So far, a ready-to-download and ready-to-use software developed in Germany and tailored for e-portfolio application could not be spotted, neither in the commercial, academic nor open source sector. Also, there are no signs for ongoing developments of such e-portfolio software. A kind of exception is the Portfolio:Medienkompetenz.

Portfolio:Medienkompetenz

The promotion of developing media competencies at school is gaining more importance since the middle of the 90s. In this context, in North Rhine-Westphalia, the federal state institute for school has developed a paper-based portfolio framework called Portfolio:Medienkompetenz in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung. This instrument helps students to identify and document their individual media competencies acquired at school or in a non-school related context [Hauf-Tulodziecki-2005].

The portfolio is distributed at several schools in different German federal states. For instance, in 2002/2003, about 200 schools in Lower Saxony used the media portfolio beginning with 7th grade students. To date, the media portfolio is also used at different schools in Bremen and North Rhine-Westphalia. Interested schools can download from the Internet.

This portfolio supports typical actions such as the collection of individual assets, the documentation of the work and learning progress, and reflection on the learning process. The student provides input by filling out a set of questionnaires and template forms. Both input methods are explained by short descriptions.

Requirements for the use of the media portfolios are the provision of media content at schools, the integration of portfolio work into the curriculum, pedagogical guidance, and the provision of time for maintaining such a portfolio.

In addition to the paper-based portfolio, the Portfolio Assistant, an electronic desktop version was developed that allows to store recurrent information and to generate nice print-outs.

References:
Annemarie Hauf-Tulodziecki. Die Portfoliomethode: Evaluation von Lernerfahrungen für Schülerinnen und Lehrerinnen. In Veronika Hornung-Prähauser, editor, Tagungsbeitrag zum ePortfolio Forum, pages 39–42, Apr 2005.

Research on e-portfolios in Germany is rather less prevalent. Only a few projects and initiatives exist which we will name in the following.

To get a first impression of the German e-portfolio community activity frequency, Google can provide us with two data types: page hits and queries. For both, we used the input string “eportfolio, e-portfolio”.

Google page hits for “eportfolio, e-portfolio� (March 2007)

The previous figure shows the distribution of page hits ordered by country (done with Google Language Tools). For Germany, the amount of page hits in March 2007 is about 118000 which is a very high value. That is, so many web pages were counted which include either the term “eportfolio” or “e-portfolio”. Compared to other European countries, Germany ranks at second position, right after United Kingdom with c. 140000 page hits. The international leader are the United States where, in fact, the research activities in this domain are very intensive. For China, Google counts 402 page hits. This statistic puts forward that there is intensive activity in the e-portfolio domain.

However, the query analysis (done with Google Trend) shows a different behaviour (see Figure below). Although, the high number of queries asked in United Kingdom still correlates with a high number of page hits, there is a steep drop for Germany. This proposes that there is little interest in e-portfolios. Taking both statistics into account, the conclusion is that only a few interested parties work intensively on e-portfolios and it also raises the question on the communities vividness and sustainability.

Queries for “eportfolio, e-portfolio� (March 2007)

Queries for “eportfolio, e-portfolio� by region (March 2007)

Further statistical investigation is needed that sheds light on the quality of page hits: who is the author, what is his background, who is the target group, what kind of page is it (article, blog), are the hits (imported) blogs, is it a general, pedagogical, or a technical page. Also, it is worth to know who the query requesters are and in what kind of e-portfolios are they interested.

From interviews we know, that a collaborative, vivid, and sustainable community does not exist in Germany, yet. Though, there are several working groups developing proprietary e-portfolios solutions or using e-portfolios at schools and universities in pilot studies, most of the groups and e-portfolio researchers do not know each other. Also, these groups usually do not have contacts to the international English speaking e-portfolio community. Consequently, they are not aware of international work, achievements, and standards such as IMS e-portfolio.

A more general problem is the lack of accessibility to e-portfolio software or systems for personal evaluation. To our knowledge, there exist so far only two open source web-based solutions, namely Elgg and Open Source Portfolio. There is no German alternative. Likewise, there is no rich client solution ready to download, install and test. Hence, there are only limited ways to get an impression what an e-portfolio is.

To boost the e-portfolio community movement and activities, we recommend:

• a national e-portfolio workshop to primarily bring together e-portfolio researchers, developers, users, and other interested parties. The workshop should inform about e-portfolio work and current state.
• a national e-portfolio community platform acting as an entry point for e-portfolio researchers, developers, users, and other interested parties to inform about current e-portfolio work and status.
• a German e-portfolio open source solution is needed to show interested parties what an e-portfolio could look like and what functions it can provide.

