affiliation, annotation, keywords and, most
importantly, learning outcomes together with the
required assessment form. The user-friendly
graphical interface contains several modules for
creating, browsing, reporting and exporting a given
curriculum. The EDUportfolio platform is designed
as a general tool supporting outcome-based as well as
module-based education, making it possible to
describe any study programme. Design, development
and implementation have been coordinated by the
Faculty of Medicine of the Masaryk University,
where a pilot run of outcome-based curriculum of
General Medicine study programme has been
successfully carried out.
2 METHODS
From the perspective of each institution of higher
education, a comprehensive collection of
requirements on its students (often called
competencies or learning outcomes) after the end of
learning period – typically just before their graduation
– is needed. The main emphasis is focused on the final
product, i.e. what sort of graduates shall be produced,
rather than on the educational process itself (Harden
1999). EDUportfolio supports various kinds of
curricula; one of them – an outcome-based paradigm
followed by the Bloom’s taxonomy as a pilot
experience from Masaryk University – is briefly
described below. There has been limited discussion
on original information technologies supporting
outcome-based ideas. There are only a few available
and published solutions, which have been developed
for making educational outcome-based data
accessible to the target group – students and teachers
(Komenda, 2015). Based on the comparison of
various curriculum management systems (Vaitsis et
al., 2017), which support the complex delivery and
audit of miscellaneous study programmes, a final set
of requirements and core features of EDUportfolio
were defined. EDUportfolio is a kind of standard
compliant system, which covers a complex process of
curriculum building, browsing and interactive
visualisation.
2.1 Bologna Process
This approach is also in accordance with the
European strategy for higher education. One of the
major changes was introduced by the Bologna
Process, which has created the European Higher
1
http://www.ehea.info/pid34250/members.html
Education Area (EHEA). This comprehensive reform
started in 1999, where the Bologna Declaration was
signed by education ministers from 29 European
countries and important goals were defined. The first
objective was to provide an easily readable and
comparable system of degrees and divide the study
into two-cycle of degrees (undergraduate and
graduate degree). Another important goal was
focused on the establishment of a Europe-wide
system of credits (ECTS – European Credit Transfer
System), which was created to encourage student
mobility (Hansmann et al. 2017). Nowadays, the
Bologna Process has 48 participating countries. Every
two years, there is a meeting of education ministers
where the original agreement is discussed and might
be revised as needed (Collins and Hewer 2014)
1
.
EDUportfolio, which is presented in this paper as
a system for easy curriculum development,
management and mapping, has been developed
according to objectives defined by the Bologna
Process; furthermore, it also reflects and respects the
goals of European reforming activities.
2.2 Bloom’s Taxonomy
This Bloom’s taxonomy is a theory of educational
goals defined by Benjamin Bloom, an American
psychologist. It is one of the most important
pedagogical theories influencing the concept of
teaching planning and curriculum development.
Benjamin S. Bloom was the head of a group of
educational psychologists which, in 1956, published
a study called „Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:
The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I:
Cognitive Domain“ (Krathwohl 2002). The original
publications contain carefully developed definitions
for each of the six categories in the cognitive domain.
These cognitive skills range from simple levels to
more complex ones. The categories are:
(1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application,
(4) analysis, (5) synthesis and (6) evaluation.
Individual levels are linked to each other; it is
therefore necessary to master a simpler category
before continuing with a next one, which requires
deeper learning and is more complex (Krathwohl
2002, Adams 2015). The Bloom’s taxonomy can be
used by professionals to write learning outcomes that
describe skills and abilities; these competencies are
subsequently required from learners to master and to
demonstrate. Among others, the so-called action
verbs are very useful; there are lists of action verbs
(Adams 2015) that are appropriate for learning
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