This document summarizes a presentation about developing career portfolios and online communities of practice in Manitoba, Canada. It discusses the Career Portfolio Manitoba program which helps adults develop portfolios of their skills using Mahara. Plans are outlined to transition the program online, embed digital skills, and create a lifelong learning network. It also describes the proposed Centre Online community of practice for sharing best practices using Mahara as a collaboration tool. Next steps mentioned include expanding portfolio programs to students and testing Mahara's capabilities as a digital identity manager.

1. Mahara in the
Community
Employability ePortfolio for Adults
& Professional Community of Practice
Mahara UK 11
June 2011
Don Presant

2. Learning Agents
Accelerated learning systems
E-learning resources & services
Learning community support
Consulting

3. Agenda
• Career Portfolio Manitoba
• The Centre Online
• On the horizon

4. Manitoba & Canada
Small province in a small country
• Challenging geography
• Diverse demographics
– French/English, Aboriginals, Immigrants
• Federal political structure
• Manitoba: “Canada’s social science laboratory”

5. Regional solutions
Inspiration for Manitoba

6. Career Portfolio Manitoba
Current stakeholders: WEM & WPLAR
• Nonprofit partnerships of Government,
Business and Labour
• WEM: workplace education in Essential Skills
• WPLAR: workplace Recognition of Prior
Learning
wem.mb.ca
wplar.ca

7. Canada’s Essential Skills
Contextualized by workplace occupation…
1. Reading text
2. Document use
3. Writing
4. Numeracy
5. Computer skills
6. Oral communication
7. Thinking skills
– Problem Solving, Decision Making, Critical
Thinking, Job Task Planning and Organizing,
Significant Use of Memory, Finding
Information
8. Working with others
9. Continuous learning

8. The Essential Skills Portfolio
Origins and character
• First immigrants, now “general”
– Career changers (younger, older..)
• Reflection on life-wide learning of
Essential Skills for employability
• Build confidence, improve “skills dialogue”
– Make resumes & cover letters clearer, more credible
– Preparation tool for interviews
• More than ES: attitudes, specialized skills
• Product: ring binder, from electronic templates
• 18 hours class time + c. 18 hours of homework

9. The “e” factor
Advantages and opportunities
• Information Management
– Collecting, archiving, making different versions
• Measurability
– Frameworks, rubrics, summative tracking
• Interoperability
– Communication with other ICT systems via APIs, open standards
• Sharing
– “One to many”, digital copies, links to specific pages
• Multimedia
– Video, audio, digital images, online presentations…and scanned docs
• Internet skills
– Online research: documents, networks, Internet literacy
• Collaboration
– Easy to add comments, edit, mentor, coach
• Personal Learning Environment
– Integrated learning environment, professional network, digital identity

10. Essential Skills ePortfolio
Program overview
• Adapt the paper curriculum
• Leverage the “e” factor
• Embed authentic ICT skills
– Useful software, accessible hardware
– Digital identity literacy
• Provide ongoing support

11. Vision for Career Portfolio Manitoba
Career development for life
• For all Manitobans
• Learner owned
• Lifelong
• Lifewide: home, community, school, work...
• Based on (not restricted to) Essential Skills
• Built through partnerships of stakeholders, with
WEM and WPLAR as “anchor tenants”
• Globally aware, locally relevant

12. Choosing the platform
The “Mahoodle” ecosystem
INSTRUCTOR LED
Archiving
Presenting
USER DRIVEN
Mahara tools
Blog, forum, views
Collect, Select, Reflect…
Human capital Networks Artefacts, commentary, dialogue
development Peers, mentors
Employability Other Web 2.0 tools
Skills transfer
KSA asset building
Lifelong learning

13. Implementation
Online tour (careerportfolio.mb.ca)

14. Moving forward
Make it more usable
• Shorten curriculum, customize delivery
– Retire Moodle (for now)
– Full vs. accelerated versions
• Improve worksheet methodology
• Stream learners
– Computer skills gap training
• Add more exemplars
– Caucasian, Aboriginal...
• Document more fully
– Manual, more/updated videos

15. Community of communities
“Small pieces, loosely joined”
Government Student
Information Records
Portals
Employer HR
eGovernment Management
Single Window Systems
Service
Online Localized
Credential
Mahoodle
Labour Market
Verification Hub Information
Web 2.0
YouTube Job Boards,
LinkedIn Recruitment
Twitter… Sites
Online Personal
Mentoring Networks,
Services Communities

16. The Centre Online
Professional Community of Practice

17. Centre for Workplace Skills
• Federal NGO - partnership of business & labour
• Employers, labour reps, academics, literacy
advocates, trainers, consultants
• Commissioned research, dialogue &
dissemination
– e.g. Work Related Informal Learning
• Pragmatic: “Find out what works and share it”

18. Online Community of Practice
“More a coffee shop than a library”
• Private corner
– A secure place to observe and absorb current practice in order to
build knowledge and competence
• Public salon/tradeshow
– Present your skills and knowledge in a “virtual booth”
– Find peers and mentors, build a professional network
– “Sip from the stream”: gather filtered insights
• Best practices, lessons learned
• Emergent practices, promising initiatives, “foreign” insights from other fields
• Private/public workshop
– Performance support tools, ad hoc forum for quick questions
– Discussion, collaboration workspace for larger issues, projects

19. Why Mahara?
• Online profile: introduction, skills, interests
• ePortfolio: professional marketing showcase
– Web 2.0 friendly
• Group forums: discussion
• Group files: sharing
• Group views: collaboration
• Open source for future development

20. Demo

21. Community of communities
“Small pieces, loosely joined”
Centre for
Workplace Skills TBA
website
Other
External Online
Newsfeeds Communities
The
TBA Centre TBA
Online
Web 2.0
YouTube Member
LinkedIn Organization
Facebook Websites
Twitter…
HRSDC
TBA & other govt.
websites

22. On the horizon
Mahara as digital Swiss Army knife
• Multimedia project tool for high school students
– National charity: “science of agriculture”
• Digital Identity Management Project
– Pilot project
• Athabasca University
• Mahara as “thin hub”
– With Moodle?
• Mahara User Group Canada
– On mahara.org

23. Useful links
• Career Portfolio Manitoba
– http://careerportfolio.mb.ca
– http://bit.ly/eP_example
• Workplace Education Manitoba
– http://wem.mb.ca
• WPLAR
– http://wplar.ca
• The Centre Online
– http://online.workplaceskills.ca
• Mahara User Group Canada
– http://mahara.org/group/view.php?id=1008

24. Don Presant
don@learningagents.ca
Twitter: donpresant
Skype: dpresant