The e-portfolio community in Germany is not as visible, vivid, and sustainable as it is for instance in United Kingdom or Austria. There is no policy support by public authorities at the federal or regional level. Activities are limited to local research, to development of proprietary e-portfolio solutions, and to pilot studies. In the context of this investigation, the identification of e-portfolio activities as well as of e-portfolio researchers, developers, and users turned out to be a successful achievement.

Because the community is not in high gear, no e-portfolio portal or community platform has been set up. Some researchers maintain a (private) weblog or contribute to an online platform run by their department. Despite of this fact, there exists a German-speaking community Portfolio-Schule (Germany, Austria, and Suisse) of pedagogy researches and teachers who investigate the application of paper-based portfolios at school.

Concerning e-portfolio solutions, web-based systems — partially LMS with some e-portfolio functions — are the predominant choice. None of the systems provides import/export facilities for IMS e-portfolio encoded data which reflects the lack of relations to the international community. Also, there is neither any open source nor any ready-to-download-and-test solution on the market.

E-portfolios are not anchored in any school curriculum. Therefore, if they are used then only in form of a class education accompanying tool. Pilot studies are being conducted occasionally at German schools. The most prominent study is eportfolio-hessen. There exists only one higher education curriculum, the Master of Distance Education Program (MDE) in Oldenburg, which requires the use of e-portfolios to finish the grade successfully.

Other e-portfolio related activities deal with personal development planning and competency/skill management (e.g., Talent Relationship Management (SAP), KOWIEN, Professional-learning).

A feasibility study identified 200 PDP initiatives and 50 PDP passports which are merely locally used. Based on the study’s results, a global framework has been devised. It’s implementation, the ProfilPass, is currently being disseminated all over Germany and it is considered an instrument that completes EuroPass.

A constant key problem in Germany is data protection that has a strong visibility in the public and in the media. It is a key obstacle for tracking employee data. So far, there is no explicit employee data protection law. However, the protection of individual-related data is considered a base right. The key data protection principles are: data prevention and data economy, necessity, and earmarking. Whenever an employer wants to track individual-related data he has to inform his employees, to ask them for permission, and to show that his intentions are justified and that they do not violate his employees’ right on informational self-determination. Against the background of this complex issue, companies rather prioritise the implementation of e-portfolios low.

Eventually, we can summarise that Germany has a relatively low but growing degree of awareness of e-portfolios.

There is a lot of research going in in affective learning. To measure emotions you can either track sensor input, prompt the student for an emotion description, or reason on the student’s general input (via keyboard). A simple way to express emotions is to use emoticons. People using messengers also use emoticons intensively. Why not the same emoticons (for instance from ICQ) in an e-portfolio, or more generally in an e-learning environment. Though, emoticons can lead to distraction, they can also havce some advantages:

• They express in short a motivation state.
• The gesture to express emotions is shorter than typing text.
• Distraction can also have a positive impact: have a break, to bring the brain down.
• Assuming that being in good mood implies being successful, learners will want to show their emotion to fellow students.
• Assuming that being in a bad mood implies being unsuccessful, emoticons can inform others (teachers/fellow students) that help is needed.

Just my five pence thoughts.

The other day, I was thinking about making e-portfolios compulsory for our ActiveMath students. This requierement has two advantages:

• Students and tutors can observe learning progress.
• I can evaluate e-portfolio use over time during my PhD research.

I’ll think about an initial setup.

The drawback of the IEEE RCD specification is that competencies cannot be grouped or related to each other. Hence, the structure does not allow

1. to build complex competencies from simpler ones, e.g. by using an isPartOf relationship,
2. nor is it possible to establish or name relationships between concept definitions at all.

Claude Ostyn is working on on a new standard data definition, Simple Reusable Competency Map (SRCM) which aims “to be used for describing, referencing, and exchanging data about the relationships between competencies, primarily in the context of online and distributed learning�. The basic idea is to concatenate RCDs in a in direct acyclic graph. This enables to define relations between competencies in a top-down manner. For instance suppose you have the following DAG and you interpret edges as an isPartOf relationship. Each node in the DAG can denote either a RCD or a SRCP.

