An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web (also called Webfolio). Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks.

E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user’s abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time.

An e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.

What I’ve learned is that more and more the changes of software particularly browser technology can make these obsolete over time. It actually becomes easier to keep a checklist of change management. I have four samples up at any given time – some have been up since 2003.

Interesting note: I met a new neighbor last weekend who needs a Federal contract fulfilled with a relevant accounting training I touched on seven years ago.

Flash and PDF seem to be the containers of choice. They’re always displayable regardless of which browsing technology is used – they all support the industry standard.

Charles Jeter’s ePortfolio links:

Tutorial – Completing Government Cost Accounting System Employee Timesheets (Adobe / Macromedia / Captivate / eHelp RoboDemo 2003)

Help File – Codo Software’s Laser Squad:Nemesis Tactics Guide (RoboHelp X5 FlashHelp, 2002 – 2003)

Rapid eLearning – Collaborative Blogging Overview (Articulate Studio 2009 with elements designed using GlobFX Swiff Chart Pro and Adobe Captivate, 2008)

Effective Curriculum Development – Securing Our eCity (multiple technology for Instructor Led Training, 2009 – 2010, shows results)

Corporate Blogwriting – Blogging in April on the ESET Threatblog (Microsoft Windows Live Writer / WordPress, 2010)

Australia’s Learning Object Debate

Are flash based Learning Objects dead?  They sure are expensive – since 2001 the Teaching & Learning Federation (TLF) has used “AUD$123 million ….. divided by 6300 curriculum items.

That’s close to AUD$20,000 for each single (eg, Flash) TLF curriculum item,” observed Stephen Loosley

One of the comments had this to say in defense of the cost:

Using a purely economic argument in this discussion is flawed from the start because the real cost of the digital content produced by The Learning Federation is shared by the 3 million plus school children across Australia (using 2007 census data).

A $20,000 Learning Object if only ever used only once by one third of this population equates to a one-off cost of less than 2 cents per student. The reality is that the best of these objects will have a much greater rate of use and for some a longer shelf-life.

Sales of tools such as Adobe Captivate / eHelp RoboDemo brought the cost down for learning objects. Before that it was Flash programming for hours and hours. My question is one of usage. How would anyone know what the value of the content is if they can’t chart the usage statistics properly?

Sounds like a client for Articulate Online or some other LMS. What a case study. Actually, this might be a good time for the administrators to release some usage data justifying the cost of these presentations / learning objects.

It’s been a while. Kicking off today with the impact of Web 2.0 on investigative reporting.

Web 2.0 Online Collaborative Takedown: Beijing’s Gymnasts

It seems that the Chinese Olympic gymnast age issue has some new online forensic evidence that points irrefutably to the Streisand effect taking place to rewrite history within the Chinese Gymnastics statistics.

Mike Walker broke the story about He Kexin while operating under the pseudonym Stryde Hax and had this to say:

This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet.

Will this stand?

Apparently not when half the literate world researches and screen prints the cached stats…

News agencies AP and FoxNews were quick to verify the source and interview Mike Walker.

Scriptorium Launches Content-Rich Wiki

Sarah O’Keefe from Scriptorium / Palimpsest did several interesting and enlightened things. First, she gave away about thirty copies of her very cool book which I have recommended for some time. Then she commenced to launch their wiki, with a tremendous amount of content available for research, comments, and modification.

Today, we are launching wiki.scriptorium.com. Our new wiki currently includes the training content from our FM 101 (unstructured/accelerated introduction) and FM 201 (structured/introduction to authoring).

We will also add the content of our other three FrameMaker workbooks as soon as possible. Our workbook content is for FrameMaker version 7, which means that about 90 percent of it is accurate for version 8.

Articulate: Working On Releases | Revising Content

As I find the time this busy week I’ve been testing out the Articulate Online software. It appears to be a good SaaS for LMS tracking without the overhead cost, similar to the model MadCap Software has taken with their Feedback Service.

