VERSATILE TOOL FOR COMPETENCE MANAGEMENT
An e-Portfolio Management System for Higher Education in Applied Sciences
Jouni Huotari
School of Technology, JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Piippuk 2, FI-40100 Jyväskylä, Finland
Mirja Pulkkinen
Department of CS&IS, Faculty of Information Technology
PO Box 35, FIN-40014 University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Annu Niskanen
Teacher Education College, JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Rajak 35, FI-40100 Jyväskylä, Finland
Keywords: Outcome Based Education, Higher Education, Assessment, Accreditation of Prior Achievement, Portfolio,
e-Portfolio, ePMS.
Abstract: In the line of outcome based education and transferability of credits, we study a Higher Education case and
propose an e-Portfolio solution as a versatile tool for assessment tasks. The solution tackles the problems
firstly, of accreditation of prior achievements from both institutional and experiential learning. Secondly,
the developed tool carries the process of learning outcome definitions management (derived from the real
employment world), and the learner self-assessment and self-reflection as well as the guidance and support
for these. From the areas where the tool is applied, we present the learning unit Project management given
at the ICT department in a university of applied sciences. The e-Portfolio management system, ePofo,
supports the identification, assessment, recognition and accreditation of prior learning achievements and
learning outcomes. Additionally, it is a tool to present the sectoral qualification requirements to the students,
to derive learning needs and define the learning outcomes, thereby structuring the teaching. It also provides
support for the learner’s own management of achievements and competences, and finally for presenting the
profile to potential employers.
1 INTRODUCTION
The change towards the European Union Bologna
agreement requires attention not only on the
philosophies but also on practices and tools to be
used to enable the Higher Education Institutions
(HEIs) to attain the centric Bologna goals. The
competences acquired and striven for should be
captured in such information systems that support
the teachers in their task to appraise achievements
attained in both the formal education setting and
prior to enrolment to a HEI.
The importance of accrediting prior learning
achievements is growing in higher education. This is
shown clearly in the strategies and decisions in the
European Parliament and the Council of the
European Union on the European Qualifications
Framework (EQF). (European Commission 2005;
2006; European Parliament Council, 2008). The
emerging agenda of lifelong learning promotes the
idea of life-wide learning processes, which take
place everywhere, in all paths of life and are based
on various sources of formal, non-formal and
informal learning. Understanding this leads us to
understand the fundamental idea of APL. The focus
in APL process is on competences. It is based on
comparing the existing knowledge and skills against
the requirements of the curriculum or programme.
(Lepänjuuri, 2010). Accordingly, APL sets a request
to build support for teachers’ activities such as
definition of the competences to be learned as well
as assessment, accreditation, and validation of these
learning outcomes. In turn, students should get
438
Huotari J., Pulkkinen M. and Niskanen A..
VERSATILE TOOL FOR COMPETENCE MANAGEMENT - An e-Portfolio Management System for Higher Education in Applied Sciences.
DOI: 10.5220/0003481704380448
In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (ATTeL-2011), pages 438-448
ISBN: 978-989-8425-50-8
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
support and guidance in self-assessment,
management of learning outcomes and career plans,
and in building a professional identity. (Keurulainen,
2010; Niskanen and Lepänjuuri, 2006).
This paper reports an effort to develop
supporting system and electronic tool with the help
of which students could self-assess their prior
learning through reflecting their achievements
required against the competences as described in
curriculum. We present a solution called ePofo, an
e-portfolio management system, aimed for both
teachers and learners. The system supports also the
student both in studies and in the pursuit of
employment career. S/he may have gained his/her
competence either in formal education or in informal
settings as work practice or on-the-job training. The
developments of the ePofo described here is related
to wider development of the recognition and
accreditation of prior learning (APL) system for the
higher education sector done in JAMK University of
Applied Sciences during the last decade (JAMK,
2011).
The paper is structured as follows: In the next
section (Section 2), firstly (2.1) a brief account is
given on the competence based education and its
consequences at the HEIs as the driver of the
challenge to which the presented development is an
answer. Secondly (2.2 and 2.3), as further
background, we take on some discussion of the
meaning of assessment and judgment in HEI, since
this is the main function the ePofo tool supports
within the HEI activities. We explain what portfolio
and e-portfolio mean in the context of this paper.
