Portfolio Learning in a MUVE

NSCC Is a portfolio College. That means that all learners develop a portfolio as a requirement for graduation from their programme and that we foster an environment of portfolio learning. I firmly believe in portfolio learning as it really does allow for learners to "get" what they have learned by forcing them to explore their motivations for learning and discover the learning they have actually done. For many it eases them away from the achievement of grades (the K-12 measure of success) to the achievement of learning (the adult education measure of success in my mind).

Many learners find it very difficult to develop their portfolios and as a faculty member I am constantly trying to help learners with their portfolios. I have just discovered (in a great AHA!! moment) a way in which portfolio development and portfolio learning can be made easy. The answer is to live your portfolio and the way to do that is to move to a MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment).

In my case that MUVE is Second Life (www.secondlife.com). Last night I was in world and IMing with a good friend and colleague and we got to talking about all of the great learning opportunities offered in Second Life - and comments made during our conversation provided instant clarity:

"when you think about it, all your learning is on display,
even if you're just an avatar
what you know is visible
the ultimate portfolio - you create it by being
it's so true - so easy to create a portfolio in here - all you have to do is log on and live"

Very cool - all you have to do is log on and live - what a moment of clarity for me - get learners to create living portfolios in a virtual world that they can share with the real world! This is in fact, what we are trying to do in the real world capture what we are living (and learning), but we get bogged down by paper and Web sites, and code, and finding the time to update things, and ... In a MUVE it all happens simultaneously.

Now - how do I convince learners and others that I'm on to something? Hmmm...