SUPERVISING AND MANAGING PROJECTS THROUGH A
TEMPLATE BASED E-PORTFOLIO SYSTEM
Catarina Félix and Álvaro Figueira
CRACS & INESC TEC, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 1021/1055, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Keywords: Projects, ePortfolios, LMS, Information Systems.
Abstract: We report an integration process that involves the Moodle learning management system and an in-house
developed e-portfolio system - SPD – and the institution information system. SPD is a system developed to
create, evaluate and maintain digital portfolios assigned and assessed by a jury to keep a high quality level
of the projects registered. The SPD system uses information imported from Moodle’s database, in order to
fill in its own database for users and courses and for propagating the existing session between systems. It
also keeps projects ordered by development phases, determining whatever can be done and by whom,
making them available for consult only after being accepted by the jury. To aid the rapid creation of projects
and development of its documentation a set of pre-defined templates are made available.
1 INTRODUCTION
Since the beginning of our school life, we have been
assigned to all kinds of work. But where is all that
work now? How many people have had access to
this coursework or can consult it in order to improve
their own future work? Some, eventually, have had
their work published on the school classrooms. What
about the others? Until now only the teacher read
and evaluated it, probably keeping it away,
afterwards where no one would ever access it.
The initiative “ePortfolio for all” (EIfEL,2010),
hosted by the ElfEl community, is a concrete
european project whose mission is to promote
innovative practices using eportfolios, to define
standards, provide support and assistance in the
creation and dissemination of ePortfolios in Europe
SPD (César Ferreira, 2007) is a web-based
system that allows students to create “portfolio
projects” and submit them for evaluation. The
system features special accounts for the assessment
role to be performed with the aim of publishing only
the best projects, and maintaining a high quality
level in the institution portfolio.
By using SPD, students can publish their work
on a system where it can be consulted by everyone
after it’s been accepted. This way, the coursework
can even cross the school frontier, helping other
students or any other person who might be looking
for information related to that project’s subject.
Together with Moodle and the institution
information system holding a database of users, SPD
adquires a new dimension, where students are
assigned to the project normaly, access the system
and develop their work which will then be evaluated
and, if accepted, published for public access and
consultation.
We’ve made minor changes to Moodle so that it
can be used together with SPD, maintaining sessions
between the two systems, information about users,
roles and permissions. This way, the integration of
both systems could be seen as a new tool,
complementing each other in an integrated e-
Learning environment.
In the following sections of this article we
discuss the benefits and disadvantages of using
‘traditional’ digital portfolios, as well as ‘reflexive
digital portfolios’ in education. We also refer to the
involved system’s background (Moodle and SPD),
the user’s roles on SPD and the implementations we
made on sessions architecture, the allowed users
roles and authentication. Finally, we discuss some
details about scalability and performance of the
system.
2 DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS
e-Learning is commonly used to refer to web-based
and distance education, although it can also be used
152
Félix C. and Figueira Á..
SUPERVISING AND MANAGING PROJECTS THROUGH A TEMPLATE BASED E-PORTFOLIO SYSTEM .
DOI: 10.5220/0003914401520157
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 152-157
ISBN: 978-989-8565-06-8
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
to complement normal classes and physical
interaction. It usually includes many types of
technology to enhance and support the learning
process, making it more interesting, attractive and,
ultimately, efficient (vanWesel and Prop, 2008).
Taking advantage of technology and Internet
development, this kind of enhancement has also
evolved, making possible the creation of different
kinds of activities to complement or even replace
regular classes. Students can now consolidate what
they have learned on classes and follow them even if
they can’t physically attend to it.
A portfolio is a set of artifacts filed together as a
way of showing someone’s work. It is normally
created by joining different, but related, projects’
information together so that anyone can consult it
and learn about the author’s work, research or
projects.
A reflexive portfolio is in most ways similar to
the regular and traditional one, however, here, the
author should/must express his critical opinion about
his own work. In this case, it’s expected for him to
say what went right and wrong, to reflect about the
knowledge acquired and skill developed, about the
project and the process of creating it, its context and
development environment, his personal vision of the
job, all with the goal of becoming more ware of
what went right or wrong and, if the case, what can
be done to improve it.
Following the progressive improvement of
technology, the development of digital portfolios (or
even reflexive digital portfolios) is spreading in
education institutions as a valuable pedagogical tool,
not only now accessible, but also attractive by using
more appealing media and allowing the access of
almost anyone who wants to consult them.
Therefore, ePortfolios are like regular portfolios
but, instead of being stored as a physical object, they
are kept available online allowing for an easier
access, research and consult. Joining an ePortfolio
system with an eLearning system, the projects
quality is granted (by means of having it assessed by
a jury) and, also, making it available to much more
people interested on the project’s subject.
In this article we took part of this view, but
return to the original notion of a portfolio, by only
considering projects created by students, evaluated
by teachers and, after acceptance, published on the
Internet as a new type of information to consult
whenever someone wants to make another project on
that subject or just consult it to learn about its
subject.
