ePortfolios: Mediating the minefield of inherent risks and tensions

The ePortfolio Project at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) exemplifies an innovative and flexible harnessing of current portfolio thinking and design that has achieved substantial buy-in across the institution with over 23000 active portfolios. Robust infrastructure support, curriculum integration and training have facilitated widespread take-up, while QUT’s early adoption of ePortfolio technology has enabled the concomitant development of a strong policy and systems approach to deal explicitly with legal and design responsibilities. In the light of that experience, this paper will highlight the risks and tensions inherent in ePortfolio policy, design and implementation. In many ways, both the strengths and weaknesses of ePortfolios lie in their ability to be accessed by a wider, less secure audience – either internally (e.g. other students and staff) or externally (e.g. potential employees and referees). How do we balance the obvious requirement to safeguard students from the potential for institutionally-facilitated cyber-harm and privacy breaches, with this generation’s instinctive personal and professional desires for reflections, private details, information and intellectual property to be available freely and with minimal restriction? How can we promote collaboration and freeform expression in the blog and wiki world but also manage the institutional risk that unauthorised use of student information and work so palpably carries with it? For ePortfolios to flourish and to develop and for students to remain engaged in current reflective processes, holistic guidelines and sensible boundaries are required to help safeguard personal details and journaling without overly restricting students’ emotional, collaborative and creative engagement with the ePortfolio experience. This paper will discuss such issues and suggest possible ways forward

Benefits realisation management: panacea or false dawn?

Benefits Realisation Management (BRM) is becoming an increasingly important aspect of project and programme management. However, commentators have observed that the practice of BRM is often flawed, and have made suggestions as to how practice might be improved. This paper is concerned with the reasons why the implementation of BRM might not be straightforward, by focusing on the underlying assumptions. It will approach the issue by drawing on the author's experience from the 1990s and 2000s in working in the management of government-funded regeneration programmes in the UK. In this field there was a rigid benefits management framework, although it precedes the development of BRM. The paper will argue that there are important underlying conceptual issues in benefits management which have practical implications and need to be recognised in the development of theory for BRM

Teacher competence development – a European perspective

This chapter provides an European perspectives on teacher competence development

Community-based mentoring and innovating through Web 2.0

The rise of social software, often termed Web 2.0, has resulted in heightened awareness of the opportunities for creative and innovative approaches to learning that are afforded by network technologies. Social software platforms and social networking technologies have become part of the learning landscape both for those who learn formally within institutions, and for those who learn informally via emergent web-based learning communities. As collaborative online learning becomes a reality, new skills in communication and collaboration are required in order to use new technologies effectively, develop real digital literacy and other 21st century skills

Tales of serial exploration

In this paper, we examine the firm and ecological factors that affect the long-term sustainability of exploration. We analysed the investment decisions by US venture capital firms to enter new technological domains over a 43-year period. Our results suggest that in addition to the well studied effects of inertia and slack, exploration is affected by an organization´s knowledge specialization, is conducive to repetitive momentum, and affects an organization´s subsequent exploration when occurring early in an organization´s life. We contribute to the literature on organizational learning by identifying some of the antecedents of exploration and its sustenance over time.

The Journey to R4D: An institutional history of an Australian Initiative on Food Security in Africa

Internal Revie

Diversifying academic and professional identities in higher education: some management challenges

This paper draws on an international study of the management challenges arising from diversifying academic and professional identities in higher education. These challenges include, for instance, the introduction of practice-based disciplines with different traditions such as health and social care, the changing aspirations and expectations of younger generations of staff, a diffusion of management responsibilities and structures, and imperatives for a more holistic approach to the "employment package", including new forms of recognition and reward. It is suggested that while academic and professional identities have become increasingly dynamic and multi-faceted, change is occurring at different rates in different contexts. A model is offered, therefore, that relates approaches to "people management" to different organisational environments, against the general background of increasing resource constraint arising from the global economic downturn

Formality and informality in the summative assessment of motor vehicle apprentices: a case study

This article explores the interaction of formal and informal attributes of competence‐based assessment. Specifically, it presents evidence from a small qualitative case study of summative assessment practices for competence‐based qualifications within apprenticeships in the motor industry in England. The data are analysed through applying an adaptation of a framework for exploring the interplay of formality and informality in learning. This analysis reveals informal mentoring as a significant element which influences not only the process of assessment, but also its outcomes. We offer different possible interpretations of the data and their analysis, and conclude that, whichever interpretation is adopted, there appears to be a need for greater capacity‐building for assessors at a local level. This could acknowledge a more holistic role for assessors; recognise the importance of assessors’ informal practices in the formal retention and achievement of apprentices; and enhance awareness of inequalities that may be reinforced by both informal and formal attributes of assessment practices

Mission-Market Tension in Managing Nonprofit Organizations

Private not-for-profit organizations combine characteristics of a public sector agency with those of a private, proprietary firm. In particular, nonprofits are required to address designated social missions while breaking even financially. This structure underlies the difficulty that nonprofit organizations face in making decisions with important resource implications. Specifically, choices that would achieve maximal mission impact may differ from choices that reward the organization in purely financial terms. As result, nonprofit managers face a variety of trade-offs between mission responsive and financially rewarding actions. This paper considers some of these tradeoffs by exploring how tensions between mission and market manifest themselves in a variety of nonprofit decision making applications. The analysis is based on a set of task forces assembled by the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise in eight areas of nonprofit decision making. The paper suggests the development of metrics to reconcile mission goals with market incentives and research on appropriate nonprofit practices in areas such as pricing, employee compensation, outsourcing, collaboration, investment, fund raising and the undertaking of commercial ventures. Working Paper 06-2