E-portfolioS

We are strongly committed to electronic portfolios. The traditional ring binder stuffed with paper can all too easily be left at home or lost! It also involves hours of tedious cross referencing and can be a major challenge to some learners who, while excellent at their jobs, may not always find it easy to produce written evidence.

E-portfolios can contain a wide range of types of evidence, including video or voice recordings. They can be accessed securely by the learner, the assessor or verifier and the employer, anywhere there is web access - which can dramatically reduce the time needed to complete a qualification. They make it easy for us to monitor progress and to spot any problems as they arise. Most of all, e-portfolios are easy and fun for learners to use, and help to develop their IT skills.

People and Business has teamed up with OneFile, a leading e-portfolio software product which is endorsed by City & Guilds. OneFile takes the assessment process as a workflow and breaks it down into tasks that need to be performed by learners, assessors and verifiers. Assessments are automatically cross-referenced against the standards to which a learner is studying.

OneFile's greatest strength is in its simplicity and ease of use. According to the Times Educational Supplement, a pilot study in 2006 by the Learning and Skills Council found that e-portfolios led to a sharp increase in student staying-on and achievement rates. Trainees in the trials took just seven months, instead of 18 to 24 months, to complete their courses. One assessor was quoted as saying: “If you ask for a written testimony from a manager, you could be waiting till Christmas. Put a digital recorder under a manager's nose and say 'Can you explain what Madge did in her practice last week?' they can do it in five minutes."

Where a learner has difficulty in adapting to e-portfolios, or where internet access is a major problem, we will still work with traditional paper based methods. However, in our experience, learners not only enjoy working electronically but appreciate the benefits of rapid achievement.