2016 ePortfolio Forum Day 2: Digital footprints as ePortfolios and open badges

For me day two reinforced the message that students are choosing to use a range of technologies beyond those provided by their educational institution to support their learning.

In general students are not bringing social (Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram) content into institutional ePortfolios but they are taking learning artefacts and reflections from institutions (and work placements) into personal social technologies.

• What are the privacy implications of this blurring of the personal and institutional?
• What are the copyright and IP implications?
• What are the learning, teaching and assessment benefits and risks?

Some courses in higher educational institutions (medicine, health, education) raise awareness of privacy issues, scaffold student understanding and model best practice. But what about students in other courses who are capturing their learning in personal social technologies? Are the risks lower in other courses?

A student's digital footprint or online presence could be seen as a collection of learning and social artefacts - an (unintended?) 'ePortfolio'. These collections can be made visible through search engines.

Institutional ePortfolios provide a controlled environment and risk mitigated processes to construct an online folio. Are students aware of the potential benefits and risks of the personal (and often unplanned) 'ePortfolio' that arises when someone puts their name into a search engine?

Increasing numbers of students are engaged in both formal and informal learning. Can online open badges provide a way for students to raise the status of their informal learning in the eyes of potential employers and educational institutions?

Do open badges provide a way for students to bridge formal and informal learning across their chosen social technologies and into institutional ePortfolios?

Should the My Education ePortfolio facilitate the presentation of open badge backpacks?

How do we prepare students in years 7-12 to safely and effectively navigate institutional and personal ePortfolios?

A Strategic Online Presence for Secondary Students

Students may have an online presence distributed over a number of services and created over a number of years. Some may no longer be in use - even forgotten. These present a risk to identity and reputation management.

A strategic approach is needed that will help create a purposeful and professional online identity and reputation.

Students need a safe and secure online presence that they can control and which will populate web searches with positive content.

As seen in the previous two posts students seeking jobs, scholarships and more... also require an ePortfolio, a LinkedIn profile, an online resume and compelling evidence that showcases their knowledge, skills and interests.

An eportfolio could be used as a space to showcase evidence via selected social media as well as displaying a resume and other more formal evidence.

Two or three social media services such as YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn could be selected and managed to host compelling evidence for a job application. These could be linked or embedded inside an eportfolio.

A resume, assessment results and certificates/prizes could also be uploaded to the eportfolio.

The eportfolio owner could then generate a private URL which would be sent to a potential employer.

In this way a student could begin to strategically manage their online presence and reputation.

However, while a student can manage eportfolio access care needs to be exercised with the selected social media services. Potential risks and strategies to deal with these will be examined in the next post.