Recommendations 8 modified following Brussels meeting

Learner information

By Michel Arnaud, University of Paris X

(version 7, November 4, 2006)

1. Introduction

Learner Information is likely to be the type of learning related information digitally stored for the longest time. Current approaches to learner information take an institution-centric view of the learner, and are primarily concerned with the management of official records - a combination of operational data and progression data - and this information is being looked at in terms of standardisation for exchange amongst institutions and official bodies. The importance of standards is gradually increasing as Learner Information is needed in an increasing number of systems for e-learning. In order to avoid redundancy and corruption of information it is essential to enhance the interoperability and transferability of Learner Information between different systems in order to reuse data in new contexts, in combination with fragments of other types of Learner Information from other sources.

The e-Portfolio is a web-based information management system that uses electronic media and services to provide a lifelong learning device for users, a monitoring tool for training institutions, an improved access to employment opportunities. Learner information is used for various purposes: reporting and administration, accountability, assessment and last but not least, social organisation. The e-Portfolio can provide an opportunity for the European Union to have a stronger implication in improving European employability through its promotion, provided there is a coordinated action regarding competencies certification and validation across Europe, using the same format, protecting personal data and finally ensuring system interoperability.

However currently available systems, known to the IMS e-Portfolios Development Committee, store e-Portfolios in formats that have no facilities for importing and exporting e-Portfolio information conformant with accepted standards. There are two main reasons for the inaccessibility of Learner Information. Some of the information about the learner is not permitted to be used outside administrative systems and there are no mechanisms to exchange the information (or parts of it). Secondly the information is often locked into proprietary data formats. This, in combination with a market with only a few suppliers of administrative system, has a checking effect on the use of standards. This makes it difficult or impossible to move e-Portfolios data between systems, and leads to inefficiency and redundancy when integrating e-Portfolio tools with other enterprise systems.

Morevoer, to be portable e-Portfolios need to ensure educational continuity between programs within an educational institution that use e-Portfolios, integration of evidence about learning over time, and smooth transfer of verifiable information about learning and evaluation between institutions, levels of education, and employers. From an individual perspective, information about and artifacts of a person's performance and achievement, as recorded in an e-Portfolio, need to operate across institutions and countries throughout their lifetime.

In order to develop advanced systems and services that help improve European citizen employability, through the promotion of e-Portfolio, there is a need to have common references for:

- e-Portfolio format: the scenario online template has to include general information (language, description, creator, audience, source, other contributors, scenario flow diagram from different perspectives, a list of stakeholders and other actors, information about resource's format and contribution's rights management, information about the person who enters the object/resource (role of the creator/publisher of the scenario).

- competency definitions through the model of learner competency (IMS LIP), based on RDCEO and to be applied all over Europe,

- Europass Diploma Supplement,

- Data Protection and Privacy procedures (IPSE),

- interoperability of e-Portfolio on different platforms and environments.

A strong case is emerging for the development of a European standard to support these technical initiatives and pilot their implementation to exchange learner information between member states. Standardized interfaces will facilitate the way towards customized and efficient e-Portfolio services from a training and work-related perspective. There is a need to:

1. Provide resources to allow the definition of specs in a modular way using good practice and refactoring existing standards and vocabularies
2. Getting stakeholders to specify requirements in a modular and coherent way and to mandate cross-sector application
3. Develop solution pattern list by communities of practices and governments derived from case studies based on implementation

2. State of the art concerning standards and interoperability

There are various standards for storing, processing and exchanging information about users. Apart from the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) specifications for catalogues and the vCard specifications for digital "business cards", the IMS Learner Information Package (IMS LIP) and the specifications Personal and Private Information (IEEE-LTSC PAPI)¹differ slightly. While IMS LIP tends to take on a classical CV-structured approach to Learner Information, PAPI has a stronger focus on performance information and interpersonal relationships . In addition to the differences mentioned above, there are some important technical divergences regarding their respective data models . While IMS LIP is XML-centric, PAPI has a number of different bindings to programming languages APIs, protocols and data representation formats (including XML). PAPI uses a registry-based approach which means that it becomes less sensitive to changes and a bit more susceptible to additions. PAPI has a focus of separating different types of Learner Information -such as contact and performance information . While IMS LIP categories the data into 11 different categories (and PAPI into 6), IMS LIP has no technical mechanisms for separating the data. This might be a weakness when combining information from different sources: such as LDAP data for contact and LMS data for performance or when there is a need to separate different types of information for integrity and security reasons.

Besides IMS LIP and PAPI, there are some limited efforts that address specific parts of the Learner Information. [EduPerson] is an example of a LDAP schema-class for Learner Information. [EduPerson] can be used in combination with other standards to store catalogue data in an LDAP catalogue. Universal Learning Format (ULF) is another effort. ULF is based on different standards such as vCard and RDF but, in spite of that it is a proprietary format. EPAPI by the GESTALT project and UKLeaP, which is a more detailed and extended version of IMS LIP for practical purposes, by the BSI are other examples of Learner Information-related specifications.

The SC36/WG3 Learner Information develops International Standards for Learner Information for the ISO/IEC JTC1. The scope of this group is information associated with participants in learning, education, and training. Accommodation information might include items connected with culture, language, function, devices, cognitive preferences, capabilities or human computer interfaces.

Common schemes include:

• Reusable Definitions of Competency (IMS to IEEE)
• IMS LIP
  • UK Leap - a profile of IMS LIP for the UK
• IMS Enterprise
• IMS Enterprise Web Services
  • Synchronous
  • Asynchronous - though this is not used much
• SIF (Schools Interoperability Framework)
• e-Portfolio (different formats)

There appears to be a profusion of formats for exchanging learner information electronically yet we have not realised anything other than local interoperability. The use of XML may have contributed to the proliferation. Differing formats continue to be used, or proposed, even within sectors in the same country.

3. Demands, requirements/use cases

A central issue for accessible interoperable e-Portfolio is created by the huge variety of heterogeneous assistive technologies, approaches, standards and guidelines, devices, individual requirements and the need to match these together to provide an accessible learner experience. If users do not adopt interoperability standards in this domain, the present risk is that different vendors and system developers will use proprietary formats for the storage and representation of portfolio information. Learners, as users, will find their information locked into their original e-Portfolio system, unable to reuse the information that they have gathered in contexts other than the original one. This will act as a disincentive for any substantial personal development of portfolio content, and in turn, blight the prospects of e-Portfolio systems being taken seriously. It will also hinder the development of an effective market in e-Portfolio systems.

E-Portfoliointeroperability is an issue, not initially for the providers of e-Portfolio who are in competition for market share, but for the purchasers. Those who develop and market e-Portfolio - whether public sector or private sector, have little incentive to ensure that their products and services are interoperable, unless of course, pressure is brought to bear by consumers. Those who choose and use e-Portfolio may naively expect that products and services simply are interoperable. And what happens when they are not ? Worst case scenario is that they reject the whole concept of e-Portfolio and find other learning solutions.

Therefore, a concerted effort by learning leaders such as the LIFE Consortium advances both interests and needs of e-Portfolio users and sustainability of e-Portfolio industry. Some of the world's finest e-Portfolio is free of charge, some is extremely expensive; yet the user can really only rely on the claims made by the providers - institutional reputation or subjective marketing materials. Therefore, independent and objective quality assurance is required. One of the quality standards is that good e-Portfolio is interoperable. That doesn't imply that it is interoperable by only one set of standards. It implies that the producer must ask the consumer the nature and extent of interoperability they require and provide evidence that they have done so. The Open eQuality Learning Standards, being consumer-oriented, begin with expectations or standards for achievement of appropriate skills and knowledge, and return on investment for learners. Only if the e-Portfolio can meet those standards would e-Portfolio users concern themselves with details of instructional design, learning management, interoperability.

