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IMS ePortfolio - Overview
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Terms of use
These contents have been obtained from the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site for additional information on terms of use
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IMS Global Learning Consortium
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The development of this specification was initiated because existing systems store ePortfolios in formats that do not reflect accepted open standards, and have no facilities for importing and exporting ePortfolio information conformant with accepted standards. This makes it difficult or impossible to move ePortfolios intact between systems, and leads to inefficiency and redundancy when integrating ePortfolio tools with other enterprise systems.
ePortfolios need to be portable to ensure the educational continuity between programs within an educational institution that use ePortfolios, the integration of evidence about learning over time, and the smooth transfer of verifiable information about learning and evaluation between institutions, levels of education, and employers. From an individual perspective, information about and artifacts of a person's performance and achievement, as recorded in an ePortfolio, need to operate across institutions and countries throughout their lifetime.
The IMS ePortfolio specification was created to make ePortfolios interoperable across different systems and institutions. The ePortfolio specification:- Supports the advancement of lifelong learning important to many government initiatives.
- Makes exchanging portfolios from school to work transitions easier.
- Allows educators and institutions to better track competencies.
- Enhances the learning experience and improves employee development.
IMS ePortfolio Specification Web Site |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site for additional information on terms of use
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Requirements
In accordance with IMS an ePortfolio, might contain, in addition to actual packaged digital works, these different kinds of information:- digital and non-digital works created or part-created by the subject;
- the subject of the ePortfolio;
- activities in which the subject has participated, is participating, or plans to participate;
- the competencies (skills, etc.) of the subject;
- the achievements of the subject, whether or not certificated;
- the subject's preferences;
- the subject's goals and plans;
- the subject's interests and values;
- notes, reflections, or assessments relevant to any other part;
- results of any test or examination of the subject;
- contextual information to help the interpretation of any results;
- relationships between the other parts of the information (see elsewhere for discussion);
- the creation and ownership of the parts of the ePortfolio.
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Out of Scope
It is out of scope of this standard:- ePortfolio services and behaviors.
- Storage of ePortfolio Information
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Portfolio Packages
Interoperability of Portfolios as described by IMS is achieved by defining a Portfolio as an IMS Content Package. A Portfolio is defined as a collection of portfolio parts that are collated in an IMS Content Package (the formal binding of the Portfolio to the IMS Content Package is described in the IMS ePortfolio Binding document).
All of the contextual information for a portfolio, e.g., presentation aids, relationships, etc., are also defined within the IMS Content Package. In essence the manifest file for the IMS Content Package is the XML representation of the Portfolio with each of the portfolio parts being supplied as resources in the content package. The following figure gives a schematic representation.
IMS Content Packaging can also be used to exchange more than one Portfolio. Each Portfolio is defined in its own content package i.e. with a single manifest file. Sets of Portfolios are exchanged by creating a top-level content package in which each portfolio package is a resource.
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Data Model
Portfolio is the main class representing an ePortfolio. Portfolio collects the set of information parts described using the PortfolioPart class, and optionally provides a specification for displaying the collection using an instance of the Presentation class.
The relationship between portfolios, owners, views, and presentation as a Content Package is shown in the next figure.- The Owner class represents, abstractly, that a Portfolio has an Owner, and that an Owner may have more than one Portfolio.
- The Presentation class represents a specification for the presentation of the Portfolio, including the selection and ordering of items from the set of available PortfolioParts and their constituent attributes.
- The View class represents, abstractly, that a View is a type of Portfolio, differing only in the context of use. A View, in practice, represents a subset of a larger collection of PortfolioParts provided for a specific purpose, but which, in expression, is structurally identical to a Portfolio.
- The PortfolioPart class is used to represent the superset of the components of a Portfolio. It can be associated with the following classes: Accessibility, Activity, Affiliation, Assertion, Competency, Goal, QCL, Reflexion, Relationship, Rubric, RubricCell, SecurityKey and Transcript.
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Rubric
This specification deals with the representation of guidance as to how a portfolio has been, or is to be assessed. A rubric carries information about interpretation of merit or the criteria that have been used in the interpretation. That information is carried in statements and a structured model. The word 'guidance' is chosen deliberately since we are not providing a model for assessment schemes in their full glory nor are we providing an information model to support automated evaluation software. The primary consumer of data produced according to this specification is not an assessor, since there would normally be additional elements of guidance and professional expertise, as well as issues of moderation surrounding an actual assessment process.
In the context of the IMS ePortfolio specification, Rubrics constitute one type of PortfolioPart, which may be included within a Portfolio and may be related to other Portfolio Parts. The Rubric Specification is a separate document to acknowledge that the data structure described herein may be useful in other elearning contexts. However, the Rubric Specification explicitly treats Rubrics only in the context of ePortfolios and does not address these other possible uses. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site for additional information on terms of use
Print
General Information
Title: “IMS ePortfolio Specification”
Version: 1.0
Release Date: 2 June 2005
Status: Final Specification
Editors: Colin Smythe (IMS), Darren Cambridge (EDUCASE), Mark Mckell (IMS)
The electronic version is available at IMS ePortfolio Web site.
It is comprised of three documents:- IMS ePortfolio Information Model. This document describes the data structures.
- IMS ePortfolio Binding. This document describes how to encode the IMS ePortfolio objects in XML and provides the corresponding XML schema
- IMS ePortfolio Best Practice Guide. This document provides an overview and describes how the IMS ePortfolio Information Model and XML Binding can be applied to specific types of interoperability scenarios
- IMS Rubric Specification. This specification deals with the representation of guidance as to how a portfolio has been, or is to be assessed. A rubric carries information about interpretation of merit or the criteria that have been used in the interpretation.
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Global Learning Consortium official Web site for additional information on terms of use
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The ePortfolio Specification is related with the following specifications produced by IMS and other organizations:- IMS Learner Information Package (LIP). Provides a very flexible way of representing information about the activities, achievements, etc. of a learner.
- IMS Learning Information Package Accessibility for LIP (ACCLIP). Can be embedded in LIP to provide the accessibility component of learner information.
- IMS Content Packaging (CP). Provides a convenient way to package a collection of files along with information about how they should be organized.
- IMS Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective (RDCEO). Provides a way to represent a definition of what it means to be able to do something. Learner achievement information may include a pointer to some RDCEO data.
- IMS Enterprise Services (ES). Includes a data model for representing people and groups.
- IMS Digital Repositories Interoperability (DRI). Portfolios share characteristics with repositories. Future versions of the DRI and ePortfolio specifications may need to be aligned.
- IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM). Provides a way of describing a 'learning object' including information about its lifecycle. IEEE considers a 'learning object' to be a very broad class of entity so LOM is appropriate for ePortfolio data, although people often use 'learning object' to refer to digital instructional materials
- W3C XML Digital Signature Syntax and Processing (Dsig). Dsig provides a vehicle whereby information can be proven to have originated from an entity and not been changed. Digital Signatures are important because they avoid the need to go back to the origin of information for verification and so reduce the need for large repositories of persistent information.
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