Lead Contact: Dr Roger Clark (r.clark@livjmu.ac.uk)

JISC Programme: DeL Regional Pilots

Lead Institution and Partners: Liverpool John Moores University (L), Connexions Greater Merseyside, AimHigher Greater Merseyside, Knowsley Community College, St Helens College, West Cheshire College, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University, Edgehill University, University of Chester, Learning Skills Council, Greater Merseyside Centre for Recording Achievement, Liverpool City of Learning

 

Project Dates: January 2005 - October 2006

 

Case study tags: online learning, e-portfolios,liverpool john moores university, e-portfolios for application, e-portfolios considerations - authentication, learner perspectives on e-portfolios, e-portfolios for reflection,widening participation drivers for e-portfolios

 

 

Background & Context

 

What is the background to the e-portfolio initiative?

 

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Further Education Colleges (FECs) in Cheshire and Merseyside have long experience of working together in partnership, and an enviable record of widening participation initiatives including the Liverpool City of Learning initiative, the LUCID project for the development of a personal development planning software and the New Technology Initiative, a consortium that acts as a single gateway to FE and HE across Cheshire and Warrington. Other ICT-related collaborative projects include the Cheshire and Merseyside Modular Scheme (CAMMS), a work-based learning initiative in health and social care areas and the Learning Bites project, attempting to provide unified access to credit-bearing e-learning chunks from the HEIs.

 

Initiatives like these have identified barriers in several areas including inter-institutional access to resources, maintaining and communicating student records as well as obstacles arising from administrative system incompatibility and funding regimes. In the technological aspects, this project is needed to push at and overcome some of these barriers allowing such initiatives, for which there is a clearly perceived need, to go forward more smoothly.

 

Solving technological problems is of little interest unless the technology is going to be used to achieve something of value, in this case to promote increased progression to Higher Education by non-traditional categories of learner. A "Higher Education Taster" service would aim to reduce the barriers to progression by giving the learner a better understanding of educational progression options and practical experience of learning at levels beyond their current level.

 

What were the aims and objectives of the initiative?

 

The aim of the project was to enable non-traditional students considering progression to Higher Education to access appropriate learning opportunities from a partnership of FE/HE providers via a standards-based electronic interface. The main objectives were:

 

1. To develop a learner interface that presents a unified view of, and access to, learning opportunities within the sub-region
2. To offer a personal development planning facility via the Learning Matrix that provides advice, diagnostic support and reflective opportunities for participant students, and to consider the integration of e-portfolio tools with the LUSID system to support and enhance the use of the interface
3. To deliver learning opportunities in partner FECs and HEIs that will enhance learner preparedness for HE
4. To develop an interface for institutional staff in the partnership to facilitate the description and publication of course descriptions (metadata), the management of student enrolments and the viewing and updating of learner records
5. To evaluate the systems, tools, information flows, learning experiences from the project to gauge the potential for sustainable future practices.

 

How was the initiative implemented?

 

The method of approach to the Learning Matrix flowed from some key decisions on several points:

 

• A decentralised, distributed approach was adopted because this seemed more likely to meet the broader aims of supporting a variety of different regional services.
• Each institution was in charge of managing its own quality and student management processes with respect to its own offered learning packages.
• The kind of support envisaged was to engage learners in Personal Development Planning activities designed to promote an understanding of their skills and interests, and to assist in the collection and preparation of evidence in support of a progression path.
• Enable the learner to collect together an accurate and up to date record of all their learning episodes, and for institutions who are approached by a candidate to be able to view such a record.
• The organisation of the project was an important factor in the method, because a large number of institutions of different types needed to be fully involved.

 

The project is broadly divided into two aspects: the creation of an enabling technological base, and the piloting of a service using the technology. The "Higher Education Taster" service aims to reduce the barriers to progression by giving the learner a better understanding of educational progression options and practical experience of learning at levels beyond her current level. The service was developed by identifying 10-15 suitable short learning packages (LPs) and working with the partners involved with the potential client group (Connexions, LSC) and others on a learner recruitment strategy. Given the range of functionality envisaged and a limited budget, proprietary commercially available technological solutions did not seem viable. For interoperability reasons, flexibility and cost the choices were seen to be in open source tools of the kind supported through the JISC. See the Technology section for more information.

 

The early stages of the project involved extensive gathering of information from IT support and academic departments in the institutions involved. Potential technological solutions were investigated through the JISC project listings. The main conclusions from this were:

 

• The results of a survey sent to all IT support departments involved showed that some institutions had some staff with expertise in open source java technologies while others (including larger institutions) had none at all
• In the timescale of the project, releasing personnel for significant amounts of time to work on the project was not going to be easy
• The processes and systems for student records, course catalogues, network access etc differed widely between institutions
• There were potential learning packages already in existence, or that could be developed in the timescale
• The ioNode approach developed by Phosphorix Ltd for the SHELL project was an elegant solution well suited to the needs of the Learning Matrix
• There was an overall willingness to engage with the project and an enthusiasm for what it was trying to do

 

The learning delivery aspect of the project overlapped considerably with phase 1 (technology phase) in that learning packages had to be planned and prepared, and arrangements for recruiting learners needed to be made. The three elements of this project component were identifying and preparing suitable learning packages, agreeing a format for metadata to describe each course offering (this linked into the XCRI project) and planning for the recruitment of learners to the pilot.

