Practicing what we preach:

building an e-portfolio Community of PracticeLouise FrithDaniel Clark

Kent’s e-portfolio

Enabling the use of technology in teaching “When asked what they would find most

helpful to enable them to use technologies more in their teaching, most teachers say 'give me examples, in my subject area' and 'point me to relevant people I can discuss these issues with”. Conole (2010)

From sharing to participating (passive to active) O’Reilly 2005

What are the barriers to E-portfolios being taken up more widely in L&T?

ISSUES Responses

Too many tools Replaced Pebblepad with MyFolio

Time to learn the new technology before using it with students

Established a digital retreat

Need local examples of use Established a Community of Practice for Kent staff

Lack of sharing among disciplines & between academics & services

Emphasised that it’s for all disciplines and support staff

Methodology: Principles of our approachUsed Clegg and Bradley’s (2006) 3 approaches to PDP to arrange the case studies: Professional Academic Employability We aimed for our community of practice to be:User centredExperientialSharedEvolving

MyFolio Community of PracticeWhat we did:Set-up a group in MyFolio for any member of staff using MyFolioEmphasised that the group is for all staff (academics and services) this reflects how we expect students to use it i.e. to record their academic and other activityCurrently has 33 members and 14 pages which share practice

Example page

Three elements of a CoP (Wenger,1998)

Showcase day

Employability strategy

Own pages within the group

Evaluation of the CoPInterim evaluation has been done via telephone and face to face interviews with staff. From this this information the following recommendations have been written:

continue to record new practice with MyFolio through pages within the MyFolio CoP.

collect and share practice on assessment of e-portfolio work

continue to encourage students to share ‘finished’ pages

hold annual Embedding Employability through E-portfolios events which showcase work and facilitate networking.

Questions What new technology has led you to do

things differently in your teaching/interactions with students?

How have you been able to communicate your use of new technology to colleagues?

References Clegg & Bradley (2006) Conole (2010) O’Reilly (2005) Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of

Practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press.