We’ve done a great job with Leap2A in terms of providing a workable starting point for interoperability of e-portfolio systems and portability of learner-ownable information, but what are the next steps we (and JISC) should be taking? That’s what we need to think about.

The role of CETIS was only to co-ordinate this work. The ones to take the real credit are the vendors and developers of e-portfolio and related systems, who worked well together to make the decisions on how Leap2A should be, representing all the information that is seen as sharable between actual e-portfolio tools, allowing it to be communicated between different systems.

The current limitations come from the lack of coherent practice in personal and professional development, indeed in all the areas that e-portfolio and related tools are used for. Where some institutions support activities that are simply different from those supported by a different institution, there is no magic wand that can be waved over the information related to one activity that can turn it into a form that supports a fundamentally different one. We need coherent practice. Not identical practice, by any means, but practice where it is as clear as possible what the building blocks of stored lifelong learning information are.

What we really need is for real users — learners — to be taking information between systems that they use or have used. We need to have motivating stories of how this opens up new possibilities; how it enables lifelong personal and professional development in ways that haven’t been open before. When learners start needing the interoperability, it will naturally be time to start looking again, and developing Leap2A to respond to the actual needs. We’ve broken the deadlock by providing a good initial basis, but now the baton passes to real practice, to take advantage of what we have created.

What will help this? Does it need convergence, not on individual development practice necessarily, but on the concepts behind it? Does it need tools to be better – and if so, what tools? Does it need changes in the ways institutions support PDP? In November, we held a meeting co-located with the annual residential seminar of the CRA, as a body that has a long history of collaboration with CETIS in this area.

And how do we provide for the future of Leap2A more generally? Is it time to form a governing group of software developers who have implemented Leap2A? Is there any funding, or are there any initiatives, that can keep Leap2A fresh and increasingly relevant?

Please consider sharing your views, and contributing to the future of Leap2A.