• Read the first DAG as follows. If Y is the only child of X then proficiency in X requires proficiency in Y and proficiency in Y implies proficiency in X. Similarly, proficiency in A requires proficiency in B AND C, and proficiency in B and C implies proficiency in A.
• Different complex competencies might share more simple sub competencies.

The usage of DAGs and the implicit interpretation of of edges as isPartOf solves problem 1). I am not quite sure whether the standard is also open for the description of other relationships than the “isPartOf” which would solve 2). The missing information is a element in the data model that refers to or describes a relationship. I have to investigate this.

To understand SRCMs data mode, I made some graphical representations. I will briefly describe those. Red nodes denote manadatory elements, blue nodes are optional elements, edges represent sub information elements.

• It’s unclear to what rcdRef is referring to. I could not find any explanation for this.
• Referential is a boolean placeholder which indicates whether the structure is self-contained or whether it refers to some other SRCMs. In principle, this value could be deduced automatically while going through the graph nodes.
• The Metadata element can include any information, but it is recommended to stick to LOM here and to put anything else in Extensions.
• The crucial information is within the Graph element whic contains a list of nodes, a reference to entry nodes, nodes without parents, and a reference to the “root” default entry node.

So, to break it down, the very interesting information of this structure is inside the node type.

The node type has the following elements:

• rcdRef refers to a RCD if the node is not a grouping.Otrherwise it is nil.
• SymLink might refer to a SRCM to include a map defined somewhere else.
• A model element might refer to some model or vocabulary and use a “label” to define a class of nodes, RCDs respictively.
• Each node refers to its parents.
• Each node lists its children.
• each node lists a set of rules.

Relative to the node’s context children node’s have additional information. This is:

• they have a weight which contributes to the calculation of the parents proficiency.
• dataRequired field indicating whether the proficiency information should go into rollup calculations.
• they have a required proficiency value
• and a desired proficiency value.

Note that a competency’s or map’s weight and proficiency values might differ in different contexts. For instance, depending on a educational level, one might expect higher proficiency values for higher educational levels.

To be honest, I do not understand the definition between required and desired proficiency.

Rules define rollup computations for all children, including proficiency required/desired, rollup method and an additional value depending on the rollup method. Methods can be: all, any, fraction, units, mean, and other. Rules proficiency statements are made for the context and they override the requirements specified for individual nodes of the context.

Examples are:

• A required 80% proficiency value for any sub competency, i.e., just one sub competence needs to be fullfilled in order to imply a proficiency in the current node.
• A proficiency mean of 80% requires that the mean of the proficiency values of the sub comptenecies is at least 80%.
• Node RX refernces RCD X and specifies a proficiency required of 70%. However, node RX is a child of RA that specifies that for child RX the proficiency required is 80%. When rolling up comptency status information from RX into the comptency status information of RA, the proficiency required used to evaluate whether a measure satisfies the requirement will be 80%.

Some conclusions:

1. Finally, a data structure model for relating comptencies with each other. At least for isPartOf.
2. The data structure model mixes competency structures/relations with proficiency information. I am not sure whether this approach meets my expectations.
3. It is unclear what the difference is between required and desired proficiency.
4. Why should proficiency information in rules (on the context) override individual node information for the context. Isn’t it the other way round? Nodes are more specific than general rules?
5. It is unclear whar rcdRef means in the context of the rcm element

Well, it is good to know that there is some solution for the interoperability of complex competency definitions. Whether I will use it at some point, I do not know.

This IEEE 1484.20.1 standard defines a data model for describing, referencing, and sharing competency definitions. It is quite simple and in this blog entry I want to explain only the difficult to understand elements. Below is a simplified graphical data model of RCD created in form of a diagram:

Arrows denote element that are part of an data structure. Red nodes denote a mandatory information, blue nodes represent an optional data.

The most interesting part of the specification is the definition information. The definition is an optional information. There can exist several definitions in parallel. A definition can be stated in different ways.

• Either there exists already a definition, so I reference it by the source element.
• Or I make one or more statements about the RCD in the definition section.

The statement element itself may be made in different ways. Note, that those alternatives are conditionally optional,i.e., only one of the alternatives is to be used. Alternatives are:

• Statement identifier is a unique label within the scope of the definition. I do not understand wether this information is a label for the statement itself or if it refrences some other statement. If it is a unique reference label, where is it referenced then? If it is a reference, where is the unique reference label stored? The fact that this element is conditionally optional it suggests that the element is used for referencing other statements.
• Statement name is just a string name. Examples are: Condition, Action, Standard, Outcome, Criteria, etc.
• Statement text is some more verbal text that describes the competency.
• Statement token is a data structure that includes a pointer to some location which defines a vocabulary to use and a value chosen from this vocabulary.

