Electronic portfolios and digital asset management

by Richard Parsons

A number of exciting advances in e-learning with the potential to revolutionise online learning and teaching have been introduced at the University over the summer period.

Students and staff throughout the University now have access to an electronic portfolio system to support their learning and teaching. This resource has been deployed alongside the enhanced Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), to meet the expectations of a number of departments, such as Education and Nursing, that have a requirement for an ePortfolio system. Students can use ePortfolios to document their personal development, to support their module work, for formal assessment and as a lifelong record of activity. The portfolio system provides a store for digital files of many types, and a web-based interface to allow the student to organise, share and display these files. Access to view a portfolio can be provided to other students, lecturers and even potential employers. Dundee is the first University in the UK to deploy the Blackboard ePortfolio system campus-wide, and many other institutions are interested to learn if the system meets our expectations.

For staff, a specialist Learning Content Management System (LCMS) is now in place within the VLE. This provides a "Learning Object Repository" where key digital assets can be maintained, and made available to a number of VLE modules, as web links and to external users. It is early days for the LCMS and guidelines that cover the access and intellectual property rights are being proposed. Increasingly, other universities and institutions will deploy similar systems and staff will be able to provide students with VLE-based links to learning objects both within and beyond the University.

Support for quality online assessments remains a priority for the central elearning team, and the latest version of Questionmark has been installed on the assessment servers. Uptake across faculties continues to grow, while recently students have been leading an innovative approach to assessment by authoring their own short answer questions with feedback, staff checking them and combining them into shared revision assessments. This approach has been pioneered in both Environmental Science and Medicine.

The final major advance is in the provision of student portal features within the VLE. The new interface allows greater user customisation so that personal bookmarks (or favourites) can be stored, news feeds displayed and subject specific information made available to defined groups, for example Law students can display an active link to ‘UK Law News’. Student groups can now use the VLE systems to support their on-campus clubs and societies using a feature called ‘Organisations’ within the My Dundee system. Here, students can create secure web-based organisations for sharing meeting details, trip programmes, contact details and club reports. Early users of the system include the Equestrian Club and the Cricket Club. Those wishing to establish a presence for their own club or society can contact LEU staff.