thesis title: designing eportfolios for music postgraduate...

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Thesis Title: Designing ePortfolios for Music postgraduate study. A practice-led inquiry.

Submitted by:

Paul Stephensen GradCertCI (DigitalMedia), MastersCI (Communication and Design)

A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Masters of Arts by Research in the Faculty of Creative Industries at the Queensland

University of Technology 2 George St, Brisbane QLD 4000

GPO Box 2434, Brisbane QLD 4001

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Abstract

Title: Designing ePortfolios for music postgraduate study. A practice-led inquiry.

In this research I have examined how ePortfolios can be designed for Music postgraduate

study through a practice led research enquiry. This process involved designing two Web

2.0 ePortfolio systems for a group of five post graduate music research students. The

design process revolved around the application of an iterative methodology called Software

Develop as Research (SoDaR) that seeks to simultaneously develop design and pedagogy.

The approach to designing these ePortfolio systems applied four theoretical protocols to

examine the use of digitised artefacts in ePortfolio systems to enable a dynamic and

inclusive dialogue around representations of the students work. The research and design

process involved an analysis of existing software and literature with a focus upon

identifying the affordances of available Web 2.0 software and the applications of these

ideas within 21st Century life. The five post graduate music students each posed different

needs in relation to the management of digitised artefacts and the communication of their

work amongst peers, supervisors and public display. An ePortfolio was developed for each

of them that was flexible enough to address their needs within the university setting.

However in this first SoDaR iteration data gathering phase I identified aspects of the

university context that presented a negative case that impacted upon the design and usage

of the ePortfolios and prevented uptake. Whilst the portfolio itself functioned effectively,

the university policies and technical requirements prevented serious use. The negative case

analysis of the case study found revealed that Access and Control and Implementation,

Technical and Policy Constraints protocols where limiting user uptake. From the semi-

structured interviews carried out as part of this study participant feedback revealed that

whilst the participants did not use the ePortfolio system I designed, each student was

employing Web 2.0 social networking and storage processes in their lives and research. In

the subsequent iterations I then designed a more ‘ideal’ system that could be applied

outside of the University context that draws upon the employment of these resources. In

conclusion I suggest recommendations about ePortfolio design that considers what the

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applications of the theoretical protocols reveal about creative arts settings. The

transferability of these recommendations are of course dependent upon the reapplication of

the theoretical protocols in a new context. To address the mobility of ePortfolio design

between Institutions and wider settings I have also designed a prototype for a business card

sized USB portal for the artists’ ePortfolio. This research project is not a static one; it

stands as an evolving design for a Web 2.0 ePortfolio that seeks to refer to users needs,

institutional and professional contexts and the development of software that can be

incorporated within the design. What it potentially provides to creative artist is an

opportunity to have a dialogue about art with artefacts of the artist products and processes

in that discussion.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge the incredible patience, wisdom, knowledge and support of

my primary supervisor Dr. Steve Dillon. Steve has been an exemplary supervisor always

being available to discuss any matters or concerns in a responsive and considered way with

great insight. He has always offered my work to others as being innovative and important

and allowed me opportunities to participate in research opportunities both within QUT and

externally. These few short lines will never be enough to thank him for his professionalism

and understanding in helping me to gain the confidence to write this thesis and the virtues

of tolerance and celebrating the differences of others.

I also wish to also acknowledge my other key stake-holders and supervisors. Dr.

Andrew Brown, Dr. Robert Davidson and Dr. Glenn Smith for their counsel and advice on

the many challenges faced during my journey. I particularly wish to thank the Dean of the

Faculty of Information Technology Professor Simon Kaplan who provided me with the

scholarship to undertake this study. Other critical supporters have been all the staff in the

Creative Industries research office, Professor Brad Haseman, Professor Terry Flew, Dr

Susan Carson. Their assistance has helped me to navigate the research process and journey

in a professional and collegial manner. I also wish to thank Associate Professor Helen

Partridge for her Mentorship.

My life is blessed with many friends who have helped me with proof reading or just

generous smiles and chats over coffee when I complained about late nights and not enough

sleep. Or even just asking me what my research was about. To these I add with enduring

thanks Mr. Brian Smith for his expert advice on writing styles and grammar. To my

extended family and friends who have put up with my long absences from their life, the

many missed family events like birthdays and graduations I thank you as well. I am

eternally grateful to my father Mervyn James Stephensen Senior for the ability to be able to

discuss the views of others in a critical fashion while affirming and respecting the person

who gave that view, this being the most important thing about a debate. Finally, to my

Mother Margaret who is my rock. I can never repay you for your patience, love and

sacrifices that have helped me achieve the completion of this selfish dream. The only way I

can thank you is to dedicate this thesis to you.

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material

published elsewhere or extracted in whole or part from a thesis by which I have qualified

for or been awarded another degree or diploma.

No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of

the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any

other institution.

All research procedures reported in the thesis were approved by the Queensland University

of Technology Human Ethics Committee.

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Introduction

Electronic Portfolios (ePortfolios) are difficult to define as the term can be applied

to numerous electronic media. Designing an ePortfolio system for creative artists has been

a great challenge for me as an interaction designer. This is because I felt charged with a

responsibility to learn how to design an ePortfolio system which would allow creative

artists to represent their creative artefacts in a compelling manner when integrated into an

ePortfolio system. In chapter 1 I undertake a contextual analysis to examine how creative

digital artefacts are represented, stored and managed by creative artists and the relationship

and value the viewer places upon them and the original performance of those works. To me

this meant there was a risk that the meaning, intent or ownership of the performance could

be lost or changed if those digital media artefacts were included in an ePortfolio system

without the application of appropriate design protocols (Dillon and Brown 2006). For

musicians creating work for postgraduate study the digitisation and representation of a

creative work is NOT the work itself and may have limitations in its expressive capacity.

In many cases ‘curating’ digital artefacts may even become another kind of ‘art’.

Considering the value and purpose of the artefact was important for the integrity and

intention of the study. It is from this analysis that I framed the research question in this

study as: How can ePortfolios be designed for Music postgraduate study?

Having had nearly 18 years experience and education in the use of Information

Technology I consider myself to be a competent user of Information Technology.

Accordingly, I acknowledge that I have a preference for technologies which have helped

me to achieve success in the past. I also believe that technology can be used to overcome

barriers to learning and allow people to be innovative in developing strategies for

developing new ways of working and living. Accordingly, I acknowledge that not

everyone views technology through this lens. Some impediments to the update of

technology can include technophobia, policy problems and lack of technical support and

access to time to gain comfort with technology (Williams and Castells, 2003). In chapter 2

I describe the application of the Software Development as Research methodology (SoDaR)

(Brown, 2007) which enabled an approach to research and design that privileges the users

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in the design and simultaneously includes pedagogical strategies to the design in a client

responsive way (Brown, 2007). In chapter 2 I also provide a detailed analysis and

explanation of how the SoDaR method has helped me to identify these problems by

examining the qualities of artistic knowledge which needs to be built into ePortfolios in the

creative arts. This approach has helped me to reflect further on how ePortfolio designers

can go about deconstructing an ePortfolio system design so that the affordances and deficits

of ePortfolio use can be determined through iterations of user-led design and prototyping.

This exegesis discusses these methods and instruments which were applied the four

protocols of ePortfolio design in a Web 2.0 context (O’Reilly. T. 2005). I have also sought

to design this ePortfolio system so that creative artefacts can be stored on a centralised

University server or allow the ePortfolio owner to connect to and embed their creative

product from external Web 2.0 websites. These websites can include social networking

sites such as Flickr.com, Youtube.com and Last.fm. This process can be achieved by an

institution adapting these suggested design frameworks that incorporate the four protocols

of ePortfolio design applied in this research (Dillon and Brown, 2006).

In Chapter 3 I examine two design models for ePortfolio systems that seek to enable

postgraduate creative arts students to maintain the integrity of the creative product and to

keep music and performances present in the conversation about music. In this research I

have sought to achieve this through extending on existing theoretical research and

problematizing four protocols of ePortfolio design :

1) "Access and Control

Who controls the use of the portfolio and how much control is appropriate?

In media arts, users may have a great deal of technical skill to manipulate

the portfolio. (Dillon and Brown, 2005)

2) Ethics and Rights Management

Confidentiality, intellectual property, copyright. Who sees and owns the

work? (Dillon and Brown, 2005)

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3) Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints?

What are the technical constraints that prevent quality representations from

being uploaded, or who has the skills of access to the technological

gateway? (Dillon and Brown, 2006)What policies

prevent or enhance this access?

4) Representation and Recognition

How is the work to be represented and what is the quality of the work that is

acceptable as an artefact? Can the collection of artefacts capture the

qualities of artistic knowledge effectively?" (Dillon and Brown, 2006 )

It is hoped that these methods may be transferable to others designing ePortfolios

for teachers and postgraduate students. The goal of this process of design is to create

ePortfolios which provide multiple lenses on phenomenon and enable multi-modal

approaches to learning (Lai and Chan. 2006). This is important for postgraduate music

students so they can provide evidence of their learning and achievement in multiple forms

of digital media to support their claims of discipline-specific knowing and their own

learning. In addition to a model for a centralised Web 2.0 ePortfolio system I have also

designed a portable ePortfolio system which allows the postgraduate music student to

provide prospective employers or agents the ability to link to their ePortfolio from a Smart

Web 2.0 business card. This creates a new business relationship between the user of the

portable ePortfolio and the postgraduate student. The portable ePortfolio acts as an Internet

Portal or Kiosk to the postgraduate student’s online version of the Web 2.0 ePortfolio and

the university which houses the ePortfolio system.

In chapter 4 I provide a series of recommendations and conclusions about further

development of the ePortfolio prototypes and design processes. This exegesis acts as an

explanation and examination of theory and critical analysis of designs and context for

ePortfolios in creative arts . These ideas have been applied to the design of two prototypes

which constitute the practice led component of this study. The first prototype can be found

at http://dmap.ci.qut.edu.au/ as documented in chapter 3 Design Outcomes. The second

prototype is attached to this exegesis see appendix 11.

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In chapter 4 I recommend my Web 2.0 integration design as design frameworks and

as a policy response to the four protocols of ePortfolio design for Web 2.0 ePortfolio

design and integration. I hope that these two frameworks will inform the creative artist and

university how to develop and integrate Web 2.0 ePortfolios in an equitable way based on

the four protocols of ePortfolio through (Dillon and Brown, 2006).

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT 2

INTRODUCTION 6

CHAPTER 1 CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS 14

THE STUDY OF EPORTFOLIOS 17

DEFINING THE EPORTFOLIO 19

EPORTFOLIO DEFINITIONS 20

EPORTFOLIO CATEGORIES FROM THE CREATIVE ARTS 23

PRESENTATION 23

DOCUMENTARY 24

CURATED EXHIBITION 25

PERFORMANCE EPORTFOLIOS. 25

INSTALLATION 26

CHOREOGRAPHY 27

REPRESENTATION AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION VIA EPORTFOLIOS. 27 Table 3: The ethical protocols of ePortfolio design in the creative arts. 31

THE EPHEMERAL NATURE OF MUSIC. 32

REPRESENTATION AND OFF-LINE OBJECTS 34

PRESENTATION 34

THE FOUR PROTOCOLS FOR WEB 2.0 EPORTFOLIO DESIGN IN THE CREATIVE ARTS. 37

CONCLUSION 39

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY 40 Table 4 Research Question Matrix 40 Table 5 Research description by phase and research question relationship 41

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Date 41 SoDaR Stages 41 Research question relationship. 41

OVERVIEW OF THE METHODOLOGY 42

BACKGROUND TO THE PROTOCOLS 43

RESEARCH METHODS USED IN THIS PROJECT. 46

THE PRACTICE-LED INQUIRY. 47

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AS RESEARCH. 47

SODAR PHASES 48

Stage 1 Identify activity 48

Stage 2 Software design and production 49

Stage 3 Usage and refinement 50

TRAINING AND FOCUS GROUPS. 51

THE CASE STUDY. 52

THE PARTICIPANTS. 52

PARTICIPANT DESCRIPTION. 52

THE FOCUS GROUP. 53

THE INTERVIEWS. 54

TRIANGULATION OF DATA. 54

NEGATIVE CASE ANALYSIS. 54

Access and Control. 55 Examples of reason for lack of uptake. 55

Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints? 56

'Representation and Recognition' and 'Ethics and Rights Management' and 'Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints'? 57

CONCLUSION 58

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CHAPTER 3 DESIGN OUTCOMES 59

WORDPRESSMU. 61

HOW WORDPRESSMU WORKS. 62

WORDPRESSMU AS AN EPORTFOLIO SYSTEM FOR POSTGRADUATE MUSIC STUDENTS. 63

MODULAR DESIGN 65

INTEGRATING WEB 2.0 CONTENT FROM SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES 66

TRADITIONAL EPORTFOLIO SYSTEMS. 67 Figure 3.0 Traditional ePortfolio content model 67 Figure 3.1 Previous examples of ePortfolios 68

WEB 2.0 ENABLED EPORTFOLIO SYSTEMS. 68 Figure 3.2 Web 2.0 ePortfolio design conceptual layout 69

PORTABLE EPORTFOLIOS FOR POSTGRADUATE MUSIC STUDY. 70 Figure 4.1 Start the ePortfolio software 71 Figure 4.2 Confirm that you are running the software locally by clicking no 71 Figure 4.3 Start the Apache Server Module 71 Figure 4.4 Starting the ePortfolio 71

SUMMARY 73

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 74

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 74

REFERENCE LIST 80

APPENDICES 89

APPENDIX 1 | FOCUS GROUP SUMMARY 89

APPENDIX 2 | INTERVIEW TINA 95

APPENDIX 3 | INTERVIEW ARTHUR 113

APPENDIX 4 | MOBILE LEARNING STYLES 126

APPENDIX 5 | LIST OF CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS EXAMINED. 127

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APPENDIX 6 | CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM SELECTION CRITERIA AND TEST PROCESS 129

APPENDIX 7 SOFTWARE SELECTION CRITERION 131

APPENDIX 8 | TABLE 2.0 SODAR BY PHASE. 134

APPENDIX 9 BARRETT’S WEB 2.0 EPORTFOLIOS CHARACTERISTICS. 136

APPENDIX 10 KEY STAKE HOLDERS PROJECT REQUIREMENTS. 137

APPENDIX 11 | PORTABLE ELECTRONIC SMART BUSINESS CARD 138

APPENDIX 12 | CD PORTABLE EPORTFOLIO 139

APPENDIX 13 | RECORDED INTERVIEWS AND FOCUS GROUP. 140

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Chapter 1 Contextual Analysis In this research I will be examining the idea of ePortfolio use within the context of

postgraduate music production and study. In the study I will create a design for an

ePortfolio system as required by a student undertaking a 'practice-led' enquiry to present a

prototypes accompanied by an exegesis.

The exegesis will describe the user-led design process and discuss the wider issues

surrounding the design and implementation of ePortfolio systems in the world today. The

research question that drives this research process is: "How can ePortfolios be designed for

Music postgraduate study?". In this exegesis I will begin by undertaking a contextual

analysis of ePortfolios to determine the role of Web 2.0 technologies in their design

affordances and deficits. I then examine these findings against a conceptual framework for

ePortfolios in creative arts. Following this I will outline a practice led methodology for

designing ePortfolios specifically for postgraduate music students’ use. Music studies

include a variety of media and artefacts of research and practice that problematised the

design process. In particular the practice-led methodology will be used as a vehicle for

understanding how the ephemeral aspects of representation of musical experience and

production can be effectively documented. I will describe the design outcomes providing

links to artefacts, examples and interviews/focus groups with participants and raise extra

questions for further research.

"The art of ePortfolios" sought to ‘Construct a new conceptual framework for using

digital technologies in achieving better arts assessment' (Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith,

2003). This research used a language which comes from the creative arts and was targeted

towards other researchers and interaction designers interested in developing ePortfolio

systems. It implements metaphors from the creative arts to extract deeper meaning from

their research (Woolcock, 2004). In this study I have sought to contextualise the design of

ePortfolios in a global economy that is driven, in part by, the development of the World

Wide Web and the Internet in academic and the creative industries (Young, 2002).

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To be competitive in the international job market new talent needs to be highly

educated, experienced and flexible with high-end design skills (Pink, 2005) (Leadbeater,

1999). Design and knowledge-based skills are highly sought after by industry and academia

as they are seen as tools that will add competitive advantage expressed in new products and

processes (Cunningham, 2002) (Leadbeater, 1999).

Transferable skills and accreditation then become important enablers in

documenting and accrediting these skills sets (Emmett, 2003). This raises questions about

how industry and academia can validate or qualify which talented people are best for their

organisation (Cotterill, Hammond, Drummond , Aiton and .et al. 2005). For employees

who wish to work in creative production contexts, how they represent themselves in virtual

spaces, such as ePortfolios, is becoming a passport which will allow them to participate in

new economic opportunities (Saxenian, 2002) (Ruthmann, Seddon Frederick et al., 2008).

These economic opportunities include new work opportunities and entry into study

programs within more increasingly distributed global economies in businesses that can

often be spread over diverse geographical environments (Flew, 2002) (Pink, 2005)

(Phillips, 2004). For example, Florida (2002) suggests that creative people prefer to live in

large cities (p.ix). This enables creative people who wish to live in cities to have access to

the global economy through e-business solutions, have access to tertiary education and

secure employment opportunities, and the flexibility to be able to choose what sort of

lifestyle they have in their private and work life (Madon, Shirin, Sahay and Sundeep, 2001)

(Florida, 2002).

The rise in the use of information and communication technologies in our society

has enabled larger amounts of people to become educated with high end design, business

process modelling and quality improvement skills (Pink, 2005, Florida 2002 and 2005).

Many academics and business leaders are arguing that these types of skills are in high

demand for globalised businesses. It is suggested that design skills can be used to create

businesses which sell intellectual property via design orientated goods and services which

then operate in a global economy via e-commerce and the Internet (Pink, 2005) (Flew

Terry. 2009).

In the past, creative arts students used their ePortfolio as a collection of digitised

artefacts, including demonstrations, resources and accomplishments that represented their

individual, group, community designs or performances (Feng, 2006). This collection was

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often made up of text-based, graphic or multimedia elements which were then archived on

a web site or on other media such as CD-ROM or DVD, (Emmett, 2003). Often this work

was integrated as part of a course-work program such as a bachelors or postgraduate design

course. However, ePortfolios can also be aimed at improving the strategic management of

education programs, documenting knowledge, skills, abilities and learning (Lorrenzo and

Ittlelson, 2005). Furthermore, ePortfolios can be used for the documentation of how an

educational program which helps to develop the programs ability to provide for self

examination or reflection and the monitoring and evaluation of courses (Harper, Hauville,

et al,. 2006) (Nalder, Dillon, Brown and Smith, 2004). Barret discusses how ePortfolios

are generally viewed by educators as an assessment process or as a tool for reflecting or

referring to the students learning:

“According to Arina, blogs make visible what you have learned and we could

use blogs as a meta-cognitive tool (something I have advocated ever since I

started blogging). Further, Arina says that we could connect reflections through

the use of wikis for abstraction and generalization, referring to Kolb's

Experiential Learning Model. With Web 2.0 technologies, we are moving from

browsing to aggregation. … When educators think of portfolios in education,

they assume the purpose is for assessment. But I always ask, "What kind of

assessment?" As I have discussed in my previous online papers, there are

several approaches to assessment, and thus to portfolios. First, here is a

comparison of these two key assessment purposes, based on work done in

Britain by the Assessment Reform Group (see www.assessment-reform-

group.org.uk)” (Barrett H. 2007)

An examination of the literature that examines the use of I.C.T. and Web

Technologies shows that there is the potential for a new relationship to be created between

the student and their design work, the student and the employer, and academia and the

global economy (Phillips, 2004) (Klug and Katz, 2005). This is a radical departure from the

previous view of many ePortfolio theorists. This is because the ePortfolio was seen as a

tool for sharing academic or creative design work. This research discusses these new

relationships and provides examples of the literature and contexts which provides evidence

of this and discusses these views.

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The Study of ePortfolios Gardner argued that it would be of benefit if we could develop a tool that allowed

for assessing and identifying the different types of intelligences and strengths individuals

possessed and how to assess those multiple intelligences. (Gardner, 1985).The main point

from Gardner’s application of these ideas in the Harvard Project Zero Arts Propel Project

was to:

"1) Provide portfolio assessment and models 2) Undertake domain

projects to discover what ePortfolios would provide as a digitised version

of the physical portfolio." (Dillon 2009: personal correspondence).

(Brisbane, July 2009). (Davidson, 1992)

Gardner’s work provides some long termed examples of projects which fostered

the use of paper based process portfolios so that students could demonstrate their deeper

learning and document changes in the way that they think.

