EDEN 2005 Annual Conference, 20.-23.6.2005, Helsinki, Finland

Insights into electronic portfolio interoperability

Simon GrantIndependent consultantInformation Strategists

Interoperability

If e-portfolio systems are to be used for lifelong learning, they should interoperate

Several specifications have been suggested

How can an e-portfolio system be built or made to be interoperable?

Outline agenda menu

Do the definitions make sense? Do we share understanding of the items? What is interoperability? How items are represented by specs Europass instruments E-portfolio systems architecture Interoperable skills and competences

E-portfolio items (1)

Achievements qualifications; certificates; awards; prizes;

etc. Products

works; things created, tended, managed Competencies (by whatever name)

knowledge; skills; attitudes achievements/products can be evidence

E-portfolio items (2)

Goals a sense of direction as in action planning

Activities past: as record to present and reflect on future planned: as part of action planning

Evaluations (formal) of activities or products

E-portfolio items (3)

Interests what personally motivates, including values

Assertions by self or others, testimonials, free format

evaluation by others Reflections

as part of PDP; self-evaluation

E-portfolio items (4)

Organisations (reference) point of reference for several things

Affiliations details of relationship with organisations

Other people of significance (reference) mentors; friends; people that wrote

assertions

E-portfolio items (5)

Identification names, addresses, photos, date of birth…

Relationships many highly significant between items

metadata not an item in itself, but a record of: rights

over any item; dates of creation, revision

E-portfolio items review

Is there anything that doesn’t fit in those?

Do those categories distinguish properly? between things of different form/structure

How do these relate to lifelong learning?

What is interoperability?

Portability of e-portfolio records; OR Different systems concurrently offering

and using related services To be useful, interoperability

specifications must be based on real practice

What are your scenarios? What services are implied?

Semantic interoperability

Can the item of information in one context be meaningfully interpreted in another? think of particular PDP scenarios…

Role of type vocabularies to distinguish semantically different things

with the same or similar structure Could items with types form a sufficient

basis for making useful distinctions?

Current specifications

IMS LIP 2001: large and complex

UKLeaP (BS 8788) 2004/5 attempting to make LIP usable

IMS ePortfolio draft 2004, final 2005

HR-XML

What do we want of a standard?

Various trade-offs Simple – complex XML – RDF well-defined – flexible monolithic – segmented (“speclets”) early (untested) – late (tested)

Development / revision: easy or hard?

Europass instruments

http://europass.cedefop.eu.int/ Europass CV Europass Diploma Supplement

(Certificate Supplement is not personal) Europass Language Passport Europass Mobility

Europass issues

Europass representation challenges Who is working with Europass

instruments? How and why? May there be a future need to generate

the Europass instruments from an e-portfolio system?

E-portfolio systems architecture

Distributed nature of item storage items held by originating institutions?

Need for aggregation/distribution future concept “PIADS”: personal information

aggregation and distribution service See WS4RL

http://www.elframework.org/projects/ws4rl

WS4RL diagram

Personal Information

Aggregation & Distribution

Service

Personal Learning

Environment

Personal Development

Planning Web

Service

Learning design & materials repository

service

1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8

9

database

database

database

Learner

Key: WS call WS return other (may be WS)

Educator

Skills interoperability

What happens when institutions describe skills in different ways? evidence here does not connect over there

But uniform standards not feasible Need a “meta-framework” for skills

enable relationships across frameworks http://www.elframework.org/projects/spws

SPWS diagram

Medium- or low-level shared skill concepts (“C”)

i

viiv

iiiiv

ii

vi

higher-level

concept 1 for body 1

(“C”)

higher-level

concept 1 for body 2

(“C”)

skill iv as assessed etc. in body 1 (“EO”)

skill iv as assessed etc. in body 2 (“EO”)

Opera

tionalise

s

Is Part Of

Concluding comments?

Is interoperability feasible now, or when? Transfer or concurrent use? What stands in its way? Is the fundamental approach sound? Or is there a better way? Can you take this forward?