Example. I have to add one. So far I came across an example shipped together with IMS Rubric /e-portfolio specification, but I do not like it very much. At least, it shows you how to use the definition source model element and some statements. Surprisingly, IMS uses for statements both: statement name and text. This breaks the conditionally optional concept.

The example basically defines the following:

• It references a basic rubric modelin the model source field
• It makes three statements:
  1. Regarding measure,  all artifacts and work samples are clearly and directly related to one or more national, regional, or state teaching standards and provide evidence of professional practice.
  2. Regarding score, a value of 9 has been achieved.
  3. According to skill-level, the token exemplary has been chosen from the vocabulary source at URN:FICTIONAL:UWSTOUT:SKILL-LEVELS.

Well, need to add more good examples including one in IMS RCDEO XML specification.

Metadata is an optional information. According to the specification, there is no restriction, but I guess that it is recommended to stick to the LOM standard. Also, it is suggested to put here the information about the schema and its version the information model sticks to.

By the way, what is the difference between data model and information model? The IEEE draft presents a data model while IMS is talking about an information model. Have to check this.

The master thesis task mentioned in an earlier blog entry on competency matching has been cancelled. I will implement it myself. I plan to start with with several steps:

• Check for related work.
• Check for competency models.
• Check for technologies to be used.

Check for related work. There has been some work on competency matching such as Kowien and Professional-Learning. Kowien is a project that ran out in 2004, and as far as I know, it has not been continued. However, it investigated how to use ontologies for the management of competency profiles.

Professional Learning is a project that starts where Kowien finished. It also favours a solution based on semantic web technologies. The goal was to propose a framwork description that glues together several components which interrelate with each other in a business / on-the-job setting where being up to date educationally is a requirement. The componets are: user profile, HR system, learning repository, and job tasks description. The components are glued by competencies.  An individual has or lacks competencies; job tasks are described by required competencies; learning objects goals can be decribed in form of competencies. HR Systems idenfy competency gaps and recommend learning objects to close competency gaps. 

Check for competency models. Claude Ostyn lists a few comptency models standards. Among others he lists the IEEE RCD data standard for reusable competency definitions which has been implemented by IMS in IMS RCDEO in an information model. Right now, Ostyn is working on on a new standard data definition, Simple Reusable Competency Map (SRCM) which aims “to be used for describing, referencing, and exchanging data about the relationships between competencies, primarily in the context of online and distributed learning”. The basic idea is to concatenate RCDs in a in direct acyclic graph. The description of data about relationships between competencies is a bit misleading, as the parent-children graph relation implies a semantic consistsOf/isPartOf relationship. I am not quite sure whether the standard is also open for the description of other relationships.  I have to investigate this.

Another short but nice competeny model (in this case ontology)  is presented in the professional learning. The basic idea is to describe competencies in a hierarchical manner including a description of the competency level (or even range). A subsumes and isComposedOf relationship helps to use competency substitutions and competency subsumptions to deduce correct matchings.

Both models, SRCM and Professional Learning, aim to connect job/task/learning object descriptions with an individual’s profile. The glueing stuff are the competency descriptions.

Check for technologies to be used. A possible and my favourite solution to my task is a semantic web approach. The reasons are:

• A clear distinction beween model and logic.
• Different ontologies depending on the cotext can be devised for different purposes while the basic ontology model is used.
• Depending on the  ontology language (inference) some functionalities are provided for free, e.g. class subsumption or transitivity (OWL).
• There already exist several very good frameworks that additioanlly offer query possiblitie, another abstraction level. That is we have a deductive modelling language, a set of possible inference engines, and a deductive query language.

I reviewed several open source framworks: Jena, Sesame, and IBM Semantic Layer Research Plattform. While Jena has been there for a while it is considered to be slow and too inflexible. I do not want to comment this as I am not an expert. Collegues at DFKI recommended to use Sesame. One of the main benefits is its  abstraction to the inference engine. Through a plugin mechanism it is possible to include own inference implementations. Sesame itself comes with RDF and RDFS inference. However, OntoText offers  an OWL inference plugin, called Owlim. Finally, IBMs Semantic Layer Research PLattform is an application plattform for applications that need semantic data store and inference layer. In the recent version, the decision was made to change from Jena to Sesame.

