Survey results published: e-pdp and e-portfolio practice in UK higher education
- Date: 20-02-2007
This survey was undertaken by the Centre for Recording Achievement on behalf of the Higher Education Academy. The e-portfolio field is changing very rapidly and this survey provides a snapshot, at an interesting juncture, of an ongoing process.
In 2005 the Centre for Recording Achievement became an Associate Centre of the Higher Education Academy in the UK with a brief to lead on the development of personal development planning and eportfolios in UK Higher Education.
As part of this brief the CRA was asked to undertake a survey to identify provision for e-PDP or e-portfolios by:
- mapping and identifying existing practice
- documenting the approaches taken
- establishing a directory of practice and key contacts.
The survey has been completed and the full report is now available from the Academy Resource Database. Responses were received from 71 separate institutions and the trends are outlined below.
- Almost all HEIs claimed that PDP had now been implemented in their institution and over three-quarters of these were using some form of electronic tool to support the process.
- Just over half of HEIs surveyed claimed to have an e-portfolio tool or system.
- Implementing PDP and supporting overall development were the most popular purposes for their systems, both cited by nearly all of those who claimed to have a system.
- Presentation/showing was cited by three quarters of respondents who had an e-portfolio, assessment by around two thirds and CPD for staff by a half.
- Commercial vendors who also supply the institution’s VLE have the most powerful hold on the market by a significant margin.
- The main challenger is also a commercial system but purpose-built with UK PDP requirements in mind, and facilities for external hosting and support.
- Other systems have achieved some penetration of the market (i.e. they are used in more than four institutions in addition to the institution where they were developed). In this survey, only one of these was an open-source tool.
- Where commercial solutions have been rejected or not considered, opensource solutions generally lag behind one-off, in-house developments.
- Interoperability in terms of inter-institutional transfer is not yet a high priority.
- There is a high awareness of the importance of accessibility issues but only moderate practice.
- However, there is considerable interest in integration of systems within institutions, particularly between e-portfolios, VLEs and student record systems.
- Most institutions still regard themselves as being at a pilot stage and have plans to evaluate their experience. However very few have committed the resources to run trials of different systems in-house.
It is very important for the HE community to continue to share their experience, to illuminate exactly how systems are being used and why some systems which appear ideal in one context fail to meet the requirements of another. The accumulation of this knowledge depends on continued association between the technologists and the practitioners, each with their own understanding of what is desirable and possible.
Furthermore, in the context of the UK national policy on PDP/Progress Files in Higher Education, UK HE has a particular and special role to play in the worldwide development of e-portfolio practice.