3.1 e-Portfolio data

The main Learner Information categories are related to competency, demographic information, preferences, accessibility, performance and achievements, plans/goals/reflections, activity, map of relationships.

Each Life-long Learner creates, manages, and owns their individual Portfolio and the data it contains. This data is categorized as follows:

- Static Biographical - describes invariant characteristics of the Life-long Learner such as date of birth;

- Dynamic Biographical - describes variant characteristics of the individual such as current address or email information;

- Self-Reported - information under the direct control of the Life-long Learner and modifiable by them regardless of source such as a writing sample, a computer aided design work product, or a transcript furnished to the Life-long Learner by a third party and entered into their Portfolio by the Life-long Learner;

- Third Party Validated - information placed in the LLL Portfolio with the permission of the Life-long Learner but under the control of a validating third party such as a certifying training provider or degree granting educational institution. The obvious example is a transcript but also includes test and evaluation scores and may be extended to include performance reviews and personnel evaluations and health certifications as well.

Portfolio's access is under a strong public key infrastructure and requires full digital certification. Key fields in each record in the Portfolio are separately encrypted to prevent direct identification of individuals from non-specific information. For example, access to a single transcript will not yield and individual information and therefore cannot be linked back to an individual.

4. Relationship with services/components

4.1 XCRI

eXchanging Course-Related Information (XCRI) is a JISC-funded project that aims to define a vocabulary and appropriate technology bindings (e.g. XML, RDF) for describing course-related information that encompasses course marketing, course quality assurance, enrolment and reporting requirements. XCRI is a partnership, led by Dr Mark Stubbs of Manchester Metropolitan University, involving a range of institutions including UCAS (the UK's national course information and applications aggregator). XCRI has released an XML schema for describing course information that has been piloted in institutions across the UK, from Glasgow to Exeter, from Liverpool to London, Oxford and Hertford. A demonstration web service will be available soon.

4.2 IMS RDCEO and Europass

IMS Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective (RDCEO) provides a way to represent a definition of what it means to be able to do something. This is particularly useful for e-Portfolio definition of assessed ability which may include a pointer to some RDCEO data. Where vocabulary data types are defined in IMS specifications, the community of use may choose to define its own vocabulary. The RDCEO definition construct includes the idea of a definition model: a template for defining competencies, educational objectives, etc. The great variety of models in use means that communities using e-Portfolios will generally have to define how their model is expressed in RDCEO.

The e-Portfolio can be complemented by other instruments aimed at strengthening overall recognition of qualifications in Europe. The Europass Diploma Supplement is an annex, an explanatory note attached to a diploma awarded by a higher education institution. It helps to explain the diploma which may often be understood only within the country concerned. When fully completed this document provides all the information necessary to make a valid assessment of any degree or qualification. The Supplement should be issued to every student, upon graduation, together with their official diploma, free of charge, in a widely spoken European language.

4.3 Authentication and verification of portable and potentially distributed Learner Information

In order for learners to self-organise as effective study groups requires informal groupings and social advertisement, which are not features of official record management. This requires a very different type of system from the MIS. There is considerable current debate as to whether an e-Portfolio can actually be reasonably considered as structured data, or is inherently something which will tend to be primarily human-readable but which may have added semantics (e.g. microformats or topic map overlay). Certainly where portfolios are part of an official process they may have structure imposed, however this clearly depersonalizes the portfolio and reduces its authenticity to its subject. Authentic eportfolios - of the myspace/livejournal/elgg variety - are very loosely structured and do not contain any official records. This raises the question of the relationship between records management and personal portfolio - which have often been conflated in the eportfolio discussion.

While establishing the meaning of learner information can be accomplished independently of other work on standardization, judging the trustworthiness of information is a more general problem and will require a more general solution. For learner information to be truly mobile, in addition to agreement on what it means, we need a way to establish its authenticity. This will require a unified, distributed authentication infrastructure and a method for verifying the authorship of documents. The need for authentication and verification are not unique to learner information; many other applications of the Internet would benefit from these services. Numerous initiatives have been formed to address these problems, and plentiful technologies are available to solve them. However, the marketplace has produced no clear leaders. Policy leadership is needed to establish the infrastructure needed for universal trusted exchange of information.

With the phenomenon of the iPod and of mobile telephones know that an increasing number of learners carry, the means for data storage and interaction are evolving. Coupled with the adoption of Bluetooth and the introduction of affordable biometric-enabled USB flash devices with cryptographic capabilities, components to develop prototypes and demonstrators for learner information will incorporate biometrics devices. e-Portfolio systems should be protected since they hold personal and private information. It is the safety and security of the e-Portfolio which makes it a place where learners "reflect much more deeply than in paper-based alternatives" and where they can "write and share things that [they] could never share in any other way"². This sense of safe personal space would certainly be eroded if linked to any form of data-harvesting service, even if that service were ostensibly provided for the benefit of the learner.

Proper and prudent funding for special needs children ought to require a high degree of accountability, reporting, and audit.  With our world being allegedly overdue for the next pandemic virus/flu, now would be a good time for World Health organizations and local Centers for Disease control to tie into school infrastructures and establish automated, virtual, health monitoring centers.  An increasing need exists, within both "Homeland" security and emergency management organizations for immediate access to real time, reliable school data; in times of natural disaster, a vendor neutral, platform independent, common tie into all school system's HR finance systems would ensure faster and safer relocations for students, teachers, and families without any loss of productivity or revenue, both now and into the future.

Another issue that should be coped with by policy makers is to achieve an agreement among labor, learners and organizations on who owns the information collected about a learner or employee, what rights they have with respect to data. What rights, if any, does a government or a private insurance company have regarding these records?

The CEN ISSS Workshop on Data Protection and Privacy (CEN/ISSS WS/DPP) is extended beyond 2005 as a project team whose aim is to help organizations to comply with the Data Protection Directive and relevant national legislation by facilitating harmonization of practice, developing the understanding and predictability of detailed or sector practices, contributing to resolving ICT technical compliance issues, and encouraging consistency of assessment and oversight. The Workshop took due regard of the provisions of the relevant EU legislation on data protection and privacy, including Directives 95/46/EC, and 2002/58/EC.

4.4 Communication "LMS - HRMS" and "LMS - Validation Center for Education and Training Records"

A Human Resources Management System (HRMS) stores records of employees and potential employees. Part of this information must be transferred, synchronized with and updated by other software systems in the same or other institution. As far as the communication with a LMS, the HRMS may provide the former with the credentials of a particular user who may be interested in a course in order to apply for a new position in the institution. On the other hand, the information stored at the HRMS can be updated by the LMS (for example when a student finishes a course that can be included in her CV). Communication between a LMS with a EVC is a particular case where, on one hand, needed data on student is more generic, and, on the other hand, security and confidentially are a concern. Before these systems are available the policy makers must define an appropriate legal framework. The Enterprise specifications by the IMS are focused on this area.

  4.5 Specifications for collaborative learning

IMS Learning Information Package and ePortfolio specification have been found inadequate when documenting collaborative team-based learning activities. Alongside team-based projects, sometimes a group of people studying or working collaboratively and who jointly contribute their efforts build a portfolio based on group-constructed artifacts. To support collaborative learning and data exchanging between personal and group profiles, specifications for multi-learner profiles seems to be necessary.