Due to my collected data and because I have to make a decision very soon, my choice is in favour of Sesame. I’ll see how far I get with that.

The e-portfolio community is quite young and comprises people from different disciplines with different backgrounds and experiences. As a result, there are different views and definitions of an e-portfolio. Simon Grant, from UK, initiated in his paper Clear e-portfolio definitions: a prerequisite for effective interoperability, presented at e-portfolio 2005 in Cambridge, a discussion on e-portfolio terminology in order to find a consensus. In the German speaking community Thomas Häcker investigated the roots of the term “portfolio” and presents different definitions (see also Handbuch Portfolioarbeit).

One reason for the difficulty to grasp the essence of (e-)portfolios is that (e-)portfolio work originates from its application. It’s not a product of some theory. In contrast, the theory is being constructed from e-portfolio usage.

Having read lots of literature on e-portfolios, I came across a number of different definitions which I want to list in this blog. Apart of English definitions I am going to cite and translate German definitions as well. There is no common consensus for a definition, but some of them are more often cited than others. Also, they differ in their meaning and focus:

• (e-) portfolios as a product or a collection
• (e-) portfolios as systems/services/environments
• (e-) portfolios as means to support learning processe
• combination

A collection of authentic and diverse evidence, drawn from a larger archive, that represents what a person or organization has learned over time, on which the person or organization has reflected, designed for presentation to one or more audiences for a particular rhetorical purpose.

EDUCAUSE NLII

An ePortfolio is a personal digital collection of information describing and illustrating a person’s learning, career, experience and achievements. ePortfolios are privately owned and the owner has complete control over who has access to what and when. Is an e-portfolio a tool?

EIfEL
http://www.eife-l.org/portfolio/

E‑portfolios have emerged as a valuable online tool that learners, faculty, and institutions can use to collect, store, update, and share information. E‑portfolios allow students to reflect on their learning, communicate with instructors, document credentials, and provide potential employers with examples of their work

EDUCAUSE II (2005)
http://www.educause.edu/E-Portfolios/5524/

Portfolio ist eine zweckgerichtete Sammlung von Arbeiten und Dokumenten im Zusammenhang mit einem bestimmten Schulentwicklungsprozess bzw. Schulprogramm, die sowohl den Entwicklungsprozess als auch die -ergebnisse dokumentiert und reflektiert.

Meyer, Schumann, Angello (1990)

Ein Portfolio ist eine zweck- und zielgerichtete Auswahl eigener Arbeiten einer Schülerin bzw. eines Schülers, in welcher die individuellen Bemühungen, Fortschritte und Leistungen in einem oder mehreren Bereichen dargestellt und reflektiert werden.

Elfriede Schmidinger
Handbuch Portfolioarbeit

By portfolio, we mean a purposeful, interrelated collection of student work that shows the student’s efforts, progress or achievements in one or more areas. The collection includes evidence of students’ self-reflection and their participation in setting the focus, selecting the contents, and judging merit. Acrivities are guided by performance standards. A portfolio communicates what is learned and why it is important.

And in German:

Ein Portfolio ist eine zielgerichtete Sammlung von Arbeiten, welche die individuellen Bemühungen, Fortschritte und Leistungen der/des Lernenden auf einem oder mehreren Gebieten zeigt. Die Sammlung muß die Beteiligung der/des Lernenden an der Auswahl der Inhalte, der Kriterien für die Auswahl, der Festlegung der Beurteilzngskriterien sowie Hinweise auf die Selbstreflektion der/des Lernenden einschließen.

Pearl and Leon Paulson; Meyer (1992)
What makes a portfolio a portfolio?
in Educational Leadership

A portfolio can be defined as a purposeful collection of student work that tells the story of a student’s effort, progress and or achivement in a given or several areas.

Wade and Abrami (2004)

A digital portfolio or e-portfolio is a collection of learner’s work that can include text, pictures, hyperlinks and different multimedia elements.

Ahonen and Murto (2004)

Portfolios, as the name suggests are mobile containers for artifacts in a range of media.

Hartnell-Young (2004)

… the term ePortfolio … tends to be seen as a toolbox for the student and the knowledge worker.

Home and Charlesworth (2004)

The e-portfolio is an information management system that uses electronic media and services

Haywood and Tosh (2004)

Hartnell-Young (2004)