Section 2.4 presents the case organization and the
steps to develop the tool: requirements, the solution,
and the technical implementation details. In Section
3, the study method is discussed, and Section 4
accounts the experiences with the tool this far. In
Section 5, we discuss the implementation and the
changes induced and opportunities opened by the
tool in the activities of learners and teachers. Section
6 concludes with remarks to further research opened
by this initial work.
2 BACKGROUND
2.1 Competence Driven Education
Identifying and recognition of prior learning is a big
issue in education in Europe. The European
strategies have been developed to increase mobility
and to acknowledge the competences and learning
outcomes provided by vocational education (the
Copenhagen Process) and by higher education (the
Bologna Process) (Commission of the European
Communities, 2005). There has been a numerous
research and development projects going on in
different European countries which aim is to get
better understanding about identifying and
recognition of formal and informal learning (e.g.
Duvekot et al., 2007a; Laitinen, Nurminen and
Soininen, 2007; Soininen, Niskanen and Lepänjuuri,
2010; Stenström, Niskanen and Lepänjuuri, 2010;
Duvekot, Pukelis and Fokiene, 2010).
This phenomena is located in frameworks of
Lifelong learning, Life-wide learning and European
Qualifications (EQF) which all highlight the
meaning of assessment of learning outcomes (skills,
knowledge and competences). Recognition of
learning outcomes means to acknowledge those
competences that have been acquired in formal and
informal learning environments. Competences can
be mapped out (identified), assessed and
acknowledged (certified). The acknowledgement can
take place in a more formal (e.g. through
certification) or in a less formal way (e.g. to check
what has been learnt by the individual). (Niskanen,
Lepänjuuri, and Rautio, 2006; Niskanen and
Virtanen, 2008). Recognition of informal and formal
learning concerns both young people and adults, and
it should be an established practice of provision of
higher education.
The European Qualifications Framework (EQF,
European Commission 2006) outlines the underlying
principles and benchmarks the criteria for
educational judgment. In EQF, educational
achievements are described in terms of knowledge
(factual and theoretical), skills (cognitive and
practical deployment of knowledge) and competence
(including responsibility and authority).
The achievement of these is valued with criteria
for seven distinct achievement levels (European
Commission, 2006). The concept of competence,
translated in an institutional education context to
learning outcome’ (European Parliament Council,
2008; Simon et al., 2011), is a point of focus and
drives the planning and development of ICT based
tools and systems to support educational activities.
The learning outcome based education means a shift
from teaching and curriculum centred paradigms to
learner focus emphasizing achievement (Burke,
1995, p. vii). These targets are equally striven for in
the European Commission guidelines.
Following the Bologna process outline, there are
two-fold targets the HEIs aim at when developing
the approaches towards competence and learning
outcome based education. It is changing, firstly, the
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439
administrative attention to the educational offering.
The definition and appraisal of the relevant
knowledge, skills, and broader competence
constitute the targeted and acknowledged
achievements. Achievements accredited by HEIs in
many fields mean official qualifications to
professions (European Parliament Council, 2008).
Thus, the governments delegate the judgment of a
person’s qualification for a profession to the HEIs as
in the EQF definition of qualification: ”a competent
body determines that an individual has achieved
learning outcomes to given standards”.
Secondly, both structuring the teaching
arrangements, e.g. to units (curricula, modules,
courses), and the appraisal of the achievement of the
learning outcomes are aligned along the
competences targeted at. Following the EU
rationale, improved performance in economy and
society, the source for the information on
competence requirements is the employment market.
As stated in the EQF documentation, professional
bodies in the respective fields shall provide this
information. European Parliament Council (2008)
puts this in the EQF definition: “‘international
sectoral organisation’ means an association of
national organisations, including, for example,
employer and professional bodies, which represent
the interests of national sectors.
2.2 Assessment of Competences
Achieved
Concerning recognition and accreditation of
competence achieved there are different concepts
used that may take slightly different stand: Learning,
APL (Burke 1995, p. 4), for assessing and validating
result of learning prior to enrolment to an
institutional program. To this, concept of APEL adds
‘experiential’ for learning in non-formal (e.g. work
practice) context. Canadians use the concept Prior
Learning Assessment and Recognition, PLAR,
(Conrad, 2008) which combines learning results
from both formal (education) and non-formal
(practice) context for appraisal and validation
process.
Within EU, context assessment of prior learning
is often referred as validation. It includes three
processes: i) identification, ii) assessment, and iii)
recognition and accreditation of competences
(Colardyn and Bjørnåvold, 2005; Niskanen and
Lepänjuuri, 2006; Lepänjuuri, 2010.) In turn,
Duvekot (2007b) prefers using word valuation of
prior learning to emphasise raising awareness and
motivation of a learner and the meaning of the
process - not only for the development of an
individual but of organisations and society.
