Terms of Reference

JISC commissioned AlphaPlus to carry out a study exploring the distributed e-portfolio model, through the exploration of a hypothetical scenario. The study was intended to inform future JISC work within in the area of repositories and e-portfolios.  The main deliverable of the study is a final report with recommendations, intended for the JISC Executive. The final report can be downloaded from here.

Scenario

The scenario is of an academic working at a UK Higher Education institution. She has many intellectual outputs relating to her lifelong learning achievements that she has collected so far during her professional life. These outputs include her qualifications, University final year dissertation, a Masters thesis, a PhD thesis, digital photographs evidencing her site visits to archaeological digs on Flickr, her blog of events She's been to, some research papers held in repositories and online journals, and some learning materials developed for teaching. These outputs are sitting in a number of different places, but can be drawn upon (imported or dynamically drawn down) into her e-portfolio (system or suite of tools) where She is able to provide views of these outputs for different purposes and audiences.

She is looking to apply for a new job in a larger department in a different institution. She wants to prepare her application through offering a presentation of her achievements through her e-portfolio, in the form of a web-based presentation based around the required skills for the job presenting a range of her work. She also asks her Head of School and the local Museum curator to comment on a range of her achievements which are included in the presentation, and allows them access with permissions to annotate the results. She evidences the competencies required for the new job by pointing to a range of outputs and the comments of her colleagues. She is then able to give permission for the recruiting institution to access the presentation and view her achievements matched to the skills required for the post.

Scope of Work

• To provide further detail to this scenario, exploring the range of human and system interactions involved, and modelling the key processes.
• To conduct baseline work to establish where the intellectual outputs may be stored at the moment (e.g. a national qualifications repository, institutional student record system, institutional repositories, Jorum, personal hard drive, institutional e-portfolio system, virtual learning environment, social networking sites?
• To investigate what would need to be in place for the scenario to be supported and realised (including the technical, organisational/policy, cultural, and legal issues). These will include issues of security, privacy, authentication, and authorisation:
  • Allowing third parties (who may not be within the institution) access to a view of an individuals resources which are sitting in a number of places with various different access requirements;
  • Allowing third parties (who may not be within the institution) to annotate and comment on an individuals resources;
  • Linking together the information held in diverse stores, perhaps with some form of unique identifier that is supported across all of those stores;
  • Ensuring the privacy of the individual by only allowing the release of information that is appropriate to this particular task.
• As the work progresses, the successful contractor will need iteratively to review the feasibility and desirability of the outlined scenario, by reference to domain experts and key stakeholders, flagging up any issues to the JISC programme manager. If, once the scenario is more fully described, it is seen to be feasible and desirable, the study should provide a roadmap of delivery in terms of what needs to happen and when in order to reach the end goal. If not, the study should provide an outline of the alternatives with accompanying roadmaps for delivery.

The original Invitation to Tender is attached to this page.