This is another case study from the University of Wolverhampton involving e-portfolios, this time with PGCE and Foundation Degree students. The author had previously experienced success with paper journals and wanted to see if the success was transferable to an online environment, which she sees as "inherently more dialogic and intuitive". She also expresses concern about the "accumulation of paper" in a traditional e-portfolio, which seems to be a simple but effective rationale for this innovation. PebblePad was once again used.
The interesting point of this case study was the degree of resistance on the part of some teaching staff. The dominance of the VLE within this particular institution created a perception of the e-portfolio as somewhat redundant. Some staff also appeared to be threatened by the ownership and control afforded to the learner through the use of an e-portfolio. On top of this, the researcher was made to bear the weight of the technology and all its attendant problems, with the result that she ended up feeling quite isolated within her institution.
Perhaps this demonstrates a point about innovation: resistance may need to be overcome by persistence. The innovator's belief in the technology, and particularly in the inseparability of the pedagogy and the technology, needs to be strong. Where resistance is an issue within an institution, we could reasonably conjecture that it will take a teacher with a certain kind of personality to lead the charge.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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4 comments:
Hi Sonja,
Another interesting review :-)
I wish I could have had an e-journal when I was a PGCE student! Although I found my 'reflective log' useful - it turned into a sprawling mass of paper, so much so that by the end of my course I found it difficult to locate previous comments/reflections.
As I see it, e-portfolio's are advantageous as they are:
a. portable
b. you can modify them easily
c. searchable
d. accessible to all parties concerned
Your comments on resistance are also interesting. I'm beginning to think that e-learning may have a fight on it's hands!
Take care,
Lee.
Hi Lee,
Thanks for your comment and for enumerating the benefits of e-portfolios, that helped me to organise my thoughts.
I think you may be right about this fight thing!
Maybe the fight may be seen through Rogers' adopter types we are reviewing this week!
Hi Sonja, I'm in Deneka's group and looking at this case study as well (http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?user=556993). I've put together a few questions in order to help me get more of an understanding for this case (and hopefully you'll find the references useful too):
Crosta and Prieto(2009)suggest that there are three areas to benchmark in innovation:
Technological innovation, which is the inclusion of the newest and more sophisticated technical advances, instruments, tools.
Sociological innovation, which is based on the inclusion of social risk and disadvantaged people in the e-learning initiative.
Service customization, which shows the quality of services offered and the involvement of e-learning organisations in the improvement of the features of their programme.
Do you think we can pretty much argue that at the time of the study the technology was still relatively new and so could be termed as innovative?
If we read further around the Wolverhampton Uni approach to e-Portfolios we can see that they are trying to achieve sociological innovation as well by widening participation(Duncan-Pitt,2009). Unfortunately, Hughes doesn't really give us a lot of information but maybe the Foundation students in the study could be included here (Hughes, 2008). Any thoughts on that?
Do you reckon that Service customization could also be highlighted in this study?
References:
Crosta, L. and Prieto, V. (2009) How to measure innovation in eLearning: The i-AFIEL methodology eLearning Papers Nº 13, April. Available from: www.elearningpapers.eu (accessed 23 February 2010)
Duncan-Pitt, L. (2009) Tangible benefits of e-learning, Wolverhampton University , Use of e-portfolios to support nursing and midwifery. Available from: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/wolverhampton/index_html (accessed 28 September 2009)
Hughes, J. (2008) Use of e-portfolios and blogging in Teacher Education [online] http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/wolverhampton/success1 (Accessed 18 February 2010)
Cheers
Graeme
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