Much current accessibility work has also focused on content delivery. With the shift towards more learner authoring and participation there is a need to gather together and publicize practices and guidelines on accessible media and authoring practices that enable collaborative authoring . A learning product may be authored collaboratively by persons with quite different and possibly conflicting access requirements. This places stress on the media representations and the way media is used as it passes between persons - some things work and some do not. The W3C/WAI Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines have begun the work of producing guidelines but much more work is needed. A European database of such practices could be a way to do this. This is a vital component to establish participation of excluded persons.

5. Stakeholders Concerns/Issues (Political, Technical, Semantical)

Europe Higher Education is a varied collection of organisations. There are organisations that have grown over a very long period from mediaeval times to the present, others that have been born as the result of twentieth century political initiatives and still others that have grown into universities from small independent educational beginnings in the twentieth century. The result is a collection of organisations that are all very different. Though there are systemic commonalities, two learners studying a course with the same title in different universities may be taking a course that is very different in structure, content and approach. Departmental and administrative structures have been similarly varied and to date many universities have relied on diverse heterogeneous incompatible information systems for internal information exchange.

5.1 Political issues

It seems highly unlikely that this issue will be resolved by there being "a winner" between what exists and what is being developed today. For example, standardisation of IMS LIP will not resolve the issue. A good deal of the pre-requisite for this is non-technical and this would be a useful policy action. Analysis of the scale of the overlap and a roadmap to harmonisation and modularity would be worthwhile, specifically to separate generic (e.g. address) from learning-specific modules. This would need to address the relationship between learner information and human resources information in greater depth than has so far occurred. This requires more than noting the relevance, mapping etc.

The rapidly growing use of e-Portfolios (Personal Development Planning) in higher education provides students a user-centered learning management option. Many schools and universities in the UK have developed e-Portfolio systems where students are encouraged to store and organize artifacts during their formal schooling and to further carry on with augmenting that e-Portfolio during lifelong learning. One of the important features of e-Portfolios is that the learner is the owner but others, including teachers, can contribute information to a learner's e-Portfolio or review portions of the e-Portfolio from time to time.

To be portable e-Portfolios need to ensure educational continuity between programs within an educational institution that use e-Portfolios, integration of evidence about learning over time, and smooth transfer of verifiable information about learning and evaluation between institutions, levels of education, and employers. From an individual perspective, information about and artifacts of a person's performance and achievement, as recorded in an e-Portfolio, need to operate across institutions and countries throughout their lifetime.

Content accessibility guidelines are useful and widely known but are not sufficient as the incorporated notion of a single universally accessible resource is flawed . Much more work is needed to show how guidelines such as these can be used, together with other approaches and standards, to adapt content and systems to meet individual needs in real contexts. In order to make them useable work is needed on how to integrate their use in real contexts, with learner profiles such as IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP (ACCLIP) , with Accessibility Meta-data on Learning Objects, and with other technical work ongoing. The pressure to develop Quality Certification schemes for e-Portfolio Accessibility in Europe is such that there is a danger that organizations may rush these through before the necessary technical pieces are developed and tested. Work is urgently needed to trial approaches to accessibility that integrate technologies and standards before they are rolled out large-scale.

5.1.1 Learner information needs context

How and to what extent to represent the context of learning is a key conceptual issue that must be resolved for learner information to be used effectively. If a particular piece of information, say a goal or competency, is to be shared, how do we ensure that the recipient has access to enough information about the place that data plays within a larger, integrated representation of the individual's learning to be correctly interpreted? Does this require sharing the individual's entire portfolio, or is there an intermediate solution?

US research indicates that creating an integrated picture of lifelong and lifewide learning and communicating that digital composition to real audiences is key to making the documentation of learning in itself a powerful learning experience (Carney 2004, Yancey 2004). Research on the e-Portfolio Minnesota project, which makes e-Portfolios available to all citizens of the State of Minnesota, indicates that the degree of integrity and authorship are also strong predictors of the perceived value of such documentation to the learner (Cambridge 2005). How do we exchange learner information is a manner that honours and takes advantage of the integrity of digital compositions?

Some of the current effort in this area is aimed at unifying different kinds of learner information - for example, official operational data and learner-created content. However, the mechanisms and bindings that may suit inter-institutional transfer are not always suitable in other contexts. For example, it is very unlikely that the mechanisms for transfer of transcripts will be useful for personal reflection. Nor will a large-scale data model suit the representation of simple content such as forum postings. However, we are still in the "vertical XML standards" mindset of trying to create a unified data and transfer model rather than managing the interactions between a variety of ontologies and syntaxes with task applicability, an approach increasingly popular within what is broadly termed "Web 2.0". One difficulty of the unified data model approach is the lack of quick wins, as everything has to be standardised before anything can be achieved.

5.1.2 Personalization and accessibility

Each community has its own curriculum and consequently their own sets of identifiers for aspects of competence, topics, learning outcomes etc. The way these are managed is often to just use a word or phrase to identify the underlying concept. This is usually fine within that closed community as the members of the community are familiar with the terms and their contexts. For exchange of information between communities or between different schemes this can be far more problematic. The main place to put information about learning outcomes or objectives is in the Classification element in LOM. For example, in England the Curriculum Online metadata scheme has 4500 curriculum specifiers that are arranged into 12 taxonomies. There is Tagging Tool that helps providers add metadata and to navigate the curriculum structures. A metadata instance can contain one or many curriculum specifiers to indicate the curriculum coverage the resource provides. Each specifier has both a unique identifier and a name (in LOM these are taxon.id and taxon.entry). The various specifications for information about learners are not likely to use the same specifiers to identify learner needs and competencies as those used to tag resources and can vary between each implementation. There is some commonality and the equivalence of some elements across schemes is obvious, but it is not always clear whether elements represent the same conceptual domain or not. Even when they do, they may use a different syntax or value space making mapping difficult.

Across Europe there is a growing population of aged people and across the world there is a shift towards more use of mobile devices. Both of these present potential challenges that impact on the infrastructure of a European Learner Interoperability Framework. Elderly persons often have increasing difficulties using the access modes commonly provided with a younger market in mind and need content and systems that can adapt to the ways that they can use. This is a potentially very large market that is not presently well-reached by e-Portfolio systems. Learning does not stop at some particular age. The changes required in order to reach such markets require that there are integrated standards that vendors can follow and that sufficient infrastructure is in place that vendors can respond to given the normally short investment return timescales that medium or small scale investors must have. Assistive technology vendors are often particularly affected here by virtue of being small scale.

There is a need for an interoperable (probably service) architecture for learning objects that we all agree on that supports provision of accessibility. This is not straightforward because not all of the needed basic standards work to support accessibility of e-Portfolio has been yet done. Work is underway in CEN-ISSS , IMS , ISO IEC JTC1 SC36 , IEEE LTSC , W3C/WAI and other places and efforts are made to integrate this work with varying success (see for example ). Taking the W3C/ WAI work as example, one of the main planks of this is the guidelines called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines . These guidelines on making content accessible are useful and widely known but they are not sufficient and the incorporated notion of a single universally accessible resource is flawed . Much more work is needed to show how guidelines such as these can be used, together with other approaches and standards, to adapt content and systems to meet individual needs in real contexts. In order to make them useable work is needed on how to integrate their use in real contexts, with learner profiles such as IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP (ACCLIP) , with Accessibility Meta-data on Learning Objects, and with other technical work ongoing. Real learning doesn't take place using only e-Portfolio or using only non-e-Portfolio but integrates both. Similarly accessibility solutions often require integration of e-Portfolio and non-e-Portfolio. Work is needed in many standards to "soften the hard edge" and show how accessibility can be provided in real heterogeneous environments. For example the alternative for some learner for some online resource may be a combination of a different course and human assistance. Current standards and systems do not well cope with this kind of requirement.

