I before E: identity management, e-portfolios and personalised learning

Thursday 18th May 2006
RSA, John Adam Street, London WC2

Speakers and seminar leaders - biographies

Andrew Charlesworth
Senior Research Fellow in IT and Law, University of Bristol
Seminar C: Data protection, privacy and other legal issues around e-portfolios

Andrew Charlesworth is Senior Research Fellow in IT and Law, and Director of the Centre for IT and Law (CITL) at the University of Bristol. The CITL is sponsored by Herbert Smith LLP, Vodafone, Barclaycard, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, and the Law Society Charitable Trust.

Andrew has worked on data protection and privacy issues in HE/FE for a number of years and authored the JISC Data Protection Code of Practice for the HE and FE sectors. He is currently working with Dr Anna Home on the JISC-funded Lifelong Learner Record Legal Study, which has produced a number of reports and FAQs on legal issues for lifelong learner and ePortfolio projects; and with Dr Sean Smith on an ESRC-funded project on Federated Identities, 'Circles of Trust' and Decentred Data Protection Regulation in M-commerce.

Andrew has lectured on data protection, intellectual property, computer misuse, and Internet/E-commerce law, at conferences and seminars in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Australia. Recent publications include: "Information Privacy Law in the European Union: E Pluribus Unum or Ex Uno Plures" (2003) 54 Hastings Law Journal 931-969; and "The Future of Data Protection Law" (2006) 11 Information Security Technical Report 46-54.

Alan Cranston
Head of Information Policy, Technology Group, DfES
Keynote speaker

Alan Cranston is Head of Information Policy in the Technology Group of the Department for Education and Skills. This new Group was set up last year to deliver the Department's e-Strategy and to respond to the Transformational Government agenda. Alan is particularly responsible in the Group for developing a system-wide information architecture, for identity management and data standards, and for developing forward strategy on e-portfolios and e-assessment. Alan is a career civil servant who has previously worked in a number of education policy areas.

Richard Dunning
MATU Service Manager
Seminar F: Shibboleth

Richard was appointed specifically by Eduserv as Manager of the Middleware Assisted Take-Up service (MATU). MATU supports early adopters in achieving their Shibboleth objectives. The service is a project funded by JISC. Richard has 20 years experience across a variety of industries in systems implementations, project management, and help desk and support services.

Simon Grant
Seminar A: Architectural/technical/business model issues around e-portfolios

Simon Grant is an independent professional working in the e-portfolio area, and the joint coordinator of the JISC-CETIS Portfolio Special Interest Group. Previously a teacher, then a lecturer in human-computer interaction, from 1997 he pioneered the conceptual architecture for the development of the University of Liverpool's LUSID PDP system. This led to a full portfolio of work from 2002, including a major role in drafting BSI's UKLeaP interoperability standard. He has acted as consultant to several bodies, particularly the Centre for Recording Achievement, specialising in the more technical aspects of e-portfolio systems, and has authored many academic papers and project reports in this area, especially with his LUSID colleagues Janet Strivens and Adam Marshall. He believes firmly in the desirability of bringing together practitioners, developers and others to further consensus and progress in the field.

Philip Harley
Nottingham City Council
Seminar B: Using e-portfolios to support movement between institutions

Phil is the 14-19 Transition Strategy Manager at Nottingham City LA. He has been working with schools, colleges and local universities to develop a transition strategy centred on an e-portfolio. He has developed the City of Nottingham Passport ( www.cityofnottinghampassport.com) which currently has 3,500 users. He is working on a more interactive model to be called the PassPortFolio, ready by summer 2006. The work has been used as a case study by Becta and reflects the strength of the partnerships created and sustained through a common agenda. He is working closely with the University of Nottingham as part of its JISC funded projects on distributed e-learning and a reference model. Phil has spoken at international conferences on e-portfolios and has also published papers on his work.

Additionally Phil is the Action on Access Schools Advisor working on widening participation issues. In this capacity he has organised and run a series of successful seminars, written a guide to 14-19 reform and contributed to events both as a keynote speaker and workshop provider.

Prior to his current career Phil worked in a Leicestershire 14-19 Community College. He was also involved in the DfES Progress File demonstration project beginning his interest in e-portfolios.

John Harrison
Director, Edentity Ltd
Seminar A: Architectural/technical/business model issues around e-portfolios

John Harrison is a Director of Edentity Ltd, a company that seeks to catalyse the creation of infrastructure that will allow individuals to (i) enjoy secure single sign-on to multiple organisations; and (ii) give explicit permissions for the sharing of personal attributes between such organisations. Recent activities have included work for the Citizen Information Project team at the Office for National Statistics, and for a consortium of local authorities.

Anna Home
University of Bristol
Seminar C: Data protection, privacy and other legal issues around e-portfolios

Anna is a Research Associate at the Centre for IT and Law (CITL) at the University of Bristol. She trained as a Social Science researcher, and a lecturer in International Relations, and has a doctorate in the field of ethics and EU policy making. Her current research, funded by the JISC, is focused on the legal and related social aspects of e-portfolios. She has a particular interest in exploring how e-portfolios could be harnessed to tackle social exclusion, and has a growing publication record in this area. Anna enjoys interdisciplinary research and thrives when engaging in research projects that address topical issues in national or world politics.

