Introduction
Once again this overview is for two webinars – a FineFocus and a Serendipity. Both sessions were lively and interactive with lots of sharing of ideas annd opinions.
E-portfolios for RPL – a personal journey
Our first FineFocus webinar for 2013 was about using an e-portfolio for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). This recorded session was about Phil Hart’s (@philhart) personal journey through the RPL process in gaining higher level vocational qualifications through recognition of his prior experience and learning rather than following a formal course.
Phil began the session with whiteboards to elicit some thoughts from the group on the what and when of e-portfolios.
The next part of the session was a brief consideration of the technologies that can be used in e-portfolio building, beginning with a whiteboard for ideas from participants and continuing with Phil’s own mix of tools (a website format) used to produce his Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) portfolios. This led on to a look at the design objectives of the website and the portfolio structure used, including drilling down through units to performance criterion level.
Phil then discussed the assessment process (including the challenge test he completed with the assessors for authentication purposes) and lessons learned. Some of the lessons came out of his first portfolio and were applied in the second and third portfolios to give a more streamlined and focussed product.
This was a terrific session – I always find hearing about “personal journeys” fascinating! There were also lots of opportunities for interaction enabling all of us to share our own ideas and experiences of our own and/or student e-portfolios.
Serendipity
As always in Serendipity we began this recorded session with a whiteboard for topic ideas. These were flowing well giving us several topics to choose between in the poll. The topic selected was
“Why do so many students drop out of online courses? How to keep them motivated”
We started with a blank whiteboard focussing on the “why people drop out” side of the topic.
These ideas were developed and extended through discussion in text chat and audio. We then moved on to consider ideas for overcoming the risk of students dropping out. Again this started from a whiteboard and expanded from there into both audio and text chat discussion with many ideas around participative activities, ownership and community.
Conclusion
Two great sessions that provided massess of food for thought and reflection as well as many links and strategies. E-portfolios are always a topic of interest as there are probably as many variants as there are people building their own portfolios. Maintaining student motivation and reducing dropout from online courses is one of those issues that most of us are always keen to discuss in our constant search for ways to keep today’s learners energised.
Our Next Session
Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session. Join us for “Extraordinary Literacy Learning!” in to hear about how we delivered a pilot (funded by the Australian National Vocational E-Learning Strategy initiative – Partnerships for Participation) adult literacy course entirely online using virtual classroom, blogs and other e-tools. Join us on Thursday Jan 24th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning Jan 25th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.