5.2 Technical issues

The current situation, with a complex web of systems, all dealing with Learner Information in one way or another clearly shows the need for using interoperability standards for Learner Information. The contact with system provides and users indicate that a situation where all the Learner Information is stored in one place according to one common data model is a utopia - at least in a foreseeable future. Mechanisms for combining different data models need to be supported by the recommended standards.

5.2.1 Modularity

Currently available systems, known to the IMS e-Portfolios Development Committee, store e-Portfolios in formats that have no facilities for importing and exporting e-Portfolio information conformant with accepted standards. This makes it difficult or impossible to move e-Portfolios data between systems, and leads to inefficiency and redundancy when integrating e-Portfolio tools with other enterprise systems. IMS Learning Information Package and e-Portfolio specification have been found inadequate when documenting collaborative team-based learning activities. Alongside team-based projects, sometimes a group of people studying or working collaboratively and who jointly contribute their efforts build a portfolio based on group-constructed artefacts. To support collaborative learning and data exchanging between personal and group profiles, specifications for multi-learner profiles seems to be necessary.

5.2.2 Learner Application Profiles

Due to the complex situation it is important that the standards and specifications to be used allow Learner Information to be stored in a distributed fashion and that the information can be combined into contextualized Learner Profiles on demand as well as exchanged between systems, in a fashion similar to how Application Profiles are used for combining different models for metadata . In such way data models - including data models from standard specifications such as IMS LIP and ex-PAPI - can be supported. A consequence of such use would be that the strength of both specifications can be utilized, while their respective weaknesses can be avoided. In , and Dolog et al. suggests how this can be accomplished through the use of Learner Ontologies and RDF . In Dolog et al. gives an example of how three different Learner Information data models are used to describe an Ontology-based, exchangeable Learner Profile, focusing on learner performance. A similar approach is proposed by Magoulas and Dimakopoulos in . They emphasises the problems when dealing with multiple data models for Learner Information in the scope of Service Oriented Architectures, where different services are masters for different parts of the Learner Model and the Learner Information. The focus in is on personalization and preferences - which is another aspect of Learner Information that is becoming increasingly important. Such considerations will further increase the need to combine different data models as well as the requirement to map proprietary data models to existing (and future) standards and specifications. As Magoulas and Dimakopoulos put it (page 69): "...it is unlikely that all the information required by any particular personalised information space can be captured in the elements of a specific data models."_And further on: _"Encoding user profiles in RDF provides flexibility to include elements from multiple schemata, to enrich them with additional elements, when necessary, and to maintain interoperability with other systems."

5.3 Semantic issues

In order to make sense of both integrated and atomized learner information, the parties to an exchange must share a common set of interpretive practices. If there is no agreement on what information means, exchange is largely pointless. For meaningful exchange of learner information in Europe, shared vocabularies must be developed and put into practice. This process should be both top-down and bottom-up. National and international vocabulary development, such as the work on vocabularies of relationships developed as part of IMS e-Portfolio and BSI 8788, is essential. However, these vocabularies are likely to be challenged by cultural and operational differences between contexts. To overcome these challenges, they must be validated and refined through agreements between organizations actually exchanging real learner information. In most cases, these agreements will lead to either the development of profiles of national and international vocabularies or vocabularies specific to a particular region, sector, or partnership. For example, vocabularies are being developed for use with IMS e-Portfolio among the higher education institutions using the Open Source Portfolio in order to facilitate transfer between institutions. The higher the stakes of the successful exchange of information, the more valuable the vocabulary is likely to be. At the national and international level, attention should be focused on collecting and developing crosswalks between the vocabularies and profiles that emerge out of practice. As patterns of use emerge, the more global vocabularies should be revised to reflect them.

Finally, the overriding need of accessibility is cohesion of approach. We need to understand and agree the definitions of terms we are using, whatever languages or Meta-data schemes they are in, to know when we are using the same terms but calling them different things and that we use them the same way. The development of a European Taxonomy of Accessibility Terms in multiple European languages is proposed by CEN-ISSS Learning Technologies Workshop.

In the recommendations of ontology it is worth mentioning a few specific examples. One is the use of microformatted HTML, as in: <p class="goal">In the future I'd like to do more volunteer work</p>. Another is metadata in syndication, as in: <atom:entry>, <atom:category scheme="lip-uri" term="goal"/>, </atom:entry>. Another is the use of topic maps based on a common ontology that point into unstructured information such as web pages, blogs etc..

Specific recommendations for vocabularies:

1. Reuse existing vocabularies from available repositories
2. To promote interoperability among repositories of vocabularies
3. Guidelines for the creation, maintenance and control of vocabularies
4. To develop sample projects exemplifying good practice
5. To support and document the process by which shared meaning is negotiated across multiple vocabularies
6. To develop a set of explicit business cases
7. To support multilinguality

6. Interoperability scenarios

The development of sophisticated e-Portfolio systems is still relatively new and the standards designed to support interoperability between systems are still under development. Even when those standards are ready for wider implementation it will be some time before there is simple and comprehensive interoperability between different e-Portfolio systems. Even at a very practical level there are transferability issues which arise simply because of the size of e-Portfolio records. Whilst it is possible to design features to support 'resume download' on a transfer out of an e-Portfolio system it will be much more difficult to upload even a 100mb record to an institutional system. The server will almost certainly time-out and there is, at present, no way to assure a 'resume upload' feature.

Developers of e-Portfolio systems therefore need to ensure that there are practical ways in which users can archive or move their e-Portfolio data when they leave an institution. Ideally of course institutions will continue to provide hosting for learners - even if this is tied up within some kind of Alumni package, though it is highly unlikely that all providers of e-Portfolio systems will continue to provide learners with access to their records once they have moved on. One simple, but effective method is for learners to compile assets into a variety of 'stories' (presentational e-Portfolios) and export each of these stories to any of a range of storage devices and then on to their own, self-managed web-space (Google, Yahoo etc.). In our early developments IMS content packages were used to prove the utility of this self-managed interoperability. Indeed, an unplanned bonus was that teachers were able to use the e-Portfolio to create web-based resources ([WebQuests], Treasure Hunts etc.) which could be transferred to the virtual learning environment. The recent development of the IMS e-Portfolio specifications makes this a more viable solution as IMS e-Portfolio packages also act as content packages allowing users to view their e-Portfolios in web browsers. Once in the web space any of the assets linked to a particular story can be linked to from any other e-Portfolio that allows linking to external URLs. The presentation of artefacts through 'free-for-life' web space is one way of ensuring the persistence of links from subsequent e-Portfolio systems to assets created earlier in a learner's life.

Approaches to, and support for interoperability continues to develop apace: it is crucial to ensure that the solutions we arrive at support the end user; that allow user agency over how their records are secured, moved and reused without recourse to IT technicians. Simple solutions will help to maintain faith in the concept of e-Portfolio for life-long and life-wide learning but attaining these solutions must not default to simple systems at the expense of e-Portfolio systems that focus on rich, personally significant stories of learning.

6.1 A LIP-based learning scenario

There are a large number of potential ways that the LIP specification can benefit stakeholders in Higher Education (HE) processes in Europe. Some of these operate on an intra-organisation level and some with inter-organisation information exchange. There are potential benefits for consumers (students), for provider organisations (universities and others) and for administrative agencies.

