1. Practicing what we preach: building an e- portfolio Community of Practice Louise Frith Daniel Clark

2. Kent’s e-portfolio

3. Enabling the use of technology in teaching  “When asked what they would find most helpful to enable them to use technologies more in their teaching, most teachers say 'give me examples, in my subject area' and 'point me to relevant people I can discuss these issues with”. Conole (2010)  From sharing to participating (passive to active) O’Reilly 2005

4. What are the barriers to E- portfolios being taken up more widely in L&T? ISSUESResponses Too many toolsReplaced Pebblepad with MyFolio Time to learn the new technology before using it with students Established a digital retreat Need local examples of useEstablished a Community of Practice for Kent staff Lack of sharing among disciplines & between academics & services Emphasised that it’s for all disciplines and support staff

5. Methodology: Principles of our approach Used Clegg and Bradley’s (2006) 3 approaches to PDP to arrange the case studies:  Professional  Academic  Employability We aimed for our community of practice to be:  User centred  Experiential  Shared  Evolving

6. MyFolio Community of Practice What we did:  Set-up a group in MyFolio for any member of staff using MyFolio  Emphasised that the group is for all staff (academics and services) this reflects how we expect students to use it i.e. to record their academic and other activity  Currently has 33 members and 14 pages which share practice

7. Example page

8. Three elements of a CoP (Wenger,1998) Showcase day Employability strategy Own pages within the group

9. Evaluation of the CoP Interim evaluation has been done via telephone and face to face interviews with staff. From this this information the following recommendations have been written:  continue to record new practice with MyFolio through pages within the MyFolio CoP.  collect and share practice on assessment of e- portfolio work  continue to encourage students to share ‘finished’ pages  hold annual Embedding Employability through E- portfolios events which showcase work and facilitate networking.

10. Questions  What new technology has led you to do things differently in your teaching/interactions with students?  How have you been able to communicate your use of new technology to colleagues?

11. References  Clegg & Bradley (2006)  Conole (2010)  O’Reilly (2005)  Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press.