The profile of a student enrolling to a curriculum
or syllabus is established for required achievements
that s/he might already have covered previously.
Prior learning achievements in the case of HE may
come either through former institutional education,
professional development (PD, e.g. courses by
commercial education and training providers, staff
training on-the-job), or through work practice.
Appraising PD outcome as part of institutionally
accredited qualification is inline with the lifelong
learning idea. As an example in the specific area of
ICT, there are tightly supervised certification
programs with very detailed learning outcomes for
e.g. some frameworks and models (e.g. ITIL,
CMMI). It is the task of the HEI quality assurance to
position and appraise such achievements as a part of
a qualification.
Be it prior learning, or learning during education,
assessment is the key to establishment of achieved
learning outcomes and thus qualifications. Joughin
(2009) derives from an extensive review of literature
a definition of assessment that is well suited to both
cases:
“From these definitions, the irreducible core of
assessment can be limited to (a) students’ work, (b)
judgements about the quality of this work, and (c)
inferences drawn from this about what students know.
Judgement and inference are thus at the core of
assessment, leading to this simple definition: To assess
is to make judgments about students’ work, inferring
from this what they have the capacity to do in the
assessed domain, and thus what they know, value, or
are capable of doing.
As said, European Commission (2005) denes
validation as the process of assessing and
recognising a wide range of knowledge, know-how,
skills and competences, which people develop
throughout their lives within different environments,
for example through education, work and leisure
activities. This process can very well be supported
by a portfolio tool. A portfolio not only provisions
the technical and administrative process support, but
also provides an expedient for social aspect of the
learner’s self-reflection, identity building, and the
learner-teacher interaction e.g. in learner guidance
and supporting the self-assessment (Barrett, 2001).
The learner gets assistance in developing their
judgment (Joughin, 2009) of their own expertise,
profile, and development needs. The teacher has a
tool for judging prior achievements with
qualification profiles from authoritative professional
bodies that help to sustain assessment criteria
consistent in the appraisal of the achievements. This
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is enabled by storing in the tool international
sectoral organization qualification profiles that
comprise the learning outcome definitions to be
aimed at.
In order to recognise learning which may occur
in diverse environments, educational institutions are
challenged not only to develop their curricula to be
competence-based but to describe the criteria based
on what the assessment of learning can be done.
Accreditation of prior learning challenges in a very
profound way our understanding of assessment and
methods used but also guidance of students.
(Niskanen and Lepänjuuri, 2006; Keurulainen, 2006;
2010) Accordingly, it is important to notice that the
student makes an initiative on assessment of prior
learning. It starts from learner’s willingness to show
his/her prior learning and ask it to be identified and
recognised by the educational institution. (Niskanen,
2010.)
2.3 Assessment Tools
As Joughin (2009) points out, assessment is a task
for both teachers and students. For both, there are
quite negative connotations with assessment in
education. Assessment is however, a core in the HEI
function: as we stated, there lies the responsibility of
establishment of qualifications. Joughin’s review of
assessment studies shows that the student approach
to learning can be influenced by the assessment
towards a deeper (more reflective) learning. Through
electronic tools, the assessment function can,
however, be enhanced to encompass self and peer
assessment, motivation and professional profile
building, to support the modes of assessment that
pursue deeper learning goals.
Electronic tool enables, firstly, the management,
presentation, and sharing of information between the
stakeholders, here students and teachers. This
information includes the focus area and learning unit
information, learning content, and student data. The
system retains information specific to each learner,
so that his or her personal learning plans can be
followed through over the study career. HEI learning
management systems should therefore follow all
legal requirements for the storage and processing of
learner specific information. Using an electronic tool
enables an assessment and APL process transparent
to the student.
Portfolios have been in the focus of educational
developments over the past decades (Kankaanranta
et al., 2007; Barrett, 2001; Grant, 2008). A portfolio
means a collection of pieces of work of an individual
(professional), from which sets of samples can be
presented as proof of the competence of the
individual. With portfolios, diverse educational
goals can be pursued: assessment in its various
forms as the general summative, in some cases also
formative, or peer assessment. Further, the portfolio
augments the assessment processes with self-
reflection and self-assessment and a learner profile
construction for developing judgment (Joughin
2009) that is also according to the EQF a part of
professional competence. Judgment is a part of
qualifications granted at HEIs, essential in expert or
leadership roles.
