This year, I talked with a number of people about Elgg, and some of my ideas about introducing a social component to the traditional e-portfolio. I found some of the reactions rather interesting, and thought that I'd put them below. (Hey, reflection on portfolios -- novel thought!)
First, I found it difficult to get the central idea of an informal, socially-based, and RSS-centric portfolio software across. Eventually, I realized that the key terms for non-technical people were 'social' and 'student-controlled.' People there generally understood portfolios, harping on the change from one-to-a-couple-of-professors to many-to-many got the central idea of Elgg across fairly rapidly.
Second, people almost always came back asking about two features. The first was security. I didn't realize how important the granular level of security built into Elgg was until about the third person asked me if students could control different levels of access. Second, they were concerned about reflection on the various pieces and parts. One developer in particular told me that she'd be happy with elgg as a portfolio if it allowed reflection and assessment activities.
Third, I don't think that the notion of blogs has quite worked its way into this group of people. Over the entire conference, I did not see even one presentation on using blogs. I got no reaction when talking about how students' blogs were very reflective on the various aspects of their portfolios. People at this conference are very interested in teaching & learning and are not techies, but still, I was rather surprised.
Fourth, people really don't get social software. Depending mainly on how old the person I talked to was, they had differing levels of reaction against online communities. Several people saw them as an inferior replacement for 'real' communities. I mentioned myspace a couple of times (out of desperation trying to explain the elgg concepts) -- big mistake. People immediatley 'got' it, but lost all enthusiasm for the topic as an 'academic' topic.
I was able to talk with John Zubizarreta, who recently wrote a book on portfolios (just read the preface), for about 45 minutes. For the record, he's a really great guy, very likable and willing to talk with a grad student for a while without growing too impatient... :-) What was interesting about talking with John was learning some of the issues that have not been researched. For example, he said that we really don't know how the 'e' in e-portfolio changes the nature of a portfolio. At the moment, digital portfolios are remarkably similar to paper ones. Just as e-mail is very different from mail, I still think that being digital changes the way things should be structured. He thought it was an interesting point. He was also very open to the idea that 'social' (one of his 3 core parts of a portfolio) could include other students and not just the professor or a mentor.
In any case, it was an interesting conference that really helped me develop the 30second version of Elgg & my research in it. Oh, and a lot of professors quickly 'got' the idea that my writing add-in would help drive adoption as professors require students to submit their papers & projects online :-)
My recent school push & finally calming down. I got a bit overwhelmed wtih all of the material due, and ended up taking several vacation days to get it all put together. I'll start up again on the add-in code (push to Alpha!) probably tomorrow. I hesitate doing too much before the next version is up, but I want to keep moving ahead anyway...
Nathan
Keywords: portfolio wiki
