Information Architecture for Outcomes-Based Learning: Enabling Large Scale Use of e-Portfolio for Education and Lifelong Learning

Call for Participation
To inquire about participation, please contact us.


The Vision
More and more of documented learning experiences will be available in electronic form as we move into the future. Currently, a relatively small number of leading institutions use documented outcomes to organize a program of study and monitor achievement.  Some of these leading organizations are beginning to use online course management systems (CMSs, LMSs, VLEs) and e-Portfolios to capture results of learning experiences that may enable better understanding of a student’s achievements and therefore better placement into jobs or further study.

The e-Portfolio is also viewed as a potential lifelong repository of documented learning experiences for individuals, potentially changing the form of the traditional “resume.” In the future we will no doubt continue to evolve to better ways to achieve a good fit between employer and job seeker with or without formal e-Portfolios. But, educational institutions and schools that can help their students develop such e-Portfolios will no doubt be providing exceptional service to students, academic advisors, and potential employers.

The Challenges to the Vision
 The most significant challenge to this vision can be summarized in the following problem statement:
“How can we enable institutions, teachers, and students to make the use of e-Portfolios as “easy” and “accepted” and “ubiquitous” as the current predominant practice of grade reports and test scores?”

There is absolutely no doubt, based on experience, that a grant-funded initiative can implement e-Portfolios for a course, program of study, or even across a region.  But such efforts generally have utilized a separate application/repository that requires additional effort for the students and teachers to populate and maintain. Another option has been to use the e-Portfolio applications that are bundled with course management systems. But these applications tend to lock the institution into a system that works well within the context of the specific course management product, but has limited use outside that specific course or program.

Moving to the next era in which it becomes commonplace to see the use of e-Portfolios providing greater payback than the effort put in faces several challenges:

How to Best Address Overcome the Challenges
It takes significant resources and cooperation to address the challenges to achieving the vision. Government-funded initiatives tend to focus on one specific identified need and will tend not to address this big picture scenario. Most suppliers, while interested, have limited resources and thus must focus their activity on a piece of the solution that results in clear additional opportunity for their products.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC) intends to make progress toward the vision set out above using a phased set of activities led by education institutions, departments, or programs that are strongly committed to outcomes-based learning as one of the key distinctive features in defining their approach to education. Such organizations are relatively rare but growing around the globe. They are committed to providing superior student learning and career or academic placement through program design that provides transparency to students, potential students, governments, and employers with respect to the qualifications successful students will have met at completion. This creates a standard practice that can form the basis of an e-Portfolio-based approach - a more granular and meaningful level than a set of course names and grades as is predominant today. Such institutions will serve as the motivated experts that can successfully lead this type of effort. In addition, we invite interested suppliers to implement live systems using interoperability standards that can be replicated by other interested parties.

Applicable Interoperability Standards
Development of a major new set of interoperability standards is not expected as part of this activity. That is because the focus will be on applying existing standards. IMS standards to be applied include:

The work will refine existing versions of these standards as needed to achieve testable interoperability between:

Phase One Participation
The outcomes expected from phase one will include:

Participation in phase one of the project requires status as an educational institution, department, or program, a commitment to outcomes-based learning as a distinguishing characteristic, and demonstrated experience of at least three years in using e-Portfolio and course management software to facilitate teaching, learning, and documentation of outcomes.  Interested suppliers are also invited to participate along with their institutional customers that meet the above criteria.
Based on the success of phase one, later phases will conduct additional interoperability testing among a wider set of participants to formalize the revision of the IMS standards as required.

To inquire about participation, please send an email with your organization’s interest and qualifications by contacting us.

You will be contacted by Rob Abel of IMS GLC to discuss the project specifics within 30 days.