The study of ePortfolios began in the 1990's when educators began exploring how

the sharing of a student's achievements could be documented and shared with others by

using personal computers, the World Wide Web and the Internet. Butler-Songer (1996),

examined how the personal computer, the World Wide Web and the Internet could be used

to create an Internet-infused learning environment. Butler-Songer examined the use of

Internet and telecommunications network such as where and how they would enhance

learning and teaching (Butler-Songer, 1996).This research sought to allow students to

undertake ‘genuine scientific inquiry' in the context of a school science classroom. Butler-

Songer (1996) concluded that for an Internet-infused learning environment curriculum to

be effective it needed to adapt a coordinated approach that included:

‘... the design of a coordinated, distributed-learning approach to guide

the development of cohesive and relevant understandings.' (Butler-

Songer, 1996).

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Studies such as Butler-Songer's have contributed to highlighting the complexities

involved in the on-line publishing of ePortfolios. Understanding these complexities allows

us to gain a more meaningful appreciation of the positive and negative effects that the

World Wide Web and the Internet have in relationship to ePortfolios. This is because the

technical limitations that technology brings with it are juxtaposed against the human

expectations of students, teachers and key stake-holders who wish to interact with such

systems (Emory, 2007) (Harper, Hauville K , et al. 2008).

The literature on the evolution of ePortfolios discusses how an ePortfolio should be

defined and on the different research methodologies that could be used to steer such

development projects (See for example: (Abrami P and Barrett H. 2005). The ePortfolio

literature also focuses upon how a particular ePortfolio software solution can be used and

what the particular affordances of the software are to the potential clients (See for example:

(Gibson G and Barrett H. 2002). Ravet, for example, provides and explanation of how new

Web 2.0 technologies could effect Web and Internet technologies incorporated into an

ePortfolio system supplier’s ePortfolio frame work (See for example: (Ravet, S. 2007). It is

the complexities of customising ePortfolios to educational use that Ravet discusses as one

element of this work:

“The last point I would like to address in this introduction is that of complexity. The world is

complex, learning is complex, the management of learning processes is complex. Yet, most

activities on learning technology, and even more on standards, are aiming at simplifying the

world, using technology as a kind of shoehorn to force life's complexity into a series of predefined

machine readable forms. Some believe that by simplifying the world's representation it will be

easier to manage. For them, everything has to be expressed into XML schemas, because what we

want is machine readable ePortfolios and CVs because we want machines to do the work that

humans can't do (like reading thousands of applications for a job offer). The question one should

ask is whether when describing individuals into a set computer readable data we are not in reality

simply reifying (thingifying)” (Ravet, S. 2007.p2)

It is suggested that it is the affordances of the different types of ePortfolios that are the focus for the arts communities use of ePortfolios.

“For the arts community ePortfolio affordances include:

Portfolios are beneficial, in that they enhance student motivation and engagement in learning,

foster constructive learning, enable dialogue and co-operation between students and their teachers,

provide valid and authentic assessment tasks that are related to the art curriculum, and respect the

voices and personal styles of students (Pereira de Eca, 2005). However, while students are

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encouraged to make their own decisions about the art or design project they conduct, and which

pieces of work are included in their portfolios as evidence, the autonomy of decision-making is

difficult for some students, especially where they have no previous experience of critical reflection

or evaluation their own work (Pereira de Eca, 2005).” (Butler P. 2006.p9)

Defining the ePortfolio The ePortfolio is problematic to define as the term ePortfolio can be applied to

many different electronic media. These media can include video tape, digital versatile

media such as DVD's, CD's, USB keys, static websites, weblogs and even user profiles on

social networking sites such as Facebook.com, Myspace.com, Twitter.com, Flickr.com and

Last.fm.

What becomes perplexing for ePortfolio theorists is how we delineate what an

ePortfolio is? And what criteria do we use to identify those portfolios? How might we

design better ePortfolios so that they include meaningful artefacts and digital media

content? These questions are further complicated by the introduction of powerful mobile

devices such as smart-phones which can digitally capture images, video and sound

recordings of a student's performances and upload them to a student's website or Social

Networking profile (Tepper, 2003). Students naturally want to include these digitally

recorded works into their academic studies (Jafari, 2006). How do educators assess the

academic worthiness of these hyper-mobile hyper-media so that they can be included in a

student's ePortfolio? Another important question is how do we ensure that Web 2.0

and earlier style ePortfolio systems allow for user friendliness and academic credibility to

be built into ePortfolio systems (Zimmerman, 1992)? Or has the ePortfolio become so

flexible that they will begin to affect how assessment criteria are applied or constructed for

ePortfolios?

For example Cobcroft, Towers, Smith and Bruns (2006) meta-study suggested that

the learning landscape is pervasive in the lives of students and teachers which is

transported by new and advancing mobile technologies. They construct a view of

contemporary student's use of technology in this profile (see for example appendix 4

mobile learning styles). These traits combine to present a different relationship between

learner and how knowledge is found, shared, expressed, critiqued and communicated.

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Richardson and Ward (2005) point out that other researchers are also experimenting

with blogs and Wikis as a tool to assist in approaches to effective ePortfolio

implementation and embedding in an educational institute (Richardson and Ward,

2005.p12).

Jafari suggests that we need to examine web technologies that offer certain

qualities that afford the University and the user a number of affordances. Jafari suggests

that the qualities can include user friendless and ease of use as well as an approach that

caters to the business needs of educational settings, advanced features, broad reaching

technologies, lifelong support and transportable standards of design (Jafari, 2006).

Jafari expresses this hypothesis as a formula of ePortfolio design:

“Successful ePortfolio Project =

I + J + K + L + M + N + O, where:

I = ease of use,

J = sustainable business plan,

K = advanced features,

L = robust integrated technology

architecture,

M = lifelong support,

N = standards and transportability,

And O = X.” (Jafari, 2006.p42)

By reflecting on how we may go about defining an ePortfolio the research of in this

section is suggesting that a web 2.0 enabled web log system may be a suitable vehicle for

develop an ePortfolio systems for creative artists and the creative arts.

EPortfolio Definitions The United Kingdom’s Joint Information Steering Committee (JISC) provides a

succinct definition of an ePortfolio. An ePortfolio is:

"..the product created by learners, a {purposeful ...sic} collection of

digital artefacts articulating learning, experiences and achievements."

(JISC. 2007).

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However, as Hallam and McAllister (2008), suggests, the ePortfolio needs to be a

'purposeful' collection of materials as defined in the JISC definition (JISC, 2007). Hallam

argues that an ePortfolio should be more than a random collection of digital files and links.

This creates an important link to creative arts ePortfolio systems. For example Cobcroft,

Towers, Smith and Bruns (2006) propose that the learners of today are digitally literate,

may already have a multiple web presences, and are interested in sharing the do-it-yourself

approach to creating and sharing creative product (Bruns A. 2007). With this in mind it is

important for ePortfolio designers to ask:

"Does a Facebook.com, Myspace.com, Twitter.com, Flickr.com and

Last.fm profile count as an ePortfolio?" (Ravet, S 2007.p1).

Ravet asks us to reflect upon this important question of ePortfolio design and Web

2.0 integrations of how we should go about integrating these new technologies into

ePortfolio systems. Ravet states:

"So, if the World Wide Web allows everything to be connected to

everything, the immediate question that comes to mind is: what are the

limits of my ePortfolio? Are MySpace and SecondLife - two of the spaces

where I create meaningful artefacts and develop social relations - part of

it? Or could I decide to have my ePortfolio Island on SecondLife to

create, store and share my ePortfolio? Would that mean that my

ePortfolio is part of SecondLife? Which contains the other? It is clear

that this question could not have been asked about paper portfolios or

even online paperless portfolios. The nature of the new media transforms

the nature of the ePortfolio and its dialectic." (Ravet, S 2007.p1).

As Emory warns us in education environments that can change swiftly that learning

management systems designer need to be able to integrate the needs of different

generations. Emory has found that:

“An emerging generation of users influenced by social networking

experiences and empowered to create, publish, appropriate and

redistribute content may find the structures of the LCMS traditional and

inflexible in contrast with the user-centered approach of Web 2.0

services.” (Emory, C. 2007.p2)

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The JISC definition suggests we can start to develop more flexible types of

ePortfolio systems that will allow more Web 2.0 functionality to be included. JISC argues

that an ePortfolio should support an argument for advancement in:

1. "Supporting an application, e.g. for study or for a job

2. Supporting transition, e.g. into a new employment situation

3. Supporting teaching, learning and assessment, e.g. the assessment of

learning (summative evidence of achievement) or the assessment for

learning (a formative process that encourages students to reflect on their

learning activities and outcomes)

4. Supporting professional development planning (PDP) and/or

continuing professional development (CPD)" (JISC. 2007).

Thus combining the JISC definition and Ravet’s ePortfolio definition ePortfolio

designers can start to define a Web 2.0 ePortfolio as a distributed Internet-infused virtual

container of a person's evidential learning which becomes the ePortfolio (Richardson and

Ward 2005). The ePortfolio may be able to demonstrate the ePortfolio owners' evidential

learning and achievement over multiple forms of digital media to support their claims.

These multiple forms may include profiles and artefacts uploaded to Social Networking

sites such as Facebook.com, Myspace.com, Twitter.com, Flickr.com and Last.fm. Through

my own design processes and research I note that Web 2.0 ePortfolios have unique

qualities that affect how we assess creative practice (Thompson, 2007).

Bruns for example provides us with evidence that Web 2.0 content hosted in social

networking sites needs to be addressed as students are wanting to integrate their user led

products and processes into educational tools such as ePortfolios. Bruns suggests this when he

states that there is a:

“…a growing need for education to address and problematise the

process and practice of user-led content creation itself, in order to help

participants develop a more informed, self-reflexive, and critical

perspective on their own practices as information seekers, users, and

providers, and to enable a wider range of participants to engage

successfully in user-led environments.”(Bruns, 2007.p1)

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EPortfolio Categories from the Creative Arts Through examining prior research have identified six different creative arts

categories of ePortfolios by aligning them to metaphors drawn from the creative arts which

can be integrated into a Web 2.0 ePortfolio system. These categories are:

1. “Presentation;

2. Documentary;

3. Curated Exhibition;

4. Performance;

5. Installation; and

6. Choreography.” (Dillon and Brown, 2006.p423)

Presentation Presentation portfolios are a quintessential part of the creative arts as they help to

document presentations. This is because the presentation of one’s creative works provides

extra understanding of the fundamental elements of performance, aesthetics and the

philosophy of performance which relates to the performative nature of experience.

The presentation ePortfolio presents examples of a creative artist's creative product in a

structured way. Importantly, the viewing of the ePortfolios is different to the viewing of the

performance as the ePortfolio has a different temporal nature. By this I mean that the

inclusion of a digitally recorded performance within an ePortfolio presents us with

interesting challenges. This is because of the following reasons;

1. The presentation ePortfolios are presenting us with new opportunities to reflect and

review that performance in a non-linear format.

2. This would be done via the ‘presentation ePortfolio' and not via the viewing of the

original performance in the real world which is normally how these types of

reviews are carried out.

3. The presentation ePortfolio allows us to frame 'new presentational opportunities' for

a presentation portfolio to become a new performance itself.

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4. Perhaps the performance within the presentation ePortfolio and the interaction and

design elements within the presentation ePortfolio will be something akin to a meta-

performance.

Thus the meta-performance within the presentation ePortfolio may allow the original

performance to be re-examined in new and interesting ways, creating new opportunities for

new ways of discussing the performance within the presentation ePortfolio.

Documentary When students select critical moments on a DVD and present it in a documentary

style about their artistic performance it can be a powerful method of creating a new type of

multimedia résumé. Students could use these kinds of representations to provide evidence

and strengthen their argument in convincing employers or agents of their employability.

With the advent of new Social Networking sites such as Youtube.com and

Vimeo.com, the uploading of documentary videos is achieved relatively easily. These new

technologies can allow for the documentary ePortfolio becoming shareable between Social

Network users (see for example http://viemo.com and http://youtube.com ). This

technology can create extra dimensions of the performance included within the

documentary ePortfolio. This can be achieved by ePortfolio visitors leaving comments in

the form of text and video posts such as pod casts (Roberts, 2004). The use of web cams

can also be used to link to off-line objects such as sculptures, visual art installations or

project participants

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Curated Exhibition The ePortfolio can also be used to broadcast the ePortfolio owner's work in a

curated way. As the curator of an ePortfolio the ePortfolio owner sets the framework of

what will be exhibited and what the work means in terms of visual and artistic forms. In

this way:

‘... the presentation of materials from an ePortfolio can be understood as

an exhibition of works, curated to draw attention to a particular facet of

the materials." (Dillon and Brown 2006.p425).

A curator of a curated ePortfolio would decide how a historical display of creative

works in an ePortfolio should be displayed in the best way to show the importance of the

featured creative artist's works. The ePortfolio curator could also help to establish the

overall aesthetic of a collection of art works to create an objective display of the artworks

in question, as well as providing expert consultation on the scrutinising of works of art to

check their validity of authorship within the curated ePortfolio.

Performance ePortfolios. It is further possible that ePortfolios could one day be designed in such a way so

that the ePortfolio will support the ‘the arts metaphor of performance' in real time. For

example, the use of the ‘the arts metaphor of performance' can help define new types of

simultaneous live performances and digitised recordings that can be recorded and uploaded

to an ePortfolio as the performance is being performed in front of an audience.

These digitised performances can then be presented to a group of peer or teacher

assessors providing summative or formative feedback and assessment. This also helps the

creative arts student to demonstrate their information technology skills which some

students believe can add weight to the student's application for employment or course

acceptance.

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Installation The visual art installation ePortfolio suggests that this type of ePortfolio offers new

and interesting ways of expressing complex juxtapositions of art philosophy and visual

ascetics. This is because visual art installations are normally presented in ways that are

dynamic and often non-linear. This allows the audience different opportunities to

experience the visual artist’s work. This occurs because the visual artists often uses

techniques that require their audiences to experience their visual art installation using not

only their vision but also their other senses, such as smell and touch. In adding extra

dimensions to a visual art exhibition the visual artists may choose to include interactive

media or interactive multimedia which means that there is no one set way in which we

should be viewing the installation.

Not all the elements of a visual artist’s work can be captured in digital or electronic

format. The sensations that we experience from touch, taste, smell and the psychological

feelings associated with visual art installations are some of those non-quantifiable outputs.

However, with the advent of Hyper-media such as websites and weblogs and social

networking sites such as Facebook.com, Flickr.com, Last.fm and Youtube.com this could

potentially change. The visual artists can now go about creating an ePortfolio which allows

for them to create a Digital Story which can have many different story lines or different

presentational hierarchies and different methods for measuring tastes and feelings which

can be achieved by a range of survey tools available on the different Social Networking

sites. Barrett (2005a) defines Digital Story-Telling as:

"Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of

storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music,

narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid

color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights. - Digital

Storytelling Association" (Barrett 2005a).

I think that it is important to note that Digital story telling does not just sit in the

installation ePortfolio category but rather that digital story telling would cut across a

number of the other categories. This is because narrative is an integral part of the work of

creative artists whose performances rely on digital media. In a sense all digital artists create

digital stories and these unify all electronic portfolios categorised here. The difference

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perhaps is that the narratives allow multiple pathways through the data and hence multiple

narratives. It has been suggested that a combination of digital storytelling and new hyper-

media such as installation ePortfolios can allow the visual artist to create an ePortfolio

which has the following characteristics:

"... Ability to have dynamic and programmatic Web sites {sic ... which}

can provide an ever-changing folio presentation that, like an installation,

may never be the same at each visit. Such algorithmic structuring of

materials can be manually prepared, as were the original art and music

works that used these procedures, or they can be automated with scripts

that select materials for presentation based on specified rules." (Dillon

and Brown,2005.p426)

Choreography The organisation of physical bodies in time and space is the art of choreography.

Dance problematises the capture of bodily gesture. This has implications for ePortfolios,

for example, while a dancer will be moving throughout a physical space in an ‘elegant

fashion' the digitisation of this process changes this relationship between the dancer and the

space and the choreography. This is because of the choreographer's ‘information space’,

where in the creative arts, choreography is a creative arts metaphor for navigating through

space within the real world.

Representation and artistic expression via ePortfolios. Human society has represented and communicated knowledge via gesture in dance,

song and visual art for 50,000 years before the invention of print:

"Think of the paintings in prehistoric caves. Thanks to them, we now

know what certain prehistoric mammals looked like! [Cave paintings]

preceded the invention of writing by 30,000 years! Those people left

us with veritable archives of the fauna of their time...” (Eco, Gould,

Carriere, & Delumeau, 2000, p.40).

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EPortfolios and Web 2.0 technologies that can present these forms of knowledge in

a unified and accessible form can provide an opportunity to reactivate the compelling

message off these media. Marshall McLuhan believed that the medium that is used to send

the message influences how the message is perceived (McLuhan, 1996). With the design of

ePortfolios the representation of artefacts takes on both ethical and value laden dimensions.

Print technologies have helped us to create a framework of reference, which has

helped us to create a shared history and common understanding of artistic representation

and artistic expression. For example, we now have an understanding of the works of

famous artists such as Van Gogh. This has been achieved through the codification of his

works through the study and practice of art history by art historians who have been largely

published through print.

Other media are now available to help us study artistic representation and artistic

expression but print is still the main method used to discuss the histories of artists and their

works. Print technologies allow us to go about, storing, representing, communicating, and

expressing valuable cultural ideas, Print based assessment systems are the most common

way in which we have gone about codifying artistic representation and artistic expression

within academic creative arts environments. This is most often done through summative

and formative text based assessments using print technologies. This suggests that there is

an imbalance between how we go about assessing our knowledge of the arts in print based

formats and that ePortfolios may help to correct this imbalance (Dillon and Brown, 2006).

From the study of ePortfolios ePortfolio designers are now able to

identify the processes that occur when creative product and experiences are

contextualised from the live performances or installations to the ePortfolio. This

is because the explanation of the performance is often privileged over a

representation of the knowledge itself when displayed symbolic form. By this I

mean that the artistic artefacts and the creative practice that went into these

artefacts can be formulated into a method which details and codifies the creative

practice and processes.

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Thus, the process of creating an ePortfolio allows us to organise and

present our creative practice to others through a process which allows displaying

and interacting with them in new and unique ways.

Other examples of digital archiving research demonstrate that this process can be

used to digitise, re-think and reflect on Australian indigenous ideas of ‘knowledge

referencing, management, and communication' (Mackinlay, 2004). Mackinlay's (2004)

demonstrates how this was achieved with sensitivity and awareness of issues relating to

culturally sensitive digital artefacts.

The process of creating an ePortfolio also allows us to organise and present our

creative practice to others which formulates a process that manages and organises our

artistic representations and expressions through the use of digital media and ePortfolios.

The process of digitisation suggests we need to re-think and reflect on how sensitive ideas

embedded in creative product and processes allows for the creation of a knowledge

referencing and management systems in an ePortfolio system. I also have found that we

need to reflect on how we can integrate knowledge referencing, management, and

communication systems which can be codified in an ePortfolio process and systems.

Thus, by discussing and analysing metaphors of artistic practice within the creative

arts I have been able to identify these forms of ePortfolio as being:

1. Presentation;

2. Documentary;

3. Curated Exhibition;

4. Performance;

5. Installation; and

6. Choreography.

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We can now start to see how contradistinct qualities of artistic knowledge provide a

means of problematizing the idea of ePortfolios. Problematizing has helped me to reflect on

how ePortfolio designers can go about deconstructing ePortfolio systems design so that the

affordances and negatives of ePortfolio use can be determined. Once determined these

affordances and deficits can help creative arts ePortfolio designers to create a design

solution which meets the needs of a creative arts community. The creative arts is

particularly challenging but rewarding in developing ePortfolios as the creative arts help to

provide us with evidence in multiple formats. For the ePortfolio systems designer there is

the same opportunity that exists within ‘Digital media and information systems' to enable

creative artists to present the ‘capture, store, and manage multiple forms of evidence'

(Dillon and Brown, 2006).

An ePortfolio system designed for and by creative artists would allow them to

capture, store, and manage multiple forms of evidence about their artistic products and

processes. This design model could also be used in other disciplines as the skill set used

can be transferable. ePortfolios use digital media to capture store and represent

experiences. What is problematic about ePortfolio systems in the arts is the ephemeral

nature of artistic product and processes. It is the organisation and representation of

ephemeral artefacts in digitised form which poses questions around the accountability,

rigour and value of the representation that provides useful understandings for other

performative and ephemeral research. The goal here is to design a system that lends itself

to processes which could be more compatible with the individual meanings specific to

artistic practices.

The intricacies of ePortfolio systems design have measured and captured in use and

via an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant entitled ‘Constructing a new

conceptual framework for using digital technologies in achieving better arts assessment.'

(Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith 2003) (Nalder, Brown and Smith. 2004). This study

contextualised the Original D-MAP project which has provided us with literature that helps

to demonstrate the intricacies involved in implementing ePortfolio systems in the creative

arts (Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith 2003).

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This current research has attempted to establish a re-contextualisation of the

DMAP ePortfolio system by creating a prototype ePortfolio system. From their research

Dillon and Brown where able to ascertain that ePortfolios afforded the creative arts

students the opportunity to, have a number of sites which allowed them to discuss their

reflection about their creative work in a reflective way. These insights have helped me to

contextualise the ‘creative production context' for ePortfolio systems designers who work

with ePortfolio systems within the creative arts. These opportunities are unique as they help

the creative arts ePortfolio systems designer to understand some of the unique insights

which go into the creation of creative product. For example, Dillon and Brown were

presented with feedback from within their stimulated recall interviews from both teachers

and creative arts students who suggested that ePortfolios presented a number of issues

within the creative arts, (see for example table 3).

Table 3: The ethical protocols of ePortfolio design in the creative arts.

Access and Control: Who controls the use of the portfolio and how

much control is appropriate? In media arts, users

may have a great deal of technical skill to

manipulate the portfolio.

Ethics and Rights Management Confidentiality, intellectual property, copyright:

Who sees and owns the work?

Implementation, Technical and

Policy Constraints

What are the technical constraints that prevent

quality representations from being uploaded, or

who has the skills of access to the technological

gateway?

What policies prevent or enhance this access?

Representation and Recognition How the work to be represented is and what is

the quality of the work that is acceptable as an

artefact? Can the collection of artefacts capture

the qualities of artistic knowledge effectively?

(Dillon and Brown, 2006. p424).

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An important juxtaposition is created between the ePortfolio designer, the teacher,

student and creative arts community. How to translate ephemeral creative products into a

suitable teaching and assessment system as opposed to an ePortfolio system which just

provides clear or literal numerical grades and comments is often contradistinct. This

juxtaposition leads me to reflect on how we can create and integrate an appropriate

assessment system within the creative arts ePortfolio system? Importantly, it is intended

that any evaluative framework integrated within an ePortfolio system within the creative

arts recognises:

“… graduations of technical and expressive ability inherent in the

product and process.' (Dillon and Brown, 2006.p421).

Attached to this complex juxtaposition is a need to acknowledge that teachers are

also a 'valid instrument of assessment' (Dillon and Brown, 2006). This is because the

teacher has the knowledge of experience and ability to evaluate assessable works and how

any aesthetics could impact on a creative works quality. The teacher also brings to the

students’ experience of creating creative products the live lens of the students experience.

This can be achieved if the teacher is able to interact freely with the students' ePortfolio.

The teacher can provide a level of rigour by discussing with the student progressions of

expressiveness and aesthetic development in their creative works. Teachers can also

provide rigour by provide 'multiple lenses' on the phenomenon. (Dillon and Brown, 2006).

The ephemeral nature of music.

For postgraduate music students their knowledge is often focused on the intuitive

and analytical elements which can be expressed in creative product in many forms.

(Swanwick, 1994). Two main elements are involved in the making of music. Measurable

elements, such as tempo and beat, can be easily assessed in numerical terms and rhythmic

accuracy to is comparable. These analytical aspects of musical knowledge are easy to

measure and quantify. This is because these elements are quantifiable. However, there are

more ‘intuitive aspects' elements within the music making process which come from an

individual’s expressiveness (Vella, 2000).

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Expressiveness requires knowledge of the technical expertise which allows the

musician to convey the inherent meaning which allows them to get across the meaning of

the sounds that they produce in a context (Vella, 2000). It is often that the musician is the

only person who can understand the meanings in these contexts as they come from what is

called ‘the embodied experience'. How can ePortfolio systems designers integrate these

types' of contextual symbols within an ePortfolio system?

Music is an interdisciplinary and integrated practice and does not sit outside other

disciplines. For example, music is included in dance, theatre and computer games. Music is

also often expressed as ‘gestures' within these other types of creative productions. We also

see songs being performed in other languages and cultures. The temporality of music can

be documented through the use of multimedia. With multimedia tools we can record and

then unpack each element of the performance so that a greater exegetical explanation can

be placed beside the musical performance. EPortfolio systems can potentially provide a site

and a rigorous process for examination of products and processes. As Polanyi infers the

artefact may not accurately represent the performance. However when the artefact is

accompanied by other evidence of the artists processes the intention of the work may be

more easily conveyed (Polanyi 1967) For the ePortfolio systems designer or owner we are

challenged to provide an information space which speaks of this human performance with

the same resonance as it was performed in.

I have found warnings that ePortfolio systems designers run the risk of not creating

a true representation of the work that was performed. One way of reducing this loss is to

record performances with more than one camera or microphone thus providing us with

more than one digital view of the captured performance. This kind of approach has been

used commercially with ‘directors cuts’ on DVD format that allow a multiple perspective

and an opportunity for a stimulated recall conversation around the art work that makes the

understanding potentially richer. This helps to provide a more trustworthy lens on temporal

performances. Other methods which can afford more honest and trustworthy perspectives

on artistic products and processes and their artefacts. This can include captured data from

multiple sources that help to build rigour within creative arts ePortfolios.

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Representation and Off-line Objects Representations are fraught with the potential for error as they rely on the human

interpretation. Likewise digital media and multimedia are also open to misinterpretations as

they can be vague (Dillon and Brown, 2006). EPortfolio designers need to consider that a

sound recording is a filtered artefact of a performance. The ephemeral nature of sound and

indeed its temporality presents the possibility of multiple interpretations. What is important

to the musician is that they select recordings and artefacts that represent their work and are

aware of what the technology conceals. In some cases using the ‘directors cut’ style

approach a musician may use multiple recordings of the same performance. The ePortfolio

can then be used to provide an artist selected representation of the performance the

technology used in the ePortfolio What is important here is that the artists is satisfied that

the performance has been represented in a light that allows the viewer to perceive the

intended meaning.

To provide accountability via an ePortfolio system, the creative arts will need to be

able to include creative product that is able to be incorporated from external online sources

which can be verified via an audit trail that can validate authenticity and authorship claims.

Just as importantly, offline objects of creative product such as buildings or sound

installations as part of a stand-a-lone performance will also have to be capable of being

included in a creative arts ePortfolio.

We should also be aware of the extra effort that accountability may incur needs to

be weighed up against time spent in making and presenting art. There is an ethical

responsibility to self in this process. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies the inclusion

of geographical meta-data and possibly annotations will help in providing deeper thought

on how offline objects can be included into ePortfolios from the creative arts. This type of

meta-data may be able to be used to provide an audit trail.

Presentation In this section I will discuss presentation as a style of ePortolios. To the creative

artist, presentation is an essential element of creative product. This is because the creative

artist also have to show how they went about demonstrating their understanding of the

creative product processes they created, performed and designed. This is referred to as ‘the

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performative nature of experience' or presentation. This is because presentation needs to

include a:

‘... temporal unfolding which will be easily explainable and understandable as a

performance'(Dillon and Brown, 2006).

Thus we see the ePortfolio providing us with opportunities for performativity of the

ePortfolio to emerge. To some artists using an ePortfolio is itself a performative action.

This is because the creation of the ePortfolio is seen as a type of performativity. This

enhancement needs to be based on the understanding that the computer has a special

position where it is both the tool for constructing the portfolio and the medium in which the

construction takes place..

Importantly, as ePortfolio systems designers and owners we need to be aware that

digital media offers us certain elements which both promotes the advantages of technology

used but that also remove ‘the scope of the ePortfolio'. Sculptors, for example, have unique

skills in how they can talk about the media that they work with and they examine the

strengths and weakness of the media that they use on a constant basis for each project.

Therefore, if ePortfolios are to be more effective ePortfolios developers will need to be

guided by those who have expertise in each creative arts discipline. Nattiez provides

examples:

"1. according to expectations of performers and audience,

2. according to standards of judgement proper to the culture,

3. in terms of context proper to particular performance, and

4. in terms of analogies with the listener's way of perceiving the world in

general” (Nattiez, 1990.p 66).

Often students in tertiary arts based institutions have advanced skills in website

design. It would be optimal for the student to have full access to the aesthetic technologies

for controlling the aesthetic of the ePortfolio. Using the model developed for this project

this is achievable by the use of customizable themes. Creative arts students may also have

advanced e-commerce skills which will allow them to develop creative product which

represents their creative performances which they may wish to sell online. This can be

achieved by small software programs known as plug-ins.

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The ability to sell digitised creative product has become possible through the use of

e-commerce solution. Flickr.com is one such an example where a photography student can

share and upload their photographs, share them with their friends, protect their work by

using a Creative Commons License and offer that work for sale to the public or the

Flickr.com community. Part of the Flickr.com community experience is the leaving of

feedback and comments by the community and public.

Another example is Last.fm which is an online music community which allows its

users to upload their music and make it available for free listening by the public or Last.fm

community. Last.fm has a technology which then allows the listener to purchase the music

from iTunes.com.

Another example is Last.fm which is an online music community which allows its

users to upload their music and make it available for free listening by the public or Last.fm

community. Last.fm has a technology which then allows the listener to purchase the music

from iTunes.com.

Other examples include CDBaby.com which is a website that helps independent

musicians sell their own music online without the need for the major record labels to

become involved. The user could be a music student who is interested in setting up their

own record label, for example. As Barrett suggests an import part of Web 2.0 ePortfolio

design will be the selection of an appropriate software platform that will have the

affordances of Web 2.0 software such as the Wordpress bloging system:

“With Web 2.0, an ePortfolio is really an aggregator of my work that is

stored at many places online: video in video sharing sites like YouTube,

Vimeo, blip.tv, etc.; images in Flickr, Picasa; documents in GoogleDocs,

scribd.com, or lots of other locations; audio in Myna, etc. What we lack is an

aggregator. We need a database to keep track of our online content, sort of

like a database that we can use to organize our personal content, wherever it

resides on the web. If you look at the report that was written by Ian Fox in

NZ, a database of personal/academic content, that can be meta-tagged, is the

missing link.” (Barrett, 2010).

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Finally, as part of this contextualisation of the study of ePortfolios in the creative

arts I have re-adapted the four protocols of ePortfolio design:

Access and Control Ethics and Rights Management Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints? Representation and Recognition (Dillon and Brown, 2006 )

The protocols where developed from feedback back from the original ARC study

‘Construct a new conceptual framework for using digital technologies in achieving better

arts assessment' (Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith, 2003). Lorenzon and Ittleson (2005)

also found these four protocols of ePortfolio design to be critical reflective design questions

(p.4). Other researchers have come to similar conclusions in identifying these protocols as

important to ePortfolio systems design see for example The feedback provided the

following suggestions for developing a suitable ePortfolio model for a creative arts based

ePortfolio system below. I have reinterpreted those protocols which should now allow for

the sale of creative product and the appropriate treatment of creative product from creative

arts students below.

The four protocols for Web 2.0 ePortfolio design in the creative arts.

In the following section I will examine the questions arising from the study of literature

and in particular those emerging from the re-examination of protocols within a web 2.0

ePortfolio context and integrate my own research findings with that of the context review.

1. How does a tertiary institution identify and manage the ethical implications that

may arise from when a research student uploads audio visual materials into a student

ePortfolio?

The use of Web 2.0 integration tools and third party websites allows the ePortfolio

user to manage the ethical management issues themselves.

Ethical standards control then becomes an issue for the research student and the

third party Web service provider and not the responsibility of the tertiary institution.

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This is achievable through the third party Web-services terms of service agreement

which often states the ethical restrictions and relationship between the people using

their services at the point of sign-up.

2. Who owns the intellectual property and the copyright of those audio-visual

materials integrated within a student ePortfolio?

The student should always have full control of the intellectual property and their

creative work at all times. The student created the work and designed the work.

However, the tertiary instition should retain the right to disallow access to uploaded

audio visual materials if the materials contravene local and state laws such as

decency, pornography or the violation of international copyright laws.

A Web 2.0 model which uses third parties Web-services can allow the student to

control their own intellectual property by signing a terms and services agreement

with some providers.

The appropriate service needs to be chosen as some Web 2.0 sites and third party

providers assume control of intellectual property when it is uploaded.

3. Who owns the ePortfolio? Is it the student or the institution?

The student always owns the ePortfolio. To protect their intellectual property the

Web 2.0 and third party services model allows for the audio visual materials to be

protected by the terms and service agreement of the service provider. This is

because the audio visual materials are stored on the third party services network of

computers and not the learning institutions.

4. Who is responsible for the costs of the storage of the ePortfolio and

artefacts?

It is the responsibility of the tertiary institution to provide the cost of the ePortfolio.

However, if a research student does elect to use a Web 2.0 integration model the

research student would not normally be charged for hosting or the downloading of

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material from their external provider to their tertiary institutions ePortfolio system.

This means the research student dose not have to pay for the hosting of their audio

visual data but can still have the option of integrating those materials into tertiary

institutes Web 2.0 based ePortfolio system.

Both these options are then able to be integrated into a Web 2.0 and third party

provider services in a tertiary institute’s ePortfolio system through the use of a

small piece of software, known as a plug-in. I have suggested an approach to

achieving this in the methodology section of this exegesis

This allows the research student to have full control of who has access to their audio

visual files when they are integrated via the use of Web 2.0 websites and third party

services.

Conclusion In this chapter I have examined and analysed, through a contextual analysis, the

deeper meanings of the text and provided links to other authors that help inform us of what

ePortfolio systems may be able to be developed. I have sought to treat artefacts from the

arts appropriately in a reflective manner. It is important to note that Dillon and Brown’s

research was undertaken in 2002-6 at a time when Web 2.0 was in early stages of

development. From Dillon and Brown's work I have been able to examine the metaphors

used and lessons learned from a synthesis of their conceptual framework and a contextual

and literature examination of recent design and technology to develop an interaction and

design methodology which I discuss in the next chapter.

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Chapter 2 Methodology In this chapter I discuss the methodologies and design processes applied to the

research question. Table 4 summarises the research activities phases of the project linked to

the research question. Table 5 reflects on the Software Development as Research phases.

The remainder of this chapter discusses the other elements of the design processes and

interaction and design techniques used to achieve the creation of two ePortfolio system

models proposed and prototyped.

Table 4 Research Question Matrix Activity number

Activity description

A1 Context analysis.

A2 Examination of the learning environment and identify potential

project participants.

A3 Examination of the institutional policy.

A4 Identifying the learning opportunity.

A5 Identification of appropriate software tools to design an open-

source ePortfolio system?

A6 Refinement and usage.

A7 Implementing a rigorous and accountable approach to design.

A8 Examination of uptake and usage of the ePortfolio system.

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Table 5 Research description by phase and research question relationship

Date SoDaR Stages Research question relationship.

A1, A2 and A3.

A2 and A4.

A1

February to March 2007.

Phase 1 Identify activity

First Meeting with key stake holders

Contextual Analysis

Identify Participants

Ethics and participant information.

A3, and A6

April 2007 To January 2008. d

Phase 2 Software design and production

A focus group

Document Design Requirement

Interface Feedback

Request for Functions

Test Functionality

Design Requirements

A1, A4, A5, A6 and A7

July 2008

to

November

2009

Phase 3 Usage and refinement

Interview Participants

Report and document case studies and

publish findings.

Recommend changes for the next

iterations.

A1, A5, A6 and A8

See appendix 8 for a full description of the SoDaR activities and phases.

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Overview of the Methodology This study utilises an interactive design-based practice-led enquiry to ask how

ePortfolio designers can design ePortfolios for Music postgraduate study. Practice-led

enquiry according to Schön is about examining:

"the situations of practice - the complexity, uncertainty, instability,

uniqueness and value conflicts which are increasingly perceived as

central to the world of professional practice" (Schön, 1984).

Schön's notions of reflective practice underpin the design of this study through developing

the idea of ‘knowing-in-action'. In applying these processes designers reflect on the activity

of practice iteratively informed by ‘making work- design' and critically reflecting on it and

further interrogating the process by reflective consultation of peers (Haseman, 2006)

(Schön, 1984). What ePortfolios potentially provide is a flexible and accessible location to

discuss and critique art through collaborative digital processes. Schon’s notions of

reflecting on and in action can be expanded to include ‘through’ action (Schön, 1984). The

ePortfolio then becomes part of a dynamic and collaborative reflective practice.

This study seeks to develop a prototype ePortfolio system that embodies and

extends upon a conceptual framework for ePortfolios applied to tertiary music research. It

adapts Schön's theories to present a tangible model that enables us to see the problems of

design of ePortfolios for research with a new lens. This lens helps us to extract deeper

meaning from the data collected through the design process which is built into the

methodology. These relationships will be examined over seven discrete research stages as

summarized in this table 5 (see appendix 8 for more detail). This process of iterative

reflective practice and creative production has allowed me to ‘dive in' (Haseman, 2006) and

attack the problem and start building prototypes as potential solutions. This approach

provides rigour and accountability that would help ensure that this project would be

appropriately documented and inform the design and production processes in a clear and

client responsive way.

As a confident Information technology user I have a bias towards technologies that

I have had success with and have tended towards a view of technology as something that

can enable new approaches to ways of working and living.

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However, not everyone sees technology in this light and techno-phobia and many

other impediments to uptake of technology can often stand in the way of large scale

adoption of what may seem obvious, innovative and useful advances to me (Rura-Polley

and Baker, 2002) (Williams and Castells, 2003). To counteract these aspects of personal

bias and to privilege the users in the design process I have adapted an iterative multi-

methodology called Software Development as Research (SoDaR) (Brown, 2007). This

approach to method has allowed me to combine an iterative approach of design and

pedagogical development (Brown, 2007) (Cotterill, Hammond, Drummond and Aiton et.

all, 2005).

This methodology also incorporates ‘practice-led enquiry' in the form of my

practice as an interactive designer that allows me to investigate the deeper meanings of the

research project through experiential knowledge gained in a studio based environment and

applying critical ‘reflection-in-action' and ‘reflection-on-action' (Schön, 1984).

The identification of the underlying problems in design were further achieved by a

process of critical context review involving the examination of open source software

programs which could be used to build the ePortfolio system (Appendix 5). This allowed

me to examine the affordances and problems of access and user-ability inherent in current

systems. This allowed me to develop an interaction and design model to address these

problems.

This interactive 'studio element' of the research allowed me to customise and install

an experimental design Web 2.0 ePortfolio system. (Haseman, 2006) (Dillon, Personal

Correspondence 11/06/2008 10:35 PM, Brisbane Australia).

Background to the protocols The Australian Research Council study ‘Constructing a new conceptual framework

for using digital technologies in achieving better arts assessment' was undertaken in 2002/3

(Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith, 2003). This ARC funded project studied how Digital

Media Assessment Portfolios could be implemented across a number of arts disciplines

with the intention of ‘highlighting the experience of classroom music making' in selected

tertiary teaching and learning contexts.

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The ‘Constructing a new conceptual framework for using digital technologies in

achieving better arts assessment' study studied these contexts as achieving better arts

assessment through the use of digital portfolios was considered a problematic process at

that time (Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith, 2003). The researchers designed and

implemented a number of ‘participant observation case studies' which allowed the research

team to draw upon and to examine what deeper meanings may have lay hidden within the

data they collected about these processes .

The Australian Research Council study used a participant observation case study

method (Lincoln and Guba 1985) (Jorgensen 1989). Five case studies had been set-up to

run across arts disciplines in arts based teaching and learning institutes.

The overarching methodology was a ‘Multiple Perception Analysis’ which

incorporated case study alongside other data forms to gather impressions of the project

through stimulated recall interviews (Ecker and T. Baker 1984). The stimulated recall

process was used to capture the use of the ePortfolio systems designed for the ARC project

which was called the Digital Multimedia Assessment Portfolio system.

The secondary goal of the stimulated recall process was to allow the participants to

tell their stories of their use of the ePortfolio system. This was achieved through the use of

video recorders and laptops .

The Australian Research Council study researchers included a teaching and

assessment approach as part of their study so that they could simulate Howard Gardner's

Project Zero style of teaching and learning approach from domain projects which had

included paper based portfolios (Garnder, 1988). Gardner achieved this in similar teaching

and learning environments to the ARC study (Blythe, Allen et al. 1999).

Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith, (2003) adopted the Project Zero approach

allowed them a number of teaching and learning affordances which aligned well with the

research methodologies (.p1). These affordances included:

“Portfolios to utilise peer, self and teacher assessment;

Individual and group work with a strong emphasis upon reflective

dialogues between; students and students and teacher;

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Examinations of production, perception and reflection processes within

long termed domain projects and utilising portfolios and a suite of self,

peer and teacher assessment activities to create a dialogue about artistic

knowledge with students and within the learning community;

Digital videotaping of all performances and presentations Students

submitted text and notated assessments in a universal digitised form i.e.