Ultimately, the SPD system will be the
‘showroom’ (i.e. the digital portfolio) for all the
institution projects.
3 BACKGROUND ON THE
SYSTEMS INVOLVED
3.1 Moodle
Moodle (Moodle, n.d) is an open source system
designed to allow interaction among students and
between students and teachers of an institution. It’s
based on modules than can be altered by anyone
who needs to add a new functionality or modify an
existent one.
Using this system a teacher can create courses
and activities inside them. Because it is also a
Learning Management System (LMS) students can
interact with each other along with the teacher,
complementing the traditional way of course
management based on books.
The standard types of activities that can be
created include assignments, chats, choices, forums,
glossaries, lessons, questionnaires, quizzes, wikis
and workshops. A student can participate in an
activity for training, but he/she can also be evaluated
from the results he/she has on some of those
activities.
From the moment that an activity is created by a
teacher and becomes available, any student
registered on that course can access it and use it
according to its type.
3.2 SPD
The SPD (César Ferreira, 2007) was designed to
allow students to publish their coursework, as a
digital portfolio, so that it could be consulted by any
member of the school community or even for public
access. It was made conformant with the IMS (IMS
Global Learning Consortium, 2004) norm for
ePortfolios. Therefore, all included files for a
particular portfolio can be aggregated and packaged
at any time, so that transference between compliant
systems is possible and straightforward.
The system can accept projects in every topic,
with no size limit (apart from the database capacity)
and new data templates can be added to suit the
students’ needs and wishes.
Here, users are separated by roles, each one
defining what each one can do and what the users’
permissions within the system are:
• Visitor: can only consult the projects after they
have been accepted;
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• Student: can create, edit or reformulate a
project, besides consulting the accepted ones;
• Teacher: if assigned to do so, can evaluate a
project and still consult the ones already accepted.
Figure 1: List of current projects on SPD.
A student can create, edit or submit a project for
evaluation. After it has been submitted, the course
teacher – or other teacher defined by the system’s
administrator to belong to the jury– can begin its
evaluation by rejecting, accepting, commenting or
asking the student to reformulate it.
During the lifetime of a project within the system
it can go through various phases:
• Editing: the project has not been concluded yet.
At this time, only a student from the authors’ group
can access, edit or submit it for evaluation;
• Waiting for Evaluation: the student or group
has submitted the project for evaluation but the
teacher hasn’t already started the process;
• Evaluating: the jury started the project’s
evaluation but he hasn’t decided yet about its level
of quality;
• Waiting for Reformulation: the teacher has
commented a project and asked the student to make
some adjustments so that the project can be
accepted;
• Rejected: the teacher evaluated the project and
decided it was not relevant enough to be on the
system. Only a student from the group that created it
can access it to view the comments that justify the
rejection;
• Accepted: the project is correct and relevant and
can now be accessed by any member of the
community, although it can’t be modified by
anyone.
Only after being accepted can the students’
projects be visualised by everyone. This ensures a
certain quality level of the projects in the system,
also providing, for consult, only good, relevant and
correct projects.
3.2.1 Templates for Faster Creation
When a project is created in SPD, the author has to
choose a template (César Ferreira and Álvaro R.
Figueira, 2006) that will be used to format every
page in the project.
The templates define which elements will figure
on the project pages and where they will be placed,
its size, together with other important information
about the appearance of pages.
By using this kind of formatting, the users don’t
need to worry about the position of each item on the
page, making thus the creation of a project easier
and faster.
Besides that, the system projects become more
uniform, allowing also a higher degree of layout and
design quality.
3.2.2 Student’s Role
Students are the users who most benefit from using
SPD, because they can see their work valued and
published where it can be seen by people interested
on that subject.
Entering the system, the student can create a new
project, by choosing the course it belongs to, the
subject and adding more of his classmates in case of
a group work.
After this step, the student, or any member of the
group, can start creating the project by adding pages
to the portfolio having each page a well defined
structure.
Figure 2: User choosing a template for a particular page
while developing a portfolio.
When the project is finished, the student can
submit it for evaluation. Then, he waits to see if the
project is rejected, accepted, or if the evaluator asks
for some modifications by commenting it. If this is
the case, the student can edit his work making it
correspond to the guidelines given by his teacher.
There are two ways for a teacher to comment a
project: in general terms or in specific sections of
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each page.
In the first case, the evaluator can choose a
standard comment or write his a personal one.
Each page is based on a template which
integrates several sections. For example, the
template shown in Figure 2 presents three elements:
image, title and caption. When commenting this
page, the teacher is able to register his opinion about
any of them.
Figure 3: Student observing the comment made to his
project.
After the evaluator asks for the project to be
reformulated, the author can consult those comments
in order to improve his work according to the
guidelines given, as seen on Figure 3.
A portfolio can also be edited by any one of its
authors, anytime, provided it is not waiting for
evaluation nor being evaluated.
Students can also access other portfolios on the
system if they have already been accepted. This
way, they can improve their jobs or, if they’re not
assigned to one, they can also use the system to
make or complement a research on any of the
accepted projects subjects.
