Narrative for a learner making an application to a higher education institution

NameNarrative for a learner making an application to a higher education institution
Projecte-Portfolio for Lifelong Learning Reference Model
AuthorAlan Paull
Creation date1 June 2006
Last update date 13 September 2006 by Peter Rees Jones
Version Final



Introduction

An e-Portfolio engine
‘On a technical level e-Portfolio is not a service like Assessment or Career Planning. Rather e-Portfolio is an application, the engine which enables the individual learner to join together what they have learned through different services so that they can demonstrate to another institution, an employer or a parent what they have done, how they are succeeding and who they are.’
Peter Rees Jones “Defining an e-Portfolio Engine for Personal Learning Space”

1. This document describes a narrative for a learner making an application to a Higher Education Institution (HEI), using the thin e-Portfolio model exemplifying the approach set in Annex 2 of the e-Portfolio Reference Model Report. It is based upon the thin e-Portfolio model detailed in the interim report of the e-Portfolio Reference Model of April 2006, in particular section 6.2.

2. The narrative sets out how a learner with access to an e-Portfolio engine may handle the search for Higher Education courses and application to an HEI via UCAS. The focus of the narrative is on electronic information system processes to enable the learner to complete structured Personal Statements as part of his or her applications to HEIs. The learner creates Personal Statements in order to match his or her own attributes against the preferred attributes for admission described by a particular HEI for a specific course. The learner can also match formal academic achievements against the course’s academic entry requirements.

3. We recognise that learners seeking admission to higher education can be categorised into many groups with differing needs in the areas of academic support, information, advice and guidance (IAG) and information and communications technology (ICT). Learners can also be grouped by social class, gender and ethnicity, all of which have a significant part to play in Higher Education choice. The narrative uses a specific example of a type of student, not to suggest that the processes are restricted to this group, but to present a realistic scenario. The processes here could be relevant to any learner with access to an e-Portfolio engine.

4. The e-Portfolio engine makes use of e-Portfolio enabled services and e-Portfolio enabled repositories. The e-Portfolio engine empowers the learner and other human actors to use the services, to manipulate the data and create links between data items held in the repositories and to cause the services to interact with each other in useful ways.


Overall narrative: UCAS transition scenario

5. Within the context of an Individual Learning Plan (ILP) negotiated at age 17, when she entered college, Anne has expressed a desire to progress from FE college to Higher Education, probably studying electrical and electronic engineering. She has attended university run master classes in engineering as a taster of Higher Education. She searches for courses, mapping her own academic and non-academic profile against the UCAS Entry Profiles of different courses. Anne discusses these draft Personal Statements and the initial outcomes of her research with her college adviser. She records comments, both formal and informal in her personal learning space on the college e-Portfolio system. Her college tutor writes her a reference, and she applies to her chosen courses at selected HEIs. Final outcomes of her applications result in formative feedback, which enables her to learn from the experience as well as to progress to HE.

6. Environment: Anne has access to advisers and other supporters, as well as electronic resources to help her. The college provides its students with a personal learning space (‘college e-Portfolio system’) that has embedded functionality enabling students to interact with internal assistance (tutors, referees, other students, etc), as well as to access external information systems, including course information services and the UCAS Apply service.

7. Constraints: The learner is familiar with the college e-Portfolio system. Advisers, and her college tutor, are readily to hand to help with formative and summative assessments. Other aspects of social context are not discussed further.

8. Processes not covered: log-in, learner identity verification, non-electronic research of options.

Service Flow Diagram: Application to HE Service Flow


9. The service flow diagram describes the conceptual approach to the narrative, which is an iterative progression from an initial decision by the learner to move on to HE towards making a formal application via UCAS. While the action sequence here may suggest a traditional rational decision-making process, we recognise that the real processes may be messy and strongly influenced by elements not formally recorded here. The key to the service flow is to enable the learner to keep control over the processes (however messy) by enabling advice, reflections and decisions to be recorded electronically for formative assessment, a summative assessment at application stage and for further formative assessment as and when the learner's e-portfolio artifacts are transferred to the Higher Education domain.

