VMAP- Visual Mapping of
Portfolios
John Phelps
Goldsmiths, University of London
Project Team
Goldsmiths, Universtiy of London
John Phelps
Martin Wellard
OXILP
Sean Keogh
Liz Polding
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Rationale
• Visual Mapping of Portfolios (V-MAP), builds upon the
need to provide fair and equitable opportunities for
learning to all in the support of lifelong learning, and sets
out to build a set of tools that provides an innovative
flexible and accessible approach to the creation and
sharing of e-Portfolios.
• We aim to develop a visual mapping tool that will:
– Enable the learner to interact with a pre-defined institutional
template for preparing e-Portfolios in a format that is most
accessible to the learner;
– Enable the learner to plan, construct and update an e-Portfolio
through the use of a visual mapping interface, on their own
personal desktop;
– Enable the learner to share, publish and disseminate an
e-Portfolio through the use of a visual mapping interface, to their
institutional system.
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Person level functions
• Presentation Portfolio tool in visual form
– Dyslexics (and others!!) like presenting and
using information in a concept map type
approach
– The purpose of the project is to develop a
portfolio publishing tool that enables portfolios
to be compiled and presented in a non-linear
format
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Use Cases
•
Student uses V-MAP tool to
complete an e-Portfolio for an
assessment
•
Student on Postgraduate Level
Programme wishes to
demonstrate competency in
particular professional skills
Actors: Students, Academic Tutor
– Narrative: Nadia is a dyslexic
student on the first year of her
Programme in the Department of
Sociology. Students are required
to complete their e-Portfolios to
demonstrate their progress
throughout the year in developing
their key-skills as defined by the
department. The students share
their portfolios with their tutors and
are encouraged to share aspects
of their portfolios in a published
format with other students
Actors : Students, Academic Tutor,
Professional Body
– Narrative: Ajay is a mature
student on a Postgraduate
Course. In order to get associate
membership of a professional
institution he has to demonstrate
competencies in skills defined by
the professional institution, and
also wants to use the portfolio
developed to demonstrate to
prospective employers his range
of skills
Plus cases from IMS ePortfolio specification
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Technical Stuff
• VMAP is
– Stand alone tool or embedded JAVA Applet, written using J2SE
• Sun JAVA J2SE 1.4.2 <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/index.html>
• XML 1.0 Third Edition - <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml20040204/>
– Based upon FreeMind Software
• Demonstration of integration with institutional systems
– Integrating with moodle
– Connected through API based upon SOAP
• SOAP 1.2- <http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-soap12-part120030624/>
– API released under appropriate GPL
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