize and accommodate a range of evidence and ways of working, has the potential to greatly enhance motivation and achievement.  We are disappointed that the role of e-assessment and e-portfolio is not explicitly recognized within this, as development in these areas will be crucial to the success of this element of the strategy.

14. If personalisation is to be truly meaningful to the individual we need to be actively engaging with e-assessment, e-portfolios, unique learner numbers and with the current and potential practices made possible by web 2.0 technologies.

15. We agree that tailoring the service to the learner must apply to the whole learner journey and not just parts of it.  We encourage the strategy to consider the various elements of the learner journey – initial assessment, student representation, tutor/broker support, student evaluation, more flexible qualifications etc. holistically, ensuring that they are joined up and the danger of silo development is avoided, particularly with regard to the supporting systems and infrastructure.

16. We advise careful consideration needs to be taken regarding the question of access and control of the electronic environments and data contained within them at different stages in the learners journey.  This is particularly pertinent for younger learners as their legal status changes from age 14 to 16 to 18+

17 We fully support the need for synergy and consistency across sectors, ensuring the learner experience is seamless at all stages of their learning journey.  We would encourage further integration across sectors of work such as MIAP to ensure that the data and systems used to support learners are consistent and accessible.  We would also encourage strategies to ensure investment and development across the sectors is equitable to ensure that the resources (particularly e-resources) are consistent across providers.

18. We are concerned by the lack of reference to the data and systems requirements that will need to be identified and developed to support the aspirations for improved student identification and support. We welcome the work of MIAP in developing the unique learner number (ULN). We would recommend a focus on data portability, data ownership and lifelong learning within these agendas.

19. In light of the above comments we stress the importance of strategic review of business processes within colleges and also for the careful planning of ICT infrastructure, taking account issues such as cost of ownership, the need to deliver seamless managed learning environments, simple data transfer and availability and minimizing risks of staff skill shortages.  We believe that personalisation initiatives introduced in the absence of system-wide changes in business processes are likely to fail.

Annex A after the jump.

Annex A

Definitions

Defining personalisation:

“In an educational setting, personalisation means working in partnership with the learner and employer - to tailor their learning experience and pathways, according to their needs and personal objectives – in a way which delivers success.” (p. 7)

We agree that personalisation is not just something that is ‘done to’ the learner – it is a description of a relationship between the provider and the learner where the learner’s experience, needs, preferences and opinions are respected and responded to – a realisation of the rights as well as the responsibilities appropriate to each party.
AoC NILTA has produced a model of Personalisation in Electronic Environments which we would like to extend here in terms of a definition of personalised provision:

Adaptive personalisation:

This refers to the pre-organised provision of a personalised experience. Learners may be able to access the same process from a different location, complete tasks at their own pace, or are presented with a range of tools and access determined by their username. While this offers a tailored experience to each learner, differentiation is based upon the curriculum, the category of learner or the learner as a member of an organisation, rather than as an individual. We can broadly categorise this as institutional provision and procedure.

The Managing Information Across Partners (MIAP) initiative provides a good example of this kind of personalisation – a range of learner information and requirements can be transferred between intuitions in order to provide continuous learner support.

Customisation:

This enables the learner to engage with institutional provision. An example of this within the terms of the document would be a learner choosing which modules to select to complete a course of study, or standing for a recognized student council role.

“The development of Specialised Diplomas as a modular qualification with young people taking different modules or qualifications in different institutions…” (p.17) is a clear example of customisation.

Dynamic personalisation:

This refers to what we regard as learner-led personalisation: support and acknowledgement for the learner to create, write, collaborate and direct content and activity within the contexts of their own choosing. This is the institution engaging with the learner. There is little evidence of how this type of personalisation will be supported within the document, although the intention to equip learners with the skills to negotiate and design their own learning journeys is indicative of this kind of activity.

More PLE questions

Some interesting questions being raised about Personal Learning Landscapes across the blogosphere right now. This recent post by Juliette White,  a couple by Catherine Howell.

