eportfolio Requirements Request

Transcription

1 eportfolio Requirements Request Background An IMS Global Learning Consortium Special Interest Group (SIG) is addressing eportfolio interoperability. The SIG is seeking input from the e-learning community to identify and prioritize requirements. It is expected that the SIG will produce a formal Scope of Work by the end of August Subsequent specification development would likely be completed in early To ensure full consideration, your contributions should be sent by 24 July The SIG will continue to accept submissions until 14 August Details and examples are provided below. You are encouraged to distribute this request to other interested parties. IMS and the SIG participants are keen to encourage your participation in this requirements gathering process, both so that your organization is aware of this open specification effort and, so that as a result of this wider consultation, greater interoperability can be achieved with less proprietary extensions to the specification(s). Where to Send your Responses and Questions Use either of these publicly accessible methods. - Web - usecase@imsglobal.org or Use Case and Priorities Forum at IMS Contributing Members may also use the IMS Members Site SIG and forums to post requirements. Information submitted to IMS may be made available to the public. Please indicate an alternative preference, if applicable. See the Use Case Instructions below for more details. IMS Global Learning Consortium, founded in 1997, is an international, non-profit, membersupported consortium that develops open specifications for e-learning. Its specifications are accessible to everyone at no charge and require no licensing fees to implement.

2 eportfolio Requirements Request The IMS eportfolio SIG is interested in receiving requirements that describe the range of eportfolio practices in use currently, planned, or envisioned for the future. An eportfolio is here defined as: what is produced when persons collect, select, reflectively interpret, and/or present their own evidence to support their assertions about what they have learned, know, and can or should do. a selection of products of learning, reflections or interpretations on those products, and representations of relationships between and among the products and interpretations. These relationships may need to be verifiable with some third-party authority and be non-revocable. for our purposes, the set of products, interpretations, and relationships presented to a particular audience. Multiple eportfolios may be constructed using the same data within an eportfolio system. We are particularly interested in requirements, which describe: Instances where eportfolios need to be passed or shared between more than one eportfolio application. The interoperation of eportfolio applications with other enterprise e-learning applications, such as CMS/LMSs and ERP systems. Practices that require complex data models, such as where the navigation and visual presentation of the portfolio needs to be highly customizable. We anticipate that many of the interoperability needs for eportfolios can be met using existing specifications. We are also committed to identifying areas that do not comfortably fit within the currently available collection. We plan to use the requirements to develop a set of best practices for combining existing specifications into a standardized application profile for eportfolios. The SIG also will recommend a new specification or set of specifications if the needs not met by existing specifications are significant and sufficiently common across practices. IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. 2

3 Use Case Instructions and Template A Use Case is a description of some activity between a person and a computer system or between two or more systems. Use Cases can be informal, such as simple narrative descriptions, or very formal, such as those used in Software Engineering. IMS employs Use Cases to help capture information about the context, activity and requirements involved in an area of specification development. What follows is guidance on the minimal requirements that IMS requests when you submit a use case. Please do not submit information that would require the payment of licensing fees should the material be incorporated into a specification. Contact Name and (check those that apply) I do NOT wish my use case to be made available outside of the IMS Membership, [ ], otherwise, if it is made public, I would like my address removed [ ] I would like my organization s name and any reference removed [ ]. Organization Name-Index, where index is the number of the use case you are submitting. e.g., IBM-04 Title a brief (short sentence or phrase) title for the use case Related to eportfolios Players - human and machine entities and their roles Assumptions - a description of what, if anything, is assumed to have happened before the activities described in the use case description Description - a narrative description of the use case. Transactions (optional) the transactions and constraints that are derived from the description Exceptions - short description of what error situations need to be protected against and what should happen if they are detected Options short description of any related and optional activities. IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. 3

4 Use Case Examples Darren Cambridge, June 4, 2003 EDUCAUSE-01 Title Moving between post-secondary educational institutions Related to EPortfolios Players Student Advisor eportfolio applications from different vendors installed at two institutions Assumptions The student has collected evidence of learning in one institution s eportfolio system and related it to competencies that are defined similarly at both institutions. Description After completing a degree program, a student enrolls in another program at a new institution. The student creates an eportfolio to use with the advisor at the new institution to determine what courses the student should take. The student creates the eportfolio within the system at the old institution and sends it to the new system at the new institution. The advisor accesses it using the system at the new institution. Transactions 1. In the system at the old institution (system one), the student selects set of competencies to assert. 2. System one locates products related to those competencies. 3. The student instructs system one to send the products, competencies, and relationships (the eportfolio) to system two. 4. System two create a package containing the eportfolio that conforms to a data specification understood by system two. 5. System one encrypts eportfolio. 6. System one authenticates itself with system two. 7. System one sends eportfolio to the system at the new institution (system two) and system two receives it. 8. System two decrypts the eportfolio and stores it. IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. 4

5 9. The student instructs system two to authorize the advisor to view the eportfolio. 10. The advisor instructs system two to search the eportfolio for evidence related to the competencies required for placement at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels within the new degree program. 11. The advisor views the evidence returned by the system and makes a decision about at which level to place the student. Exceptions If system one cannot authenticate itself to system two, an error is generated. If the encryption is not shared between systems, the user may specify that it be transferred unencrypted. IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. 5

6 Darren Cambridge, June 4, 2003 EDUCAUSE-02 Title Applying for a network administration job Related to eportfolio Players Applicant Employer eportfolio application Assumptions Student has collected evidence of learning related to network administration in an eportfolio system. Description 1. A applicant uses an eportfolio system to construct an eportfolio for use in applying for a new job as a network administrator. From the digitally-represented products of learning already collected within the system, the applicant selects a set relevant to what she needs to demonstrate to a prospective employer that she is the best candidate for the job. Some of the products, such as MCSE and A+ certifications and a community college transcript, are verifiable with external authorities. Others are not, such as a library of source code written by the applicant and a video of the applicant training an intern. 2. Optional: The student then composes reflections or interpretations which demonstrate what about the products is evidence that the applicant has the skills or qualities in the description of the job provided by the employer. The student indicates which subset of the selected products to which each reflection refers. The student specifies the order (which may be linear or hypertextual) in which the products and reflections should be viewed, their layout and appearance on the screen when viewed, and the navigational controls available to the reader. The student uploads and places a digital photo on the first screen of the eportfolio and the logo of the college from which she graduated on the transcript page. 3. The student instructs the system to give access to the resulting eportfolio to the employer for one month. The employer views the eportfolio within the system. The employer compares the digital signature attached to the MCSE certification with Microsoft s public digital signature in order to verify that the certification is genuine. At the job interview, the student and the employer view products and reflections from the eportfolio as examples of what the applicant can do. Exceptions If the employer does not have the software to view a product included in the eportfolio in its native format, the system should convert the product into a readable format. IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. 6