Nick Johnson
Project SWISh Development Officer, University of Exeter
Seminar E: Managing information about people - issues and challenges

Nick joined Exeter's Project SWISh, one of JISC's Core Middleware: Infrastructure Programme Early Adopters a year ago to explore the introduction of Shibboleth-based technologies into campus environments. During this year, he successfully ran a Shibboleth trial for Exeter library users and developed a business plan for identity management for the university. He has worked as a Unix Systems Administrator, analyst and programmer for 25 years and enjoys developing solutions that fill the gap between what commercial systems offer and what the organization wants. His background is with commercial, inter-governmental and research organizations devoted to identity management, astronomy, global monitoring, satellite data transmission and the media.

Peter Rees-Jones
CETIS e-Portfolio feasibility study
Seminar B: Using e-portfolios to support movement between institutions

(details available soon)

Karin Maslen
Training and Communications Administrator, MATU
Seminar F: Shibboleth

Karin was appointed by Eduserv as Training and Communications Administrator for the Middleware Assisted Take-Up service (MATU). MATU supports early adopters in achieving their Shibboleth objectives. The service is a project funded by JISC. Karin joined MATU after a 20 year professional career in the UK and Europe spanning both education and various industry sectors.

Graham Mason
Kidderminster College
Seminar F: Shibboleth

Graham Mason having a career in computer engineering and teaching in the independent sector, moved to Kidderminster College in 2002 as Head of ICT. Graham not only runs a busy ICT department at the College, but also leads open source research and development projects. At present Graham is Project Manager of the KC-ROLO Project (Kidderminster College Repository of Learning Objects), a JISC Core Middleware funded project.

He is currently collaborating with colleagues from the West Midlands region, RSC WM, University of Wolverhampton and University of Worcester in providing Shibboleth Moodle open source VLE access, Epistle e-Portfolio and open source repository authentication.

Helen Richardson
JISC-CETIS Portfolio Special Interest Group joint Coordinator
Seminar G: Using e-portfolios to support personal development planning

Helen is joint Coordinator of the JISC-CETIS Portfolio Special Interest Group. She works with the Centre for Recording Achievement and others, to promote and develop learner centred good practice in the e-portfolio domain to support personal development planning and cognate practice. Recent work with the Lifelong Learning Support Project of the JISC funded MLEs for Lifelong Learning Programme (2003-2005), included development of an e-portfolio mapping template, and a planning tool to help practitioners identify functional requirements for 'getting what they want' from a portfolio system, for learners in their context ( www.jisc.ac.uk/project_0103_support.html).

Helen's commitment to learner-centredness is emphasised by a parallel role in pedagogic developments, currently through the FDTL4 Student Transition and Retention Project ( www.ulster.ac.uk/star), in supporting management of learner transition.

Previously, as Lecturer in Physiology, at the University of Manchester, Helen published in neuroscience and education research, and developed innovative practice for both discipline-based and generic skills-related learning and assessment. She played a significant role in development and implementation of the University's PDP processes and policy (DfES, Recording Achievement Project, 1998-2000), and of online PDP tools.

George Roberts , MPhil (Oxon), MA Ed (Open), CMALT
Educational Developer, Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University
Seminar H: Managing cultural change

I have been at Oxford Brookes since 2000. In my current role I advise the Head of E-Learning and Senior Management Team of the University on policy for off-campus e-learning and e-learning partnerships, and teach and research into the pedagogical, social and technical dimensions of e-learning nationally and internationally. I am interested in the interactions between personal identity and the values and beliefs that are embedded in the artefacts of Learning Technology. I also teach on the Open University MA course, "Language and Literacy in a Changing World" and am the Project Manager for a series of JISC Distributed e-Learning Tools Projects, developing and implementing the Open Source Portfolio in 14 sites in Southern England. Before Brookes I worked in Adult Community Learning projects and for the energy industry. I have lived in Oxford since 1983.

Shane Sutherland
ePortfolio Coordinator, University of Wolverhampton
Seminar D: Ensuring cross-sectoral collaboration and ownership of outcomes

Shane is the ePortfolio Coordinator at the University of Wolverhampton and a Director of Pebble Learning, the company who developed the PebblePAD ePortfolio system. Shane previously worked in the School of Education before moving to the Centre for Learning and Teaching as an eMentor. He is particularly enthusiastic about taming technology to support the process of learning.
As well as developing PebblePAD and promoting ePortfolio use, throughout the University of Wolverhampton and beyond, Shane also finds time to teach in areas as diverse as the PGCert HE, 1st Year undergraduate studies and sailing! Throughout the year Shane also runs eLearning Retreats for fellow teachers exploring the innovative use of ePortfolios, Virtual Learning Environments, WebQuests and other eLearning systems.