Specifying an e-Portfolio:

Project news

• January 2005: The University of Nottingham has won a £4.2 million grant from HEFCE to establish a Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The Centre for Integrative Learning will offer a distinctive model of student-centred, holistic learning for the 21st century, harnessing the best of HE pedagogy internationally. It will promote independent, reflective, self-managed learning both inside and outside the curriculum, enhancing students' academic performance, employability and personal confidence to engage successfully with the challenges of a rapidly-changing world. The project will provide a focus for leading UK ePortfolio development and be based on a combination of three areas of excellence at the University: entrepreneurship education, history and the PADSHE initiative (www.nottingham.ac.uk/padshe). [Link to Briefing Powerpoint]

• January 2005: Project staff at the University of Paisley held a one-day event for Admissions Officers on 21 January 2005. [Link to report (MS Word document) and Powerpoint; see also www.paisley.ac.uk/clt/index.asp]

• December 2004: City of Nottingham Passport staff reported that the Passport is currently being used to record and support progress by over 2000 young people in Greater Nottingham. In order to respond to the need to improve transition at post-16 and the curriculum changes suggested in the Tomlinson report, staff have been working in partnership with a number of local organisations, including the University of Nottingham, to significantly increase and improve the functions of the Passport web site. [Link to newsletter (pdf format)]

• October 2004: Angela Smallwood, Phil Harley and David Ford gave a presentation on the project at the EIfEL second international conference on the electronic portfolio at La Rochelle on 28/29 October [Links to paper (MS Word) and Powerpoint]. This reinforced existing interest in the joining up of practice in Nottingham to support and encourage transitions between schools and into college and university.

  Project Team member Peter Rees Jones gave a keynote address in which he offered a definition of e-Portfolio covering European requirements, especially Lifelong Learning, for inclusion in an e-Portfolio White Paper. This was illustrated with a use case derived from the Project's undergraduate admissions material covering the use of European Diploma Supplement in the context of e-Portfolio for graduate application to employment. Following the conference, EPICC invited Peter to give a workshop in Holland to develop further scenarios for the use of e-Portfolio concentrating on the processes by which learners prepare themselves to make applications covered by the Project's use cases. Peter has also been asked to make a presentation to the Eminent invitation conference for European Ministries of Information in Prague in November 2004.

• October 2004: This project is given specific mention in the final report of the independent review conducted by Professor Stephen Schwartz of the options which English institutions providing Higher Education should consider in assessing the merit of applicants for their courses. See paragraph E9 of Fair Admissions to Higher Education: Recommendations for Good Practice published at www.admissions-review.org.uk/downloads/finalreport.pdf.

• May 2004: Progress File and the web-based City of Nottingham Passport have moved to the centre of Nottingham's 14-19 Strategic Policy. The Greater Nottingham 14-19 Strategy Group, which is made up of both City and County LEAs, the local LSC, Connexions, representatives from schools, colleges and HEIs and other local partners, decided at a recent meeting that the City of Nottingham Passport should be one of three major initiatives to push forward the 14-19 agenda.

  The Passport, which has been developed though Aimhigher: Excellence Challenge, has until now been confined to city schools and colleges but will be looking to expand into the greater Nottingham conurbation. It is hoped that this recognition will allow the Passport to develop into areas of collaborative activity, including the creation of new cross-phase compacts.

  The Passport is seen as a way for students to record all their achievements and produce ongoing individual learning plans. In addition it supports the preparation of summative documents, including a personal statement and CV. A key driver in promoting a new ethos in teaching and learning, it has been recognised as a crucial factor in allowing young people to take some responsibility for their own development in the context of ever-increasing curriculum flexibility.

• April 2004: Members of the Project Team participated in the UCAS Admissions Officers Conference.

• March 2004: Peter Rees Jones gave a presentation centering on the Nottingham Project following Mike Tomlinson's keynote speech at the ePortfolio London event organised by EIfEL and the Cass Business School on 29 March 2004.[Link to Powerpoint]

• December 2003: Peter Rees Jones gave a presentation centred on the new version of the UCAS use case in UK LP1.1B at the EPICC launch event in Paris on 17 December 2003.