Origins & First Meeting

On the launch of the eportfolio initiative at DCU with a small number of eportfolio champions, I sought to keep communications open and support collaborative learning on our initial steps into eportfolio practice. With this in mind, regular user group meetings to share problems and inspiration were organised and all eportfolio champions were invited. Realising the benefit of this open approach to practice, I asked the group if they were happy to open this community to others adopting eportfolio in other institutions. There was a positive reaction to this suggestion and I started to make contact with other institutions that I knew were engaged in eportfolio practice.

I named the group MaharaIRL, and Mahara were happy to give us an online home on the main Mahara.org site to facilitate the community. MaharaIRL user group formed bringing together eportfolio users from 7 institutions across Ireland including colleagues in UCD, DkIT, RCSI, NCIRL, AIT, MIC, Hibernia and others. The first MaharaIRL meeting took place on St Patricks campus on April 27th, 2017 with over 25 participants. This proved to be a really interactive and productive day with presentations from many eportfolio users from DCU and beyond.

Our first online webinar took place on September 19th, 2017 with a special presenter from New Zealand, Anne Matthews and 25 in attendance from 8 different institutions. A link to a recording of the webinar can be found here and a summary of the session. A suggestion was also raised at this meeting as to the benefits of another face to face meeting and the possibility of seeking funding from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning for that purpose.

I was successful in securing this funding and planning began for a face to face eportfolio seminar. At this point, I recruited a steering committee some very eager members and together we rebranded MaharaIRL as Eportfolio Ireland to better represent the needs of all eportfolio practitioners, not just those using a specific platform.

Looking for an interactive format to promote collaboration, the event was a participant driven Unconference. Response to the event was been very high and the event initially sold out so was moved to a larger venue. I was delighted with such a positive reaction and it confirmed to me the level of interest in eportfolio practice. The event took place on January 26th, 2018. A brief blog post including photos and reflection of the event is here and a Storyify record here.

Prizes going for Top Tweeter at the #EportfolioUnconference today! Share your experience of the day using our hashtag - we are looking forward to seeing your pictures. #EportfolioUnconference https://t.co/XeebCutANr

Subsequent evaluation of this style of professional learning event has indicated that over 83% of respondents prefer it to a traditional conference and this feedback will shape Eportfolio Ireland future events.

The second Eportfolio Ireland unconference event took place at Marino Institute of Education on Sept 7th, 2018. The organising team sought to continue to push boundaries and included the writing of a series of 'unpapers' as part of the day. The event also identified the need for professional development in the area of designing a professional portfolio. Funding was sought through the National Forum Seminar Series and was successful. This event took place on February 14th and was already sold out.

The process and outputs of Eportfolio Ireland Unconferences has been published in the AePR review in November 2018.

Prizes going for Top Tweeter at the #EportfolioUnconference today! Share your experience of the day using our hashtag - we are looking forward to seeing your pictures. #EportfolioUnconference https://t.co/XeebCutANr

Eportfolio Ireland

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