Cumulating work achievements, and the task to
select and sample work achievements for
establishment of qualification leads to reflection and
insights into one’s capabilities. With a portfolio, the
students can enquire their own strengths and
weaknesses. Aiming at a qualification, an electronic
portfolio augments the process with pre-established
qualification profiles from the labour market that
enable a gap analysis (comparison to one’s own
profile) and thus guides in selecting the learning
opportunities to cover the achievements still needed.
There are many alternative portfolio tools and
systems. The challenge is to choose the best
combination and integrate them in a meaningful
way. In addition, visualizing the connections
between competencies and courses is important for
two reasons: it helps understanding of the structure
of the curriculum and it facilitates finding potential
omissions or inconsistencies.
In the Case at the JAMK University of Applied
Sciences, the creation of the electronic portfolio
solution started with developing APL procedures in
HEI. The main objective of the first two projects
coordinated by Teacher Education College in 2004-
2007 called Taituri (Niskanen et al., 2006) and
AAKE (Laitinen et al., 2007) was to develop
theoretical background and pedagogical grounds for
APL in universities of applied sciences. This
development was followed in 2008-2010 with a line
of three smaller projects called @mk-Tieturi, Anturi
and Säihke (Niskanen and Virtanen, 2008)
especially focusing on development of methods for
identification, assessment, recognition, and
accreditation of prior learning. These methods yet
included development of theoretical principles and
practical guidelines, but also ICT tools such as web-
based e-Portfolio management system, self-
evaluation questionnaires, and skill tests. The @mk-
Tieturi project was a kind of a feasibility study
phase. During that phase, existing e-Portfolio
management systems were examined such as FSU
Career Portfolio. (Lumsden, 2011). Although we
VERSATILE TOOL FOR COMPETENCE MANAGEMENT - An e-Portfolio Management System for Higher Education
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found many promising open source tools or systems
such as Mahara (http://mahara.org/) and Elgg
(http://elgg.org/), none of them met all the
requirements (see section 4). Later on, the
development of e-Portfolio has been continued in the
project called KORSI (Peltola, 2011).
2.4 Case: APL in Project Management
Course
As an example, we take an area of competence the
institution chooses to offer in their program. The
case under study is project management. The use of
an e-Portfolio management system (ePMS) (Ravet,
2007) is illustrated here with this example.
Project management is a subject area commonly
taught especially in higher education for ICT and
other technology and business related study
programs, but also in professional development
offered by various commercial education
institutions.
The starting point is a competence description
that is normally presented at achievement levels and
competence components. Description of targeted
competence, both generic descriptions (EQF), and
with subject area specific descriptions, is entered to
the database. For the project management, the
specific authoritative descriptions and detailed
competence descriptions are available through the
web pages provided by the international institutions
representing the area:
The International Project Management
Association, IPMA, http://www.ipma.ch/
Project Management Institute, PMI
http://www.pmi.org/
The teacher enters to the portfolio database the
detailed competence description, with the given
levels of knowledge, skills, and competence. The
teacher also maps the provided learning
opportunities (courses) in the institution (in this case
the School of Technology), with the detailed
descriptions of competence. This means following
the learning outcome driven approach in structuring
and presenting the educational offering.
Through comparing to the descriptions of target
profiles (IPMA/PMI and competence descriptions
provided by the teachers), the student can fill in the
elements of the competence for their own
achievement profile. If they have documentation,
e.g. achieved through accomplishment of education
provided by an institution, the respective school
report, diploma or certificate can be scanned and
stored into the student’s own portfolio area for
proving the achievement and its evaluation.
If a student wants to have informal learning
outcomes (e.g. acquired through work practice)
acknowledged as part of the competence required for
a degree, (s)he enters a description of the prior
achievement, and a self-assessment of the
achievement. Student compares and matches the
given descriptions of the levels and elements from
project manager’s competence profile and returns a
self-assessment based on the IPMA Competence
Baseline (Caupin et al., 2006) to the ePMS or to a
learning environment. This has been a mandatory
task in the Project Management course. This helps
students to see the competences needed in project
management and evaluate their current level of
knowledge and skills. The teacher can then utilise
this valuable information in order to give individual
guidance, suggest APL process (including the use of
ePMS), and make the acknowledgement decisions.