3.2.3 Jury /Evaluator’s Role
SPD keeps information about who can evaluate each
project and the class/course it belongs to. Initially,
when the project is created, only that class’ teacher
is on the jury, but, later, the site administrator can
easily add or remove teachers from that group.
When a teacher enters the system, he can consult
the projects. If he wishes to evaluate any of them, he
only has to click it and start its evaluation.
At this moment the teacher is in the role of an
evaluator and can take three options:
• accept it;
• comment it and ask for its reformulation;
• reject it.
Accepting or rejecting a project is a final decision,
which means that these statuses can’t be changed,
although the teacher can add a comment to this so
that the student knows the reason of the decision.
If the teacher asks for reformulation, he expects
the student to make the requested adjustments and
can then restart evaluating the project, making sure
that their recommendations have been followed.
4 INTEGRATION
In order to integrate SPD with the Moodle learning
management system, we created a new Moodle-
module so that a teacher can assign (Figure 4)
students from his/her course to a project on the
Moodle system, knowing it will be performed on
SPD.
Figure 4: Activity SPD inserted on Moodle.
When a Moodle user follows the link to the SPD
activity (as depicted in Figure 5), he is automatically
authenticated on this system. This happens because
SPD now shares Moodle’s PHP session variables, by
importing his $_SESSION array, and avoiding the
need to login every time the user wants to switch
between systems.
The situation provides a smooth and transparent
transition from the LMS to SPD while keeping the
two system decoupled, in order to allow independent
possible evolution of each, separately.
Figure 5: A Moodle link to SPD.
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Despite being automatically logged in through
Moodle, the user can also log in on SPD alone with
the same credentials he uses on Moodle. To make
this possible, we had to create a script that interacts
with both Moodle’s and SPD’s databases, copying
relevant data from the first to the second one, as can
be seen on Figure 6. This operation occurs
simultaneously while running Moodle’s cron.php
script, which is used to perform regular updates.
Figure 6: Data imported from Moodle to SPD.
Data imported from Moodle to SPD includes, as
can be seen on Figure 6, data about users (username,
ciphered password, full name, role, classes he is
registered in) and courses (name and teacher).
There is almost a direct mapping from Moodle to
SPD and we only had to include the public access id.
The SPD’s authentication process is illustrated on
Figure 7.
Figure 7: Authentication process on SPD.
Here, u is the username inserted on the form and
p is the password. p(u) is the password of the
respective user, extracted from de database. c(p) is
the result of applying the cipher algorithm to the
password inserted on the form. Although p(u) is
imported, ciphered, from Moodle to SPD, both p(u)
and c(p) are computed on SPD whenever a user tries
to login the system. Both these operations are
performed on the server side for security purpose.
Access to the system is granted if c(p) matches p(u),
and denied otherwise.
This architecture allows a loose integration
between systems and is modular to both Moodle and
SPD in the sense that it can be connected and
disconnected through use of separate files from the
systems.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Nowadays, many schools already use Moodle or a
Moodle-based system to manage their courses,
teachers and students enrolled in specific classes,
with the advantage of allowing a faster distribution
of course material, more efficient course/class
administration and providing education “anywhere
and anytime”.
This is not a particular issue of e-Learning or
education. As stated by De Reyck: “the ever-
increasing penetration of projects as a way to
organise work in many organisations necessitates
effective management of multiple projects. This has
resulted in a greater interest in the processes of
project portfolio management” (Bert De Reyck et al,
2005)
SPD can be seen as a way of complementing that
system by showing students’ projects to, at least, the
entire school community. By joining both systems,
we developed a new tool allowing students to
publish their work on the same e-Learning system
used by the learning institution. Students’ essays,
projects and portfolios can, this way, be consulted in
a simpler and easier way. Being sure that all works
have passed a thorough evaluation process, a high
quality level is granted to all who access them.
Because the portfolios are made according to
strict patterns, the templates, they become easier to
make, (and consult) and provide a higher degree of
design quality. The templates also allow teachers to
comment on specific sections of a project page,
providing additional information about which
elements or contents should be reformulated by the
author. While developing the integration, there were
some changes made on both systems – such as
creation of a new Moodle module, maintaining
sessions when a user switches from Moodle to SPD
and importing data between databases – so that they
could work together.
We made sure that the systems could still be
used separately, so that there wouldn’t be constraints
to their correct behaviour, despite working in a
similar basis and with the same information about
courses, users and their roles.
However the possibility of being used along with
Moodle, SPD is autonomous, because it has got its
own database, tools and management procedures
which allow it to run independently from any other
system and scale apart from the other systems.
Our future work is making this work available to
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the users of the institution in order for the projects to
be created, submitted and evaluated. We realize that
although the system has proved its functionality, as
it passed all unit tests, it is important and
fundamental to have used and assessed by the real
users (teacher and students). We hope to receive
important feedback in order to tune the system to
make it even easier to use and accepted by our
stakeholders as an important tool in education.
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