The LIP specification can enable greater flexibility for the learner for example in moving between provider institutions. By providing a mechanism for recording the detail of courses taken by a learner the LIP can also provide for flexibility over time as a learner takes parts of courses when they best fit with the learner's lifestyle. The use of heterogeneous incompatible information systems provides many opportunities for error and confusion as data is communicated from one department to another. Exchanging learner information in a standard form reduces the possibilities for confusion to occur. The greater transparency of operation can enable many improvements in management of the processes;

In what follows many of the processes are currently undertaken by hand or not carried out with the efficiency or rigour that LIP enables. Prior to admission of a learner to a university there is a selection process involving the learner, university admissions tutors. As a result of the process, admission to a course is agreed and learner data with validated qualification information is created and lodged with the university profile server. Other organisations Europe A-level examination boards, are involved in the validation.

At the point of enrolment the learner adds to information stored with personal information and preferences. As a learner progresses through a course the learner profile server is given data on marks achieved and the course context. If a course is shared with another provider then that other provider can interoperate with the profile server across the Internet to store marks achieved in the context of that provision.

During a course a learner may wish to move from one provider to another, for example studying the first year at one university and the second and subsequent years at a university with a nearly equivalent course or with an approximately common first year content. Admissions tutors/processes at the second university will rule on whether the transfer can take place. This involves looking at the course content and prerequisites and learner achievement for each course or module to determine whether the prerequisites for the course at the second university have been met. This in turn requires examining the detail of context and marks at different granularities in different areas of the course. As learners may take time out of courses between years, detail needs to be relevant to the instance of the course that was actually followed and that will be followed. This information could be made available via a LIP transfer.

Often learners wish to take substantial time (such as a year) out from a course and return to it later. The LIP can facilitate this with a precise record of achievements and course context. In the case where a course has changed its content or structure in the interim, analysis of LIP data can allow construction of an appropriate path for the learner to return to the course, possibly involving extra study to satisfy new prerequisites. The facility to examine different granularities of course and achievement data is essential. For a learner studying a course with an industrial placement component it is desirable that detail of the learner's abilities in particular areas, can be provided to potential placement providers (employers) to assist them with selecting appropriate candidates. Some of this detail may not be directly relevant to what has been taught on the course. For example, it may be that for a particular computing placement, an A-level Mathematics qualification (sub-degree) is essential but is not a prerequisite for entry to the present course. The granularity with which the information needs to be presented is very different in different circumstances and could be under the control of the enquirer (employer). At the end of a course information about a learner's achievements, both on the course and in other areas can be provided, under the learner's control, to prospective employers. When the learner applies to take courses at other institutions in the future, a record can be made available of qualifications and abilities at a fine granularity can be made available.

In a similar manner LIP can provide inter-institution flexibility for providers. In the future as we move towards more open flexible provision the LIP specification can provide a means for information exchange and recording of achievement data on courses with multiple institutional providers. There can be many advantages in sharing provision between institutions in particular circumstances. One particularly striking example is that of courses with foreign language components where different parts of the course are provided by different institutions in different countries. There are many other examples where specialisation can allow a provider organisation to carry a level of expertise in an area that would not be viable otherwise. By providing a common logical data format the LIP enables this exchange to be more efficient and for associated processes, such as qualification validation, to take place with greater rigour. Where a learner interfaces with these systems, such as in enrolment on courses, there are usability benefits and potential cost savings.

6.1.1 Life-long learning scenarios

Life-long Learners can review information in their Portfolio at any time under direct and secure access. Furthermore such learners can create "views" of their Portfolio information in a manner similar to creating a resume or curricula vitae by using Portfolio elements as building blocks. These views can be made available either to a "public" view that is generally accessible or to "specific" views restricted to one or more recipients. Recipients may include prospective employers, advisors, evaluators, etc, and have secure access to views provided to them by learners.

In many organisations staff are encouraged to undergo a range of training to help develop their competencies and knowledge thereby improving the usefulness to their employer and their own career prospects. These companies run internal training courses and so a 'cohort' of individuals may train as a group. This creates three distinct but related perspectives i.e. that of the individual learner, the trainer and the associated group.

From the point of view of the individual learner, details concerning the course(s) undertaken and the corresponding outcome must be recorded. This information should be aggregated with other similar information already stored in the learner's training record. The IMS LIP provides mechanisms by which this information can be added to previously stored information independent of the location and nature of the storage of that information. The associated goals and required competencies for the development of the learner's career can be used to inform the choice for the most suitable training materials. These goals and competencies can be transferred using the IMS LIP.

A 'trainer' needs to create the group profile. This group learner information may require links to the learner information records of the individuals that constitute the group. The group information should be supported using the IMS Enterprise specification [Enterprise, 99a], [Enterprise, 99b], [Enterprise, 99c]. The trainer needs to record any of the outcomes from the training for each individual in their learner profile. The IMS LIP provides support for the description of the material structure, the results from the evaluation, the learning products produced by the individual/group and if appropriate a formal transcript and/or qualification/certification/license.

The group learner information is updated as the group progresses through the training programme. These updates could be accompanied by changes to the linked individual records (provided the access rights to the individual profile is set appropriately), depending on the implementation. Once the group's training programme has been completed the issue of persistence of the group record must be considered. The group information should be supported using the IMS Enterprise specification [Enterprise, 99a], [Enterprise, 99b], [Enterprise, 99c].

6.2 Towards a European Career Management Account System

As an assistance to all citizens in career creation and management and facilitation of life long learning, a European Career Management Account System should be developed. The e- Portfolio is the central data construct in the CMA System. This prototype will provide a centralized repository wherein all relevant career information such as transcripts, performance reviews, sample work product, and other information besides the usual biographical material may be securely stored. The Career Management Account System (CMA) has been designed in two parts, the CMA that provides access control and security and acts as a "wrapper" for a collection of e-Portfolios.

6.2.1 Perspective of a Vendor of a Student Administration System

As the accepted mode of post-secondary education moves more toward distance learning, and as learners engage in educational activities in more than one institution, it becomes imperative to have a way to pass relevant learner profile information between the administration and academic systems that support the educational effort. In fact, this type of exchange of what we are calling learner information data has been occurring for years, in various automated and manual forms.

Just as we think of the learner information "repository" containing data typically found in a resume, we can extend that metaphor to include the educational transcript. The administrative systems have the summary information about courses taken, grades received, awards earned and degrees achieved, while academic systems (i.e. learning management systems) may have more detailed information about learner preferences and status within a particular learning experience. Both types of information exchange are supported by the IMS LIP data structures. Implementation efforts will help us see how we might supplement (replace?) the traditional exchange of transcript information with the exchange of learner information data:

The learner information for a learner could be initiated at the first entrance to a formal educational setting, where there is some systematic means to track educational efforts and progress. The idea of a Life-long Learning (LLL) profile could extend literally to the 5 year-olds entrance to kindergarten. Most likely, however, the educationally-focused aspect of a learner might begin with the High School transcript, which is then stored in the system of the post-secondary institution the student attends. Many transcripts are currently electronically processed via EDI, so the possibility of the High School passing elements of learner information data to the post-secondary school is simple to grasp. The student administration system establishes the student record and therefore elements of the learner information, using data from the application and the High School transcript;

As a student progresses through the educational process, his/her learner information data is updated through the normal posting of grades, degrees awarded and so on that occurs in the student information system. When a student transfers to another educational institution, the learner information (e.g. data contained in the Official or Unofficial transcript) can be sent to the receiving institution. This is a familiar transfer credit or articulation scenario. If the institution's academic systems contain information on preferences, educational history, goals, etc. those could be passed to the receiving academic system. Finally, when the student visits the institution's career placement centre, his/her learner information data is available to be delivered to the online job exchange or directly to a prospective employer.

