The Auricle

One for the e-portfolio knowledgebase. From volume 3 of the Journal of Information Technology Education (April 2004) comes this interesting article by Terence Love and Trudi Cooper: “This paper outlines the main findings of research about online portfolio information systems. This research focused on the educational integrity of these educational systems and the maximisation of […]

Failed processing of child maintenance payments (The Child Support Agency), tax-credit processing failures (Inland Revenue), serious delays in processing passport applications (the UK Passport Agency), failure of the National Insurance Fund Recording System (Contributions Agency), vast cost overruns and other problems in developing new IT systems for Magistrates' Courts (the Libra Project). It appears to […]

In my previous article on the theme of notification for reference and reuse I introduced the concept of trackback, a protocol for notifying the author(s) or readers of an article that the original work or derivation is being reused/ referenced. Trackback also enables aggregation of reuse/reference summaries plus links to all such reuses/references. In this […]

Now whilst I'm personally quite keen to see e-portfolios play their part in helping to progress what we currently call e-learning, we ought to consider what some of the issues are before rushing to develop, or implement, what, on first impression, may appear to be attractive e-portfolio solutions, either bought 'off the shelf' or custom […]

At a recent LTSN Physical Sciences seminar, at the University of Bath, Keith Adams from the University of Ulster, talked about using Computer Aided Assessment as part of teaching and learning. Keith has been incorporating CAA into his teaching and students' learning for about 5 years, delivering online assessments via Questionmark Perception. To learn more […]

Say you've published an item/story/article or learning object/resource to the web and would be delighted to see it referenced or reused elsewhere (with appropriate credits). What about that learning object/resource which may have been created with one context in mind but is being reused in another, perhaps in ways that were never envisaged by the […]

At last week's ALT-SURF conference on digital repositories and ePortfolios there was interesting and contrasting ePortfolio presentations from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Newcastle, and Utrecht University/University of Maastricht. Read on if you want to know more. The context for Edinburgh's ePortfolio is medical education and because it has been around since 1998 […]

Last week's ALT-SURF Spring Conference and Research Seminar in Edinburgh was a welcome contrast to mega conferences; delegate numbers were limited to ~80. The conference brought together colleagues from the Netherlands' SURF organization and the UK ALT to consider the current state-of-the-art in digital repositories and ePorfolios. SURF is similar in many ways to the […]

Regular readers of Auricle may have noticed our ongoing interest in the Maricopa Learning Exchange (MLX), and in the learning 'packages' that are housed within it. Here we provide an overview of the MLX, and indicate why we feel this initiative merits further attention from everyone involved in all levels of education. Based upon open […]

Learning objects don't need to be aggregated in one place, or be 'locked in' to one virtual learning environment. And how do we know when a learning object is being reused, which after all is meant to be the raison d'&#234tre for their existence? Although it's been available from last October if you want a […]