UML overview
     Use Case diagram: Overview of relevant e-Portfolio use cases

Scenario 1: Sources the Course Entry Profiles

Scenario description

10. Anne searches for appropriate courses using publicly available websites or search facilities accessible from within the college e-Portfolio system. Anne uses the college e-Portfolio system on-site at college and over the Internet from home. She might also choose to use it at an Internet café.

11. The college e-Portfolio system permits her to short list courses in a section of her personalised web space labelled ‘Applications to HE and Employment’. This is a local e-Portfolio enabled storage area.

12. As part of her short listing process, she wishes to carry out some trial applications to courses that meet her aspirations. She logs into the college e-Portfolio system and selects a course from her short list. The college e-Portfolio system accesses a course information system, which provides relevant information about the course and university. She also consults the UCAS website to obtain the UCAS Entry Profile for the course, which is accessed via a Personal Statement template drawn from the college e-Portfolio system. Anne views the information about the short listed course on screen.

13. Anne could have registered on the UCAS website at this time as a precursor to making a formal application through the UCAS Apply service. She decides to do that at another time.

14. For convenience Anne creates a new sub-section of the ‘Applications to HE and Employment’ section of her e-Portfolio and labels it ‘Applications to Engineering courses'. This sub-section holds her short list.

UML model references
     Use Case Diagram: Overview of Personal Statement Use Cases     Class diagram: Overview of Personal Statement Services
Create a Personal Statement
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Get Course Information
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Populate a Personal Statement
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Search for Courses
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Short List Courses
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Service Definition

15. Part of Anne's activity was to obtain UCAS Entry Profiles. The mechanism whereby the e-Portfolio engine obtains UCAS Entry Profile has been further described in a Service Definition document. As this service could be provided by a Web Service, we have included a generic WSDL file for it.
     Service Definition: Get Entry Profile     WSDL file: Get Entry Profile

Scenario 2: Completes Personal Statements

Scenario description

16. Anne selects a course from her short list of courses in the ‘Applications for Engineering' section of her e-Portfolio and calls up a Personal Statement template from the college e-Portfolio system, which can be populated either automatically or by her own requests with the following data:

17. The template permits her to add her own commentary against the Entry Profile items. Each Personal Statement item can be marked as private to the student or for submission as part of the personal statement. Items for publication in the Personal Statement have stated word limits. Each Personal Statement item can optionally have links to other related items.

18. Anne adds two links from her statement that she attended master classes in Engineering at her local university, one to the part of the university website detailing the master classes, and one to a statement about the Electronic Engineering module in her Engineering A level course. She records a private note to herself to re-consider the wording of this section in the context of the applications to electrical as opposed to electronic engineering courses.

19. Anne reviews and revises the Personal Statement and saves it in the ‘Applications to Engineering' sub-section of her personalised web space. She follows this same process for 3 other courses in Electronic Engineering and for 2 courses in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the latter she saves in a new short list within a new e-Portfolio sub-section which she calls ‘Applications to Electrical and Electronic Engineering'.

20. She is happy with her work on the Personal Statements so far, but would like to discuss them with her tutor (and others) before finalising her plans.
     Sample of Anne's comments against the University of Birmingham's MEng Electronic Engineering degree entry profile.
UML model references
     Use Case Diagram: Overview of Personal Statement Use Cases     Class diagram: Overview of Personal Statement Services
Edit a Personal Statement
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Populate a Personal Statement
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Service Definition

21. Part of Anne's activity was also to obtain previously held e-Portfolio Items to match the returned Entry Profile items. The mechanism whereby the e-Portfolio engine fetches the e-Portfolio Items has been further described in a Service Definition document alongside the one for the UCAS Entry Profiles. This service is a generic one, because the data could be held locally in an "e-Portfolio computer system" or remotely in a separate e-Portfolio enabled repository. As this service could be provided by a Web Service, we have again included a generic WSDL file for it.
     Service Definition: Get e-Portfolio Items     WSDL file: Get e-Portfolio Items

Scenario 3: Authentication of Personal Statement items

Scenario description

22. Anne calls up her Personal Statements and indicates items that can be read by her college tutor and referee or other adviser. She can indicate either individual items or whole Personal Statements and will choose specific individuals who will have access rights. The purpose of this action is to enable advisers, including her head of year group who will write the reference for her UCAS application, to review her statements. The advisers are able to add their comments to her e-Portfolio, so that she can read them, record her own reflections and refine her statements.

