iCampus21 and FolioSpaces (Mahara)

Web addresses: http://www.icampus21.com

http://www.foliospaces.com

Archived webinar session from 2/22/12 -- thanks to Patricia Donohue at ePortfolio California.

Webinar session slide presentation and polls (PDF)

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The following questions are a compilation of the needs and concerns identified in an informal polling of eportfolio community members during spring 2011. The answers are the vendor's responses.

What vision or understanding of learning informed the design of your tool?

In the spirit of life-long learning, learners should be able to creatively demonstrate both formal and informal achievements and outcomes in a single medium.

How does your vision of learning promote a student-centered approach to education? (e.g. student ownership of his/her learning)

Learners are first and foremost the drivers of their success. By providing a tool that allows for maximum use of different web services, we believe our system empowers the individual learner

Does your tool allow students to control permissions? Can they share with people outside of the institution? How? (e.g., advisor, prospective employer, etc.).

Yes. Students are the owners of their portfolio. By default, any artifact is private until shared with another person. Partial or complete portfolio pages can be easily submitted or shared with individuals or groups either by sharing a secret URL or by submitting entire pages to a group, adviser or tutor. Portfolios can also be exported as HTML and shared.

What is the process for inviting feedback on work or artifacts?

Voluntary. A student may enable the comment feature on pages or artifacts. Comments can be public or private.

Describe how your tool promotes and supports student-to-student collaboration.

Learners are able to invite comments, post on each other’s walls or create groups. Within a group, the co-creation of pages is possible. Furthermore, a forum tool is available for threaded discussion.

Describe how your tool promotes and supports student-to-faculty collaboration.

Beyond utilizing the sharing mechanisms of the system, all users work with the same tools without significant differences. By selectively sharing personal and professional information with each other, common interests and desires become evident.

How does your tool support and encourage the reflection process for students and faculty?

The system has a built-in journaling tool allowing for reflective thought. The flexible display system allows for re-purposing individual entries or entire journals. Multiple journals can be maintained also.

How does your tool address and support institutional level assessment needs (e.g., aggregating student data and generating reports for accreditation)?

Presently it does not have a built in reporting or assessment feature.
 

Does your application integrate with enterprise systems? Which ones? Do you have examples of effective integration in support of advising or other student services you can share?

Not without significant custom programming. Although some interoperability with the Moodle LMS is possible, we presently do not recommend it due to incomplete code.
 

What is the main strength of your application?

Flexible sharing and display capabilities. The learner is the driver of his or per portfolio.

What weaknesses have been identified relative to the user experience and shared with you?

 The system has a medium learning curve. Although technical stable and well thought out, the system requires of it’s users to plan and think- through their portfolio.

Please share some examples of user feedback.

High school guidance councilors are generally pleased to work with a system that allows for student participation when creating their learning plans. A university teacher field adviser values the quality of student reflections students shared with each other.

Please share examples of the successful use of your application to help students achieve their goals undefined admission to graduate school, career placement and advancement, etc.

 Student teachers prepare and submit their relevant artifacts to school districts in support of their job interviews.

What key changes or features do you plan to introduce in the near future?

We are primarily a host.
 

Business Operations

Company profile:  We have two goals: Providing cutting edge web technologies to teachers and trainers everywhere at reasonable cost and to provide free eportfolios to learners of all ages. icampus21.com is owned and operated by a long term education professional with a strong interest in web technologies. We provide consulting services using a hands-on approach. Based on need and customer preferences, we provide services using third party and or company owned servers. Our home base is Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Customer base/size:  <50, small.

Student license pricing model: Free.

Institutional pricing model: Shared instance (http://www.portfoliocommunities.com):

1-100 users
101-500 users 
501-1000 users 1001 users and above $1/user/year *custom pricing is available for large accounts.

Independent instance:
Virtual server
Designated server

Server appliance:
Based on need and features

Postgraduate/transfer student license model: N/A

Institution service agreement model: Depending upon need.

Online support information: Depending upon need. Primarily email based.

Institutional support services (Free): N/A.

Institutional support services (Feebased): Training and workshops are available and can be custom tailored to according to need.

IT staffing requirements: None.

Technical Information

• System Requirements End User: Browser, Internet.

• System Requirements Server:  Linux with either Mysql or postgres database.

• Hosted service? Yes. We offer full featured free accounts to anyone and paid institutional and business solutions.
• Storage Capacity (per account): 1GB
   
• Privacy policy relative to student accounts and underage users: Not on our free service. Paid services can be custom tailored to any need.
   
• Standards compliance: Not on our free service. Paid services can be custom tailored to any need...
   
• Section 508 compliance: Not on our free service. Paid services can be custom tailored to any need.
   
• Published API: N/A
   
• Migration/Exportation: LEAP2A import and export. HTML export.
   
• Systems Integration: Moodle LMS.
  
  
• Accepted artifacts/media (pictures, video, audio, text, html, documents, etc.):  Most common extensions.

(2/22/12)