There's much going for portfolios but there are some pretty thorny issues still to be solved. At the heart of these is the purpose and ownership of portfolios. Put simply are they an institutional application for assessment or s student owned utility (or set of tools) for recording and reflecting on learning.

I've been doing a little research on e-portfolios and have been trying to redefine both processes involved in developing an e-portfolio and the meaning of the terminology we employ. This definition of validation owes much to Scott Wilson's presentation on e-portfolios. I'd be interested in feedback

What does the validation of non-formal learning mean? Put quite simply it is the processes of proving ? to oneself and to others ? that the learning ? including abilities and competences identified and recorded. There may be different ways of doing this. One is through evidencing ? providing evidence that one really does have the competences claimed. This can be done through providing artifacts ? things that the leaner has made. If I claimed to be able to programme in Java (which I cannot!), I might provide examples of that Java code. If I claimed I was able to make furniture I might include photographs of the finished product (and work in progress), a written account of how I did it (or even a video) and details of where my furniture can be seen.

On the other hand, I might want to validate my claim that I successfully undertook work experience in Siemens as a member of a team programming in Java. To validate such a claim I would need verification ? i.e. someone else (presumably from Siemens) saying yes this is true and he was good.
Validation can be an valuable tool for reflection. It forces learners to think about whether they really do have the abilities and competences they are reporting and whether they are confident in their abilities. One outcome of the validation process might be the identification of further learning and training needs.

However, validation is NOT the same as assessment. Validation is referenced against the abilities and competences identified by the learner ? not those by an external occupational profile or qualification. Of course the validation process may assist in a later assessment process (although this will be dependent of different assessment systems). Why is this so important? Quite simply there is no single assessment process in Europe. Different countries have very different processes for the assessment of learning and competence. However the validation process is not dependent on education and training systems. It can be used in every country. The evidence gained through the validation process can then be used in a later assessment process ? if learners so wish ? and can be adopted through presentations to suit the needs of different education and training systems.

Last week I was at the European Commission funded ICOVET project meeting in Bucharest. The project aims to develop and implement tools for the recognition and validation of non formal learning for socially disadvantaged young people. The project partners include researchers and practitioners from Germany, Greece, the UK, Romania, Ireland and Spain.

Initially I got involved with the project because I have long been interested in the potential of informal and non formal learning - as a means of knowledge development and as an alternative to what I see as the present 'industrial' model of education and training.

More recently my interest has moved on to how we might use Portfolios - and social software - as a tool for recording and validating learning.

In my presentation at the meeting - which I hope will shortly be available on my Flickr pages (and thanks to Magda from ISE in Romania as a transcription), I presented the different processes which I think are involved in developing a portfolio.

These are:

? recording
? reflecting
? validating
? planning
? presenting
? assessing

For recognising non formal learning the most important activities are recording, reflecting, validating and presenting.

The problem, I said, is that validating has often been confused with assessing. Validation is not the same thing. Validation is the processes of proving ? to oneself and to others ? learning has taken place? including abilities and competences identified and recorded. Validation takes place through evidencing and verification evidence is provided by the learner to attest to their own achievement and may be in different forms and media.

Validation is referenced against the abilities and competences identified by the learner ? not those of an external occupational profile or qualification presenting offers an opportunity to select artifacts from the portfolio to tell a story or make a point. Presentation involves the processes of structuring, visualising, narrating and re-purposing. Presenting is the bridge between validation and assessment but it is only one of the possible purposes of presentation.

I gave a demonstration of the ELGG portfolio software. Several issues emerged from this -and it should be remembered the project partners are not educational technologists.

I was showing the profile function in ELGG and clicked on Scott Wilson's profile as an example (will add the url tomorrow). He had entered playing the guitar as one of his interests. I clicked on guitar as a link and a page came up showing all those members who were interested in playing the guitar. At theta point the practitioners got it! the ability to play the guitar is a vivid example of just that non formal learning which we seek to capture through ICOVET. However if a teacher - or coach - tells young people to record their abilities and experience in playing the guitar it is unlikely that young people will do it. If - on the other hand - they are 'talking' to their peer group about their own interests in the guitar - there is a very good chance we will capture a rich picture of that learning - which can then be used as a basis for discussing validation.

The second issue was the question of ownership and control. ELGG is essentially a personal learning environment and puts learning firmly in the control of the learner - especially through allowing them to specify who - if anyone - they wish to share with - at the level of each individual post. It also allows learners to set up their own groups. Dave Tosh has intimated (hm - can't find a permalink to his entries - there must be one) that in his presentations this has not gone down well. But for the ICOVET partners, the learner control was a key feature. Universities and formal teaching institutions will see such a system as challenging their monopoly and control over learning - and perhaps rightly so. But for socially disadvantaged learners - or for those of us operating outside the system, portfolios based on social software offer the chance for a new form of learning where we are no longer reliant on institutions. Portfolios may also be very useful in an apprenticeship system for bringing together learning from work and from vocational school.

However, we have to recognise that learners will still often want qualifications. Qualifications are a passport to work and to entry to the formal educational system. We will need to work on applications which help learners to build presentations based on their portfolios. As far as I can see ELGG at the moment lacks tools for doing this.

Whilst the practitioners were keen to try out the e-portfolio for recording and verifying non formal learning, some of the researchers at the meeting were less sure. One person wanted us to employ experts to evaluate the software prior to trialling. I talked about this with George Bekiaridis from ERGON KEK in Athens in the bar after the meeting.

George suggested that social software cannot be evaluated in this way. Social software can only be evaluated through in the context of use. This is interesting with regard to another of Dave Tosh's posts where he was concerned that the full functionality of ELGG is not transparent to the new user. I think dave is reflecting comments by educational technologists. The Ed-Techs want to take a piece of software and do a quick tour to see what it can do without using it in a social context. the ELGG functionality is revealed in use and that is how it should be. Hold your nerve, Dave.

We are going to install ELGG on George's server in Athens and have agreed to a series of trial applications in the autumn. First, though, the partners themselves are going to set up their own portfolios. I am worried about how to support teachers and trainers in this work - especially since they are in such dispersed locations. I am not so concerned about supporting the technology - that is pretty straightforward - but in explaining to a wider group about the pedagogic ideas behind the use of portfolios for recording and validating non formal learning.

I spent most of yesterday working on different forms of presentations on non formal learning and e-portfolios - basically at producing 'high quality' e-learing materials in a short time! It was a bit frustrating but hope to have some materials out in the next week. I will mix (longish) slide presentations - which I will post to Flickr together with a series of podcasts and maybe some short videos and a series of short papers. watch this space for more.