Community-based employability ePortfolio. As delivered online April 14, 2011

1. Career Portfolio
Manitoba
Essential Skills ePortfolio
for Employability
Moodle Moot Elmshorn
April 14, 2011
Don Presant

2. German connection
1967 -> 2007

3. Manitoba,Canada
Small province in a small country
• Challenging geography
– 650,000 sq km (UK x 2)
• Diverse demographics
– 1.18 m (712K in Winnipeg)
– Aboriginals, immigrants
• Diverse economy
• Federal political structure
• “Canada’s social science laboratory”
• A bit damp...

4. Stakeholders:WEM & WPLAR
Workplace Education Manitoba, Workplace PLAR
• Nonprofit partnerships of Government,
Business and Labour
• WEM: workplace education in Essential
Skills
• WPLAR: workplace Recognition of Prior
Learning
wem.mb.ca
wplar.ca

5. Canada’s Essential Skills
Contextualized by workplace occupation…
1. Reading text
2. Document use
3. Writing
4. Numeracy
5. Computer skills
6. Oral communication
7. Thinking skills
– Problem Solving, Decision Making, Critical
Thinking, Job Task Planning and Organizing,
Significant Use of Memory, Finding
Information
8. Working with others
9. Continuous learning

6. The Essential Skills Portfolio
Origins and character
• First immigrants, now “general”
– Career changers (younger, older..)
• Reflection on life-wide learning of
Essential Skills for employability
• Build confidence, improve “skills dialogue”
– Make resumes & cover letters clearer, more credible
– Preparation tool for interviews
• More than ES: attitudes, specialized skills
• Product: ring binder, from electronic templates
• 18 hours class time + c. 18 hours of homework

7. Building the ES portfolio
Extracting value from experience
1. Identify life experiences
2. Self reflect to draw out human capital
• “KSAs”: Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes
3. Write outcome statements for your KSAs
4. Group into areas of expertise
5. Put it all together in a portfolio
• Title page, table of contents, introduction
• Lists: skills, examples & outcomes statements
• Evidence-demonstrations, documentation
• Resumes and cover letters
• Goals and plans (SMART goals)

8. Building your portfolio
- one step at a time

9. The “e” factor
Advantages and opportunities
• Information Management
– Collecting, archiving, making different versions
• Measureability
– Frameworks, rubrics, summative tracking
• Interoperability
– Communication with other ICT systems via APIs, open standards
• Sharing
– “One to many”, digital copies, links to specific pages
• Multimedia
– Video, audio, digital images, online presentations…and scanned docs
• Internet skills
– Online research: documents, networks, Internet literacy
• Collaboration
– Easy to add comments, edit, mentor, coach
• Personal Learning Environment
– Integrated learning environment, professional network, digital identity

10. Vision for Career Portfolio Manitoba
Career development for life
• All Manitobans
• Learner owned
• Lifelong
• Lifewide: home, community, school, work...
• Based on (not restricted to) Essential Skills
• Built through partnerships of stakeholders, with
WEM and WPLAR as “anchor tenants”
• Globally aware, locally relevant

11. Choosing the platform
The “Mahoodle” ecosystem
INSTRUCTOR LED
Archiving
Presenting
USER DRIVEN
Mahara tools:
Blog, forum, views
Collect, Select, Reflect…
Human capital Networks Artefacts, commentary, dialogue
development Peers, mentors
Employability Other Web 2.0 tools:
Skills transfer
KSA asset building
Lifelong learning

12. Essential Skills ePortfolio
Program overview
• Adapt the paper curriculum
• Leverage the “e” factor
• Embed authentic ICT skills
– Useful software applications
– Accessible multimedia hardware
• Provide ongoing support

13. Implementation
Online tour

14. Implementation
Worksheets

15. Implementation
Job match summary

16. Early steps
• Pilot
– Learners
– “Train the trainer”
• Rework curriculum

17. Current state
Lessons learned and learning
• Make it more usable
– Shorten curriculum, customize delivery
• Full vs. accelerated versions
– Improve worksheet methodology
– Triage learners
• Computer skills gap training
– More exemplars
• Caucasian, Aboriginal...
– Document more fully
• Manual, more/updated videos

18. Next steps
• Explore more ways to extend Mahara
– Framework for Moodle 2.0, LinkedIn, GoogleApps
– But keep it accessible...
• Polish the business plan
– Scope provincewide user support needs – other data?
• Build partnerships

19. Potential partners
• Other non-profits
• Sector Councils
• Post secondary institutions
• Provincial government departments
• Federal departments/agencies
• Individual employers

20. Community of communities
“Small pieces, loosely joined”
Government Student
Information Records
Portals
Employer HR
eGovernment Management
Single Window Systems
Service
Online Localized
Credential
Mahoodle
Labour Market
Verification Hub Information
Web 2.0
YouTube Job Boards,
LinkedIn Recruitment
Twitter… Sites
Online Personal
Mentoring Networks,
Services Communities

21. Further reading
• Presentations about Career Portfolio Manitoba
– http://bit.ly/CPMBpresentations
• MyPortfolio http://myportfolio.ac.nz/
– Report: http://bit.ly/g8JLLQ
• MOSEP http://www.mosep.org/
– Toolbox (curr/report): http://bit.ly/MOSEP_toolbox
• EIfEL - www.epforum.eu/
• ePortfolio Community of Practice (AUS)
– http://epcop.net.au

22. Useful links
• Career Portfolio Manitoba
– http://careerportfolio.mb.ca
– http://bit.ly/eP_example
• Workplace Education Manitoba
– http://wem.mb.ca
• WPLAR
– http://wplar.ca
• Contact emails:
– Don Presant, Learning Agents Inc.
• don@learningagents.ca (Twitter: donpresant)
– Linda Maxwell, Keystone Adult Education Services Inc.
• adulted@mts.net
– Phyllis Mann, Workplace Education Manitoba
• PMann@wem.mb.ca

23. Don Presant
don@learningagents.ca
(204) 219-5933