The atomistic approach chosen has been found a
good choice in the user experiences. It is significant
in self-assessment and motivation. When enrolling
into a curriculum, the student is motivated through
the parts of the competence area (s)he already covers
through some previous experience or training, even
though the prior learning achievements do not
suffice for whole learning units or modules.
3 METHOD (DSRM)
Design Science is recognized as the mainstream
Information Systems research methodology for
constructive efforts (March and Smith, 1995). A
generic process model for DS type research
endeavours has been defined (Peffers et al., 2008) as
the Design Science Research Methodology DSRM
(Figure 1). The process is iterative. The entry to this
process is possible at any of the first five phases: a)
Problem Definition, b) Definition of the objectives
of a solution, c) Design and Development, d)
Demonstration (of a functioning solution prototype)
or e) Evaluation. A full research cycle includes all
these as well as the last phase, f) Communication
that is done through discipline specific ways and
means in presenting the constructed solution to the
scientific community of the field.
The construction of the solution presented in
Figure 1: Iterative process of design science research
(Peffers et al. 2008).
Problem
identi
fication
Definition
ofthe
objectives
ofa
solution
Design
andDeve
lopment
Demon
stration
Eva
luation
Commu
nication
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this study followed iteratively and incrementally in
sequential projects, abided with the study of the
topical literature. After the problem identification,
five iterations (see Section 4), each resulting to an
implemented system or an increment to the system
are conducted. With each iteration, stakeholder input
to the objectives, requirements, and constraints is
taken in. The demonstration is undertaken in
practical use. In this paper, one of the user domain
experiences is reported. Evaluation follows through
user feedback collection with surveys and
interviews. A collaboration environment (wiki and
ning) is used for management of the pre- and post-
development user information.
4 E-PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM - EPOFO
4.1 Definition of the Objectives
One of the aims was to develop a web-based,
theoretically and pedagogically well-founded e-
Portfolio management system, which besides normal
learning and assessment portfolio functionalities,
supports also identification, assessment, recognition,
and development of prior learning achievements.
This is based on the idea that it is the responsibility
of the individual student to invest in personal
growth, development of professional judgment
(Joughin 2009). The e-portfolio system facilitates
this development.
One of the main requirements for the solution
was to create a database structure and a competence
matrix, which help in describing and visualising
competences, both from the institute’s and the
student’s view. The solution is based on generic and
subject-specific competencies, as described in the
EQF (The European Commission, 2005). The
system should be modifiable so that any institute or
organisation could define their competencies.
Therefore, it is possible to add the key competencies
(DeSeCo, 2005), project management competencies
based on the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB)
(Caupin et al., 2006), or any other list of
competencies to the system.
One of the main requirements was the
integration to the student register system. For
example, the documents and other files that provide
evidence about student’s competences should be
easily achieved. In addition, the courses, student
groups etc. could be imported and/or linked to the
system.
To develop a solution, the activities of the
stakeholders and the requirements for a tool to
support the stakeholders at a unit (a college or a
school at the University of Applied Sciences) were
analysed and listed. We present here the tasks for the
learning facilitator (with sub-roles of teacher, tutor,
content administrator), and the student, who are the
main user groups of the solution.
For accounts of learner achievements, learning
facilitators are involved in
1. Reviewing the items students are adding as
their existing personal achievements (knowledge,
skills, competencies);
2. Appraising and acknowledging learner prior
achievements as learning outcomes e.g. to be part of
required achievements for a certificate or diploma;
3. Providing tutoring to guide the student on
their path through the program at their present
learning institution (what is / should still be
achieved, at what level and on what area to attain
qualification);
4. Presenting the educational offering according
to the outcome orientation principles to the students
(i.e. how can the student cover missing learning
achievements and qualifications through the courses
given in the program of the institution); and
5. Managing the competence profile
descriptions (e.g. qualification for a profession)
coming from societal and professional bodies.
The student activities include:
1. Creating an account of their personal learning
achievements, together with stored data and
information on the achievement for valuation and
proof (i.e. for judgment of their quality by institution
staff), the students post documentation (certificates,
job descriptions, letters of recommendation,
produced files) into the portfolio tool;
2. Presenting their existing knowledge, skills
and competences, i.e. prior achievements to the
learning facilitators;
3. Comparing their achievements to the required
qualification profiles of their desired learning targets
that is provided in the system; and
4. Presenting their qualifications in the form of
a sample portfolio to peers for peer support and
review, and to other stakeholders, e.g. potential
employers.