6.2.2 Perspective of a Vendor of a Human Resource Management System (HRMS)

A HRMS would be one of the major contributors to, and recipients of, learner information. Therefore, a HRMS is a primary, de facto "learner information server". Some of the learner information will be employee-provided (personal information, learning preferences) while the bulk will be the result of manager-acknowledged "events", such as qualifications received, training completed, competencies achieved, prior employment, etc. Several key Human Resource/Personnel functions touch directly on the learner information; the sequence of processing is primarily building and maintaining the profile for the employee, either through direct input to the system or through receipt of messages from other sources, such as schools, other employers or associations. Sample functions/uses include:

Most organizations go through a yearly review process at which time the employee and manager agree on the work products and competencies achieved in the prior review period and plan future objectives, including education and training goals. The employee's competency, skills and/or education record is updated (currently, this is generally a manual process), but some aspects of the records could be updated through a message from a learning management system used by the training/education provider. This example illustrates the creation and update of the learner information;

Most organizations attempt to track an employee's training and educational efforts; in many industries this is mandated. The training administration system at an organization, often part of the overall HRMS, should provide profile information about learner preferences, certifications and licenses, current training involvement and training/education needs. This data should be sent to the training provider so a tailored learning experience can be created, perhaps even including the "membership" for the training event. The training provider, in turn, returns the information about certifications achieved, classes completed and so on. This data should update the employee learner information on the organization's HRMS or training administration system;

The organization's recruitment function is directly impacted by the exchange of learner information; in fact, a simple way to describe a profile is to compare it to a resume or CV. Most major organizations now receive applications and resumes electronically; the electronic format allows them to systematically populate the applicant's record on the HRMS database so targeted searches can be performed by the hiring manager. As more organizations use the online "exchanges" to look for employees, we can envision the transfer of the profile information from the exchange to the hiring organization's database as the recruitment process is finalized.

Employers do not typically share anything but the most basic information about a prior employee with a new employer; consider the very strict rules (in the US, anyway) about what can be revealed about an employee's status in an employment verification function. For example, the current employer or prospective employer does not ask the prior employer for information about the skills, competencies, certifications, etc. of an applicant or an employee; they ask the employee and then do the necessary verifications. Therefore, the distribution of profile information between HRMSs, while certainly technically feasible, is an area worthy of discussion and exploration from an implementation viewpoint. Centralized career management centres or repositories, which are under the employee's control, may be a way to get around this normal reluctance of employers to pass along any employee data to the next employer.

6.2.3 Central European Validation Center for Education and Training Records

Adequation of format for job market offer and job application form through LIP should be made possible with the creation of a Central European Validation Center for Education and Training Records (EVC): learner/worker information will be posted on the site in the LIP format in a scenario as follows.

A job applicant is using an on-line job search agency. He would like to support his resume with a complete educational history by using the official, online European Validation Center for Education and Training Records ("EVC") created by the EU. Using the EVC's online process, the applicant requests that his official college transcripts be forwarded to the EVC for online posting on its secure site. In addition, the Applicant requests that his employer, which has provided and tracked substantial on-the-job training and skills enhancement over the years, send information to the EVC for posting to the site.

Using the common formats detailed in the IMS LIP specification, the colleges and the employer electronically forward their data to the EVC. In the future, participating institutions and corporations may make their databases available and accessible via a shared protocol in which the EVC would be able to send out a "databot" that would find and display the data for a given individual through its web-site without the need for an actual physical electronic exchange of the data.

Because of the standard formats, the EVC is able to cost-effectively consolidate a lifetime of training and education into a single, easy-to-read document, which can be readily compared to other applicants providing information via the same formats. When the Applicant's supporting documentation has been collected, the Applicant provides permissions to various potential employers to view and/or retrieve the data collected by the EVC.

7. Relationships with the adoption life cycle

Governments and other agencies need to provide many opportunities for people to develop their understanding of the underlying issues, and funding for a very widespread and far-reaching discussion around e-Portfolio issues between people who have grasped the main issues. This is needed to provide the basis for agreeing interoperability standards, while retaining diversity of systems and tools. Once interoperability standards have been agreed, policy should be to fund only projects and initiatives that conform to them. The whole process must be managed intelligently, that is, by avoiding fixing on standards which are not fully fit for purpose, and by incrementally developing the area of consensus and standardisation, while also being sensitive to shifts in consensus.

A key top-down driver of progress in the UK is the government e-Portfolio strategy (Department for Education and Skills, March 2005 ), Harnessing Technology, which indicates that all school students will be allocated a personal learning webspace by 2007. The strategy is a broad document and priority is likely to be given to personalised learning, widening participation and lifelong learning. The strategy's inclusion of personalised learning highlights the existence of another driver, which is, however, of a very different kind: the preferences evidenced by the social practice of young people, who are using informal communication tools in ever greater numbers. The tensions between institutionally-based provision and personally-owned technologies are especially clear in the higher education sector in the UK, where (as in schools) responsibilities for quality assurance sit most easily with formal institutional systems but where students have the best resources and maximum opportunities to display their preferences for individual freedom and informality in using the web.

Work on facilitating individuals' transitions between institutions and/or employers provides a very useful focus for developing scenarios and use cases on interoperability, and these, in their turn, enable progress with both practice and policy. Linking JISC work on scenarios of practice with the scenarios of policy developed by Professor David Wood of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at Nottingham , offers a potentially very influential methodology. Professor Mike Sharples, David Wood's successor as Head of the LSRI, is continuing to develop David Wood's collaboration with Nottingham's eportfolio team and future work will continue to draw on work the approaches to research outlined in the Research Brief to EUN's INSIGHT programme.

Our objective should be a set of simple, extensible models and protocols for enabling machine communication about learners. These models and protocols should enable a wide range of objectives to be realised without imposing a costly implementation burden on developers, or a costly cognitive burden on learners. Learner Information should be capable of being integrated with the learners' wider identity, and be able to be reused by learners in other contexts. Finally, learner information should be traceable and verifiable - both in terms of organisation verifying claims in learner-provided statements, but also in terms of learners establishing the provenance of claims made about them.

The Nottingham pilots demonstrate that existing specifications and standards work, but in a way that is over-complex and can be significantly improved. The Reference Model is scoping the development of a modular, lightweight standard, building on the work of IMS and BSI. Lifelong learning cannot be achieved within a single sector or a single country, and the success of this work will depend on cooperation across these boundaries. The JISC-CETIS conference provides a website through which colleagues can comment on and contribute to the development of the e-Portfolio Reference Model.

A relatively lightweight set of standards in the area, agreed across Europe at least, covering the attributes of each major class of item relevant to portfolios, and covering all envisaged needs for Europe-wide documentation of individual competence (including Europass instruments and their likely successors), together with a meta-framework in which skills frameworks can be progressively constructed and agreed. One of the essential characteristics of this set of standards would be the uniform provision of certain metadata, crucially including legal and viewing rights.

Each small standard or specification should be relatively independent, fostering consensus in areas where it is not disputed, and focusing discussion on areas of real debate. They need to be consistent in their overall form, and in particular in their metadata, so that items can be managed together. A related objective will be to convince the community to adopt the standards in the areas they are intended for, but not to mix in types of information that are essentially disparate.