23. This action also enables the referee to confirm via a reference that the information given in Anne's application is accurate.

24. In this narrative the generic term 'Adviser' is used to mean any authorised individual, including a tutor or other member of staff who can be given access to a learner's e-Portfolio for review purposes. In Anne's case she receives advise from her tutor, her head of year group and her subject teachers. She grants access to the relevant parts of her applications to her subject teachers, but she gives access to all her Personal Statements to her tutor and head of year group.

UML model references

Assign Access Rights
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification     Class diagram: Assign Access Rights

Scenario 4: Adds a reference

Scenario description

25. When Anne has finished her work on the Personal Statements and discussed some of the items with her tutor, she gives permission within her e-Portfolio for her academic referee at college (the head of her year group) to write a reference. The college has a policy that academic references can be drafted at any point during the autumn and winter terms, and for convenience students are asked to permit the creation of a link to the draft reference by mid November. Anne has given her tutor and her academic referee access to the Personal Statement items (see Scenario 3), which they use to inform the reference.

26. Within the reference the academic referee (advised by Anne’s tutor) comments on the major sections of the Personal Statements, providing links from his reference into the appropriate Personal Statement items. He confirms that Anne has shown her commitment to HE by attending Engineering master classes at the local university. He includes a hyperlink in the reference to the relevant Personal Statement item and suggests that Anne includes a hyperlink to the master class page on the university's website in her comment.

27. Anne adds this link as a final refinement. When she has finished her formal application, she asks her tutor to review it prior to completion of the reference and formal submission. Her tutor adds a further link from the reference to the part of Anne’s e-Portfolio that lists her academic achievements.

28. Adviser access to Anne's e-Portfolio is read only, although the adviser will be able to comment on Anne's Personal Statement items by linking his or her comments to the items. The adviser retains the ability to amend comments he or she has authored.

UML model references

Add a reference
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
29. This class diagram describes a generic 'add a comment' action by an adviser. The 'add a reference' activity is a special case of 'add a comment'.
     Class diagram: Add Comment or Reference

Scenario 5: Submits an application via UCAS

Scenario description

30. When Anne is ready to submit a formal application via UCAS, she logs into the college e-Portfolio system and obtains a UCAS ID via the UCAS website. Her contact details are passed from her e-Portfolio to UCAS automatically as part of this process, and she receives a UCAS username and password, which will enable her to track the progress of her application via the UCAS website from within the college e-Portfolio system, as well as a unique UCAS Personal ID, which identifies her throughout all her use of UCAS services.

31. A UCAS Apply template held within the college e-Portfolio system is populated automatically with all the relevant information about Anne, including the Personal Statements. Anne now reviews how her UCAS application will look on-screen. She approves it for transmission to UCAS. As the college participates in UCAS’ college-based version of the UCAS Apply service, her application will be reviewed and approved by a designated adviser (in this case, her academic referee). If any problems are discovered (e.g. parts of the application incomplete or inaccurate), it will be referred back to Anne for amendment.

UML model references

Submit application to UCAS
     Use Case Diagram     Use Case Specification
Class diagram
     Class diagram: Submit an application via UCAS

Glossary
TermDefinition
AdviserAny member of staff, including a tutor or other individual who can be given access to a learner's e-Portfolio for review purposes.AssertionA statement made by the learner about his or her achievements, aspirations or reflectionse-Portfolio management systemUsed in this UML to describe any type of personalised web space for the learner that has the described type of interoperability functionality.e-Portfolio-enabledA service (for instance a storage service or Web Service) that can be linked to an e-Portfolio computer system to do useful things.College e-Portfolio systemShort hand for any college e-Portfolio management system.Course Entry ProfileSee Entry Profile (qv)Entry ProfileA collection of attributes of a course set by admissions staff that describes the preferred personal characteristics to be held by students on the course.Higher Education Institution (HEI)University or college offering higher education coursesLearnerA student or potential student, who owns the e-Portfolio information. The main actor in the narrative.Personal StatementA series of assertions about him or herself made by a learner. Usually used as part of a presentation e-portfolio.Presentation e-PortfolioA set of assertions and / or evidence created by a learner from his or her e-Portfolio for summative assessment or review by another party.TutorAn adviser responsible for creating a reference for the learner.