There are two approaches to competence
evaluation, holistic and atomistic (i.e. the elements
that together comprise the competence). The chosen
approach is atomistic, i.e. the student has the
opportunity to have small units or elements of prior
achievements acknowledged as part of their personal
achievements profile.
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For the assessment, the aim was to offer a 360°
perspective. The student gives his/her own
evaluation, which is then commented and evaluated
by the teachers or other experts from the institute.
Finally, if the student has given permission, peers
and external reviewers can give their evaluation and
comments.
Some further requirements for the ePMS were
listed in our project environment called Nest
(Rintamäki, 2008). For example, it should allow
24/7 access, be based on open standards and support
nationally agreed interoperability standards, and
usable over mobile and wireless technologies.
4.2 Design and Development
The e-Portfolio management system, ePofo, is
developed by using incremental and iterative
approach. Each year, one project group of four to
five students took the responsibility of fulfilling the
requirements given mainly by the experts of the
Teacher Education College in JAMK. One of the
students then took the results of the development to
the group of the following year. The principal
lecturer in software engineering was leading the
development group making sure that the
requirements were understood. One of the
dissemination methods was using wiki and, during
2009, a Ning environment was established. Thus, the
developers received immediate feedback and some
requirements for the future versions.
The ePofo is based on free and open source
software running in a Web site. The technical
solution of the web server was built with the
“LAMP” set of open source technologies, i.e. on
Linux operating system, Apache HTTP server
management software, the MySQL database
management system, and the PHP programming
language for developing the web interface to the
database. The user interface was developed with
XHTML with the help of CSS and JavaScript
(AJAX).
The ePofo is technically a multimedia database,
where the students can store their sample
achievements (voice, video, image, text). This is an
important feature for different skills and abilities as
e.g. design, technical professions or music. Each
user sets up the structure of the database for their
personal portfolio. Following the reflective aspect,
(Barrett, 2001), the user decides on the number and
names of the categories according to which they
arrange their achievements.
An ePMS should enable the students to get
familiar with the required competencies and then
add proof of their individual skills and
qualifications. ePofo combines characteristics of
each of the typical portfolios: assessment, showcase,
development, and reflective portfolio (Stefani et al.,
2007).
The users store categorized descriptions of their
achievements and add documents into the database
as attachments to provide evidence of the
achievement of the competencies or learning
outcomes for the qualification (certificates, diplomas
and the like). An example view is shown in Figure 2.
In addition, sample files can be added to present
performance in a competency area. The
administrator decides the formats that are allowed,
e.g. pdf, doc, jpg, mp3, avi etc.
To provide sample portfolio functionality, the
solution allows the user to extract own data as a .zip
file, containing an html page as a start page with the
description of the user’s portfolio and links to the
attached files saved along to a portable .zip file to be
used as a sample portfolio.
Figure 2: A student can add metadata, choose related
skills, and attach documents. Other users can add
comments.
The ePofo consists of four user roles, each with
their own views and user rights: Learner, Teacher,
Content Admin (a role that provides the target
achievement profiles) and Technical Admin (a role
that provides technical support).
4.3 Demonstration
The ePofo was first introduced into use in 2007.
Total number of pilot users in separate schools of
JAMK has so far been 10 teachers and about 50
students during the three years of use. In each unit of
the institution, one staff member has been trained to
take the responsibility of a “content admin”
(teacher’s functionalities, point 5, see above).
However, there has been hesitation to use the
solution, which is usual with new e-Learning tools.
The use has not been mandatory, and there has been
no reward for use of the system.
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For the development that started in 2007, there
has been each year a student-learning project to
develop the technical solution further. User
requirements and user feedback has been collected
in group interviews and survey forms. Because
student project groups are changing and the target
for them has been learning IT project work, the
system cannot be compared with commercial
solutions in e.g. usability. This is why the user base
in this phase is teacher volunteers “early adopter”.
However, the tool has been in real use, and gained
both positive feedback and many suggestions to
improve it.
In the beginning, ePofo was mostly used in
Teacher Education College of JAMK. However,
ePofo has been further developed for the needs of
young students in other schools of JAMK. Teacher
Education College continues to develop further the
development of APL and ePofo especially in adult
learning. The results of these developments will be
reported in a later point in time.
