Liz Grigg

1. ACE ePortfolios!
With Liz Grigg and Lynne Gibb

2. Adult Community Education is ACE!
• 1,000 ACE organisations in Australia
- only 730 McDonalds restaurants
• Over 200 ACE organisations in Victoria
• Many ACE organisations are RTOs

3. Coonara Community House
• Located in the City of Knox – outer eastern
suburbs of Melbourne – 154,000 people
• 50,000 hours of accredited training each year
• 18,000 hours of Children’s Services
• 90% of our Diploma of Children’s Services
students are working in the industry.
• Coonara has been involved in flexible delivery
for 6 years

4. Who is using an ePortfolio?
• With students?
• Personally?

5. ePortfolios is ACE
• Google Sites
• Mahara
• Wikispaces

7. Google Sites e-Portfolio
Navigation
Pane

8. Portfolio Page
Text area

9. Comments Section
Comments

10. Review
• Not designed as an ePortfolio tool, but could
work as one.
• Customisable – presentation and design
• Security questionable
• All pages available to viewer of site
• Not Portable
• Support available on line.

12. Home Page
Navigation
pane

13. Portfolio page

15. Review
• Not designed as an ePortfolio tool, but could
work as one.
• Customisable – presentation and design
• Security available with a paid for version
• Can lock pages from viewer of site
• Portable to another wikispace not to another
program that we are aware of.
• Lots of support available on line.

17. This is my Mahara
My
Profile
My
friends
on
Mahara
My Skills
Relevant
photos
Groups I
belong to
in Mahara

18. Different Views for different things

19. Resume view

20. For RPL – screen display
This screen grab shows the total
look of the screen.
In this example, each column
refers to a different unit being
RPL’d.
You can click on a unit heading
to provide more detail.

21. RPL – for Course (several units)

22. RPL - Unit detail
Space for tutor
feedback
Name is link
to document
Description of
artefact – I used key
words and the
element numbers
Date artefact
loaded to
Mahara

23. Assessor feedback

24. Review
• Is designed as an ePortfolio tool
• Not Customisable –design, but layout is for
each view
• Security – yes
• You select blocks and documents for each
view
• Portable to some other systems.
• Support available on line.

25. Comparison
User friendly Cost Flexibiity Security Portability
Google Sites

Free
And Freely
available

Customisation?
 
Mahara
For
those with
ICT skills
Free product
Customisation?
 
Wikis

Free product
(has adds)  If pay
Free – no
privacy
Pay = privacy
 If pay

26. Why Mahara for trial?
• Heard about Mahara at EPF conference 2 in
Brisbane
• Offered free hosting on VETSA server

27. Coonara’s Mahara trial
• Pre-training interviews conducted includes ICT
skill evaluation
• RPL students with ICT skills offered to partake
in trial
• 6 out of 16 students elected to participate in
Mahara trial
• 10 students elected to complete RPL by paper
based method

28. How did we do it?
• Developed a RPL website to assist all students
• Students participated in 4 x 2 hour weekly
training sessions on Mahara prior to Diploma
course commencement
• 2 trainers conducted Mahara sessions –
industry trainer, and ICT/Mahara trainer
• During Mahara training introduced to RPL
website for supporting information and
documentation

29. Conclusion
• Explain RPL at start
• 4 x 2 hour session of RPL training supports
students – but is it cost effective?
• Level of ICT skills varies greatly regardless of
course of study
• Intimidation by ICT very real
• Our aim is to integrate ePortfolios into
Coonara across accredited delivery