Does your LMS talk to your ePortfolio?
Hello all (and Happy Easter), Seven month ago I had some interesting discussions about the differences and interdependcies between a Learning Management System like Moodle and an ePortfolio. Now we are a step closer to the possibility of giving students their own space and simply pull parts of their ePortfolios (eg Mahara) into Moodle for marking and feedback. If you had already some experience with putting together a course in Moodle you will appreciate the familiarity of configuring an ePortfolio (Mahara) assignment. This has also a big impact on managing ‘Assessment ePortfolios’, ie there is no need to manage things twice, i.e. only one list of students, one way of accessing assignment submissions and one place where to calculate final grades. If this sounds interesting you may have a look at mark’s screencast http://www.markdrechsler.com/?p=144
And there is good news for the PP ePortfolio as well – students can now send their postings, blog entries or assignments directly from Moodle to PP. And if you haven’t seen it yet – Shane made a screencast for this: http://www.pebblepad.com.au/moodle.block.html
Bottom line, in the future we need two way communication between Moodle and the ePortfolio. Teachers want to use only one system for grading and managing their classes and students should only have to type a blog entry once and be able to re-use it in their ePortfolios. So far Mahara does the first thing and PP the latter … Of course, Moodle 2.0 will change all this but then, it’s not like I will get my hands on Moodle 2.0 in a ‘near’ future 
The next question is how does the student use their eportfolio and learning artefacts post study? An institute may choose to offer an eportfolio during study but who will host it when they leave? How can they use it in gaining employment? In life long learning?
A conversation that needs to take place with leaders in education institutes?
Some eportfolio systems (like Mahara) allow students to export in a nice transportable useable format, but who will host them? It needs to be easy for students to use too.
As a side note, you can try “Moodle 2.0 dev” now to see how it is coming along.
PebblePad offer free Alumni accounts for 12months upon graduation and students can then purchase personal licences after that.
Of course, institutions could think about extending access to LMS & eP’s as part of their alumni activities and therefore tie their students to the institution in greater way.