8. Recommendations

 
Issues about e-portfolio encompass societal and political issues such as competency definition, personal data protection, professional certification. These aspects cannot be coped within the only scope of standardization recommendations. They are to be addressed through political negotiations between social partners. Therefore recommendations at this level are linked with consensus building among stakeholders so that they agree on common concepts and processes.

Governments and other agencies need to provide many opportunities for people to develop their understanding of the underlying issues, and funding for a very widespread and far-reaching discussion around e-Portfolio issues between people who have grasped the main issues. The main issues can be then validated by [MemberStates] and the European Parliament through European laws.

Competency common definition

 Competency common definition at the European level is a first step before proceeding to any standardization effort. An immediate objective for Europe should be to have developed a set of shared vocabularies for relationships and competencies that are in actual use in high stakes exchanges of learner information, across national lines, across levels of formal education, and between the public and private sectors. Vocabularies should be developed for exchange of learner information both within Europe and beyond. The EU should provide funding to encourage the development of such vocabularies and their use. For example, a European model for learner competencies as well as a European Taxonomy of Accessibility Terms in multiple European languages is proposed by CEN-ISSS Learning Technologies Workshop.

 Schemes for learner information and resources should increasingly use the terms from the same sets of controlled vocabularies. For elements that use controlled vocabularies, such as for a competence or learning outcome. For elements that use controlled vocabularies, such as for a competence or learning outcome, all schemes for learner or resource information should ensure that they contain a place for a unique identifier, as well as a person readable name or term. It would be advantageous to have a globally unique way of identifying the conceptual domain of the elements in learner and resource information and to use the terms from the same sets of controlled vocabularies.

Recommendations : 

-                   To reuse existing vocabularies from available repositories

-                    To promote interoperability among repositories of vocabularies

-                    Guidelines for the creation, maintenance and control of vocabularies

-                    To develop sample projects exemplifying good practice

-                    To support and document the process by which shared meaning is negotiated across multiple vocabularies

-                    To develop a set of explicit business cases

-                    To support multilinguality

Personal data protection

 Personal data require protection so that anyone can protect it as needed as well as can reveal it to appropriate counterparts. All schemes for learner or resource information tend to ensure that they contain a place for a unique identifier, as well as a person readable name or term. These identifiers should be produced according to a properly managed namespace (such as URN or Handle) so that they are globally unique and have one or more methods to resolve them.

 Recommendations:

• Clarify the relationship between learner information and access control metadata, especially with regard to Shibboleth, Liberty Alliance, and the use of schemas such as [EduPerson]. How do these integrate with non-institutional access frameworks such as SXIP, LID, and Microsoft [InfoCard]?

• Prioritize development around projects that deal with verification and privacy.
• Develop a policy mandate to use a single technical system of verification at least at national/community level and free of charge to the end user

• Explore tools that support the integration of the learner's disparate identities both within and outside the institution under his/her control.

Closely related topics:

• To further develop and integrate education records, student health records, and human resource finance records.
• To develop proper mechanisms to relocate students, teachers and families in case of emergency. An increasing need exists, within both  security and emergency management organizations for immediate access to real time, reliable school data; in times of natural disaster, a vendor neutral, platform independent, common tie into all school system's HR finance systems would ensure faster and safer relocations for students, teachers, and families without any loss of productivity or revenue, both now and into the future.

Assessment and professional certification

The agreement of stakeholders on assessment and professional certification processes is a first step before designing standardized tools to identify and modify discrepancies between learner model requirements and available e-Portfolio data. When a learner applies for a job there may be several relevant sets that have been or need to be applied, for example those of the learner, the assessor and the interviewer.  These may conflict (what is accessible for one person may be different to what is accessible for another) and there may be privacy concerns to honour (it may be possible to deduce a user's disability from a profile). A technical approach to this that can operate across systems needs to be developed. 

A common pattern of behaviour for the recruitment of staff is for a "person specification" to be agreed by the stakeholders for a particular job.  This sets out the essential and desirable qualifications, competencies and qualities required.  Professional bodies agree similar requirements for different levels of membership. Both employers and professional bodies increasingly require continuing evidence of successful performance and continuing professional development.  In Medicine, Nursing, Teaching and some engineering disciplines e-Portfolios are increasingly being used. 

A set of web services have been specified to support a Personal Profiling service that allows an applicant to draw upon their e-Portfolio to create a profile of themselves in terms of the requirements of a job or a profession.  This comprises a set of assertions linked to evidence within the e-Portfolio and a reference commenting on specific items.  Prototype web services are in development. For application to a job, a profession or a university place e-Portfolios are summatively assessed whereas after admission the emphasis is often on formative and diagnostic assessment by a mentor, especially for Continuing Professional Development.

The potential of e-Portfolios to raise the professional status of other staff groups, such as university research staff, is being actively reviewed.  Such staff have school and college qualifications held on repositories, as well as the specific work that they have contributed to research projects and the research publications that their team has produced and, in an increasing number of cases, university e-Portfolios. Repositories can authenticate to external audiences the qualifications, research work and publications relating to an individual and apply any restrictions on access, for example where the work produced is commercially confidential.  Should such items be imported into a personal e-Portfolio or maintained on a single repository and accessed from the e-Portfolio?  Even in the case of a previous personal e-Portfolio held at another university importing items may loose the relationships between items within the source system so that they may be misunderstood.

e-Portfolio for CPD and lifelong learning is desirable but represents a complex problem.  Is it practicable?  Is e-Portfolio for lifelong learning best conceived as a set of e-Portfolio systems aggregating and duplicating existing data?  Can a discrete e-Portfolio system take best advantage of the opportunities and economies that Web 2.0 is opening out? For this reason the concept of a thin e-Portfolio is being developed.  On this model an e-Portfolio application link a service supporting CPD with the various repositories holding the data they require and passes the data the service produces back to the appropriate repository. By breaking the concept of e-Portfolio down into services and repositories, we reduce the problem to simpler terms in which e-Portfolio for lifelong learning may become capable of practical implementation.  The e-Framework provides the context for the development of thin e-Portfolio.  This international strategic initiative is defining the services required for learning and administration and the flows of linked services required for processes such as CPD, one of the service flows under current development.

Recommendations

• Explore how learner information can be expressed and shared using existing bindings such as FOAF (Friend of a Friend), and relate these bindings to the ontology

• Explore how learner content can be expressed using existing widely used technologies such as XHTML and Atom/RSS, but again within the context of an ontology of learner information so that is retains meaning in an educational context.

• The BS8788/IMS e-Portfolio "parts" and "relationships" would be a useful starting point.
• Once interoperability standards have been agreed, the whole process must be managed intelligently, that is, by avoiding fixing on standards which are not fully fit for purpose, and by incrementally developing the area of consensus and standardisation, while also being sensitive to shifts in consensus.

• Briefing on joining up practice and technology through the medium of the e-Framework, e.g. through a focus on e-Portfolio developments
• Promote and support adoption of recommendations and best practices at European and national level
• Assess and ensure quality of e-Portfolio from the user's perspective to ensure ROI for them and sustainability.

 

References

 

[1]       Cambridge, D. (2004). Learner Related Information and Artifacts in the United States: A Comprehensive Analysis of Projects and Practices. Bristol,England: Joint Information Systems Committee. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/US_Learner_Information.pdf

[2]       Cambridge, D. (2005). eFolio Minnesotafor Lifelong and Lifewide Learning. St. Paul, MN: [MinnesotaStateCollegesand] Universities.

