“Enovation proved to be an expert and helpful partner on this project. At all times they worked closely with our team and were able to overcome any issues we encountered. We are delighted to have been able to meet our deadlines and that the project has been so successful.”
RCSI ILHM
As part of its on-going knowledge and information management strategy, the RCSI Institute for Leadership & Healthcare Management (RCSI ILHM) wanted to extend their services for healthcare professionals to include an e-Portfolio.
Based on Moodle, the RCSI ILHM has an online learning portal which underpins the learning process provided on all of the Institute’s academic and professional development programmes. However, a gap was identified in the “cradle-to-grave” continuing professional career management of their worldwide healthcare professionals.
Talking about why they chose the Mahara e-Portfolio solution, Luke Feeney KIMQ Consultant with RCSI ILHM commented: “The differentiator with the Mahara solution is that it assists healthcare organisations and healthcare professionals to continually develop and manage their professional career and reflective practice, in comparison to curriculum-based systems which are less user-centric. Easy integration with Moodle was also a key factor for us”.
Connecting Mahara and Moodle into one solution with a full range of services required some enhancements; Moodle 1.9 had improved Peer-to-Peer connectivity (MNET), but lacked the web services for export which appear in Moodle 2.0. In terms of Mahara, it met the “out of the box” requirements but still had gaps in the functionality required.
As services partners on the project, Enovation Solutions worked with the Institute to make sure their key requirements were met. Other customisations included:
- Enovation developed a reflective practice diary, to allow users to choose one of three methods to reflect on an event.
- Enovation implemented a new section to log professional development achievements, where a user records their study, research, lectures, training activities and conference notes. These sections were then included as options to display by view or export.
- Enovation took the file export further by creating a full CV and Resume, which exported all profile information in an editable form that could be accessed by the end-user, regardless of the operating system in use.
- To facilitate users being able to move their portfolio to another system without having to type it in again, Enovation implemented a standard machine-readable export which other compatible portfolios can import (LEAP).
From 2009-2010 onwards, the use of the e-Portfolio functionality will be a requirement on many of the RCSI ILHM programmes, and in some cases forming part of the assessment approach.