4.4 Evaluation
The development of e-Portfolio system in parallel
with curriculum development has given a valuable
learning experience for both the faculty members
and the students. As an example, one of the teachers
sent an email on May 2010 mentioning that (free
translation) “Thank you, I have been really excited
to (almost "drunk" about) this ePofo tool. It is a
wonderful tool for a trainer to recognise students'
skills!” In addition, the faculty members argue to
understand both the basic concepts and the
competencies required in the curriculum much better
than before using the ePofo. In the ePofo, a teacher
(content admin) has to define the competencies,
skills and knowledge, student groups, and courses,
and link all of those in such a way that a student gets
to understand their relationships. According to the
questionnaires and interviews, this clarifies the
competence-based curriculum for all stakeholders.
Figure 3: Skill matrix.
The development of ePofo has helped interacting
in socially heterogeneous groups (one of the key
competences in DeSeco, 2005). During the
development, teachers, students and administrators
from different faculties learned to cooperate,
understand each other’s views, and manage and
resolve conflicts. The decisions and ideas that
emerged during the development were documented
in wiki (http://epofo.labranet.jamk.fi/wiki/, in
Finnish, see Figure 4). In addition, a separate ning
environment (ahotat.ning.com) was created in order
to help student groups sharing experiences and to
answer questions.
Figure 4: Wiki environment.
The focus is on individual competencies.
According to interviews, the ePofo helps a student
show his/her current knowledge. The different
matrices in the system provide understanding about
the competencies and how much evidence there
already is. It also contains a dimension for different
types of informal and non-formal learning
categories, such as working experience, degrees,
courses, and hobbies.
Students were an essential source of the
development group. First, IT students have been
developing the e-Portfolio system. Second, students
opinions were taken into account when defining new
features. In addition, the competences required from
a software engineer were recognised during the
development process. Finally, students from three
different subject areas formed the pilot user group
and their comments were considered in improving
the ePofo. During the project meetings, the
experiences and comments from all three different
user groups (administrators, teachers, and students)
were collected and then parts of the documentation
were shared by using the wiki.
According to discussions with students in the
Master's Degree programme, enabling the use of an
e-Portfolio can reduce dropouts. Some students,
which work abroad and have the needed
competencies, need a flexible way to proof their
expertise. According to the students’ feedback, it is
technically quite easy although time-consuming to
add proof about their knowledge and skills once they
learn the procedure. Students face the challenge how
to express themselves clearly, so that teachers and
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other external reviewers can evaluate what the
student’s level of expertise is.
Variegated and voluntary student and teacher
involvement during the development phase proved
to be a good idea. We received a lot of valuable
feedback for improving the e-Portfolio system. In
addition, we were able to raise ICT skills and the
level of understanding about recognising prior
learning and validating competencies.
5 DISCUSSION
A significant change will take place in the ways and
procedures when migrating from curriculum and
course based approaches to a learning outcome
based approach in a higher education institution.
This induces several changes in both teaching and
administrative tasks, conducted by the teacher and
other institution staff. An important facet is that the
learning needs should be derived from actual
professional practice, which, among other things,
turns into a motivational factor for students. When
the learning needs are, as in the presented solution,
established according to the spirit of the EQF
through the qualification profiles attained from
international sectoral bodies, they enhance the
quality of both learning and teaching. In the
presented solution, they are recorded into the
portfolio management system, to be accessed by
students and other stakeholders at the HEI. This
alone is a factor that raises the quality and relevancy
of teaching, which again reflects to student
motivation.
As Ruud Duvekot (2007b) states, the focus in the
lifelong learning policy is slowly shifting from
formal learning environments to non-formal and
informal learning environments. A focal challenge in
the e-Portfolio system constructed in this study is to
enable the recognition of student non-formal and
informal learning. From the administrative point of
view, the e-Portfolio system is also a support tool for
recognition of prior learning (APL/PLAR). It serves
the student as a personal tool for documentation,
assessment, and development of their learning
towards the targeted qualifications. Teachers can
benefit from the e-Portfolio system in their
curriculum work, releasing them from curriculum-
bound thinking to learning objectives and learning
outcomes driven thinking. Consequently, the
portfolio tool supports the professional development
and learning-on-the-job of a teacher.
An information privacy specific issue to be
considered is how students can add confidential
information to an ePMS. Some students work in
their current or previous work career on classified
projects, and therefore are not allowed to add
information about them. In some cases, the teacher
or supervisor has signed a non-disclosure agreement
(NDA) with a company in order to keep the secrets
unrevealed. The teacher might have a discussion
with the representatives of a company to make sure
that the student has the competencies that s/he
claims to have. The summary of the discussion (a
kind of an evaluation report) can then be added to
the ePMS and validated with the HEI authority.