RTF or PDF, for word-processed documents. MIDI files & html music

files such as Scorch (Sibelius), .WAV and AIFF files for music; and by.

By collating these files in this way, students were able to share useful

resources at the end of the unit helpful for their first year of teaching

music.” (Dillon, Nalder, Brown and Smith, 2003.p1).

The Australian Research Council study found that creative arts educational ePortfolios

could be used to design an ePortfolio system which treated the special relationship that

exists in the creative arts digital media and artefacts generated from creative practice by

using appropriate ePortfolio design protocols . The following data was collected to achieve

this:

"Interviews and stimulated recall with digital portfolios;Video, audiotape

of presentations; Document analysis from the institution/ university and

student work;35 sets of work samples from individual students, peer and

self-assessment sheets; Marks and data base materials; and Unit

evaluation statistics and comments”. Nalder, Dillon, Brown and Smith

(2003).

The Australian Research Council study ascertained that ePortfolios afforded the

creative arts students the opportunity to have a number of sites which allowed them to

discuss their reflection about their creative work in a reflective way. This was achieved by

all students being provided with a website which allowed them to:

"Upload sound files,

Computer code,

Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) versions of notated

arrangements; and

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Compositions which where placed along text document tasks

(Dillon and Brown, 2005.p420).

Student responses suggested that the following about the outputs from The Australian

Research Council study ‘Constructing a new conceptual framework for using digital

technologies in achieving better arts assessment' stimulated recall interviews and

reflections:

"The process lent itself to accountability.

The focus was on understanding rather than outcome alone and

upon proving understanding.

There was a power shift to the student, or at least a responsibility

shift towards a democratization of the assessment process.

It provided a demonstration of outcomes.

Better teaching and better learners. (Dillon et al., 2003c)" (Dillon

and Brown, 2005.p420.)

This research suggests the positive aspects of ePortfolio systems that may help

viewers gain insights into the creation of creative products. It is these unique opportunities

which provide us with new affordances through a re-examination of ePortfolios for music

assessment that it is proposed in this study will be extended by reassessing them in a web

2.0 context.

Furthermore, the important aspects of the multiple perceptions-based analysis-

practices and user-led design process inherent in the ARC study can be incorporated into

the Software Development as Research (SoDaR) approach.

Research methods used in this project. After consultation with key stakeholders the goal of this thesis was to design

ePortfolios for Music postgraduate study using practice-led inquiry (see appendix 10). To

achieve this goal I have re-contextualised and redesigned one element of the ARC study. I

achieved this by re-constructing a new conceptual framework for using digital technologies

in achieving better arts in 2009. I hoped that this process would allow me to design a

prototype ePortfolio system which would enhance this study so that I could examine the

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impacts of new web technologies which I could then discern and discuss. The following

element of the original ARC study was chosen:

"Develop and trial a conceptual framework for better arts assessment

and evaluation and fundamental knowledge that takes optimum

advantage of the capacities of NICTS to facilitate learning". (Dillon,

Nalder, Brown and Smith, 2002.p1).

The Practice-Led Inquiry. As discussed in the contextual analysis section of this study, for postgraduate music

students, how they portray themselves in virtual spaces such as ePortfolios is becoming a

passport which will allow them to participate in new work opportunities (Pink, 2002)

(Roberts, 2004). I have designed the prototype ePortfolio system for this study to allow

these changes to be implemented into an ePortfolio system for the creative arts. I achieved

this by modifying the popular weblog software Wordpress-MU which became the

prototype ePortfolio system.

I have now also been able to develop a prototype system which allows for

ePortfolios to be adapted and configured for installation on a universal serial bus credit

card-sized memory device which becomes a smart Web 2.0 business card or portable

ePortfolio (see appendix 11). This allows the postgraduate music student to create new

relationships with parties interested in the work by creating links to their ePortfolio and

artefacts of their creative product on Web 2.0 social networking sites such as Flickr.com,

Last.fm and Youtube.com.

Software Development as Research. The SODAR method has three phases which are carried out in iterations data are

gathered at the end of each phase from the project participants and key stake holders.

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SoDaR Phases

Stage 1 Identify activity

Investigate circumstances where a new software application will foster musical

learning;

Document the educational setting, and describe the activity which will foster

musical learning;

Identify which musical learning activity is appropriate to be examined.

Implicit educational and musical presupposition and theories have categorically

defined;

This step helps ensure that the educational and musical presuppositions are

integrated into the software development phase;

Hypotheses that define the most logical out comes are developed here. This can

include known applications but may also include totally new approaches to software

development. Important; this is done not to ‘prove or disprove them', but to develop

a logical road map of what type of applications should be considered;

Research is undertaken to help in the software development phase. This can include

identifying similar software applications to see if they can perform the same

activity. Sources of information can include previous projects, established literature

about the musical learning activity and other software vendors; and.

Reflecting on the following questions may help distil how the activity could work in

the circumstance being examined (Brown, 2007.p6).

Reflecting on the following questions has been found to help distil the software

development activity further.

"-What educational value would be provided by the software?

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-Why is software the best medium for providing this experience?

-Is the activity described at an appropriate level of detail?" (Brown,

2007.p6)

Stage 2 Software design and production

Stage two sees the tools that are required to capacitate the activity are actualize;

To reduce the loss of research opportunities, as quickly as possible, and generate the

software application which will enable the basic activity to occur is written.

Improvements will be integrated within the application in stage three;

A detailed software specification should now be included. This should include

instructions and an in-depth explanation report of the software specifications.

Creating a data trail of the usage of the software application will help encourage a

comparative reflection on how hypothesis compares with the software application.

Other changes, which may have occurred because of technical limitations or even

new options for implementing the musical learning activity, should be recorded in

the user manual;

This stage presents the software development with the opportunity to create reports

which document the:

o programming code;

o programmers design comments;

o revisals;

o historical logs from the servers; and

o the manual for the users

Reflection in this stage of the process should spotlight on the objectives of the

researchers. This is so that the researchers are not distracted by technical issues that

the programmers may be having. This is so that the musical learning activity can

stay in the forefront of the researcher's investigations.

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Reflection at this stage will focus on the following type of reflection questions.

"-What are the musical elements involved and what data structure best

supports the relationships between them?

-Does each software feature reinforce the design objective?

-What software platform will best enable production and deployment?

-Has the design and production process changed the understanding of

the educational implications?" (Brown, 2007,p6).

Stage 3 Usage and refinement

The third phase is the part of the project where the music learning students should

be engaged with the learning activity. No firm timeline for this stage is provided. It

may be the situation will determined how much time can be spent on this phase.

o Lesson plans should be designed and documented;

o documentation should include teachers notes about each session where the

activity is run;

o The lesson plan is important as it helps to provide a framework for the

musical teaching activities. (Brown, 2007).

The product that emerged from this process was Wordpress-Mu which is a multi-

user multi-site weblog (http://mu.wordpress.org) (see http://dmap.ci.qut.edu.au).

Wordpress- MU emerged from the context analysis phase as having the characteristics of

flexibility and usability that fitted the needs of participants. The choice of this platform and

its affordances was made through a synthesis of the needs of system, user and context

against available technologies. This system was employed within the university system and

I have also carried further iterations of the ePortfolio system designed for this study outside

of the university which can be found at http://www.paulcstephensen.com and

http://www.savetodisc.net.

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Training and Focus groups. The user led design elements included the selection and installation of the weblog

software WordpressMu (See Appendix 6). I then modified WordpressMu software so that it

could act as an ePortfolio system. I then ran a focus group which generated important

discussion about what the participants wanted (Refer to Appendix 1, 2 and 3). The project

participants were then each allocated a user account and instructed on how to create a

weblog which could be modified to look like and act as an ePortfolio.

The ePortfolio was designed to allow the participants to store their postgraduate

music research and digital artefacts such as music notations, texts and digital video and

audio of their performances. After the one-on-one training sessions the project participants

selected a theme that they liked. They were then instructed to write posts about their

abstract and research. I organised one-on-one in-depth training sessions which lasted from

between 30 minutes and one and a half hours at a local coffee shop on campus. The

training was carried out using laptops and a wireless internet connection to demonstrate

tasks in a peer-based training environment.

The purpose of the training sessions was to train the participants in the use of of an

ePortfolio and to get a sense of their feelings, level of comfort and experiences with these

technologies. This would allow me to integrate customised functions for them on the fly to

meet their individual needs. This process allowed me to carry out the interaction and design

tasks of function building in a user-led manner focusing on the needs of the participant's

usage preferences.

This creative practice involved in this research has involved 12 months of studio-

based experimentation with different types of web-based technologies (February 2007 to

February 2008). These included content management systems and web log software ( refer

to appendix 5).A content management system is a software tool which allows people

without programming knowledge to manage content that they wish to publish on the

internet (Drupal http://www.drupal.org and Joomla http://www.joomla.org/).

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The Case Study. The use of the ‘Software Development As Research' methodology (SoDaR) was

used to identify what type of application was most suitable for the learning activity to be

undertaken (Brown, 2007). The SoDaR methodology also includes iterations of qualitative

data gathered from case studies using one-on-one interviews, focus groups and the textual

analysis (Brown, 2007).

The participants. The participants were purposively selected based on the amenability of their study

to the use of ePortfolios and contacted from a list supplied by the supervisory team.

Students were undertaking either a Master of Arts Research or Doctoral program of post

graduate study where a significant portion of their research was practice led either as

performers, composers or musicological study. Each needed a system for managing

artefacts of these works in audio visual form. The initial email to participants included an

invitation to participate in the project. I organised to meet with each participant before the

focus group and introduced them to the project as well as undertaking the organisation of

administrative matters such as the signing of the participant information sheet and ethical

approval forms. This provided an informal opportunity for the participants to get to know

me and each other.

Participant description. Arthur (pseudonym ) is a male instrumentalist with interest in guitar, drums and the

Irish rock genre and is aged in his early 40's. This participant is technology-confident with

skills in Web design and computer programming. This participant is currently completing a

doctorate of philosophy and was attracted to the project as he was interested in extending

his network of websites and creating a centralised jumping-off point to other websites he

owns.

Tina (pseudonym ) is a pianist with musical interests in composition and music

teaching. She was undertaking a masters of Arts music degree and also demonstrated a high

level of comfort and competency with technology use in her practice.

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Tina was attracted to the project as she wanted to find a way of storing all her

research in one online facility and completed all learning activities and completed their

participation in the project as expected.

Harry (pseudonym ) is a male in his early 30's who is interested in creating musical

productions and musical theatre. He is also uses technology routinely in his practice and

was attracted to the project as he wanted to develop a place were he could publish his

musical scores and attract attention to his doctoral studies.

George (pseudonym ) is a male in his late 20's who is interested in musical

directorship in church based organisations. He also routinely uses technology in his

practice and has a degree in Civil Engineering. He was attracted to the project as he wanted

to find an online solution which would allow him to discuss his research in seminars and to

have a Web presence to which he could point his key stakeholders to. George completed all

learning activities and completed their participation in the project as expected.

The Focus Group. One focus group was held at the start of the project in a small tutorial room on

campus. The four project participants were invited and attended. The focus group discussed

the participant's preference of how they would like to use the ePortfolio system (see

Appendix 1). Other issues discussed included their range of experience levels with

technology. We also discussed the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 design models developed for this

project and which approach they preferred (O'Reilly, T. 2005). Other issues discussed

included how the ePortfolios should look when displayed in a Web browser such as

Internet Explorer (Ravet, S. 2007).

At this stage the project was being hosted via an external Web host which was

controlled by me for this project. Agreement on how to proceed was reached with the

group. This site was then moved to a school of music Web server shortly after the focus

group. The focus group was videotaped and transcribed into a Microsoft-Word document

and the analogue video recording converted to a digital file format and copied to a DVD,

(See example in Appendix 13).

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The Interviews. Two one-on-one interviews of 45 minutes duration each were carried out. The

participants were emailed on nearly 20 occasions seeking a suitable time to organise an

interview with them. Multiple phone calls were also made. The supervisory team assisted

in organising contact with the project participants. The interviews were designed as semi-

structured, one-on-one interviews which lasted about 45 minutes each and were carried out

at a popular coffee shop at the research site. The interviews focused on the participant's

relationship to their music, their relationship and their understanding of technology and

their experience with the ePortfolio system developed for this project (Wiersma, 1986),

(Brown, 2007) (Yin,1981). The interviews have been digitally recorded as an audio file,

transcribed and stored on a DVD in a secure off-line location, (See example in Appendix

13).

Triangulation of Data. Whilst data from a single focus group and two interviews was limited it did serve to

enrich case study materials and to triangulate the research data. This evidence comes from

the transcribed interviews, a digital recording of the focus group, and interviews.

The evidence of this research processes will be included as summaries in the final exegesis

and the transcript of interview and digital recordings attached as appendices (see

appendices 1,2,3 and 13) .

Negative Case analysis. Like the notion of 'null hypothesis,' negative case analysis provides an opportunity

to examine the factors affecting participation with the purpose of eliminating them from the

enquiry or pursuing the explanations to extinction (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). The purpose

here is to provide credible explanations for inconsistent participation or to determine

whether the design, the system or the technology affected this. Whilst the case study data

for this research was limited, the non participation of cases revealed an important aspect of

interactive design research. Impediments to uptake of technology and policies in

institutional settings raised the questions around use of ePortfolios in tertiary environments.

In this research the reasons for non-use of the technology designed for the user were

examined against the protocols to determine what the impediments to uptake were.

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Access and Control.

Examples of reason for lack of uptake.

Arthur pointed out in his one-on-one interview that as the ePortfolio could not act

as a focal point to talk about his research he was disappointed in it. He discussed an

example of how he wanted to invite a person external to the university to become an online

community member and possibly as a key stakeholder (Rura-Polley and Baker, 2002).

However, when Arthur telephoned the potential key stakeholder Arthur was unable to

provide the key stakeholder with an ePortfolio web site address that the potential key

stakeholder could access via the Internet. Arthur was disappointed as this was a lost

opportunity to have someone from the music industry being able to see his postgraduate

music research. Arthur stated:

"That was a real bummer and I would think he would try and solicit

songs from you know where I could say look for the credits on the last

album I did." (See Appendix 3).

Arthur further reinforced his view that the lack of an online community was a significant

factor in that it he had a strong desire for an online community to be part of his study. This

could be explained as Arthur seems to have a very strong sense of community and that this

important to his music making processes.. Arthur and I discussed this in-depth. Arthur said:

"And it occurred to me that the thing that I could still do musically would be to create a

community of ideas in the same situation, the same place. And it just sort of grew from

there. Because I know a lot of people in that situation; who are in their 30's, 40's, 50's, who

are great for us, great song artists. It'd be a nifty habit to make it and make a living out of

their current activity. So, I really wanted to bring them together .... And this was like Marty

said, it wasn't a big thing then, but it became very apparent that the Internet as a

connectivity thing and as a source of news and information, all that kind of stuff was just to

keep paying". (Refer to Appendix 3).

Thus we can start to see how 'Access and Control' has had a negative impact on

Arthur's uptake of the ePortfolio system. We can see that Arthur did not have full control of

his own ePortfolio.

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Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints?

Arthur stated in his one-on-one interview that he was very keen to create an online

community of people interested in his music entrepreneurship. While the ePortfolio system

had the technical capacity to create an online portfolio system the limitation of no external

visitors prohibited the usefulness of this feature. This can be seen in the following

interview transcript extract from Arthur’s interview. Art was very keen on creating an

online community but the project has to adopt the technical and policy constraints of the

university. Arthur said:

" Good question. It means a couple of things. To me, it means the warm

fuzzies that other people have got benefit from what I'm doing, whether

it's as a performer or as someone who sort of makes other people happy,

or if they've brought together other people that have formed creative

relationships or done whatever they have. There's a warm-fuzzies thing

happening there." (See Appendix 3).

Tina also had issues with elements of the technical design of the ePortfolio system

which she did not use which centred on some very meaningful reasons. While Tina

successfully completed her participation in the project she used elements of the system that

allowed her to store her artefacts and postgraduate music research centrally. Within the

design of the ePortfolio system I had allowed for postgraduate music research artefacts to

be stored on external networks and then embedded in the ePortfolio system. These

networks included social networking websites such Flickr.com, Myspace.com and

Youtube.com. Tina did not use these features, which is another example of the

manifestation of the implementation, technical and policy had affected the negative uptake

of a technical feature of the system. In examination of this an important issue arises. In an

interview with her about this Tina expressed her concern about being able to trust external

sites. Tina states this in the following transcript extract:

"But external websites and things like that, they may not be there in a

month's time." (See appendix 2).

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'Representation and Recognition' and 'Ethics and Rights Management' and 'Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints'?

In the same interview I asked Tina about this trust issue to examine her feelings

further about the Web 2.0 design elements. Tina elaborated further by expressing her

concern about whether or not she could trust the external websites that she would be

uploading her postgraduate music research to. This is a complex phenomenon which

incorporates issues from the 'Representation and Recognition' and 'Ethics and Rights

Management' and 'Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints' protocols (Dillon and

Brown, 2006). This also helps to reinforce a strong policy concern which is to ensure that

all participants understand the technicality of the ePortfolio system. Tina explains this:

"But, I think, my frustration with computer technology is like you're

saying with the external links, is the trust. If one of those goes down or if

something happens to your computer itself, and you don't know how to

get it back, then you’re left since you don't know if you can keep on fixing

it. Because you don't know if you have those skills it takes, which are

wiped out. You're completely relying on things external."(See appendix

2)

From both interviews the protocols of 'Representation and Recognition' did not

appear to be a factor. To achieve this analysis I examined the interview transcripts in

appendices 4 and 5 for the key words ‘Representation and Recognition' and 'Ethics and

Rights Management' and similar synonyms (Dillon and Brown, 2006).

It was also established that amongst the non-user group that each had continued to

apply ePortfolio style techniques within their research practice. Arthur has implemented a

Wiki, see http://musowiki.net/index.php/Main_Page, as central to his research data

gathering using a server external to the university. Tina has applied Transana media,

http://www.transana.org, and annotation research software is integral to her research

processes. Harry has successfully applied web 2.0 websites, see

http://otherproduction.com.au/, to market and further his music theatre research. George

continues to use the ePortfolio designed for him as means of managing and keeping music

present in the conversation around his research http://dmap.ci.qut.edu.au.

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What this suggests is that there is a need for a design of ePortfolios that can operate

both within an institutional environment and that can be applied freely to self-made or

open-source environments.

Conclusion The process of creating a methodology for designing ePortfolios for Music

postgraduate research has involved the application of SoDaR, a multi method to a small

group case study of music post-graduate students. Through this process I have sought to

gather data about their needs and integrate those needs via the use of Web 2.0 technologies.

These technologies have been critically reviewed and a software package selected and

exposed to successive iterations of ePortfolio designs as applied to the specifications of

creative practitioners (see appendices 5,6 and 7). A conceptual framework was used as a

comparative theoretical measure to replicate prior research and apply the theory to Web 2.0

contexts and applications. Whilst this process has involved a small sample it has gathered

a large body of evidence from these sources that reflect a systemic and inclusive approach

to design. This approach provides what I would suggest is a thick description of the

phenomenon that is reflected in the design of the ePortfolios.

In this chapter I have introduce the primary research methods that I have used to

develop two prototype Web 2.0 ePortfolio systems. This has been achieved by providing

evidence of the previous research which has used the Software Development as Research

method to discover the deeper meanings presented in the data gathered. I have also

discussed how I have applied the SoDaR method in-depth. In the next chapter I will discuss

the design outcomes from this process.

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Chapter 3 Design Outcomes In this Chapter I will outline the design outcomes of this research beginning with a

discussion of the context and definition of web 2.0 portfolios and their origin and then

describing how the contextual and theoretical analysis has led to the design that has been

implemented here.

Tosh and Werdmuller (2005) and Barrett (2007) suggest that ePortfolio systems

could be built using extensible mark-up language and Web 2.0 technologies which would

allow for an ePortfolio to use weblog technologies (p2). Tosh and Werdmuller argue that:

"Use of the Electronic Portfolio (ePortfolio) is rising around the world

and in particular the US and UK. Two main purposes of the ePortfolio

include: promotion of student centred learning and reflection; career

planning and CV building. Weblog use has grown rapidly leading to the

development of some excellent programs for keeping a daily online

‘diary’. This report explores the possibility of merging weblog

technology with ePortfolios, creating a platform for learning reflection.

ePortfolios and weblogs: one vision for ePortfolio development.

Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh." (Tosh and Werdmuller,

2004.p2).

Barrett (2007) believes that Web 2.0 ePortfolios could be designed with the

following characteristics. Barrett lists these as:

"In summary, as I review all of these comparisons, I have designed an

ePortfolio that considers the framework of Web 2.0, which I call

ePortfolio 2.0. Other terms might be "blog-folios" or "wiki-folios" or

perhaps iPortfolios (i=interactive ) (Refer to appendix 9 for the full table

of characteristics) .