Also - for background and kudos, this post by Stephen Powell which really well sums up what the thinking was following the June Cetis PLE meeting.

One of the projects I'm currently working on is as an Advisory Board member to the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2007 Horizon Report. Here are some of the 2006 trends which are currently being carried over:

* '''Dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted.''' No longer in their infancy, tools for working collaboratively at a distance are easier to use and more commonly available than in previous years. It is no longer unusual to attend a conference online or to contribute to a project wiki. As the tools have matured, the practice of online communication and collaboration has increased. This trend is at the heart of social computing and is driving personal broadcasting as well.

* '''Mobile and personal technology is increasingly being viewed as a delivery platform for services of all kinds.'''  The presence of small devices like cell phones or mp3 players being carried about everywhere is almost a given; delivering content to those devices simply makes sense. This trend is growing in the consumer arena and is beginning to be felt in education as well. The ubiquity of these devices has enabled personal broadcasting (podcasting and vlogging) to take off almost overnight, and that is just the first wave of broadband content that will be ported to phones in the next few years.

* '''Consumers are increasingly expecting individualized services, tools, and experiences, and open access to media, knowledge, information, and learning.''' The demand for personalized content and services, increasingly met by savvy retailers and service providers, and greatly enabled by the ability of the Internet to allow marketers to meet individualized needs will surface with increasing frequency in the world of academia.   Scholarly and cultural institutions are already beginning to differentiate themselves along these dimensions and that can be expected to continue and accelerate for some time.

* '''Collaboration is increasingly seen as critical across the range of educational activities, including intra- and inter-institutional activities of any size or scope.''' As the ways in which researchers, students and teachers can collaborate with each other increase, knowledge is becoming a community property, and the construction of knowledge, a community activity. A renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is leading to an exploration of the science of gaming, context-aware environments and devices, and their application for teaching and learning.

To me, the whole PLE project is an attempt to articulate and address these interwoven changes
- articulating the conceptual shift that acknowledges the reality of distributed learning practices and the range of learner preference. In that sense, a PLE could be described as basically a mechanism, process or interface through which a wide spread of data, conversations, ideas etc are able to be constructed, organised, accessed and presented.

This might suggest that the current state of web 2.0 is great, that all we need to do is work out some way of feeding our flickr account and a bunch of blog posts and comments into a CMS so that it can be evaluated and/or repackaged into a CV/research bid/presentation friendly format.  I don’t think this is the case though – I think that we’re currently limited in articulating what a potential PLE might be like by a lack of diverse examples. We also need a wider range of organisations involved – for example, the exam boards – in order to continue to check the formal and institutional limits of what’s possible. The CETIS Team have done a great job building an example of a desk-based version (although as someone who loathes desk-based aps, this wouldn’t in practice appeal to me), and the Elgg team have done a trailblazing job producing the first example of a web-based working version.

The PLE debates are stirring up a bunch of stuff, in their focus on the ways in which people learn across and between communities and networks, and the importance of synthesis and creating connections. They also raise a host of difficult technical, legal and organisational issues.

I’m coming at this from a very specific angle and other people will have different concerns– great. The thing that most excites me about the PLE at the moment that it isn’t fixed or settled, that it’s fundamentally a conversation across the edtech community about what learners need, what institutions might be providing, which PLE methods might be most useful. I see it as a practical attempt to get beyond the current dichotomy between closed CMS’s vs the small pieces approaches, by pushing innovators and institutions to develop and explore tools and platforms where communities and individuals can themselves determine boundaries, permeability and connections.

MySpace: Better than Emo

Only just got round to watching this really funny Daily Show investigation of social networking (and in particular, MySpace) - contains the best diagram I've seen since Brass Eye went out of business. Thanks Alec!

Also, I think I caught caught the amazing Danah Boyd being interviewed on BBC World Service at some point early this morning, about her MySpace research that was presented at AAAS on the 19th. The slot was called something like "let your kids spend more time online - it's good for them!" and featured Danah's research and another woman's research into an international kid's community. Can anyone help me out with more information? It sounded great but it was about 3am.

e-Portfolio roundup

There’s a frenzy of e-Portfolio related activity in the UK at the moment. I’ve picked out some recent highlights but this list is by no means exhaustive.

