Centre:   Weston College, Weston-Super-Mare
E-portfolio:   OneFile
Qualifications supported:

• Health & Social Care NVQ, level 4,
• Management NVQ, level 4,
• Business Administration NVQ, level 3.

Weston College is one of the fastest growing FE colleges in the UK.

Paul Withers, External Projects Co-ordinator who was instrumental in the e-portolio roll-out at the college over the last year tells us more about their experience.

“At Weston College we needed a cost-effective solution for delivering NVQs especially at level 4.

Using an e-portfolio appeared to be a way we could deliver a more commercial offering than the usual LSC-funded qualification. The employer for the Business Administration NVQ really liked the system as their candidates all had ready access to pcs at work. In fact, it was just what they were looking for.

It wasn’t an easy introduction for any of us. Many staff were initially hesitant to go down this route and there was some resistance from assessors, external verifiers and internal verifiers. However, now they are all regularly using the system they love it as it’s so easy to do what they need to do. You just need to persevere with it to overcome any internal obstacles.

Implementing an e-portfolio really requires another way of thinking in order to get the best out of it. It’s not a matter of simply transferring your paper to electronic. You have to take a close look at your practices and at the different forms of evidence your candidates are submitting to ensure you get the maximum benefit. We learnt a lot from the process.

The comprehensive reporting and tracking facilities incorporated within OneFile make it very easy to monitor progress and performance of candidates, assessors and internal verifiers. It combines what was very separate processes for tracking of assessment, verification and reviews into one saving a great deal of time, effort and above all paperwork.

It certainly does speed up the process of learner completion of NVQs. We’ve noticed that already across all three qualifications.

Up until now we’ve been using the e-portfolio with mature candidates taking levels 3 and 4 but next we’re rolling it out to apprentices.  It will be very interesting to see how this younger cohort of learners responds to the technology. I’m sure e-portfolios won’t work in all areas but generally it’s got to be the way forward.”