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Barrett (2007) discusses the affordances of interactive ePortfolios that use

Web 2.0 technologies and asks to reflect on these. These observations extend the

original research focus through the recognition and ubiquitous nature and access

of Web 2.0. Barrett argues:

"What are some of the advantages of an Interactive Portfolio? Just as the

Web changed with the implementation of the architecture of interaction,

we could say that portfolios have the potential to change with the

pedagogy of interaction, especially as used within a paradigm of

assessment for learning. With these new tools, we can post work and

invite feedback, as in a blog; we can post work and invite co-authors, as

in a Wiki. Fortunately, Wiki tools keep track of the changes, so that

authorship can be tracked, if that is important for accountability. As I

wrote in the Connected Newsletter (2006)" (Barrett, 2007)

This project has drawn specifically upon the Web 2.0 ePortfolio system design

models of Barrett (2007) and Tosh and Werdmuller (2004) to create a Web 2.0 interactive

ePortfolio system.

These design frameworks have been further enhanced by applying a theoretical

aspect by incorporating a conceptual framework that outlines four protocols for ePortfolio

design as proposed by Dillon and Brown that raise questions about the design and use of

ePortfolios in practice. These protocols are:

“Access and Control

Who controls the use of the portfolio and how much control is

appropriate? In media arts, users may have a great deal of technical skill

to manipulate the portfolio.” (Dillon and Brown 2006 p427).

“Ethics and Rights Management

Confidentiality, intellectual property, copyright. Who sees and owns the

work?” (Dillon and Brown 2006 p427).

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“Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints?

What are the technical constraints that prevent quality representations

from being uploaded, or who has the skills of access to the technological

gateway?” (Dillon and Brown 2006 p427)

“Representation and Recognition

How is the work to be represented and what is the quality of the work that

is acceptable as an artefact? Can the collection of artefacts capture the

qualities of artistic knowledge effectively?” (Dillon and Brown 2006

p427)

An important element which drove the process of design in this project was the key

stakeholder’s design requirements. Please refer to appendix 10:

WordpressMu. After performing a comprehensive comparative analysis of open-source ePortfolio

platforms the software that showed potential to meet the above mentioned protocols was

the popular multi-user weblog software Wordpress Mu. A weblog is a small website that

publishes posts in reverse chronological order.

Weblogs use very simple syndication to publish between other weblogs and

subscribers. WordpressMu is programmed in the scripting language called PHP. PHP was

created to help generated websites which would support dynamic content.

The main purpose of WordpressMu is to allow people who wish to create a network

of weblogs so that they can be linked together in one central location. According to the

Mu.wordpress.org website.

WordpressMu offers organisations and individuals a large number of advantages

and features. These features include the:

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" Ability to create a hosted "community" of users.

Ability to host thousands of users on one site.

Opportunity to provide free hosting as an alternative to paid

hosting services.

Ability to limit sign-up to specific email domains if required.

Various options for adding Plugins and administration features.

Customization of the administration panels.

Ability to add Wordpress Themes, increasing user choices.

Ability to control Wordpress Themes, limiting user choices per

site needs.

Security precautions and protections in place.

Easy addition of comment spam protection through Plug-ins. "

(Mu.wordpress.org, 2008)

From the perspective of the user WordpressMu has the following features and

benefits available:

"No installation or setup. Enter user name and password and blog.

A chance to test drive Wordpress at little or no risk.

Choose Wordpress Themes that have been tested and are ready for use - no

fuss, no muss.

Part of a community, with potential for community relationships through

competition and awareness." (Mu.wordpress.org, 2008)

For the creative artist these features present accessibility, flexibility and ease of access.

How WordpressMu works. The WordpressMu files for the ePortfolio system are stored on a university Web-

server. A web-server is a computer which is accessible via the Internet and provides Web-

services to people who connect to that Web-Server and view websites stored on it.

Wordpress-Mu files are uploaded and stored on the web-server. WordpressMu provides a

wizard-driven installation screen.

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To be installed correctly WordpressMu requires a database. Once created by the

systems administrator the details of how to connect to the database are entered into the

WordpressMu installation Wizard. Once a connection to a database server is created and

the database credentials verified the software is then able to start being severed as a Web-

service.

Each time a postgraduate music student or visitor accesses the ePortfolio system

they then point their Internet browser to http://dmap.ci.edu.au. To do this the user

ePortfolio visitor has to have a university user name and password and the SAS virtual

private networking software installed on their local computer to achieve this. See

http://www.its.qut.edu.au/offcampusaccess/sas for the instructions on how to do this. Once

they have access to the ePortfolio a postgraduate music student’s ePortfolio the

WordpressMu application queries the database about how the application should be

rendered by the Internet Browser. The database then analyses what functions are to be

made available to the visitor as well. The Database server examines the PHP scripts, and

ePortfolio users selected functions and modules. This information is then and stored in the

database which is then rendered as a website within the Internet Browser. The ePortfolio

owner can change how this is viewed by the interface of the ePortfolio system. At the same

time a connection is created between the Web-server and the database server and a virtual

directory of the postgraduate music students’ ePortfolio is created. Each virtual directory

then contains an individual virtual instance of an ePortfolio. A virtual directory is created

by the Web-servers "mod-rewrite" module, a web server plug-in for the Apache Web-

Server. The virtual weblog is created in the Random Access Memory of the Web-server

and then cached on the Web-server’s hard drive to increase speed and performance. All

files uploaded to the postgraduate music student’s ePortfolio are stored in the cached copy

of the virtual directory.

WordpressMu as an EPortfolio system for postgraduate music students.

Once the WordpressMu software is set-up Wordpress can be customised to be an

ePortfolio system fairly easily by creative artists or with assistance from IT professionals or

the extensive support network that such open source communities provide. This is achieved

by selecting a theme which resembles a traditional ePortfolio.

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A theme is a customisable view of the ePortfolio. It can also be thought of a skin

which wraps around the WordpressMu content served by the Web-Server and Database

Server. This allows the ePortfolio owner to have highly customisable look and feel

elements which can help them to project their personalities through their ePortfolio. The

documentation and user manual for administrators can be found here

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress. For the ePortfolio users the Wordpress

community has extensive documentation which can be found here at

http://codex.wordpress.org/New_To_WordPress_-_Where_to_Start.

The ePortfolio owner then has the ability to create a personal weblog which allows

them to write about their postgraduate studies. This can include artefacts from past

publications, abstracts or works that they are working on with the academic supervisors.

The weblog has the facility to have multi-media files up-loaded and stored within the

ePortfolio where each student was allocated 100 megabytes of storage space. The

postgraduate student can then choose to share those files with their friends on the ePortfolio

network. Important members of the network are able to leave comments and feedback

about the ePortfolio owner’s work. This online feedback can help the postgraduate music

student create an argument which will help them to advance the goals of their study

(Roberts, 2004).

Through the use of a plug-in the postgraduate student could elect to allow their

ePortfolio visitors to upload video and audio comments through the use of mobile phones

and web cams. These comments can also be embedded into the postgraduate music

student’s ePortfolio from Web 2.0 Social networking sites such as Flickr.com, Last.fm,

Youtube.com, Myspace.com and Facebook.com (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). This creates a

very powerful reflective journal for the postgraduate student as it allows them to include

their user generated content from Web 2.0 social networks.

The postgraduate student can also upload musical scores in PDF format. There are

also plug-ins which allow the postgraduate music student to embed Sibelius scores using

the “Sibelius Scorch Plug-in for Wordpress”, see

http://www.sibelius.com/products/scorch/index.html. HTML files can also be inserted in a

Youtube.com like manner for music notation files from http://www.noteflight.com/.

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The prototype ePortfolio systems that I have developed for this project also allows

for a number of searching facilities. This includes traditional searches from a search box

that allows for key word search, Meta tags and visual tag clouds which provide a visual

map of key words which are then clicked on.

The WordpressMu editor is very basic and allows for text, image and audio to be

included. However, it is limited to the amount of text that can be included. This can be

overcome by the use of the advanced tiny MCE plug-in,

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/, which I have installed to allow for

a more feature-rich experience.

The visitor of the ePortfolio system can view a listing of all the ePortfolios

available or they can sign-up for their own ePortfolio, or if they already have their own

ePortfolio on the system they can login and start making changes. Each ePortfolio is

password protected and can only be accessed by someone who knows the user name and

password or the systems administrator.

Modular Design WordpressMu offers a Modular design approach which means that an ePortfolio

systems designer can add or remove functions of the weblog by installing small segments

of PHP code known as a plug-in. The plug-ins are uploaded to the web-server where

WordpressMu is installed and are then activated from within WordpressMu. Plug-ins are

created by the WordpressMu community and are most often free to use. Customised plug-

ins could also be written by an ePortfolio systems designer with PHP programming

knowledge. This allows for a wide variety of functions from creating a file management

utility through to allowing a user to have the ability to upload photos, music files or video

files from Web 2.0 social networking sites such as Youtube.com or Facebook.com.

Each postgraduate student is able to login to a central web page which allows them

to register as a user and sign up for an account which creates a basic weblog.

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Integrating Web 2.0 Content from Social networking websites

As part of the design brief that emerged from the research process, see appendix 10,

I implemented a function which would allow the integration of an ePortfolio owners Web

2.0 Content from Social networking websites such as Youtube.com or Facebook.com to be

integrated into the ePortfolio and protected by a number of copyright regimes. This would

allow the ePortfolio owner to discuss any digital multimedia files hosted by Web 2.0

content from social networks so that it could be included in their ePortfolio. This could

include digital audio and video recordings of their performances. This ability was disabled

in WordpressMu 1.1 by the providers of the software as it was seen as a potential security

exploit http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/search.php?q=youtube. At first I tried a number of

plug-ins which enabled the embedding of videos and music. Such as the Coolplayer plug-

in, which can be downloaded from http://izachy.com/2006/11/16/cool-player-plugin.

However, after feedback from the key stake holders and users it was found that this

plug-in was unstable and not always reliable. To negate this problem I had to modify some

of the code in a WordpressMu file called kses.php. The file with the modified code was

then uploaded to the web sever. This was done after extensive searching of the Internet and

implemented as reported below:

1. “Go to: wp-include

2. open kses.php in an editor like notepad.

3. go to around line 742 and simply do the following commenting out:

function kses_init_filters() {

// Normal filtering.

add_filter(’pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_filter_kses’);

add_filter(’title_save_pre’, ‘wp_filter_kses’);

// Post filtering

// add_filter(’content_save_pre’, ‘wp_filter_post_kses’);

// add_filter(’excerpt_save_pre’, ‘wp_filter_post_kses’);

// add_filter(’content_filtered_save_pre’, ‘wp_filter_post_kses’);

}” (goelji.com, 2008).

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This process has allowed the ePortfolio users to be able to use Web 2.0 content

from Web 2.0 social networking sites such as Youtube.com or Facebook.com. To

overcome any security concerns I have advised the users of the system to disable comments

from people who are not registered on the system.

Traditional EPortfolio systems. This is somewhat of a different approach to a traditional ePortfolio system which

typically stores audio and visual materials stored on a local file server and only allows the

user to user hyper-links to Web 2.0 content on Social Networking sites (Thompson, 2007).

Examples of traditional ePortfolio systems include QUT's ePortfolio system, see

http://www.studenteportfolio.qut.edu.au/forstudents/ and Epilsen.com, see

http://www.epsilen.com/LandingSite/Home.aspx , environment to name a few. The figure

in figure 3.0 show how I view a traditional ePortfolio systems which stores functions and

artefacts on one local. Figure 3.1 shows us an example of a traditional ePortfolio can look.

Figure 3.0 Traditional ePortfolio content model

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Figure 3.1 Previous examples of ePortfolios Figure 3.1 This is rendered in the Internet Browser in a similar fashion to the example in figure 3.1

Web 2.0 enabled ePortfolio systems. While I have been able to change the WordpressMu software which handles the

ePortfolio system the underlying systems infrastructure has not changed that much. What is

different though is how the content is displayed in the browser and is built into the design

for this project. From a conceptual level the design of a traditional ePortfolio system looks

similar to figure 3.2 where this ePortfolio system looks similar to the image in figure 3.3.

Examples of these types of ePortfolio design can be found at http://dmap.ci.qut.edu.au. To

access these examples you need to have a QUT user name and password and have the QUT

SAS client logon tool installed on your local computer. The software can be downloaded

from http://www.its.qut.edu.au/offcampusaccess/sas/. The documentation for the QUT SAS

logon tool can be found at http://www.its.qut.edu.au/offcampusaccess/sas/use.jsp.

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Figure 3.2 is a conceptual layout of how I have designed the content to be stored in

the ePortfolio system designed for this project using Web 2.0 and locally on the local web

server stored artefacts.

Figure 3.2 Web 2.0 ePortfolio design conceptual layout

Figure 3.3 Demonstrates how the content model can be configured to allow Web

2.0 content from Web sites such Flickr.com to be displayed and accessed from the

ePortfolio system designed for this study.

Figure 3.3 Web 2.0 ePortfolio Integration

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Portable ePortfolios for postgraduate music study. In addition to the centralised Web 2.0 ePortfolio system I have also designed a

system which allows for the postgraduate music student to set-up an ePortfolio on a

portable ePortfolio using a credit card sized universal serial device. Further research is

needed to work out how to have the ePortfolio exported from the main ePortfolio system.

To access the portable ePortfolio the user inserts the portable ePortfolio into the USB port

of the computer, as per Figure 4.0.

Figure 4.0 Starting the Portable ePortfolio.

To access the portable ePortfolio software the person viewing the portable

ePortfolio needs to follow the following steps as per figures 4.1, 4.2, 4.3. and 4.4. With the

software being available on the USB card (see appendix 11). Currently this prototype is

only available to Windows PC users. I have included a HTML version for other Operating

systems.

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Figure 4.1 Start the ePortfolio software

Figure 4.2 Confirm that you are running the software locally by clicking no

Figure 4.3 Start the Apache Server Module

The user clicks the apache and Mysql

buttons to start these services.

Figure 4.4 Starting the ePortfolio

The user of the portable ePortfolio will be presented with a portable version of the

ePortfolio. This allows the ePortfolio user to leave their portable ePortfolio with interested

parties as business card. The interested party can then view the portable ePortfolio and

leave comments and leave feedback on the postgraduate music student’s creative product.

This creates a new business relationship between the user of the portable ePortfolio and the

postgraduate student. The portable ePortfolio can act as an Internet Portal or Kiosk to the

postgraduate student’s online version of the Web 2.0 ePortfolio, see figure 4.5.

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Figure 4.5 The Portable ePortfolio

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Summary The ePortfolios that I have developed for this study allow postgraduate music

students’ creative artefacts to be stored on a university Web-server. Once the Wordpress

software is set-up Wordpress can be customised to be an ePortfolio via theme which is a

customisable view of the ePortfolio. The postgraduate student can then choose to share

those files with their peers on the ePortfolio network. This process has allowed the users to

be able to employ Web 2.0 content from social networking sites such as Youtube.com or

Facebook.com.

In addition to the centralised Web 2.0 ePortfolios I have also designed a system

which allows for the postgraduate music student to set up an ePortfolio on a portable credit

card-sized universal serial device. Further research is needed to work out how to have the

ePortfolio exported from the main electronic portfolio system. For the purposes of this

study I have created a prototype html version on a USB card with a video to demonstrate

what is possible (See appendix 11).

A portable ePortfolio on a USB card can potentially be a postgraduate students

flexible mobile CV to use in business relationships beyond university. The portable

ePortfolios can act as an Internet Portal or Kiosk for the creative artists online version of

the Web 2.0 ePortfolio which contains dynamically updated materials about their work.

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Chapter 4 Conclusions and Recommendations

This study has enabled me to formulate a framework of design which may assist

other interaction designers from the creative arts to design ePortfolios for arts

postgraduate study. Through the Software Development As Research method and

Schön’s studio-based practice methods I have been able to demonstrate how these

design theories can be brought into being. Wordpress MU acted as software that was

adapted and developed through iterative design based upon interactions with users and

contextual analysis. Integrated within this iterative process of design has also been a

re- examination or replication of theoretical protocols that identify considerations

around the design and usage of ePortfolios for creative arts application. The prototypes

designed here have considered the affordances of Web 2.0 technology and sought to

provide access to processes of accountability. The data presented in the case studies

and negative case analysis provide evidence for attention to both policy and

technological support for implementation of ePortfolios within institutional contexts. I

have also been able to point to other examples of ePortfolio designs and how they can

be implemented successfully outside a university. By contextualising the “Art of

ePortfolios” I have also been able to develop a number of suggested ePortfolio types

for practice-led ePortfolios using the creative arts metaphors of Presentation,

Documentary, Curated Exhibition, Performance, Installation, and Choreography

(Dillon and Brown, 2006.) Furthermore the proposed adaptation of the ePortfolio

process to USB business cards potentially addresses the need for social mobility of

portfolios between university and business and between artist and audiences.

A critically important part of this study has been my ability to provide and

document a successful problematization of the four protocols of ePortfolio design as

described by Dillon and Brown (2006). This process has enabled me to offer two

interaction and design ePortfolio system models which integrate these four protocols

and advanced Web 2.0 interaction and design techniques. In addition I have also been

able to implement two other iterations of this design model outside of the university

which can be found at http://www.paulcstephensen.com and http://savetodisc.net.

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In addition I have also suggested a policy of adoption and usage

recommendations. I hope that both the policy and interaction design models will help

inform other interaction designers in the creative arts. EPortfolio designers from the

creative arts can now look at these processes to examine the protocols of ePortfolio

design in the early stages to develop rapid prototypes without the need to do computer

programming. I would, however, suggest that having a teacher programmer working as

part of an ePortfolio system design project such as this one. A teacher or artists

programmer can provide ongoing links with new technologies/developments and work

cooperatively with artists to realise more effective portfolios. This will help the

interaction designer to be able to develop custom software to meet the individual needs

of the project participants and key stakeholders. A teacher programmer will also bring

with them a deep understanding of valid teaching tasks and assessment as well as a

deep understanding of different approaches to teaching. This perspective is important

for the evaluation of work within an institution which differs from that perhaps

performed by a funding body or community stakeholder. Schön’s notion of reflective

practices provided me with an extra lens on solving this problem by allowing me to

develop prototyping practices that considered multiple stakeholders.

This study has helped me to gain a deep understanding of the process of

problematization which helped me to distil the issues arising from applying the theory

of ePortfolio systems design in creative arts production settings. This study has helped

me to gain a better understanding of the question of what constitutes knowledge in the

discipline. I recommend to any ePortfolio designers in the creative arts to deeply

examine each discipline and ask “What are the qualities of artistic knowing?”

Understanding the qualities of artistic knowing in this research enabled an

understanding of intuitive and analytical knowledge and how it might be captured

stored and represented in an ePortfolio. This is important as it informs design choices

and the selection and development of appropriate interaction and design technologies

to fit each creative arts context.

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Finally, one of the greatest challenges for ePortfolio designers in the creative

arts is to design an ePortfolio system which not only meets the needs of the discipline

but that can also work with the university’s institutional policy. From this study I have

found that if we do not allow post-graduate music students to freely display their

ePortfolio to others outside the university that this will become a major impediment to

up-take. This tension between artistic product and process and the need for

institutional accountability and assessment against defined criteria is an important one.

The affordances of flexibility and mobility of an ePortfolio do allow multiple

exhibitions of work and the movement of a university portfolio to a professional one

may simply be interpreted as curating a different exhibit. However as two participants

stated in their one-on-one interviews not being able to show their work to others meant

that they had to do twice the work in setting-up an ePortfolio. This is because they felt

a great need to point interested parties to their work using Internet technologies. As

was the case with my participants some of them ended up creating their own Web

based ePortfolios outside of the universities. This highlights the need to develop a

responsive system which does not privilege the university policy of access and control

or of the rights of the student to show and share their work with others. Furthermore

there is a need for artists to extend their portfolios life into their professional career

and this requires an element of mobility for the ePortfolio design.

The matter of moving between the university and the professional system is

aligned with many universities policies on generic outcomes. There are two potential

solutions to this from a students perspective; firstly the gaining of skills in using

ePortfolios which they can transfer to open source applications, and secondly the

university providing ongoing access beyond the study. Other solutions include

universities simply providing an index system and storage facility for sensitive and

ethically private materials. As I have mentioned in this study the responsibility for

access and control should ideally fall to the student who can make choices about where

and how they store and disseminate their own artistic product and how they are

exhibited. Indeed all open source systems seem to have access control measures.

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From this study I believe that there is some merit in defining a Web 2.0

ePortfolio system as a distributed Internet-infused virtual container of evidence of

learning which becomes the ePortfolio. This is because the Web 2.0 ePortfolio

demonstrates the ePortfolio owners' learning and achievement in multi-modal forms.

