In 2016, I was appointed Learning Technologist with responsibility for the Learning Portfolio initiative. Learning portfolios had been called for in DCU in the 2012-2017 strategic plan.  After a whirlwind planning process which was only 28 working days, the Loop Reflect Learning Portfolio was launched in September 2016. Based on Mahara, the portfolio aimed to make learning visible through the creation of a personalised and reflective living showcase of academic, professional, and personal achievements. A number of pilot projects were selected to use Loop Reflect across a range of disciplines and in a range of different contexts. At the end of the one year pilot programme,  there were approximately 5,200 registered users on the platform. 

In addition to supporting the learning portfolio internally to faculty and students through training, drop in clinics and the development of an eportfolio community of practice. I instigated a Student Showcase and Awards which aimed to recognise accomplishments in using eportfolios and to showcase student achievements. Seventy one applications were received and some of the finalists volunteered to become student eterns to support the project going forward. Their enthusiasm for supporting their fellow students and embedding the student voice in ongoing development has become a critical element of the learning portfolio.

Technical enhancements to the Mahara platform that would enhance the reporting analytics of the platform were developed in conjunction with the University of Sussex in 2017. Further information on this project can be found here. The outputs from this project have now been included in core Mahara and over 1.3 million Mahara Users worldwide.

In 2017/18 following a formal launch attended by the Minister of education, the Learning Portfolio platform was made available to all faculty and students. 

The Learning Portfolio at the end of the academic year had over 10,000 users or greater than 50% of the student population which far exceeded expectations. The initiative has been embedded into over 20 programmes and has played a critical role in supporting work placement across a number of faculties. Additionally, it has supported ongoing co-curricular activities such as the Mentoring scheme run by the Student Support service.

The project has achieved many successes over the year including the ongoing development of the eportfolio community of practice into Eportfolio Ireland, many conference presentations and literature published to disseminate our work, and award nominations to recognise the work ongoing with the project. Ongoing eportfolio technical developments include a collaboration with the University of Limerick to development improved functionality for faculty to share portfolio templates with students. This will feature in core Mahara in October 2018.

In 2019, DCU reached over 15,000 staff and students accounts on the eportfolio platform. In practice, the eportfolio is now used for assessment across more than 30 programmes; for extracurricular activities such as work placement; and staff professional development through the Presidents Awards for Teaching Excellence. A huge advancement in 2019 was the development of the 'magic block' funded by DCU and the EMVITET erasmus project. This allows greater flexibility for staff and students in the development of eportfolio templates. This has now be adopted by Catalyst IT and incorporated into core Mahara as the 'Placeholder block'. We have shared our experience of harnessing the benefits of eportfolio widely through presentations across Ireland, UK and Asia. 

A particular focus over the last years has been developing student eportfolio awareness and competencies and I have dedicated a huge amount of time to sharing information about the learning portfolio platform through Orientation, in class presentations and drop in clinics.  The culminating event of each year has been the Student Showcase Awards. Through this event, really excellent examples of student achievement have been shared and it has served as a vehicle to encourage student involvement in the project. 

Engaging faculty to explore the affordances of eportfolio was critical. By end 2018, over 40 modules had some element of eportfolio based assessment and reflection. To get to this stage involved the dedication of a lot of time to ongoing CPD and the development of an based seminar series on eportfolio based technology and pedagogy.  Some lecturers who have been involved in the learning portfolio inititative share their thoughts below.

Lisa has edited the below ebook which was a collaborative resource that originated at the January 2018 Eportfolio Ireland Unconference. Many thanks to all who contributed to this book which outlines many different examples of eportfolio based assessment.

Eterns work collaboratively with the Learning Portfolio project team and are key to sustaining the success of the project. From promoting the use of learning portfolios to fellow students and providing tutorials to consulting on the development of the platform, the e-terns are the heart and soul of Loop Reflect. I owe a debt of gratitude to Chloe Langan, Niamh Gurrin and Mirenda Rosenberg for their tireless work and support on this project. I genuinely could not have succeeded without them! I was particularly delighted then when our team - including eterns was awarded the ALT Learning Technology Team of the Year 2018. 

A number of module based evaluations were conducted alongside an institutional survey after the pilot phase of the learning portfolio initiative and provided valuable evidence of deeper learning and student success. Results were generally positive although there we indicators that improvements could be made to the technology platform as well as requests for additional support. These results have provided direction to the project as it moves beyond a pilot to a full implementation.

Suggestions for improvement fell mainly in the following areas: More tutor scaffolding (28%), Simplify/redevelop the platform (27%), More Support/Training (25%), and Other (13%).

An evaluation of a Geography module that extensively use the Learning Portfolio yielded extremely positive feedback, such as that below , and reinforces for me that the affordance of eportfolio for student learning are very real!

