EPICC

Aims and rationale

There are currently many different ePortfolio initiatives, in Europe and beyond. It is probably true to say that Europe is lagging behind the US, where ePortfolios have been widely implemented at school and university level. At the same time there are some promising initiatives in Europe. ePortfolios are being used for teacher education in a number of European countries. A professional body, the Royal College of Nursing (UK), provides an ePortfolio to its members for re-certification and continuing professional development, while the Welsh government will offer a type of ePortfolio to its 3 million citizens. This demonstrates the willingness and the ability of some European actors to understand the huge potential of this powerful technology to transform current practice and improve the quality of lifelong learning and continuing professional development – beyond initial and higher education.

It is our view that the activities proposed in this project will allow Europe to become the leader in this field, bringing the coherence, rigour and inclusivity that is currently lacking in the diverse initiatives worldwide.

Key objectives

• A European ePortfolio vision and strategy statement – through the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding by all different stakeholders, to lead future development and practice and make Europe a leader in ePortfolio technology and practice
• A network of professionals and organisations involved in ePortfolio initiatives – a European ePortfolio Consortium to establish the consensus with different ePortfolio stakeholders.
• A Definition of European ePortfolio functional requirements – globally, but also for the different communities, language through the collection of profiles.
• Interoperability standards – insure the interoperability of ePortfolio and ePortfolio-related initiatives to various information systems and services, public, corporate, communities, etc.
• Demonstration platform(s) – to demonstrate how ePortfolio standards can be implemented to provide ePortfolio services, leading to future(s) reference platform(s), Open Source.
• ePortfolio White papers –  addressed to governmental, policy, and adopter groups to help promote the take up of ePortfolio efforts  in education, lifelong learning and social inclusion.

Approach

The project is goal based: provide a framework for interoperability of ePortfolio initiatives. It will explore the issues through a matrix approach, covering all the target groups:

• per sector – such as education, lifelong learning, etc.
• per domain– accreditation of prior learning, assessment, privacy, etc.

EPICC will be analysing current projects, practice, tools and policies in order to produce white papers for implementing portfolio initiatives at the organisation, local, regional or national level. The project will support peer-review of current initiatives.

Through an extensive network of professionals and organisations EPICC will collect ‘profiles’ from diverse communities of users (education, training, corporate sector, etc.) to feed the requirements for technical standards that will lead to a demonstration platform.

EPICC partners represent the whole spectrum of potential portfolio stakeholders, from individuals, to public authorities and cover a large number of European countries. Partnership will be extended through the signature of a MoU.

Expected results

The tangible outcomes of EPICC will be:

• ePortfolio Memorandum of Understanding
• European ePortfolio Consortium
• ePortfolio Interoperability Standards
• Demonstration Platform(s)
• ePortfolio white papers
• EPortfolio web site

The intangible outcomes of EPICC will be:

• A European vision leading policies and practice
• A network of practitioners and organisations
• Greater awareness of policy makers

Partners

• EIfEL
• Stitching IMS GLS- Europe
• CETIS
• European Schoolnet
• Giunti Interactive Labs
• University of Maastricht
• Helsinki University of Technology

Co-ordinating organisation

European Institute for E-Learning

Contact details: Serge Ravet, EIfEL, 1 rue Neuve F-89210 Champlost, serge.ravet@eife-l.org

Project website :

www.epiccproject.info

Disclaimer

EPICC is funded by the European Commission. The content of this project does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Community, nor does it involve any responsibility on the part of the European Community.