These forms include profiles and artefacts uploaded to Social Networking sites such as

Flickr.com and Youtube.com. I also present the following policy which has come from

problematizing the four protocols of ePortfolio design examined in this study and

suggest how the unique qualities of Web 2.0 Social Networking websites can be

integrated into university policy:

1. How does a tertiary institution manage any ethical disputes which may arise from

when a research student uploads audio visual materials into a student ePortfolio?

The use of Web 2.0 integration tools and third party websites allows the user to

manage the ethical management issues themselves.

Ethical standards control then becomes an issue for the research student and the

third party Web service provider and not the responsibility of the tertiary institution.

This is achievable through the third party Web-services terms of service agreement

which often states the ethical restrictions and relationship between the people using

their services at the point of sign-up.

2. Who owns the intellectual property and the copyright of those audio visual

materials integrated within a student ePortfolio?

The student should always have full control of the intellectual property and their

creative work at all times. The student created the work and designed the work.

However, the tertiary institute should retain the right to disallow access to uploaded

audio visual materials if the materials contravene local and state laws such as

decency, pornography or the violation of international copyright laws.

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A Web 2.0 model which uses third parties Web-services can allow the student to

control their own intellectual property by signing a terms and services agreement

with some providers.

The appropriate service needs to be chosen as some Web 2.0 sites and third party

providers assume control of intellectual property when it is uploaded.

3. Who owns the ePortfolio? Is it the student or the institution?

The student always owns ePortfolio. To protect their intellectual property the Web

2.0 and third party services model allows for the audio visual materials to be

protected by the terms and service agreement of the service provider. This is

because the audio visual materials are stored on the third party services network of

computers and not the learning institutions.

4. Who is responsible for the costs of the storage of the ePortfolio and

artefacts?

It is the responsibility of the tertiary institution to provide the cost of the ePortfolio.

However if a research student does elect to use a Web 2.0 integration model the

research student would not normally be charged for hosting or the downloading of

material from their external provider to their tertiary institutions ePortfolio system.

This means the research student dose not have to pay for the hosting of their audio

visual data but can still have the option of integrating those materials into tertiary

institutes Web 2.0 based ePortfolio system.

Both these options are then able to be integrated into a Web 2.0 and third party

provider services in a tertiary institutes ePortfolio system through the use of a small

piece of software, know as a plug-in. I have suggested an approach to achieving this

in the methodology section of this exegesis. This allows the research student to

have full control of who has access to their audio-visual files when they are

integrated via the use of Web 2.0 websites and third party services.

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Through this exegesis I have been able to synthesize the deeper meanings in the

process of designing ePortfolios for post-graduate music study. I suggest that the

prototypes and policies presented here can help ePortfolio designers in the creative arts and

ePortfolio designers in other disciplines. The stories of development emergent from the

SODAR methodology and negative case stories combined with the appendix transcript

descriptions from the focus groups and interviews demonstrate compelling and educative

ways of applying these digital techniques in research. This research process has helped me

to suggest an interaction and design model and policy which will help the community

which enables designers to be able to understand the wider implications of usage. This

process enables access to multi-modal learning processes for post graduate students and

provides a dynamic dialogue with a supervisor/teacher around the students’ digital media

artefacts as evidence of process and product.

Further research opportunities include the need to investigate prototypes which can

be customised to be able to communicate with a university’s learning management systems

and reporting tools. I also believe that there is a potential business model which could be

developed to allow for a customized version of the prototypes developed for this study as

commercially licensed product for use by other creative arts organisations and universities.

This is evidenced by recent systems such as TK-20 and TaskStream in the US, for example.

The USB card ePortfolio system which I have proposed for this study also needs further

research and development. Currently it only works for Microsoft Windows based

computers. Making it more readily accessible for Macintosh computers would be essential

in a creative arts setting. For the purposes of this study I have incorporated an html version

that is cross platform.

EPortfolios present a new opportunity to represent, document and provide a system

for accountable evidence of learning and creative processes. They potentially provide multi

modal and inclusive approaches to learning and teaching that maintains the integrity of the

artistic products and amplifies the intentions of the artist in compelling ways. In this

applied research I have sought to integrate the needs of the artists, the institution and the

community with emerging technologies in a way that takes advantage of their affordances.

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Appendices

Appendix 1 | Focus Group Summary Digital Multimedia Asset Portfolio System | Focus Group 1

Focus Group Facilitator: Paul Stephensen

Focus Group Participants:

Participant Arthur is a male instrumentalist with interest in guitar, drums and the

Irish rock genre and is aged in his early 40's.

Participant Tina is a pianist with musical interests in composition and music

teaching.

Participant Harry is a male in his early 30's who is interested in creating musical

productions.

Participant George is a male in his late 20's who is interested in musical directorship

in church based organisations.

Location: N Block tutorial room, Kelvin Grove

Date: April, 2007

For the first 5 minutes I introduced everyone to the topic of discussion and what we

would be talking for the session. During my introduction to the main theory behind what

makes up an ePortfolio system the participants started the following conversation.

Harry:

I think we all have a vague idea of what a portfolio is. I think we just want to know

about the practicalities of how to maintain one and how to go about setting one-up.

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Tina

Agreed with Harry but also wanted to point out that she would like a system that

suits everyone.

Paul

Introduced the notion of a common definition of what an ePortfolio was, and found

out that the participants were familiar with ePortfolios from their previous studies which

occurred in creative arts based discipline were ePortfolios were in common use.

Paul

So what is an artefact to you? To me an artefact is a demonstration of your creative

practice. I guess for you people that is going to be things like the music files, the scores that

you create and the other elements that go into making your music. What else would you

consider to be an artefact?

Harry

For live performance it will generally be something like a DVD recording of your

performance. Harry and Tina would also include any exegetical context of the performance

of their research.

Paul

Agreed with Harry and Tina and restated the need for exegetical artefacts to

reinforce the theoretical framework of what up their research and practice and your journey

of discovery.

Harry

Other things that might support that are things like your journals and ethnographies

that you keep of your research.

Paul

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So I guess what you are really saying is that you use multimedia in all forms to

create a creative work, which can be text, video, sound and images. Paul then asks is that is

correct? The group responded with a positive agreement.

Harry,

Harry particularly wanted to stress that as musicians they were very concerned with

the clarity of sound in digital artefacts. Laptop speakers in particular don't allow for the

desired quality of sound that the participants wanted.

Tina

Kathy also agreed strongly with this.

Harry

This is really important because something that is recorded is not the same as

something that you go and see in at the performance.

Harry didn't know if there was any way of capturing that difference in ePortfolio

but suggested that this was good thing

Paul

Do you use software such as Sibelius or other score notation software to keep track

of how you develop your music?

Tina and Harry

Sibelius and other software can be used to save the file as sound file or PDF file,

both Tina and Harry expressed desire for any music scores to be saved as PDF files so that

the scores could be protected from being changed by others.

Harry

Youtube.com and flickr.com are more geared for video and photographers

Musicians would prefer to use Myspace.com for sharing their music. Harry used QUT File-

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share for streaming media and sharing files with friends. Harry suggested that this could be

a good way to share artefacts with sensitive intellectual property issues discreetly.

Paul

Introduced the DMAP and design and explained that there was an option to store

artefacts on the local server or via Web 2.0 websites such as Flickr.com, Youtube.com or

Myspace.com

Paul

Discussed the Cool-player plug-in explained how it enabled a DMAP user to embed

multimedia artefacts easily into a post of page within each Weblog.

Harry

Discussed the need for the plug-in to be able to popup as a media player which

would have a full set of directional tracking controls

Paul

Assured Harry that the plug-in would do that the group were concerned about how

technically savvy the end-user had to be with user level of confidence. For example, Harry

expressed concerns about what would happen if someone like his parents logged on to look

at his ePortfolio and they couldn't use the software because it was too technical.

Paul

Asked who would prefer to display their stuff up to one server or with the web 2.0

model? The group gave a 100 percent preferred a web 1.0 model for artefact storage.

George

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The group expressed a strong preference for storing their artefacts locally as

opposed to web 2.0 which came from a concern about how well web 2.0 protected the

user’s intellectual property

Tina

Was concerned about introducing unnecessarily complicated technologies and that

increased technicality would increase the risk of things going wrong with the system if we

used the Web 2.0 DMAP.

Paul

Acknowledged that he understood what Tina meant.

Reflection

Upon Reflection of the group’s concern about the DMAP web 2.0 models I had to

think about what it was that the key stakeholders wanted in the DMAP model. For the Key

stakeholders there seemed to be particular emphasis on having a web 2.0 model which

conflicted with the desires of the project participants. After reading a lot more of the

literature I decided that a careful and conservative approach was needed. This meant that I

chose to incorporate a web 1.0 and web 2.0 architecture into the system as this would

hopefully keep all parties happy.

Paul

Explained some more of the technical features of the prototype system which he

then stepped the group through. These features included the Coolplayer media plug-in, the

Flicrk.com photo set feature, and the Tagging plug-in Feature.

The Group

The group expressed a strong interest in using the tagging plug-in and the music

player functions which were delivered by the Coolplayer plug-in.

Paul

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Talked about the Tarranga delicious plug-in which allows Wordpress users to

upload music files to their Weblogs and share that music with people who visit their

Weblogs. Paul explained that this plug-in could be useful to Wordpress users as it would

allow their Weblog visitors to search their music buy using tags. Paul explained that a Tag

is like a bookmark that searches for links to files or key words within a Weblog. Paul used

the example of using an MP3 tag which would then find any references to the word MP3 or

any hyper-links to MP3 files.

Tina

Expressed a lot of interest in the functionality as did the rest of the group. We

agreed that tagging would be a function that should be included and made as simple as

possible.

Paul

Introduced a range of other types of software that could be used to support an

ePortfolio systems which included e107, Elgg spaces and igetthis.net. Paul also discussed

the design of the ePsilen and DMAP also asked for style and preferences as opposed funky

or functional

Group

Preferred the look and feel of the DMAP site because of the look and feel. Group

also expressed how the look and feel could be used for the purpose of the site rather than

being functional or funky. The pitch was decided to be the most important aspect of the

look and feel.

George

George wanted to provide a history of research and collaboration. Harry wanted to

have two websites, one that was commercial and one that was research based. Kathie was

interested in a functional but funky space that would contain all the stuff about her research

and were they could navigate around it and store and build the things that they want to

work on. Kathie expressed a strong preference for it to be professional only related to her

research. Harry's research was very much ethnographic so a different style is often needed.

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Appendix 2 | Interview Tina Tina

Paul Stephensen: I am here with Tina, who is one of my "ePortfolio" participants. The

date is the 19th of July 2008.

Tina: The 19th? Yeah, the 19th.

Paul: And the time is 11:25. The location is the Create Cafe at Kelvin Grove campus. So,

Tina...

Tina: Mm-huh.

Paul: First, we would like to hear just a little bit about yourself in terms of your history

and with regards to your practice and where you came from and when you sort of started to

do some music. And do some...

Tina: When I started to do some music?

Paul: When did you first start playing music?

Tina: Six-and-a-half.

Paul: Six-and-a-half, OK. And what instrument were you playing?

Tina: Piano.

Paul: And as--

Tina: I still haven't got it right. [laughs]

Paul: OK.

Tina: I'm still working on it.

Paul: But how did you feel about playing piano and...?

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Tina: I don't know. I think for a while when I was teenager, it was probably a love/hate

thing. But I've always just assumed that ever since I first played - even before I played it, I

hounded my mother just to play. And then, when she sent me to lessons, I just sort of

assumed that that was part of my life.

Paul: I see.

Tina: And it has been. I must say it probably has been the closest thing I had to

meditating. I cannot possibly imagine [laughs] having to survive without that.

Paul: OK. So your playing the piano and performing at the piano, it works...?

Tina: It's internalized. I don't consider it as something I can separate and cut myself off

from.

Paul: OK. So that's great. So then when you started using technology to talk about your

music and performance, how did you feel when you were faced doing that with the

electronic portfolio?

Tina: My portfolio doesn't really talk about anything performance-based. Plus my research

isn't really to do with that. In general, my attitude to technological things is I'm not geeky,

as in I don't get off on how they work. But generally, any tool that I can use to get the

product or get the job done easily or more efficiently or something that helps organize it or

something like that - I'm really keen to have that.

Paul: What benefits does that give you that relaxes you with technology as a tool or does it

help you increase your efficiency?

Tina: Yes. Yeah, more efficient.

Paul: In what ways?

Tina: Well, music technology stuff obviously helps some with output, with storage and the

things. The ePortfolio helps a lot. I think it's good because it helps organize how and where

I store the actual research stuff that I'm working on.

Paul: So you really see?

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Tina: The data.

Paul: So you see an ePortfolio as being a place to store and organize your research data?

Tina: Mm-huh.

Paul: And also your reflections? Have you been doing any reflective work with the

portfolio?

Tina: My thing is not really applied to practice.

Paul: So, if it's strictly exegesis. Now think--

Tina: My thesis beat it, I think. Yes. [laughs]

Paul: OK. That's not a bad thing in some ways. So really, it's about organizing and

managing things because what makes you need to organize and manage your stuff?

Tina: With the file manger Plug-in, I can get a sense of where I'm at. It's a structure thing,

and it is where everything I work on is all living on my laptop. I like that; I don't have to

get up and go somewhere. I can just open another window and there it is.

Paul: So it sounds like you like things centrally organized around one particular object.

Tina: Yes.

Paul: So how did you feel then when we structured the ePortfolio to allow you to bring

things from outside of that one central structure, like from YouTube and all that sort of

stuff? I noticed you didn't actually use those, did you?

Tina: No. Because I'm using it as something purely for my thesis, or for my research

work, I don't need to use things like YouTube or other places because it's not useful. I don't

need to include that type of media. They tell me I do. For example, I'm wanting to upload

some WMV files and things like that. And that I can do all of that from my computer and I

can just dump them in there and find them.

Paul: WD files, what do you mean by that?

Tina: WMV.

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Paul: Oh, like midi files.

Tina: Yeah, or else I can just convert those to an MPEG meta-file and I'll probably put

maybe MP3 or some audio stuff on there. But, mainly, a lot of text and some photos and

stuff that they would be needing - say PDF or WORD documents that are actually in my

portfolio. So instead of linking to external sources, all the stuff I'm hoping to just have all

of it, the actual data that I've been analysing will all be contained within my portfolio.

Paul: OK. And I get a very strong sense that your strong preference is to have all this

contained in one area.

Tina: Yes.

Paul: And the other thing--

Tina: Unless it's links to other...

Paul: External sites.

Tina: External things of interest, but not things that I need to rely on. Places like Youtube,

and stuff. If I did need to use them, that would be fine. But external websites and things

like that, they may not be there in a month's time.

Paul: That's right. So longevity for you has got to be there. Have you, with your

relationship with technology, have there been many times in the past where you've been let

down by the technology? As in, you might have probably worked with something in it as

the next big word.

Tina: Uh-huh. Yes. [laughs]

Tina: Can you give me some examples maybe that are pertinent?

Tina: Yes.

Paul: And also pertinent to the ePortfolio.

Tina: Don't know about the pertinent to the ePortfolio, but I can think of several situations,

for example: sequences dying in the middle of a light theatre show. [laughs]

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Paul: Actually I handle that stuff. It's OK.

Tina: Then the when electronic portfolio had a bug.

Paul: And how did that make you feel, and that would could have been done better?

Tina: Well, you know, at the time you think, "Oh yeah, panic button now." But I don't

know. On the spot, there is no option but to keep going. And so you just keep going. And

you do the best with what you've got, and you get through it. And you have to remember

that that particular audience on that particular day hasn't heard the other version, so--

Paul: So they don't know it.

Tina: Yes, and so as long as you get through it and it sounds, you know... Yes, it worked.

You just keep going. If you don't, it will alert people's attention to the fact that it's wrong,

when they probably don't notice.

Paul: That's right.

Tina: Or that it's different, you know?

Paul: It's interesting that they say it's a social thing - reflecting on... Shouldn't that be that

relationship with computer technology and it seems to be different in some ways. In that,

do you think that it changes when it's computer technology, and that when something goes

wrong, they'll say, "It's an external fraud that you're linking to?"

Tina: It's frustrating. I think it's because you don't have any control over it. If you're in a

performance situation, and you can rely on your own internal skills to get through

something, then you still feel, somehow, that you can control things to a certain extent

because there's an escape route that you can control. But, I think, my frustration with

computer technology is like you're saying with the external links, is the trust. If one of

those goes down or if something happens to your computer itself, and you don't know how

to get it back, then you’re left since you don't know of you can keep on fixing it. Because

you don't know if you have those skills it takes, which are wiped out. You're completely

relying on things external.

Paul: Yes.

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Tina: So, for example, when I uploaded some stuff into a page on ePortfolio, and I didn't

realize that until after I'd saved it, and then somehow I lost the original thing I was copying

it from. And then I realized that there's a character limit on the pages, and it chopped a big

chunk off. So that was a good learning experience.

Paul: But you shouldn't have had to learn about that the hard way.

Tina: Oh no, but that's probably a good learning experience, because it means I won't do

that again. So I've just decided now that I'm copying from things that I've saved, so that all

the information that goes into the ePortfolio will also be in some form on my computer, as

well.

Paul: Yeah, I think that is a very good point to make as well. So when you actually have

that issue, how was the support for the site? Did you get any help or assistance? How long

did it take, and how did you feel about that journey?

Tina: Well, I couldn't find a help thing to tell me what the character limit was, so I

emailed you and you responded.

Paul: In how much time, do you remember?

Tina: It was the same day or within 24 hours.

Paul: So, not having the help thing online or on the site and reflecting on that now.

Tina: Well, at this particular occasion or this particular problem, I just looked at it as:

Well, I should have saved exactly what that was elsewhere. That's my own fault. I should

have known that after so many years of working with computers. And that was a dumb

thing. But, like I said, it was a good learning thing because I will never do that again. It was

a good reminder that I shouldn't rely that it's always happening or it always being there or

making assumptions about things.

Paul: So, what kind of assumptions did you have before doing that about?

Tina: I just thought, "Well, I can just keep typing. It's obviously going to stop me." I

assumed that when I got to the end of... [laughter]

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Tina: You know when you're typing in a text box or something; usually there is a space.

You type, and then the characters stop appearing if you've run out of space. But this one

just kept letting me type, type, type merrily. And then after I saved it and viewed it again, it

had cut it off. So, it didn't warn me about--

Paul: There was no warning about that. I must admit, in reflecting myself, I had no idea

that that bug was there.

Tina: Yeah, well, it's not really a bug. It's just a limitation that they are not aware of.

Paul: Because it is not a full-blown word processing software. Did you think it was like a

word processing package?

Tina: Yeah, I thought the page went...

Paul: The other living text page.

Tina: Yeah, I thought that was more like that, and that it would at least give me a couple

of pages of space. I don't know why I made that assumption. I just sort of did. [laughs] I

just assumed that a page would be a bigger container than the - what's the other thing?

Paul: The post.

Tina: Yeah, the post.

Paul: Because it is the post and the actual creating a page.

Tina: Yeah, I thought that when you create a page that you get--

Paul: There are several pages.

Tina: Several pages to work with. Yeah.

Paul: I think it is actually more than just one page.

Tina: Yeah, well, now I know that.

Paul: [laughter]

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Tina: But it made me rethink how I was going to put information into it. But probably,

what I would do now to more use the page is to have a short introductory paragraph, and

then links to documents like PDF files or whatever within. Then I would just dump them

into the portfolio so that it is structured differently.

Paul: And when you actually saw the interface, the actual word processing part or the text

entering part or the blog part, did you think it was like a word processor because of the way

it looked?

Tina: Similar, yeah. I thought it was like a stripped down, sort of a basic one, which was

fine. I don't mind. The functionality of it was fine. I found it pretty easy to get around and

work out how to do things. That was all quite--

Paul: Easy. So jumping ahead, you liked the menu structure or did you dislike the menu

structure or...

Tina: I didn't think like/dislike. I just thought, "How do I do that? Oh, that is where that is.

OK, click here and keep going." I found it easy to navigate.

Paul: So everything stood out, and it was easy to navigate. It was well structured. The

other issue, I guess then, is what sort of multimedia assets are you going to be putting up on

your website, on the ePortfolio. Or are you intending to...?

Tina: Yeah, just photos, mp3s, and perhaps little mpegs or wmv files, depending on what

format you're going to let play. [phone rings] I'll just turn this off.

Paul: We can stop if... OK, I've just got my laptop in front of me, and I'm about to show

Tina the Dmap website here. And I'm just going to ask her a few questions. The first one is

going to be the look and feel of the site. Is there anything that...? What are your feelings

about it?