 

Technology Used

 

What technologies and/or e-tools were available to you or did you seek to develop?

 

Given the range of functionality envisaged and a limited budget, proprietary commercially available technological solutions did not seem viable. For interoperability reasons, flexibility and cost the choices were seen to be in open source tools of the kind supported through the JISC.

 

The system was envisaged as being based on Java technologies, utilising web services and SOAP for transport, xml data formats, and deployed in a distributed architecture. The locally developed and widely known PDP system LUSID was identified as the means for adding this service to the learner interface. The Shibboleth approach was a candidate for authentication and authorisation issues. At the outset it seemed likely that the technical expertise needed to implement such a system was available in the academic and support departments of the large number of partners.

 

After Phosphorix Ltd were engaged to adapt the ioNode approach to the needs of the project, the tasks revolved around design decisions in discussion with Phosphorix staff. The ioNode approach is based on common open-source software including FreeBSD, Apache, Tomcat and all additional software developed to support the project is also available on an open source licence.

 

The design of the system was such that it could be made to work through manual intervention, but had the potential for later full interoperability. This decision was taken to minimize the risk to the project.

The scale and complexity of the tasks became obvious during the planning, and there was a careful balance to be made to bring this phase to completion within budget.

 

When the systems were functioning and had met testing standards in "lab" settings, training was arranged for the project staff who would be involved in using the systems. The training session revealed problems only apparent in multi-user situations, and significant changes had to be made.

 

Success Factors

 

What are the key outcomes of the initiative?

 

The major outcomes of the Learning Matrix project include:

 

• A cohort of learners who have used the system, and undertaken some learning experience in a setting related to progression to Higher Education, providing a demonstration of the feasibility of facilitating such activity in this way
• A hardware architecture in place with a coherent set of software tools designed to support lifelong learning, together with a demonstration of its utility
• Taken together, a practical demonstration of the potential for a service to unify information about learning opportunities in the region, and support learners through transitional stages in their learning careers
• Stimulation of discussions in institutions about the issues surrounding lifelong learning scenarios and preparing the ground within IT support departments to deal with the resultant challenges
• With respect to the JISC community, a focus in the ioNode technology developments for discussions about interoperability in a practical context, and a user base benefiting from development and improvement of services

 

The aim of the project was "to enable non-traditional students considering progression to Higher Education to access appropriate learning opportunities from a partnership of FE/HE providers via a standards-based electronic interface" and this has been achieved, as have the objectives. To some degree most of the elements in this complex whole were compromised by the need to operate in the real world of overflowing work schedules and competing interests, but where compromises have been made "placeholders" have been established as a basis for further work.

 

Because lifelong learning, widening participation and interoperability issues are foci of a national agenda, the Learning Matrix may be of interest and value across a broad spectrum. Lifelong Learning Networks have been funded in many regions included the North West region of England, and they should find it valuable to look at the approach taken in this project. National initiatives like the AimHigher network could also find the HE Taster concept worth considering.

 

What follow-up activity will be/has been carried out as a result of the project?

 

Much of the positive benefit from the project will be lost unless ways are found to embed the work as a viable long-term service in the region. To this end, a report has been prepared for partners and relevant organisations in the area detailing what needs to be done to establish a Higher Education taster service delivered through the Learning Matrix technologies. A dissemination event involving all the North West regions pilot projects took place mid 2006 to promote take up of the work done.

 

The Interoperability Network North West (ioNW2) project built on the Learning Matrix project aiming to imporve interoperability between institutions linked to Lifelong Learning Networks in the Northwest. Further information is available on the project blog and website.

 

Lessons Learned

 

What are the lessons learned from the project?

 

Despite the scale and complexity of the tasks the Learning Matrix has, in large part, achieved much of what it set out to do. A conclusion that could be drawn from this is that the problems inherent in supporting lifelong learning are at least approachable, and that there is a value in such attempts to bring together parts separately developed into a coherent, purposeful whole.

 

The idea of a Higher Education Taster service has been able to fire the enthusiasm of many people working from different perspectives. Higher Education and Further Education managers can see how this could fit into recruitment and promotional strategies, as well as taking forward agendas in widening participation. Organisations such as Connexions can see how such a service might benefit their clients. This suggests that ways should be sought to establish and embed a service into the region's educational landscape. However, a viable regional service in the longer term will need nurturing through several stages.

 

The potential of the systems put in place is not restricted to a Higher Education taster service important though that is. The systems could be used to support Lifelong Learning in other ways including credit accumulation across different institutions.

 

It is clear from the project experience that the difficult task of further development of PDP activities is needed, and this development should be informed by the extensive practitioner expertise that exists, for example in the LUSID team. The feeling from the project experience is:

 

• PDP activities need to be more interactive to engage the learner, adding value to the data that learners input to the system
• Intelligent, personalised signposting to resources would be another area of development
• Description of learning modules normally includes an indication of the skills developed by undertaking the learning. There needs to be a mechanism for formalising these and linking them through to a learner's PDP activities.

 

To build on the widening participation role of the service more investigation needs to be carried out to establish how the Learning Matrix can work with other agencies such as Connexions. There is a great deal of potential in using the Learning Matrix to work with the specialist client groups that these and other agencies are engaged with.

 

Further Resources

 

Learning Matrix

Learning Matrix Final Report