The key competences defined by the DeSeCo
project (2005) are classified in three broad
categories to which the ePofo contribute in several
ways. In the first competence category, use tools
interactively, the development and use of the ePofo
has improved ICT and language skills of
administrators, teachers, and students. In addition,
the ability to use knowledge and information
interactively is enhanced in all three user groups. For
example, the ePofo helps teachers to see how (key)
competencies relate to courses and student groups
and thus enables evaluation of quality,
appropriateness and value of that information.
The ePofo contributes in particular to the
development of two key competences: digital
competence, which involves use of Information
Society Technology for work, leisure and
communication, and learning to learn, which can be
described as an individual’s ability to organise their
own learning. The ePofo helps students to perceive
their learning needs as well as to process and analyse
the development of their competences. Furthermore,
it supports lifelong learning by providing knowledge
of students’ prior learning and encourages students
to reflect their own learning.
Acting autonomously is the basis for using the
ePofo. A student takes responsibility of his/her own
learning and development process. It is up to a
student to choose what evidence to add to the ePofo.
The system helps to understand the “big picture”,
e.g. how the key and other competencies relate to the
different curricula and courses, and how much
evidence there already exists about their individual
competencies.
There are many suggestions and ideas to be
added to the next version of the ePMS. One idea is
to integrate Mahara and competence descriptions
e.g. by creating the necessary plug-ins. Another idea
is to create a dedicated learning environment, which
is linked to competence register. Current solution is
stored in JAMK’s network server, but in the future
public cloud can also be utilised. As an example,
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students who graduated (alumni) can continue
adding evidence to the ePMS and choose courses,
which match their professional development plan.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The ePofo solution development makes evident that
the introduction of the outcome orientation in
tertiary sector teaching and learning is means a
thorough change in the educational institution
practices. Consequently, it requires novel designs for
the technological support for student, teacher, and
other stakeholder processes. The solution discussed
here supports the students (learner) and the teaching
staff (learning facilitator) (Simon, Pulkkinen et al.
2011) and the assessment by a teacher and the
institution. The teacher may assess the items in a
student’s portfolio at various points in the learning
process: for diagnostic and formative assessment to
be able to assist in planning the studies and guide the
student underway; and for summative assessment to
acknowledge competence and report to the
institution that grants a degree. Last but by far not
least, a personal portfolio developed during studies
gives a head start to the professional career.
The portfolio tool appears to have the potential
to be a bearing point in sharing information on
competences at the institution between students,
teaching staff, and other stakeholder groups. It also
supports the students in planning their studies, it is a
motivational factor to see the collection of personal
achievements grow concretely as reflected in own
database, and to get guidance from teachers how to
turn prior learning in diverse contexts into units of
acknowledged competence. Further, the solution
provides support for various activities as guidance in
study plans, searching information on existing
expertise (e.g. in setting up project groups for
learning projects, and to find teachers with various
competences) and presenting sample portfolios to
external stakeholders.
The development of the ePMS and pilots during
2006-2010 has given us valuable understanding how
to give detailed descriptions about competences and
linking them to the courses. This is an expedient to
root the institutional learning to professional
qualification defined externally. For the teachers,
this enables to structure the overall learning effort in
a focus area to plausible learning outcomes as
detailed in the professional body description of
qualification, to be targeted by the students.
If an institute implements an ePMS whether it is
commercial, proprietary, or open source, we strongly
recommend simultaneous development of
curriculum, competences, and the ePMS. This
ensures that all of them are consistent, e.g. there are
no contradictions in use of concept and terms.
For further research, one could investigate
implications of using an e-Portfolio system not only
during studying period but also before and after the
studies. This enables the student continue with
his/her studies e.g. at Master’s level. Some members
of the faculty might develop trust in the relationship
to students and be able to support them in their
career planning. Thus, an e-Portfolio is not only an
instrument for individual development and offering
professional specialisation studies; it may help
finding skilful people and give valuable feedback to
the institution that the specific competencies have
been acquired.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to the all developers of the ePofo
such as Timo Palola and Ilkka Turunen. Project
managers, e.g. Heli Peltola from KORSI project, and
teachers, especially Outi Pylkkä, have given their
valuable contribution. Finally, we thank the funders:
The European Commission, the Ministry of
Education and Culture, and the JAMK University of
Applied Sciences Ltd. The eContent+ Best Practices
Network ICOPER (www.icoper.org) is grateful for
the collaboration on New Assessment Methods area.
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