Tina: Well, I like blue. The colour is good. [laughs] And I think it is pretty clear. It is easy

to find things. That's all good. And what I liked was I could go into mine, and I managed to

find a preset design that worked for how I wanted to set it out. So I went, "Yep. I'll choose

this." I fiddled, and that was quite easy. I flipped through what I liked, this one, this one,

and this one, had a look at them and found the one that worked best for what I wanted.

Then, I just chose that, and that was very easy. I must say that I liked that you had a choice.

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Paul: OK, so I've got you saying that you liked the being able to choose the themes, and

you liked being able to have a choice of themes too.

Tina: Yep. Definitely.

Paul: Now, what I am going to do is just run a small test. All right. So how would you get

to your ePortfolio? How would you navigate to it with a browser?

Tina: With this?

Paul: Yeah.

Tina: I can just click on where my name is, and I'm there. Do you want me to do it now?

Paul: Yeah.

Tina: I can go here, like that.

Paul: I'm going to wait for it to load. That's great. So, you are comfortable doing that.

What's the address of your ePortfolio, the web address?

Tina: It's probably a shortcut of mine. [laughter]

I know that I can go "the link on dmap" [inaudible 15:27]. But I remembered that, actually.

Paul: But you remember that they're pretty much--

Tina: And [inaudible 15:33] the usual extension and then back for tomorrow night.

Paul: OK.

Tina: And I'm dumb. Yeah, I did type that in for a while, and then I got sick of it so I

made it a shortcut.

Paul: Very good. So when you log into the... Can you show me how you log into your

website, into your ePortfolio?

Tina: Aren't I in there?

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Paul: You know, when you actually added stuff in and edited it.

Tina: Oh yeah, it's been a while. It's been a few weeks. Hang on, what am I doing? That's

funny, I'm just looking at it going, "Oh, I remember doing this." [laughter]

Paul: But obviously you got some pleasure out of doing it.

Tina: Oh yeah, yeah, I was quite into it. I must say that I am going to use it more in the

next few weeks because I've got heaps of analysis to do. OK. I think I go up here and put

admin.

Paul: Yes, that's right.

Tina: That's the way that I usually do it. Because I was always not remembering how to do

it. Otherwise, I just typed that and that...

Paul: W T.

Tina: Oh, W T.

Paul: Yeah, W T.

Tina: How else should I do that?

Paul: It might have changed slightly.

Tina: Has that changed at all?

Paul: Not that I am aware of. It was always W T hyphen A.

Tina: Wasn't there a...

Paul: Yes there was. On the initial screen, there was a log in.

Tina: Yeah, that's disappeared now?

Paul: Because it's a different theme.

Tina: Oh, OK.

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Paul: So there you go. There's your admin.

Tina: Because I remember changing my password because I had picked something that I

could remember. Sorry, I was... Woops.

Paul: I've just picked up a bug, actually.

Tina: Yeah? There you go.

Paul: And putting in [inaudible 17:28]. OK. Very good. Yes, it's working. [laughs]

Tina: There you go.

Paul: So, you were able to put the address in the address bar. You were able to find the

admin screen OK. You were able to put in your password. And you where able to edit o.k

Tina: Yeah, but if I remember, I have to start doing it that way after I made a short cut.

Paul: Changed your theme.

Tina: I changed my theme because originally I had that grey theme, and it had a login

button.

Paul: Was that easy for you to do?

Tina: That was easier.

Paul: Change the theme and all that?

Tina: Oh, I thought changing the theme was easy. It was under the presentation option

thing, and I just flipped through there until I found, "Oh, there they are."

Paul: Could you just tell me where the presentation screen is?

Tina: I was going there.

Paul: Tina has selected the presentation screen.

Tina: And it shows you the current one. Then, that is what I have.

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Paul: Yeah, that is what you have.

Tina: Oh, classic. I have the totally customizable classic. [laughs]

Paul: Very good.

Tina: I just flipped, looked through there and thought, "Oh, that looks good. That looks

good." Then I tried two or three of them until I found one I liked and that's the one I've got

there, isn't it?

Paul: That's another one. You can change it if you want.

Tina: But I like the one I've got. That works best for me.

Paul: Yeah. That's what it is all about. So, and you really find that being able to change it

to be how you want it - does that motivate you more to use it, do you think?

Tina: Oh yeah. If I didn't like the looks of it, or if I didn't like how to get around it, I'd go,

"Oh, this is annoying me, " and I'd go, "Oh, I won't do that." But actually, now that I've got

it set up like this... I was supposed to be at this meeting this morning, and now, at least, I've

got a place where I can go and put all of my data analysis stuff.

And Barb, who I am doing that for, will be able to just go there and look at it. I don't have

to actually send her the humongous files or print heaps of stuff out. I'll kind of show her

that.

Paul: And does she know that you have an ePortfolio?

Tina: No. But I'm going to tell her. [laughs]

Paul: That would be a very good start. But you know--

Tina: Yeah. But I was just going to send her a link and she can have a look.

Paul: So with the design elements of it, do you think it looks funky? Or do you think it

looks tacky? Or do you think it looks cool? Or--

Tina: I would have probably chosen something that functions how I want it to function.

That was the initial thing. And the look of it happens to fit me because it's blue and white.

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Paul: That's a personal preference, the colours? Yeah.

Tina: Yeah. But if it were a different colour it wouldn't really bother me. But the set up of

this one - the particular one that I'm seeing if you like that I'm using now, is probably not

very hip looking, but I like it that it's simple and clear and it doesn't... Yeah, I think it's fine,

it looks serious but not tacky.

Paul: OK. So it's got more of an academic feel to it?

Tina: Yeah. It looks like work rather than play. But that's actually fine by me. I don't want

something that's got cute stuff jumping all over the place. Because that's not what it's about.

[laughs] It's not. It's not. Yeah. But by the same token if I didn't like the look of it at all,

then that would be an issue.

Paul: That would be an issue to you, so, it is really important for you to have, choose

themes that you can choose easily?

Tina: Yes. But that also looks OK.

Paul: OK. Yeah. That's more maintained.

Tina: I quite like this one. This is fine for me. But don't take this one out of the option.

Paul: No. Oh all right. That will stay there. Now with the management of your theme, of

your ePortfolio, with regards to adding pages and uploads and categories and stuff...?

Tina: I managed to work that out Friday, so I don't care.

Paul: OK. What do you think that was?

Tina: Initially when you talked me through some things, that even when I had a - you

know there was a week or so after that until I did it again myself. Even though I didn't

remember everything, I found that it was quite easy, I suppose it was shorter, but I think

just because I am used to doing a lot of word processing and web development.

Paul: Online forms?

Tina: Online, yeah. Things like that, and it was pretty logical I thought.

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Paul: OK. And is that because it was in hierarchical structure?

Tina: Yeah, well I just thought like if I had to add something or make something new, I'd

look up the option. It would probably be right or many so I'd try one of those. And yeah, so

it was pretty logical guesses. It wasn't frustrating to find how to do things.

Paul: OK. That's good. And did you find the help file in the system at all or...?

Tina: I can't remember. I probably didn't need to look at it much because....

Paul: That's a good thing.

Tina: Yeah. I can't remember looking for it.

Paul: The Dashboard normally has a link.

Tina: Oh yeah, yeah, I remember, I think I went there once but that was only after you -

when I asked you about the character limits on the thing, and you pointed me to that. And I

thought, "Well I should have tried that first before bothering you."

Paul: No. No. Not at all. No, that was just a link to somewhere that was an extra source in

case I happen to get hit by a trapped [inaudible 22:41] that was in the backend.

Tina: God forbid. [laughs]

Paul: God forbid, yes. So OK, and did you find the one-on-one training sessions; what did

you think about them?

Tina: Yeah. Good.

Paul: Why was that?

Tina: Because I felt like it was easy and I felt that if I had any questions that you were able

to answer them, so I didn't feel like that I was running up against problems, and that I'd

have to work with something that was like a beta testing situation or anything. I felt like it

actually did work and it was quite straight ahead, so you know.

Paul: Oh OK. That's very good. And would you use Wordpress again in another role?

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Tina: Can you just get access to it free? Like I can use it....

Paul: Yeah what you could actually do is you could go to WordPress.org and actually set

up an online site there that would be another option as well.

Tina: And that's free?

Paul: It's free but it's a very basic warm up to Wordpress.

Tina: Actually, I definitely would use that. Because for the band that I am in they would

like a website I could setup an ePortfolio for them[inaudible 23:45]. I just pulled my

website down from that because I was having problems with it. And I think it was some

issue with Front Page. It didn't format something properly. But I don't know. Something

was unsatisfactory with it. And I didn't have the time or inclination really to have time to sit

and work out what was going on. So I just pulled it down. And I thought, "If I do, it is

probably due to come up for renewal soon." So I thought, "Oh bugger it! I'll just do a

MySpace or a free thing."

But thinking forward, I would definitely do this because now I am familiar with how to do.

Paul: How to do it?

Tina: I could very easily turn this into a page for the band. It would be perfect, actually.

And I then I wouldn't have to pay for it either which is even better.

Paul: Yes. And why do you think it's perfect for your needs as a musician?

Tina: Well, say for the band or something like that, I can just plunk in. I don't have to

think about creating a whole website from scratch.

Paul: Yes.

Tina: Right. It's easy. I can just very quickly and easily build something that works.

Paul: Yes.

Tina: I don't have to make the links work. I don't have to make the pages from scratch.

Paul: Yes.

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Tina: I don't have to design the theme of it. I can just go, "Oh yeah. This probably would

work." I'll put in the MP3 here. I'll put a couple of pictures on this. It probably only needs

two or three pages and it's done. I could do the whole thing in a few hours versus two days.

Paul: Two days, that's right. And then you don't have to - and with the maintenance of it.

Tina: Well, it's maintenance free, and I don't have to pay for it.

Paul: You're not paying for it: is that a big issue for you or...?

Tina: I think that something like the bands are used to, do a lot of it, but it used to generate

more income. Now I'm more working for other people, so it's a lot less necessary which is

why I felt quite happy about pulling it down for a bit. Because it really doesn't get much

traffic now. So this way, it would be good. I could spend a couple hours of my life and

have something there if I needed it. But it's not the time or effort or expense as having the

other thing. So I'd be more likely than to have it.

Paul: Just to clarify. I am getting a sense that you're actually quite happy talking about that

experience.

Tina: Oh yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Something I need.

Paul: So that's a very strong quote. Things that help you are a good thing. Is that what

you're saying?

Tina: Oh yeah. Yeah, this is excellent. Because, like I said, for the band, for something

that is only small or not much income generating, it's something ideal. And it is quick and

it's easy and I like the free aspect.

Paul: I think you just like to plug-in and go do stuff.

Tina: Whereas like, say, something like the music and stuff for the publishing stuff that I

do, I pay for a full shop online, sort of thing. And whatever, again, I chose one of those that

has an easy merchant and you just download their wizard.

Paul: Their wizard.

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Tina: And it's a similar thing. You choose the name and you choose what you want and it's

flexible to up to a certain extent. Just, you know, fill in the blanks and put it here and you

know that it works.

Tina: Whereas having, I do have Front Page and I have done this stuff before obviously.

But that's much more work. And I'm creative, but I'd rather be...

Paul: Doing stuff.

Tina: I'd rather be doing things that I like to be creative in, not something that I feel I have

to have this work for a company and; therefore, I have to learn how to do this program. I'm

going, "Blah." I'd much rather be doing something else.

Paul: Excellent thinking. Now, just one more quick question. And it has to do with: Has

your supervisor asked you to reflect on your practice using your ePortfolio at all? And how

does your supervisor ask you to use your ePortfolio or has he...?

Tina: No. We talked about the fact that it is there, and that we both have one. And stuff

that we haven't really, and it is not that we don't intend to. I know I did mention that I am

going to use it to put the data analysis stuff into, but we haven't got that far yet. We've been

so busy absorbing other projects at the moment, which is related to those. But I would

suspect that Steve would definitely be the key collector.

Paul: Your other supervisors, you've got two. Yes?

Tina: Yeah.

Paul: So, you've got three supervisors?

Tina: Two, Andrew.

Paul: Two. OK. So Andrew knows that you've got a portfolio site?

Tina: I'm not sure.

Paul: OK.

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Tina: But if I did, I'm sure he would be happy about it. Like if he knew, I'm sure he would

be happy to go there and look at it.

Paul: OK. No worries. All right. Tina, thanks for giving us your time. It is now 11:55 am.

Tina: That is record time because I speak fast.

Paul: That's fine. That's all good.

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Appendix 3 | Interview Arthur Paul : I'm doing an interview with Arthur at the Create Cafe on the 19th of June 2008.

We're discussing his use of the DMAP portfolio system.

Arthur : Aversion to it.

Paul : Or aversion to it. I suppose we'll just start of by saying; Can you tell me a little bit

about Arthur and his relationship to technology? When did you first start using computers?

Arthur : I first started using computers when I was 18 around about 1979. My relationship

with that was just pure fascination. The ability to play games [inaudible 00:45], do an

outline, stuff like that.

Paul : What was it with that relationship with that technology that was rewarding to you?

Arthur : Well, there's an interesting story there in the contrast between me and my brother

because my brother who is two years older saw this as something that he could use. He

liked to program and play with it and build his own computers and do all that kind of stuff.

Whereas I was much more into using what was available. There is an interesting contrast

right there that continued. He went on to do a degree in programming and stuff, whereas

I've always been far more interested in applications and using stuff.

Paul : Why are you interested in that? Is it what you get out of it or what you can put into

it or...

Arthur : I think of it as a useful tool, simple as that. It's like the latest hammer.

Paul : It's like the latest piano or the latest...

Arthur : To me it's a function of- I tend to think in terms of what relationship I want to

create. What music I want to create. What to do to achieve other goals. A lot of those are

technologically based. Technology to me is simply a way to solve the problem. I'm quite

happy to innovate. I taught myself HTML. I understand a little bit of basic programming

stuff. I'm quite happy to do those sorts of things if it gets me what I want. My thing is

simply being a user. If I can hire someone who'll do the programming for me, great.

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Paul : You'll do that.

Arthur : I have done that.

Paul : You have done programming before. And you actually teach programming, I

noticed.

Arthur : No, I don't teach programming. I teach HTML design. I understand enough

HTML design to do that. But I have no desire to be a programmer at all.

Paul : OK. Also, just very briefly if you can, I want to get an understanding of your music

and your relationship to your music. How that started. When did you first start playing

music?

Arthur : Well, I used to sing to myself in my crib. My first public performance was "Oh

Christmas Tree" in kindergarten, which was when the teacher realized that I could actually

sing in tune at the age of about three or four or something like that. They made me just sing

"Oh Christmas Tree" at the Christmas party regularly. I started on the piano when I was six

until I got sick of my teacher. Then I started learning guitar when I was 10, till I got sick of

my teacher. Then I started learning trumpet when I was 11, till I got sick of my teacher.

Then I started to teach myself to play drums. I became a drummer. I really enjoyed that. It's

still my first love and my best instrument. Since then, I've taught myself to play guitar, tin

whistle, mandolin, piano, bass, and all sorts of other stuff. And I've had some lessons, so

I'm sort of classically trained. I don't sing classically.

Paul : All right. That is sort of a very broad repertoire of musical schools.

Arthur : Yeah. I've been writing since I was four or five. My daughter now makes up little

songs as we're riding around the place. That's what I used to do.

Paul : What does music bring to your life?

Arthur : It's like scratching an itch.

Paul : It needs to be scratched?

Arthur : I've tried giving up music, and I can't. It gets so bad, like I'll just be walking

down the street to go to a meeting, when I was a professional editor after five years, I'd be

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walking down the street to a meeting, and just the rhythm I'd be walking would start a beat

going in my head which would start and songs pop in. I just can't stop it. When I try and

perform new stuff I just done, add basically a little, yet I can't stop it.

Paul : OK.

Arthur : It's very annoying on occasion.

Paul : Yes I know. I've got certain addictions like that myself. But, I suppose the thing

then is, there's an intersection obviously then between technology for you and your music,

and how did that intersection evolve?

Arthur : OK, I've always been an early adopter of technology because I like it, it's a nice

toy, to play with it. My view of any application is, and again this is effective to the

relationship with my brother, because his approach always was he would create a new

program and he would deliberately say to me, "well try and break it." That was always his

approach; he wanted me to test things and see what it could do and see what it couldn't do,

all that kind of stuff. And that was useful so him in his development program. So, my

approach to technology always is to get a hold of it and don't do what you're supposed to do

with it. Smash it over the head and see if you break it. And I like to play with it. I have

never done a formal course in anything much, I just get things I need to do when I need to

do it.

And it's the same with my guitar playing. When I taught myself to play guitar, I didn't go

and get any formal lessons and practice any scales and all that sort of stuff. I just got a song

and headed to go play that song. And I still do that now even with my own creation; learn

as much as I need to.

When it comes to technology, my music career was truncated by the fact that my dad

wanted me to be an engineer. And I got basically ignored and shopped the industry over. I

went and looked at what other people were doing. So I eventually saw I'd had enough fun

being clever. Yeah I wanted to play music so this opportunity came up.

And it occurred to me that the thing that I could still do musically would be to create a

community of ideas in the same situation, the same place. And it just sort of grew from

there. Because I know a lot of people in that situation; who are in their 30's, 40's, 50's, who

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are great for us, great song artists. It'd be a nifty habit to make it and make a living out of

their current activity.

So, I really wanted to bring them together. And I went back. When I left public service

after five years and now companies scared, I went back to media. My intention there was to

use my engineering degree and study linguistics and work in radio, all sort of things and do

singing and that kind of stuff. Well I fell in love with journalism. And at the end of that I

get a nice project across the media groups that was heavily...And this was like Marty said,

it wasn't a big thing then, but it became very apparent that the Internet as a connectivity

thing and as a source of news and information, all that kind of stuff was just to keep

paying.

And I did even work for an online journal. Yeah, several of them. One of them went belly

up in the Dot Com Crash. I got run up on a set of nail, I had the dubious honour of

continuing work with no pay. Just after I got a mortgage, a month after I got a mortgage for

a house thank you and my wife was pregnant. So, then it just sort of fell into place that I

decided that I could use the Internet as a connectivity and new media technologies, to

harness this latent talent that more than likely that a whole lot of people had.

To me that's what it's all about; it's about using what's there to try and solve the problem of

how these people can get, not just me personally, because we don't want a really left wing

socialist, not just me personally, but how can I bring other people in the situation, harness

their talents and whatever their aspirations are. And who I am, do I see media technology in

music.

Paul : Excellent. It's good to hear that. And I'm getting a sense from what you just said,

then, that community is really important for you. And what does community mean for you,

in that sense?

Arthur : Good question. It means a couple of things. To me, it means the warm fuzzies

that other people have got benefit from what I'm doing, whether it's as a performer or as

someone who sort of makes other people happy, or if they've brought together other people

that have formed creative relationships or done whatever they have. There's a warm-fuzzies

thing happening there.

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Paul : So the warm-fuzzy thing, what do you mean by that, again? Do you mean it makes

you feel good?

Arthur : It makes me feel good to know that other people are getting benefit from what I

do. That may make me sound like a bleeding-heart socialist. I am not interested in- there's

probably a fair bit of that if I'm writing what I'm doing, but that's not the point. To me, the

point is that I can point to something and say, "I created that relationship, and that makes

me feel good."

Paul : OK.

Arthur : I like that community thing. Also, I think, as a songwriter and a performer, I've

never pretended to have all the answers. And I think that it's important that when I work in

partnership with other people the result is always better than when I'm trying to do it all

myself. And I think the community, at that point, has a very immediate practical benefit,

because if I need a guitarist, like, hey... [whistles]

Paul : "Could you help me with this..?"

Arthur : It got me a guitarist...

Paul : And there's a degree of reciprocality in that...

Arthur : It's a genuine community, and you hope that that's the way it would work. Of

course, it's not always working like that...

Paul : That's right.

Arthur : But affiliated, hopefully you reap the rewards.

Paul : So, really, then, you and your practice is about using technology as a tool to create

community online.

Arthur : Not only online. Online and offline.

Paul : And also, enhancing people's music-creation ability through the use of technology?

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Arthur : Well, not just music. That entire database I showed you, I would hope to tap

artists. I mean...

Paul : Is it more human-capacity building?

Arthur : Yeah. In a creative sense, yeah. I mean, in my project, there's programmers

involved. There's artists involved. There's musicians, obviously. There's a whole range of

creativity going on that isn't necessarily music. We hold this artist up, Britney Spears,

who's "the star..."

Paul : The star.

Arthur : But this person is living off the works of 1,000 other creative people, in one

capacity or another. And I'd like to sort of create a more...

Paul : Equitable?

Arthur : Yeah, I guess a more equitable, create a new structure for intellectual property

and ownership of that CD that repays the people who were involved with the creation of it.

It's not a case of you turn up and get 500 bucks, we sell 500 million copies and we keep the

rest. To me, that's always been a very wrong approach in the creation of music.