"I feel that Loop reflect was a major strength. Some of the topics covered in class were quite difficult, but by doing Loop reflect you had to read over your notes from class and do some extra research. This helped so much at exam time because you actually understand and remember what you are studying. I think every module should use Loop reflect!"

Additional feedback was gathered from students through the Student Showcase awards and again this was very positive.

"I learnt a lot about myself in the process of creating the portfolio. I found that I reflected a lot more on the different elements of my course when I wrote about them on the loop reflect page"

"Creating this e-portfolio gave me the opportunity to pull together all the experiences and learnings from the past year in college and to synthesise my achievements and growth from all areas of the course."

In 2017, eportfolio was denoted as the 11th High Impact Practice (Eynon & Gambino 2017). When done well, high-impact education practices stimulate specific student behaviours including: students invest time and effort; they interact with faculty and peers about substantive matters; they experience diversity; they respond to more frequent feedback; they reflect and integrate learning; and they discover relevance of learning through real-world applications (Kuh, 2008). The results from the DCU evaluation of our eportfolio initiative would indicate that while we are just beginning our eportfolio journey, we are starting to see these behaviours which are indicators of future student success. 

As well as the day to day practice of eportfolio based assessment in DCU, we have been involved with spreading and sharing eportfolio experience more widely. This is taken place through many events both online and face to face through the Eportfolio Ireland community of practice, as well as sessions delivered to colleagues in further education in the Cork College of Commerce and Ballsbridge College of Further Education.

The academic year 2019/2020 was an exciting time for the eportfolio project. Eportfolio practice has now bedded in for many modules and has become the norm for assessment. We are seeing pockets of use across Education and Nursing specifically and Reflect has become the standard reporting mechanism for most modules with Intra Work placement. 

As part of an Erasmus + funded project, the EMVITETproject led by HAMK University in Finland, funding was made available to explore more flexible approaches to template design for the project participants in Vietnam.  Emvitet is a capacity building project that seeks to develop competencies in student centred learning leading to education 4.0.

The team from DCU proposed a ‘Magic Block’; a block that could be included on an eportfolio page to enable a template to be structured but would magically transform to show any type of media the student deemed appropriate whether that was text based, an image, video or other. With the proposed Magic Block, the students would benefit from the pre-built template but would still be able demonstrate their creativity and include whatever evidence of their learning that they wished. “Reimagining how learning evidence is placed onto portfolio pages has greatly improved the usability” Kristina Hoeppner, Catalyst IT.

While ostensibly for the benefit of the project participants, the decision was made to design this enhancement so that it could be included into Core Mahara. This ensured that Mahara users globally could benefit from the enhancement. The name of the block has been changed to the Placeholder block on launch, and is now the default method of eportfolio page creation in Mahara. 

I travelled to Vietnam in December 2019 to deliver a number of sessions on eportfolio practice and a number of the institutions involved have now adopted the Mahara eportfolio for assessment purposes.

2019/20 started a more deliberate move towards supporting staff CPD with the Reflect eportfolio. Reflection templates were designed for each workshop that the TEU offers which are pushed out after the sessions. This enables the participants to review and reflect on the learning objectives of the workshop.

This year, finalists in the Presidents Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Learning were asked to complete an eportfolio page to reflect on their Teaching Philosophy, Assessment Strategy and more. The eportfolio was then integrated into the review and section process for awards. In addition, work has commenced with the HR department to make the Reflect eportfolio an integral part of the promotion to Senior Professor application process.

Through the support of funding from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, I ran a "Design your Professional Portfolio" workshop. This now runs regularly throughout the year for DCU staff to promote the creation of teaching/professional portfolios.

These CPD initiatives with eportfolio were shared at the ALT conference in Edinburgh, September 2019

DCU is a key partner in the EMVITET project led by Hamk University in Finland and with partner institutions across Vietnam. EMVITET aims to create new learning ecosystem for education in Vietnam, based on student-centered learning, competence-based education, collaboration and networking in digital environments as well as sharing knowledge through communities of practice. DCU are the technical partners providing expertise in eportfolio and learning platforms.

DCU were grateful to receive funding from the National Forum to support a multi-disciplinary project to enhance competence and confidence in reflection and eportfolio practice. The project will provided training and support to lecturers across three faculties from January 2020 to May 2021. This short video outlines the key outputs from the project. 

We are also involved in another Erasmus + project named INTALL whose aim is to professionalise activities in adult education and lifelong learning. An eportfolio approach is being taken and I will travel to Hungary in June to support the introduction of the Mahara eportfolio to lecturers.

Lisa was delighted to collect the Learning Technology Team of the Year 2018 award from the Association of Learning Technology, on behalf of the DCU eportfolio team. The eportfolio project was also shortlisted in the Education Awards 2019 for Best Use of Educational Technology/ICT Initiative of the year. Internal to DCU, I was delighted to be nominated in 2019 for a Presidents Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (Support category) for my work on the Reflect eportfolio project. Further details on the Awards and Nominations page.