The UK Government’s e-strategy, Harnessing Technology outlined a clear commitment to ensuring learners have access to Personal Learning Space (PLS) where they can “store coursework, course resources, results, and achievements…with the potential to support e-portfolios”, available in every school and college by 2007-08. It’s proved to be a popular idea – with many intuitions engaging in research and investigation, and even becoming early adopters of the currently available e-portfolio products. There isn’t currently an agreed definition of PLS or e-portfolio functionality and standards: however, guidelines, ideas and recommendations are fast emerging.

The cynical money is on the provision of little more than storage space for learners to keep documents and files, with options for privacy and sharing - a straightforward, unimaginative solution that fulfils the letter if not the spirit of the governments requirements. Personalisation should be more ambitiously approached – luckily there is vision and the buzz surrounding the topic at the moment, focusing on the idea of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) – accessible and interoperable institute hosted systems which would not only enable the learner to engage with institutions, projects and individuals, but also provide the ability to accommodate learner selected and preferred technologies – in-system tools or externally hosted services – for example blogs, feeds, and  photo sharing programmes.

My advice? If you are investigating e-portfolios at the moment, hold on to your money. The only product I’d currently recommend is the excellent Elgg – a freely available, open source personal learning environment, suitable for use with all ages of learners which has a ton of unique and innovative features (easy podcasting for instance) and many more on the way, including Moodle integration.  It’s currently being used worldwide, and is a flagship e-learning product for the UK.

• Derek Morrison recently interviewed Oleg Liber about the Personal Learning Environments project. There’s an audio file of the interview and a discussion about the disruptive potential of VLEs.

• Becta have just published an introductory guide for schools and colleges:  Becta's View: E-assessment and e-portfolios (pdf)

• Four new guidance papers for specific professional groups by Helen Richardson and Rob Ward of the Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA), are now available. These are based on what has emerged as the key framework document for e-Portfolio development in the UK 'Getting what you want: Implementing PDP through e-portfolio'.

1. A starting point for technical managers in HE

2. A starting point for MIS managers in HE

3. A starting point for students in HE

4. A starting point for Personal Development Planning (PDP)

• The most recent Association for Learning Technology (ALT) newsletter included An electronic learning curve: implementing ePortfolios by Richard Ingram.

• The e-Framework for Education and Research (a joint initiative of JISC (UK) and DEST (Australia)) Newsletter 2, January-February 2006 is now available and has an e-portfolio update.

• The JISC 'Legal Study to Explore the Legal and Records Management Issues Relating to the Concept of the Lifelong Learner Record' (pdf) has produced a new report which outlines the results of a consultation of selected professional associations on national developments regarding lifelong learner records and e-portfolios. A selection of professional bodies were interviewed about their perceptions of the legal issues relevant to e-portfolios / lifelong learner records; their particular areas of legal concern; benefits they envisage gaining and risks involved in entering into formal co-operation with the education sector in this area.

What does sustainability mean?

It's a question that has been obsessing me for the last couple of years, along with many other edtechs and e-learning related researchers and policy makers. I put in a proposal to the upcoming Open Source and Sustainability Conference last month, titled Sustainability as a key factor in a multi-site roll out of the Moodle open source learning platform:

"I’m currently in the second year of a multi-site VLE roll out, across 5 FE Colleges (total student number circa 60,000) and two schools. The first year of the project consisted of evaluations of a range of mainly proprietary platforms, against the project criteria, of which ‘sustainability’ was a dominant consideration. This paper will outline the variety of concepts and outputs the project addressed under the umbrella term ‘sustainability’, looks at how these have stood up in practice during the second year."

So it's with his usual perfect timing that Stephen Downes posts the excellent Models for Sustainable Open Education Resources, which takes a whole spectrum approach to the question of sustainability, and settles on the key fact Open Education Resources need to be contextualised "as only part of a larger picture, one that includes volunteers and incentives, community and partnerships, co-production and sharing, distributed management and control."