Paul : OK.

Arthur : I want other people to be rewarded for what they've done.

Paul : All right. Excellent. Well, that's a great deal, because now we have a better sense of

who you are as a creative practitioner and some of your core beliefs. So, with that in mind,

part of creative practice in an academic circle is reflecting on your creative practice and

your journey in your research.

Arthur : I've done a lot of that lately.

Paul : Which is good. So, with the e-portfolio, what did you see it as being? What was the

message that came across to you as for it to be?

Arthur : I think I viewed it as being a place that you could point to and say, "This is what

I'm doing. This is where I'm at." And that has several functions. First of all, it's basically a

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storage facility where you can say, "This is everything I've done. This is how I've done it."

You could record not just the artefacts but the process, which I think is very important. And

my own research is largely concerned with the process. It's one thing for a band to turn up

and say, "Here's our CD."

Paul : Yeah.

Arthur : And one band sells 15,000 copies, and one band sells five copies. The CDs sound

pretty much the same. What's different is the process. So to me it's an opportunity to

document not just the outcome but the process as well. Now in so doing it provides me

with credibility where I can-you know people who I've contacted and said, do you want to

be involved in this and they can tell me what they've done. I can go put that back, I've done

that, you understand that's where I'm coming from. It's all recorded and documented like

there wasn't room. So it gives me credibility, it also gives, I was hoping, but it hasn't

worked out that way but also to provide a focal point for other people to build on what I'm

doing. A lot of people could do it my rough way. So I was hoping it would provide a focal

point but I've since used Wiki because I realize that people are probably always going to

cut the mustard. That's what you get when you start from the beginning.

I think that a Wiki is a much better way to go I've found.

Paul : Is it, if only to stick on that key word you use "focal point". When you say that is it,

obviously, if you're trying to build a community of people, you're looking at people who

are outside of QUT as well.

Arthur : Absolutely.

Paul : Is that the main issue for you?

Arthur : Yeah, a lot of it is yeah. That I can't just go to, I mean I'm just the guy that put

me in a plane a Health Inspector called Ramos who has an independent music conference

that he does every year. He'll help me in New York and I wanted to point to this and say

this is the man. This is what I'm doing, this is what the research is all about but I couldn't

point to the e-portfolio. I rang him up because I had to make- because he's rich and I didn't

get in his face. I rang him up and I said well you should check out Wiki on line. But I

couldn't do that quickly-in that thing. That was a real bummer and I would think he would

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try and solicit songs from you know where I could say look for the credits on the last album

I did. You see it's not all about me I want other people involved and I couldn't do that.

Paul : You designated your e-portfolio and done all that sort of stuff. How did you find the

process of actually using it and navigating around the e-portfolio?

Arthur : Oh, that was good, that was all very respectful.

Paul : Five.

Arthur : Well I already blogged enough and built Wiki at home. Probably a bit more

savvy at that point than a lot of people and more willing to play with it to figure it to out.

That's sort of my pride so I didn't have a problem with it.

Paul : OK, so the actual software It was technologically sound.

Arthur : Yeah.

Paul : That's what you're saying?

Arthur : Look, the only reason that I didn't use it every day, though I did my blog

everyday, is because it would have been-the blogs made public and with all the accounts,

so it meant technically twice the work. I did that a couple of times, a couple places you can

find a copy of it I think posted here as well. That was just double the work because it wasn't

public-I could have made it the puzzle point where you could receive your own blog with

all the rest of it, bang it would...

Paul : So the benefit for any e-portfolio and a key to the system would be for you is if you

didn't have to pay for hosting a site outside and people could then come in and see what

you were doing?

Arthur : Yeah, see I'm plugged into my PHD as I go and at the moment that we key it in

I'm just hanging off of that blog. It I had a University RSS PHD service, where I can say

right here's the PHD blog and I had space on there that I could load the Wiki software, you

know where I could get it working and then go on. If I could produce. That would be

brilliant. Similarly, again I was tempted on the e-portfolio to upload all the papers that I

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published and stuff but the Imprints already done that so again it's twice the work. You

know, I've already uploaded all this stuff on Imprints. I just don't need to upload it again.

Paul : OK, excellent. So if it comes down to the question of- I suppose its sustainability, I

guess in a way. Is that the way you think of it as in how much time you actually have to

give to something so that it doesn't become a burden, so that it's not achievable to

sustainable?

Arthur : Yeah, Probably even more than that it's just utility. If I'm going to have to do

twice the work, I'm going to have to get at least twice the reward. The other thing is, I

wanted to help you out and I played with it and stuff. In terms of my personal involvement

in it, it's just not worth the time. At the moment, I have uploaded that CD to at least a half

dozen different websites that I have to maintain. I've got three MySpace, I've got a

Facebook site and part of my research I'm doing is to see is what's the optimum way for a

bunch of young users to do that. You can't possibly have and maintain all of the Web 2.0

websites.

Paul : That's right.

Arthur : They're springing up all over the place. So what we've got to do is pick the

winners and say, keep focusing. You can afford, probably, if you're a soloist to maintain

five as a sitting port style recording. If we can get a widget, then I post one blog post to

MySpace and it gets copied to every other blog that I'm involved in...

Interview: That would be golden.

Arthur : That would be golden. And even probably when you go there, that's the centre of

that.

Paul : That's the thing, that's the next question I was going towards actually. What's the

structure of the e-portfolio and the ability to link web 2.0 artefacts? Was that appealing? Or

was that sad? What did you think of that?

Arthur : It's a good idea, again as a focal point. Flickr already exists and Flickr is a public

thing and it's great. YouTube already exists and I've got a YouTube account and a Webber

account and a Flickr account. I don't want to have to post the same thing twice. And the

way that work that would be good. Because I can say to people, "well here's a summation

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of all of those" and then I give people one URL instead of four. Here's my MySpace site,

here's my Flickr one, here's my Webber one, here's my YouTube one; that's four URLs to

send anyone who wants to look at your stuff.

If I can go here's my e-portfolio and it brings it all in for you. It saves them. It's a real

benefit to doing it that way.

Paul : Right. The other thing then is do you know the address of your e-portfolios?

Arthur : Off the top of my head, no.

Paul : That's fine. And in fact that's because you haven't been using it obviously.

Arthur : Right. It's all written down and I can go and find it. I can find it on my database

very easily.

Paul : Now, I suppose the next thing is, and I'm being mindful of time here, is what do you

intend on doing for e-portfolios in the future? And are your supervisors happy with your

Wiki proposal?

Arthur : The Wiki's not about me, the Wiki's about community. I have my blog websites,

two Dandridge sites, particular and advance, three MySpace sites, that database one that I

just showed you which is going to be - I guess is the wisest thing that you need to do,

whether I maintain them or not - is sort of to start playing with it. Whether I maintain that a

lot will depend on what it can do for me over the next six months. At the moment I just

don't know. But it's useful contact to have made because the company have been very

personal about it. They personally contacted me: "What do you think of this? and can we

help you with that?" I sent them some feedback to say, "I really appreciated it so much."

But if I don't get some serious frames that might seal its connectivity, then that's just

another Web 2.0 things that, we're aware, I better make the decision then on whether we're

going to maintain it.

Paul : And that's really, I'm getting from your reflections there, getting a sense that it's

more about is it worthwhile for me to pursue this and what's the benefits of adopting this

technology?

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Arthur : Look, the whole point of the Wiki, was because I know as a user, if you want a

service you've got to do the work. Google doesn't always get you the service you want. It's

pretty hit or miss, particularly if you really don't know what you want. I mean you know

what to do and have no idea what it's called. So Google's pretty good. Then there's the

reliability issue where, you're just as likely or more likely to get a shyster as you are to the

genuine article. And then, even if you find it, there's no guarantee it applies to you. So the

point of Wiki is to streamline that and provide specifically a service that doesn't exist

anywhere else in the world; searches pretty extensively.

All those little directories for North American, English or French and they were all focused

on something that drove business to the furnace.

So what I set out to do was to streamline things that provides a single, one stop service. If

you can get it-the equal working on some basis then it would get the work, that's why I like

that-the idea of that talent data base because it's a way of saying, he's really put in a lot of

attention he's really done his stuff. You can get in touch with other people and downloads

being the same stuff. Several garage bases.

What's needed in the talent world is probably something that does all that. I wonder what

database has got it.

Paul : With the talent data base idea, I mean relating it to your creative practice does it

provide you with block and flake buyer and give you a price for...

Arthur : No, they haven't played with that. There is-see last attempt has a Wiki in service

a hot liner in the market. It seems to me to be a more effective way of doing this than what

Talent Data Base is doing because it's pinched in different directions. But there's no reason

why it couldn't do the same thing, as Talent Data Base still be effective. Again, I haven't

been on in the last couple of weeks since I'm slow that way so I haven't really played with

it. It provides a lot more space, I've got three CDs that I want to upload I can only upload I

guess 30 gigs worth of stuff to the Town data base whereas, PlasicM just goes a little bit

more and that's a big plus.

Paul : OK excellent.

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Arthur : Yeah, I'd look at-it really comes to utility and I haven't found a killer app yet in

terms of-in terms of line music and rare music stuff iTunes has all that. In terms of meeting

the teenagers and providing the music MySpace, God help us, is killer app. It's got

sufficient...

Paul : Particularly for musicians it seems to be very, very popular.

Arthur : Well FaceBook people graduate from MySpace to FaceBook when they get more

sophisticated in their needs and they're working and stuff. But FaceBook is just going

music oriented now approved and being out of the import blast I think and app services. So

it really seems to have MySpace as dead water, but at the moment it has killer apps. So I

think that there's a potential there for a music portfolio where you're at, I just haven't seen

the app.

Paul : But if the site was made public, you'd be more inclined to use it?

Arthur : Hmm.

Paul : And if you could link to other artefacts and...

Arthur : One of the big debates in the music community in the last few years has been, "Is

my MySpace band site enough?" and the answer is no because at any stage MySpace could

be pulled down. Everything you've done and had is lost like that, there nothing you can do

about it. All it would take is yet another paedophile, and look this is a liability and all that's

gone. Where if you maintain your own work on your own web site as band it's more

expensive, and it means you've got to maintain it because it's all your stuff. So, there's room

there for compromise it's a killer app.

Paul : OK, so really it's so hot in there-it all works technologically correctly-there was no

major bugs or anything like that?

Arthur : It's nice.

Paul : So it all came down to it didn't meet your needs.

Arthur : Simply utility. I can see two things I wanted to use the e-prints thing to store

things that I don't necessarily want public but I can point to it and say, and then the public

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thing that remains very important for-it might be for everybody. And I guess that's a bit of a

camel question. I can see that the e-prints follows advice-it has some areas where you flag a

document when it's downloaded and it's either public or not. This journal posted is it for

publication or is it just for your own...It had some kind of up...

Paul: That is there but it's more complex a work than I would have liked.

Arthur: I didn't get to play with it so.

Paul: No that's fine. OK great. Arthur thanks very much for your time that's great.

Arthur: Thank you.

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Appendix 4 | Mobile Learning Styles “Oblinger (2003; 2004) considers the key traits of today's learners as being

digitally literate, ‘always on', mobile, experimental and community oriented.

Characteristics of the ‘millennial student' - those born from 1982.

(Oblinger, 2003; Oblinger, 2004; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; McMahon &

Pospisil, 2005; Jonas-Dwyer & Pospisil, 2004; Howe & Strauss, 2000;

Poindexter, 2003; Raines, 2002) - are described as being focused on

‘connectedness' and social interaction, and as having preference for group-

based activities in study and social occasions. Being in possession of an

information technology mindset and a highly developed skill in multitasking.

(McMahon & Pospisil, 2005, p. 421), the millennial generation stays in

contact through SMS, mobile phones, chat-rooms, and email, whilst

simultaneously playing computer games, listening to music, and watching

television.

(Frand, 2000, p. 18; Oblinger, 2003; Rickard & Oblinger, 2003). In their

desire to be creative, to collaborate, and with this, to gain celebrity, today's

learners are also seen to belong to ‘Generation C'.

(Trendwatching.com, 2005). This trend indicates a movement towards the

do-it-yourself (DIY) user-led creation of content. A new focus therefore

forms on developing these capacities in the form of creative, collaborative,

critical, and communicative responses.” (Cobcroft, Towers, Smith and

Bruns.2006)

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APPENDIX 5 | LIST OF CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS EXAMINED.

Table 1.0 List of content management systems examined.

Content Management

System Name

Link to website

b2evolution's http://b2evolution.net

CivicSpace http://www.civicspacelabs.org

Drupal http://drupal.org

e107.org http://e107.org/

Easy PHP http://sourceforge.net/projects/easyphpcms/

EazyPortal - CMS http://www.eazyportal.com/

Elgg http://elgg.org/

e-Tutor http://sourceforge.net/projects/etutor/

eZ Publish http://www.ez.no

Joomla http://www.joomla.org/

Mambo http://.mambo.com.au

Moodle.org http://moodle.org/

nextCMS http://sourceforge.net/projects/nextcms/

Nucleus CMS: Pure

Publishing

http://www.nucleuscms.org

OpenDocMan http://www.opendocman.com/

PebblePad http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/

phpCMS Content

Management System

http://www.phpcms.de/index.en.html

PHPHomework http://sourceforge.net/projects/phphomework/

PHP-Nuke Web Portal

System

http://phpnuke.org/

PHProjekt 6 http://www.phprojekt.com

PHPX http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpxcms/

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Sakai Project http://sakaiproject.org/

Serendipity PHP Weblog

System

http://www.s9y.org

SiteBox - Web Portal

System

http://ostatic.com/sitebox

TYPO3 http://typo3.com

Website Baker http://www.websitebaker.org/

Website Baker http://www.websitebaker.org/

WordPress MU http://mu.wordpress.org

Worpdress http://wordpress.org

XoopsForge http://sourceforge.net/projects/xoopsforge/

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Appendix 6 | Content Management System selection criteria and test process

Table 2.0 Content Management and Installation and testing procedure.

Phase Description.

Step 1 Searched sourceforge.net for appropriate software

Step 2 Downloaded Software

Step 3 Tested software for Viruses

Step 4 Extracted archived files

Step 5 Uploaded files to web server

Step 6 Created Database on mysql server

Step 7 Read documentation on Installation procedure

Step 8 Installed Software

Step 9

If there was a problem installing the software I searched

user groups and forums and software package for

solution.

Step 10

If there was a problem and the software did not run I

removed the software from server and removed

database.

Step 11

If software worked on the server I then tested the

software by creating a post, uploaded a file and tried to

embed digital media from social networking sites.

Step 12

If step 11 was successful I searched the website of that

package and community forums for plug-ins and

themes.

Step 13 Checked themes and plug-ins for viruses.

Step 14 Created test login accounts for key stake holders.

Step 15 Emailed key stake holders and asked them to login and

check the software package for usability.

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Step 16 Reviewed the key stake holder feedback

Step 17 Meant with key stake holders to make changes or select

another software package to test.

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Appendix 7 Software selection criterion Table 3.0 Software Selection criterion.

Criterion Compliance

Server Compatibility Mac OSX or Linux Compatible

Web Server Compatibility Apache

Database Support Mysql in a single database

Programming Language PHP

License Open Source GPL license

Plugins or Modules Large Number of plugins or Modules

for free

Documentation Documentation freely available and

easy to understand

Technical Support Large support base easily contactable

support people

Virtual Communities Easy to access Virtual Community

Hard Independent Had to be able to run on any hardware

Interoperable Had to be able to compatible with any

Web Browser

Security Had to support https security

Look and Feel Each tool had to have a large number of

free themes

Web 2.0 Had to support Web 2.0 social

networking sites

File Management Uploading had to occur through the

application and not ftp

Media Players Had to have a media player that

handled, sound, images and video.

Text Editor Text editor had to support full word-

processing features such Microsoft

Word

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Wizards Had to support easy sign-up through a

Web based wizard

Installation Had to have an easy to use and robust

installation process

To experiment with the software I was provided with storage space and a web

server with an internal university web address. I identified 30 free open source tools which

were compatible with the web server and would be accessible via the internet allowing easy

access by the project participants. I identified the software tools by searching an open

source community of developer’s website http://sourceforge.net/. I searched by the key

words, content management systems and weblog software. The Sourceforge.net websites

search engine allowed me to refine this search and an in extra criteria such as the operating

system supported by each software application. The programming language that the

software was written in and what database support was provided. All 30 packages where

downloaded, installed configured on the faculty web server by myself and tested by myself

(see appendix 9).Feedback was provided by my key stake holders.

I then researched each product and found that a number of the projects were no

longer supported or had poor support. I then looked at how easily each software tool could

display multimedia such as audio and video files and how easily feedback could be left for

the project participants. Another requirement was that the software tool selected should be

able to provide a storage facility and file management tool for artefact management through

the interface of the content management system and not via a file transfer protocol (ftp)

software client. Each software tool also had to have the ability to allow the postgraduate

music students to embed any digital files that they wanted to upload from Web 2.0 websites

such as Myspace.com, Facebook.com and Youtube.com and embedded into each

ePortfolio. The software also had to be able to support the use of multiple instances running

from one piece of software with an easy set-up process. WordpressMu had the most feature

rich set of tools and meant the requirements below. Wordpress has two versions Wordpress

Multi-user known as Wordpress-MU and Wordpress which is single version. This makes

Wordpress a scalable solution which could be adapted to run on the web server or

on the universal serial bus memory card (USB) for the portable ePortfolio (See Appendix

11).

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Appendix 8 | Table 2.0 SoDaR by phase. Table 2.0 SoDaR by phase. Phase Activity. Description. Identify Activity

1.First Meeting with key

stake holders

Meet with key stakeholders and identify educational outcomes

and activity

2.Contextual Analysis

Identify key theories that relate to the learning task and

contextualises the learning environment.

Best Practice and Industry standards are also identified.

3.Identify Participants Identify participants with key stakeholders

4.Administrative

Obtain ethical clearance

Write project proposal

Include budgets

Identify technology needs for the project

Talk to information technology support team to identify policy

issues that may affect the success of the project.

Identify Work Place health and safety policy

Obtain ethical clearance from the client and your organisation.

A focus group

Participants gathered together to discuss what they wanted

from an ePortfolio system.

Software Maintenance.

1. Design Requirement

Document feedback from the interviews and focus groups and

the function requests.

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2. Interface Feedback

3. Request for Functions

4. Add in Extra

5. Functions

6.Test Functionality

7.A focus group

8.Design Requirements

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Appendix 9 Barrett’s Web 2.0 ePortfolios characteristics.

ePortfolios 1.0. ePortfolios 2.0.

Hierarchical, Designed Networked, Emergent

Metaphor: Portfolio as

Checklist

Metaphor: Portfolio

as Story

Data-driven Learner-driven

Focus on Standardization

Focus on

Individuality,

Creativity

Feedback from Authority

Figures

Feedback from

Community of

Learners

Large, complex systems Small pieces, loosely

joined - "Mash-ups"

Web-based Form Blog and Wiki

Positivist Constructivist,

Connectivist

Accountability-driven Learning-focused

Proprietary Open Standards

Digital Paper (text &

images)

Digital Story

(multimedia)

Local Storage (hard drives,

CD)

Network Storage

(Lifetime Personal

Web Space)"

Barrett (2007)

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Appendix 10 Key Stake holders project requirements.

Meta-data stored will be stored in a variety of websites controlled and published

either individually by an electronic portfolio owner or as part of social network, as

mentioned above.

The electronic portfolio may include hyper-media comments and feedback from

industry peers or academic and employer supervisors to lend weight to the claims

the electronic portfolio owner is claiming in their application.

These comments could be used to support the electronic portfolio owner’s

application. These comments could be in text, audio or digital video recordings and

be in the form of recorded interviews or performances.

An electronic portfolio will also need to be customisable in aesthetic form and be

hack-able by the electronic portfolio owner.

Accessible 24/7 from mobile devices such as laptops and mobile phones.

Technical support and documentation will need to be ongoing.

In depth training and support will help the users of such an electronic portfolio to

become comfortable with the technology available to them.

The electronic portfolio system will be well supported and documented by the

hosting institution.

Clear definitions will need to be provided as to who owns the intellectual property

in the electronic portfolio.

The electronic portfolio will be able to be searched and tagged for easy reference

and distributable through RSS feeds.

As well as being exportable to portable devices such as mobile phones and smart

devices and Social Networking sites.

The electronic portfolio will be Web 2.0 friendly and user friendly and provide

linking systems to off-line artefacts. (Dillon, Personal Correspondence, Supervisory

Meeting, Brisbane Kelvin Grove. 2007).

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Appendix 11 | Portable Electronic Smart Business Card

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Appendix 12 | CD portable ePortfolio

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Appendix 13 | Recorded interviews and focus group.

thesis title: designing eportfolios for music postgraduate...

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