Presentation given by Luke Woodham, Technical Developer in the e-Learning Unit at St George’s University of London, at MyKnowledgeMap's "How to innovate in work placement assessment" event. The presentation looks at the benefits and challenges of introducing an e-portfolio.

1. Cross-faculty implementation of
Myprogress
Luke Woodham,
St. George’s, University of London

2. Medicine and Healthcare at
St.George’s, University of London
• Specialist health sciences university
– joint site with hospital
• Joint faculty with Kingston
University
• Range of courses in medicine and
healthcare
• e-Learning Unit
– Provide and manage electronic
educational resources for the
curriculum
– Coordinate overall project for
Myprogress implementation

3. Myprogress – current usage
• Rolled out
– Diagnostic Radiography
• Pilots
– Medicine
– St. George’s Award for personal and community
development activities
• Prospective
– Therapeutic Radiography
– Paramedic Sciences
– Nursing

4. Medicine - WPBAs at SGUL
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Basic Science Transition Pre-Clinical Practice
Foundation
MBBS5
Year 1
Transitional
(T) Year
MBBS5
Year 2
MBBS4
Year 1
Penultimate
(P) Year
Final
(F) Year
Workplace-based
assessments• Key element in both learning
(formative) and summative
assessment of clinical competency

5. • Complex, hard to read
• Difficult to analyse
– No validation – “spoilt” assessments
– Illegible
• Large number of forms to manage
– Lost and damaged forms
– Difficulties in storage
• Submission difficulties when off-site
• Difficult for students to monitor progress
Paper WPBAs

6. E-Portfolio Aims
• Students “own” their own data
– Provide learners with real-time access to their
progress
– Ability to identify own opportunities for learning,
reflect upon own practice
– Evidence of own progress facilitates transition to
clinical practice
• Mechanisms for providing feedback
– Evidence submitted directly to academic tutors, tools
for returning comments
• Reduced administration load

7. Key System Requirements
• Flexibility
– able to apply to range of courses
– able to adapt to future changes
• Robust
– Meeting support challenges across several courses and
many geographically disparate sites
• Appropriate to clinical environment
– Lack of access to traditional PC workstations
– Variable access to Wifi
– Differing working practices across sites
– Usability – varying ability of assessors to embrace new
technology

8. MyProgress
• Web-based
– Hosted solution –
Commercially developed
by MyKnowledgeMap
– All data stored centrally
• Allows data input from
both the web and mobile
devices
– Cross-platform
• Works offline
– Downloads new
assessments for use
offline
– Uploads completed
assessments back to
system
www.myknowledgemap.com

9. An opportunity for WPBA
is identified
The student begins to
enter assessment details
onto their mobile device
The device is passed to
the assessor
The assessor completes
and locks the assessment
and hands the device back
to the student
who then submits the
assessment when they
next have network access

10. Assessment functionality
• Free text
• MCQs
• File uploads
• Likert matrix
• Reflective
blog posts

11. Assessment Verification
• Email sent to clinical assessor once assessment has
been submitted
• Prevents students from using assessors’ email
addresses to verify an assessment without their
permission

12. Student-centred functionality
• Simple, real time access for students to keep
track of their own completed assessments and
their progress, both on desktop and mobile
devices.
• Allows academic tutors to give feedback directly
to students.
– Monitor on going student progress in real-time and
resolve potential issues before they arise.
• Assessments can be linked to a competency
framework to aid with monitoring progress

13. Pilots
• Series of pilots – Medicine and Radiography
– Iterative improvements based upon feedback
• Pilot 1 – Bring your own device (Smartphones)
• Pilot 2 and 3 – Provided device (7” Tablets)
– Expanding scope
• Multiple attachments and sites
• Increased participant numbers
• Feedback
– Online survey
• Students and Assessors
• Survey designed to be used for all attachments/courses
– Verbal and e-mailed feedback

14. Results
• Increase in number of assessments completed – or at least
submitted
• Improved feedback from using tablets

15. Feedback & Challenges
• “Faster, efficient, saves a bunch of paperwork”
– Addresses many issues of paper-based system
• “[Paper is] easier to carry and less time consuming, but
electronic devices are good for monitoring progress”
– Paper has some perceived advantages
• “I was not sure whether my WBAs went through the
system even after synchronizing”
– Training students to fully realise the benefits

16. Feedback & Challenges
• “In terms of interface and actual usability of the app,
the only issue I had was I needed to zoom out -would
be nice to be able to zoom out even more. Otherwise
it's very easy to use and understandable.“
– Usability tweaks
• “If I'm honest doing paper CBD and cexes is a lot less
complicated! I've forgotten to charge/bring in the
tablet a few times meaning I can't get forms done, and
I've also forgotten to get the paper counterpart signed
on some occasions as well.”
– Changing the culture

17. Current and Future challenges
• How to structure system
– Cohorts and organisations
– Balance need for separation of courses with lack of
flexibility
• Support
– How to effectively support multiple courses and sites
• Adapting assessment strategies to suit the system
– Developing reporting procedures
• Opportunities?

18. Thank you and Questions
lwoodham@sgul.ac.uk
www.elu.sgul.ac.uk