Rethinking Electronic Portfolios to Promote Sustainability among Teachers

Electronic portfolios (eportfolios) can increase reflection, develop content and pedagogy skills and facilitate communication between teachers and administrators. However, they have limitations. Despite resources that teacher institutions devote to eportfolios, research suggests that most implementations are of limited duration. In a climate where sustained professional development and lifelong learning are necessary to remain competitive, organizations should reevaluate how eportfolios are implemented to sustain use and maintain skills deemed important by teaching organizations. Using principles of change theory, this article identifies several eportfolio challenges and how they may be improved through principles of personal learning environments. Implementation procedures and limitations are also provided.     

Professional Pathways: a case for measurements in more than one dimension

Recent developments in UK professional education are leading to competence-based National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) being offered alongside academic awards made within the Credit Accumulation and Transfer (CAT) system. Although dual accreditation of this type may be a welcome development, the NVQ and CAT systems have different philosophies and cannot easily be linked in structural relationships. The context-specific notion of competence represented by NVQs is only one dimension of effective professional practice, as in order to operate intelligently in many of the situations with which they are faced, practitioners increasingly need transcendant abilities of reflection, enquiry and creative synthesis. A solution lies in a coherent approach to professional development and accreditation which is based in a constructivist epistemology and allows these overarching abilities to be recognised through the CAT system independently of NVQ requirements, while enabling students to work towards awards through both systems simultaneously without duplication of effort     

The Construction of Qualification Levels and Frameworks: Issues from Three UK Projects

The United Kingdom is gradually moving to develop national frameworks of qualifications, with the aim of identifying all publicly-funded qualifications according to level, focus and, where appropriate, size or credit volume. Existing frameworks designed for use in higher education and occupational contexts reflect assumptions concerning things such as the nature of knowledge, the academic or occupational context of the learner, and the nature of access and progression within education and training. These assumptions do not hold for the full spectrum of qualifications, and need to be challenged if a fully inclusive framework is to emerge that is coherent while supporting requisite variety.     

Computer-based assessment: quality assurance issues,the hub of the wheel

Quality in computer-based assessment systems (CBA) is embedded in the identification and elimination or reduction of risks. The effectiveness of procedures that eliminate or reduce the likelihood of risks occurring are therefore the benchmarks by which the quality of CBA systems are measured. This paper proposes that the ‘Catherine Wheel’ risk model for CBA has a natural synergy with stakeholders' views on quality and therefore recommends its use for the successful implementation of CBA systems.     

Film Screenwriting

Rolando Giustini, The Film Script: A Writer's Guide (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1980 -- $6.95 paper).

Tom Stempel, Screenwriter: The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson (San biego: A. S. Barnes, 1980 -- $12.00 hardcover).

Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980 -- $12.50 hardcover).

David Lees and Stan Berkowitz, The Movie Business (New York: Vintage, 1981 -- $4.95).

Film & Literature

Gene D. Phillips, Hemingway and Film (New York: Ungar, 1981 $9.95/$4.95).

Jeffrey Egan Welch, Literature and Film: An Annotated Bibliography, 1909-1977 (New York: Garland, 1981 -- $40.00).