I’ll write a review later after my evaluation. As it stands, Articulate Online’s a KISS type of tool and very intuitive. I like the graphics and intuitive UX / workflow.

Cross-functional Dynamic Duo: Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers

One of Articulate’s contributors Tom Kuhlmann asks the question Is Google Making Our E-Learning Stupid?

For me, this article touches on the key requirement for revising old content to make it more relevant with the changes in reading habits we have. This is something that all of us Technical Communicators really needs to do but just can’t seem to find the time, or the budget approval in time.

This just in… Authoring Tools Still Draw Blood

In fact, just this week Bill Swallow and Tom Johnson had a key debate regarding tool usage, focusing on time savings from tools versus time spent on content. From Tom’s post:

The latest poll, “Which Authoring Tool Is Best for You?” has received nearly 600 votes from people around the world, and was discussed at length on the HATT listserv. In all this discussion, I’ve realized one thing: technical writers are passionate about the tools they use.

Bill answers within the comments and on the HATT list.

… And Back To The Rapid eLearning Dynamic Duo

My opinion is that Tom Kuhlmann has touched on one of the key reasons content needs to have a shelf life; if users are no longer understanding the dry, PDF print-based format, it’s going to cost the corporation or blended learning teams more time and money.

Therefore it seems that both the Technical Writing departments and the Online Training departments would benefit from more cross-functional workflow. A well-supported wiki or an online tool like MadCap’s Feedback Service would allow feedback at any time for changes that Instructional Designers might like to see. Of course this would be best behind the firewall and content notes safely tucked away for reasonable update cycles.

I avoid saying add team meetings for a reason; I hate them and they suck up everyone’s time. If you are having a cross-functional Dynamic Duo meeting, chief among the first topics should be updating the styles for a better flow.

Going at it the other way, I’m sure the online help files would benefit from having updated tutorials and case studies hyperlinked into them. Additionally, blog content might benefit from dissection of a case study for team-based discussion, distance learning, etc.

Articulate’s Rapid eLearning Tom Kuhlmann states:

The main point is that just because you do a course online, doesn’t mean you can’t blend the course content with offline activities.

MadCap’s Mimic 2.0 – Silverlight

MadCap released Mimic 2.0 a few months ago. Among other modifications Mimic 2.0 now allows both Flash and Silverlight output. I’ve covered Silverlight previously in this blog as an emerging technology. Even with few external feature updates I think introducing Silverlight is a strong first step for MadCap into the eLearning / LMS space. However I’m still waiting for the Mimic Product Manager’s blog…

DITA

Check out Anne Gentle’s Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) reading list. Great information about structured writing and questions about implementation of DITA.

And Finally… I’d Rather Be Writing – Or Maybe Not!

Tom Johnson heads for the hills for a bit of peace and quiet amidst the musing on the Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

The more you blog, the more people you attract through Google. The more search-engine-optimized your posts are, the more people find you. The more tweets you send, the more people follow you. The more social networks you join, the more people add themselves to your page. The better posts you write, the more people subscribe to your RSS feed.

The more content you generate – in whatever form and media – the more trackbacks and links people generate about you. The more you produce, the more emails and questions you get. You become like a content cloud – attracting Google searches.

Once again Tom’s analysis nails the issue precisely.

His post about his coworker mirrors my feelings regarding Twitter and why I’ve stayed away from Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, and YouTube. I’m a reluctant technophobe when it comes to my own transparency online.

But the up side is so rewarding. Again, from Tom’s post Too Connected – Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

Having a public space to write and publish my thoughts — where people actually read what I write and respond with comments or email or trackbacks — it’s motivating. My words no longer live solely in Word documents on an old hard drive, intended to be published in an obscure literary journal after months of slush pile dormancy.

My writing freely propagates around the Internet.

It freely connects with others.

Finding balance is one of those struggles that we all have in life. As you can tell from my blog, my postings are sporadic. That’s only one of the struggles I have.