ACE ePortfolios!

With Liz Grigg and Lynne Gibb

Adult Community Education is ACE!

• 1,000 ACE organisations in Australia - only 730 McDonalds restaurants

• Over 200 ACE organisations in Victoria• Many ACE organisations are RTOs

Coonara Community House

• Located in the City of Knox – outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne – 154,000 people

• 50,000 hours of accredited training each year• 18,000 hours of Children’s Services• 90% of our Diploma of Children’s Services

students are working in the industry.• Coonara has been involved in flexible delivery

for 6 years

Who is using an ePortfolio?

• With students?• Personally?

ePortfolios is ACE

• Google Sites• Mahara• Wikispaces

Google Sites e-Portfolio

NavigationPane

Portfolio PageText area

Comments Section

Comments

Review

• Not designed as an ePortfolio tool, but could work as one.

• Customisable – presentation and design• Security questionable• All pages available to viewer of site• Not Portable• Support available on line.

Home Page

Navigation pane

Portfolio page

Review

• Not designed as an ePortfolio tool, but could work as one.

• Customisable – presentation and design• Security available with a paid for version• Can lock pages from viewer of site• Portable to another wikispace not to another

program that we are aware of.• Lots of support available on line.

This is my Mahara

My Profile

My friends on Mahara

My Skills

Relevant photos

Groups I belong to in Mahara

Different Views for different things

Resume view

For RPL – screen displayThis screen grab shows the total look of the screen.

In this example, each column refers to a different unit being RPL’d.

You can click on a unit heading to provide more detail.

RPL – for Course (several units)

RPL - Unit detail

Space for tutor feedback

Name is link to document

Description of artefact – I used key words and the element numbers

Date artefact loaded to Mahara

Assessor feedback

Review

• Is designed as an ePortfolio tool• Not Customisable –design, but layout is for

each view• Security – yes• You select blocks and documents for each

view• Portable to some other systems.• Support available on line.

ComparisonUser friendly Cost Flexibiity Security Portability

Google Sites

Free

And Freely available

Customisation?

Mahara

For those with ICT skills

Free product

Customisation?

Wikis

Free product

(has adds) If pay

Free – no privacy

Pay = privacy If pay

Why Mahara for trial?

• Heard about Mahara at EPF conference 2 in Brisbane

• Offered free hosting on VETSA server

Coonara’s Mahara trial

• Pre-training interviews conducted includes ICT skill evaluation

• RPL students with ICT skills offered to partake in trial

• 6 out of 16 students elected to participate in Mahara trial

• 10 students elected to complete RPL by paper based method

How did we do it?

• Developed a RPL website to assist all students• Students participated in 4 x 2 hour weekly

training sessions on Mahara prior to Diploma course commencement

• 2 trainers conducted Mahara sessions – industry trainer, and ICT/Mahara trainer

• During Mahara training introduced to RPL website for supporting information and documentation

Conclusion

• Explain RPL at start• 4 x 2 hour session of RPL training supports

students – but is it cost effective?• Level of ICT skills varies greatly regardless of

course of study• Intimidation by ICT very real• Our aim is to integrate ePortfolios into

Coonara across accredited delivery