Create set

The user gets to add a new set before adding anything to it. Kind of like making and labelling a box yourself, ready to stick stuff in it (like when you move house). Title, description, tags (keywords) are all fairly obvious. Also here are some other fields that are merely buds of ideas right now…

Type of set

Maybe we’ll offer some nice templates for types of sets. For instance, if a field trip typically has video, journals and photos, we’d create those containers and guide the user through to add all the relevant stuff. The user could of course just have a blank set in which case they’d go along merrily adding where and when they feel like it.

Picture, icon, logo

To enable the more visually led people, we could offer the ability for the user to attach a picture to their set so they can quickly identify it. Some pre-picked pics available or they can upload or browse their own pics type thing.

Create stuff

The blank set is created. Nothin in it yet. The next screen is this: get some stuff in your set, here’s some things you can create. The user plumps for a learning journal.

Create learning journal

Enter “structured form that I don’t actually know what the fields are yet” type thingeymebob. Our user enters the data and then gets down the pub knowling it’s all been safely saved away (using AJAX, like Writely and Gmail does!)

Nb. Maybe I need to create some ‘view journal’ and ‘view set’ screens in order to illustrate exactly what things look like once in browse mode. However, I’d really love to be able to use a similar approach to Flickr in this respect – edit it as you see it AJAX goodiness.

Use the Learning Journal to reflect on key milestones in your development. It can help you to analyse your progress and to reflect on what you have learned.

Teachernet

The crucial thing is that students can reflect on something they have done in their studies. This is commonly known as reflective learning.

The most popular vehicle for promoting reflection is a ‘learning journal’ (see Moon, 1999a for an excellent introduction to their practical usage). There are many different types (workbooks, diaries, logs, progress files, profiles) but virtually all serve as a point of focus for students to look back over their recent learning and order their thoughts in order to identify strengths, weaknesses, new levels of understanding learnt and review attitudes. They are also used increasingly to record learning in situations like fieldwork and work placements (see second case-study).

Learning and Teaching web

There are many different types of learning journal. Some are highly structured, prompting the user to fill in forms in order to aid their reflecting. Some are more free-form, like a weblog or diary where there is a single box to do the reflecting in.

The OU Profile software is one example of a structured learning journal.

For the ePortfolio, we need to enable the student to do some reflecting on their learning using a learning journal. Because there are different types of journal, we need to make the system flexible enough to cater for these.

Today I’m thinking about exactly how we might do this. If you have any thoughts, please share them!