ePortfolios for the Professions

It's taken a while to get round to posting about this one but as part of the point of this blog is to record professional development I thought I'd better make the effort. ePortfolios for the Professions was held at the Bristol Hotel on 21st January - jointly organised by JISC RSC SW and Bournemouth University.

The key questions that emerged for me were the issues of portability (between different ePortfolio systems - e.g. PebblePad) and also about the ability to access or maintain your ePortfolio after you've left the institution under which it was created.

Here's a summary of the presentations (in no particular order). Apologies to any that I've missed. All of these are available on the Ning site for the event.

eFolio: A Group Effort: Dr Alex Furr of Southampton University outlined their experience of developing an ePortfolio tool for use in their psychology programme. Works with existing systems (e.g. Eprints) wherever possible.

PDP and evidence of professional competence – an e-solution: Martin Leveridge of Teeside University spoke about implementing ePortfolios for assessment of a radigraphy unit in their school of health and social care.

A Servant to Two Masters: managing CPD through an e-portfolio to meet organisational and professional body requirements: Virginia Havergal spoke about having multiple ePortfolios for different aspects of her personal and professional development. Interesting for me as she mentioned piloting CILIP's adoption of ePortfolios for chartership.

Effective Practice with e-Portfolios: Supporting 21st Century Learning: Lisa Gray spoke about some of the work that JISC is carrying out. There's a useful slide in here on what ePortfolios can support which brings home the message about lifelong learning and the importance of being able to take your portfolio with you.

E-portfolios and Education for the Professions: by Cheri Logan reported a study into ePortfolio use in Art Design and Media. Interesting  to hear positive attitudes of employers in these fields.

e-Portfolios at Yeovil College and the University Centre Yeovil: Geoff Rowland outlined the use of a number of open source ePortfolio tools at Yeovil College and UCY.

E-portfolios supporting employee development in Public Services Foundation Degrees: evidence based research outcomes: Dave Croot, Sue Atkinson & Julie Swain spoke on various aspects of the HE5P research project looking into the needs of employers and how that impacts what we do with ePortfolios in HE.