muraPOI: August 8, 2012
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Who Gets the Credit?: Paul Finn writes about prior learning assessment. As “free” courses from the likes of Udacity, Coursera and even edX take off, I wonder if personal e-portfolios might finally take off. I’ve always thought they were an interesting idea, I just couldn’t ever figure out how to implmenet them at scale, in a meaningful way to separate out the hype of them, what 5, 10 years ago? Perhaps with these courses, and the moves by some colleges and universities, they’ll finally take off. (Note: The article isn’t really about e-portfolios, but that’s what I thought of after having read the article.
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Critical friendship pointer: Simon Grant writes:
People tend to reflect only in their own way in their own time, and this is not necessarily helpful for their personal development. It is not easy for practitioners to persuade people to use e-portfolio tools to reflect in a fruitful way. And when it comes to putting together a presentation of one’s abilities and qualities using an e-portfolio tool, the result is therefore not always realistic.
This ties in nicely to the article on credit for prior learning, and argues for thinking differently about gathering this evidence (or perhaps reinforcing the role of the evaluators of prior learning). But this also makes me wonder if I should ask folks what they think are my biggest accomplishments and suggestions for work and what to do…
(via JISC Newsletter, August 2012)
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The Online Pecking Order: And this article includes what I think is lunacy about the costs colleges and universities are charging to award credit for prior learning. (Although my opinion probably has something to do with my deep belief in Open Education.) Challenge a course and prove you’ve mastered the materials, but if you do, you still have to pay us as if you took the course. Um, I totally agree with supporting the cost of reviewing my prior learning to see if it meets the course requirements (I’m not yet challenging the concept of courses themselves mind you), but that’s just crazy to have to pay as if having took the course. That really defeats a lot of the purpose for many students. The world changed last year (with the massive AI course), colleges will need to catch up.