One of this years key papers and a comprehensive reading list to boot.

Women in ICT Survey

Are you a woman working in the UK ICT sector? The Directing Equal Pay in ICT (DEPICT) project has been funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) to investigate the gender pay gap within the ICT industry, and aims to uncover intended and unintended barriers to women's pay and progression:

"Currently there is no specific national data regarding the gender pay gap and the ICT industry. The in-depth study will be undertaken to identify the main issues and the impact of the gender pay gap on the under-representation of women in the ICT labour market. One of the main outcomes of the project will provide a basis for presenting solutions to the problem, whilst impacting on UK Government and employer policies.

The DEPICT project team invite you to partake in the research and giving approximately 20 minutes of your time to complete our on-line survey. The DEPICT survey offers a unique opportunity for women to provide (and for us to gather) information about pay, progression and working conditions in the ICT industry throughout England. Women from other areas may complete this survey, the data collected will be used for academic purposes only.

Additionally if you would like to help further by being interviewed allowing you to tell your story in more detail please contact Angela Tattersall or Claire Keogh to arrange a convienient time."

Direct link to survey

e-Learning and college inspection

Thanks to Martin Cooke, ILT Curriculum Advisor at the JISC Regional Support Centre East Midlands:

References to e-learning from the draft of the 2005 Ofsted handbook for inspecting colleges:

192. E-learning is learning facilitated and supported through the use of ICT. It may involve the use of computers, interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, the internet, the college intranet, virtual learning environments and electronic communication tools such as email, discussion boards, chat facilities and video conferencing. E-learning should form part of the overall teaching and learning strategy for each course. There should be appropriate references to e-learning in schemes of work, lesson plans, assignments, course reviews and staff development plans. An overall strategy for e-learning should be supported by senior managers. Effective e-learning should:

•  improve learners. understanding of topics or activities that are part of their academic or vocational programme
•  improve their skills and their knowledge of the technology being used
•  help to maintain their interest in their programme.

193. In particular, inspectors will evaluate whether:

•  staff and learners have the relevant IT skills to make good use of elearning facilities
•  there are adequate resources for e-learning
•  the quality and effectiveness of e-learning is well monitored
•  there are appropriate opportunities for learners to use e-learning facilities outside scheduled lessons.

Panic in the streets of New York

David Shaffer and James Gee on why learning technologies (and investment) are crucial in US education today: It's not just about better, faster, smarter - it's underpinned by a fundamental paradigm shift away from (only) knowing how to do stuff, to preparation for life long learning in it's most innovative sense: finding, evaluating and applying information, tools and techniques. This is why top twenty skills lists can only ever function as  temporary markers.

Before every child is left behind: How epistemic games can solve the coming crisis in education (pdf):

"The coming crisis is this: Young people in the United States today are being prepared—in school and at home—for “commodity jobs” in a world that will, very soon, only reward people who can do “innovative work” and punish those who can’t." 

From elearnopedia

14-19 and Digital Technologies

Nesta Futurelabs regularly produce well written and relevant literature reviews - their latest, Report 13, is now available. 14-19 and Digital Technologies: A review of research and projects is written by Chris Davies, Geoff Hayward and Linariah Lukman, Department of Educational Studies, Oxford University. The conclusion points up gaps in current research, including the largely absent voice of our students.

Other available reports focus on creativity, mobile technologies, games and e-assessment.

Elsewhere on the site you'll find another newly published, worth-reading paper: Hail to the Thief: The Appropriation of Music in the Digital Age by Teresa Dillon, Learning Researcher, NESTA Futurelab (May 2005).

Overcoming social exclusion through online learning

NIACE (The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education - England and Wales) is currently running "Overcoming social exclusion through online learning", funded by the Community Fund (now the Big Lottery Fund) for the period 2002 - 2005.

There's quite a few interesting things over at the site, including two huge PDF files containing a worldwide literature review relating to the delivery of online learning (1980's onward).