">http://efoliomn.com/index.asp?Type=B_PR&SEC= 
[3]       Carney, J. (2004). Setting an Agenda for Electronic Portfolio Research: A Framework for Evaluating Portfolio Literature. Paper presented at the AERA, San Diego, CA. http://it.wce.wwu.edu/carney/Presentations/presentations.html

[4]       Yancey, K. B. (2004). Postmodernism, Palimpest, and Portfolios: Theoretical Issues in the Representation of Student Work. CCC, 55(4), 731-767.

[5]       MIAPS - Managing Information Across Partners
Shows an approach to non-technical policies and protocols.
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/learning&skills/docs/MIAP%20Data%20Sharing%20Framework%20FINAL.doc

[6]       Lexar Biometric Flash
An affordable USB flash device with fingerprint recognition and encryption.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=47810&&source=14&doy=search

[7]       Thinking Materials
Swedish company developing concepts in wearable computing and communication. Designed iVue.
http://www.thinkingmaterials.com/

[8]       UK Higher Education Statistics Agency - Redevelopment of the HESA Student Record
The kind of thing that worries me - looks like another action in a vacuum.
http://www.hesa.ac.uk/circulars/student/2005/05_04.html

[9]       http://www.inst.co.uk/clients/jisc/teche-pdefs.html

[10]    http://www.simongrant.org/pubs/ep2005/

[11]     Conlan, O., Dagger, D., & Wade, V., (2002), Towards a Standards-based Approach to e-Learning Personalization using Reusable Learning Objects, eLearn2002.

[12]     GESTALT. "Getting Educational Systems Talking Across Leading Edge Technologies", Work Package 3, D0301 Design and Specification of the RDS (Resource Discovery Service), 1999.

[13]     Reflection, AIED 2005 Conference Workshop, Edinburgh.

[14]     Grant, S., Johns, R., P., & Wood, R., (2003) Mapping Personal Development Records to IMS LIP to support Lifelong Learning, consultation document, http://www.recordingachievement.org/downloads/UK_LP1_1B_Final.pdf

[15]     Greer, J., & [McCalla], G., (1994) Student Models: The Key to Individualized Knowledge-Based Instruction, NATO ASI Series F: Computer and Systems Sciences, vol. 125, Springer Verlag, [BerlinHeidelberg].

[16]     Guo, Z., & Greer, J., (2005) Toward a Specification for Electronic Portfolios for Groups, ePortfolio 2005, [CambridgeUK].

[17]     Guo, Z., & Greer, J., (2005) Connecting E-Portfolios and Learner Models, E-Learn 2005, Vancouver,Canada.

[18]     IMS LIP. IMS Learner Information Package, Public Draft, Version 1.0, December 2000.

[19]     IMS e-Portfolio specifications, Version 1.0 Final Specification, 2005.

[20]     Kay, J., Lum, A., & Zapata-Rivera, D., (2005) Learner Modelling for Reflection, to Support Learner Control, Metacognition and Improved Communication, Workshop on Learner Modelling for

[21]     PAPI. Public and Private Information (PAPI), Draft 6 Specification.

[22]      http://www.e-framework.org/about

[23]      http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/e-Portfolio

[24]      http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/rippll

[25]      http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/epreferencemodel

[26]      http://www.e-Portfolio.ac.uk/mle

[27]      http://www.e-Portfolio.ac.uk/del/refmodels

[28]      http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/

[29]      http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/integrative-Portfolio

[30]      http://www.eun.org/insight-pdf/research_brief.pdf

[31]     Atom, http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-07-15-a.html

[32]      SXIP Identity, http://www.sxip.com/

[33]      Kim Cameron: "The Laws of Identity", http://www.identityblog.com/stories/2004/12/09/thelaws.html

[34]      Johannes Ernst: "What Is Microsoft [InfoCard]?", http://netmesh.info/jernst/Digital_Identity/what-is-msft-infocard.html

[35]     Andy Harjanto: "More Materials on [InfoCard]"

[36]     http://blogs.msdn.com/andyhar/archive/2005/09/22/472712.aspx

[37]     The Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) Project, http://www.foaf-project.org/

[38]     Internet2 Shibboleth Project, http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

[39]     Liberty Alliance, http://www.projectliberty.org/

[40]    [EduPerson], http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?PAGE_ID=949&bhcp=1

[41]     Lightweight Digital Identity (LID), http://lid.netmesh.org/

[42]      Analysis and Comparison of LIP and (formerly-called) PAPI Learner Specifications. (Working Document No. SC36 N0480)(2003). ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36: Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training.

[43]    Dolog, P., & Nejdl, W. (2003, June 2003). Challenges and Benefits of the Semantic Web for User Modelling. Paper presented at the AH2003 Workshop, User Modelling Conference.

[44]      Dolog, P. (2004). Identifying Relevant Fragments of Learner Profile on the Semantic Web. Paper presented at the Workshop on Applications of Semantic Web Technologies for E-learning ­SW-EL'04: Semantic Web for E-Learning at International semantic Web Conference: ISWC 2004, Hiroshima,Japan.

[45]      Dolog, P., & Schäfer, M. (2005). A Framework for Browsing, Manipulating and Maintaining Interoperable Learner Profiles. Lecture Notes for Computer  Science collection.

[46]     Wilson, S., & Rees Jones, P. (2005). What Is...IMS Learner Information Packaging? Retrieved 2005-10-05, 2005, from http://www.cetis.ac.uk/lib/media/lipbrief.pdf

[47]     Magoulas, G. D., & Dimakopoulos, D. N. (2005, July 24th and 25th, 2005). Designing Personalised Information Access to Structured Information Spaces. Paper presented at the PIA 2005 - Workshop on New Technologies for Personalized Information Access, Edinburgh,Scotland, UK.

[48]      IMS Learner Information Package Specification. (2005, Tue, 11 Oct 2005). Retrieved 2005-10­12, 2005, from http://www.imsglobal.org/profiles/index.html

[49]      Heery R, P. M. (2000). Application profiles: mixing and matching metadata schemas - introduce the 'application profile' as a type of metadata schema. Arriadne(25).

[50]      Hayes, P. (2002). RDF Model Theory. Retrieved February 14, 2003, from http://www.w3c.org/TR/rdf-mt/

[51]      Nilsson, M. (2001). The Semantic Web: How RDF will change learning technology standards. Feature article, Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS).

[52]      Magoulas, G. D., & Dimakopoulos, D. N. (2005, July 24th and 25th, 2005). Designing Personalised Information Access to Structured Information Spaces. Paper presented at the PIA 2005 - Workshop on New Technologies for Personalized Information Access, Edinburgh, Scotland,UK.

[53]     http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/lt/

[54]    http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html

[55]     http://jtc1sc36.org/ in wg7

[56]     http://www.ieeeltsc.org/wg11CMI/ramlet/Pub/RAMLET_project_description.pdf

[57]    http://www.w3.org/WAI/ , particularly Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php

[58]    http://dublincore.org/accessibilitywiki/

[59]    Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning Accessibility, Kelly, B., Phipps, L. and Howell, C. In: Cook, J. and Whitelock, D. (2005) Exploring the frontiers of e-learning: borders, outposts and migration; ALT-C 2005 12th International Conference Research Proceedings, ALT Oxford, available on http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/alt-c-2005/

[60]     http://www.imsglobal.org/ep/index.html

[61]     http://www.eife-l.org/activities/epicc

[62]    http://axelrod.plus.com/moin/EpAccess

[63]    http://www.europeanims.org/part5/presentation.html

[64]     http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag.php