Supporting e-portfolios – the inside track to managing learner information

Electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) are the talk of the ‘VET town’. As a relatively new e-learning tool they provide unprecedented opportunity for learners to produce up-to-the-minute records of their work history, training and life experiences.

As with most developing technologies, questions are being asked about how to manage e-portfolios use, to ensure they are used to their full potential and are not open to exploitation.

What are the legal requirements around the privacy and security of a learner’s information?

Is it the learner, the training provider or both who own the content of an e-portfolio?

How can evidence included in an e-portfolio be verified for authenticity?

A new report from the national training system’s e-learning strategy, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, investigates these questions and the requirements to support learners to move between educational sectors, job roles and industry areas.

The Managing Learner Information report considers the issues of ownership, privacy, verification, access control and security for e-portfolios.

It makes the following recommendations for the vocational education and training (VET) system to move forward:

• Establish a technical definition of a ‘learner’ for VET, which would allow learners to access information held about them on third party databases such as student management systems.
  
   
• Develop a generic set of resources which outline the legal requirements for privacy and ownership of
  e-portfolios content within the VET system.
  
   
• Investigate existing qualification verification services and systems to determine their potential integration with the VET system.
  
   
• Identify the benefits of establishing a trust federation for e-portfolios, so learners can determine who has access to their e-portfolio.

This report provides key structural information and discussion points for managers of learner information, including people working in:

• teaching and learning support and e-learning departments
  
   
• ICT implementation and support personnel, and administrators who manage an organisation’s learning management system.

The Framework’s E-portfolios web page contains the latest e-portfolio news and resources, including a recent
E-portfolios for RPL Assessment report, which identified e-portfolios as a key tool to support timely and client focused RPL (recognition of prior learning) processes, in line with the Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) RPL initiative.

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Published on 22/04/2009