Feature Wiki
Tabs
Portfolio Templates
Page Overview
[Hide]1 Requirements
To ease and extend the use of portfolios in teaching and learning processes it would be helpful if users could use pre-defined templates for a portfolio. To support this it is necessary for tutors if they can transform an existing portfolio into a template and offer it to the members of a course or group. Such templates should be repository objects using the RBAC to grant access to them.
- Templates for portfolios: It should be possible to take an existing portfolio as a good example and to re-use it as a template for other users. This requires to "anonymize" the portfolio. Lesson learned at Hochschule Bremen: there is not a small number of portfolios that could become templates in general but a lot of which only specific fit for a selected didactic scenario. Therefore, a general pool is less helpful than an easy way to transform an existing portfolio into a template.
- Templates for portfolio pages: Templates for page layouts in portfolios are already existing. But they are content-free pages and more helping to create similar looking pages. They are helpful to ease the designing process of a layout and to give different pages a similar layout.
- Templates for blog pages: Templates for pages in blogs are not existing yet and would have a similar character as portfolio pages.
1.1 Portfolio Template Object
- A user can re-use (if READ permission is given) a portfolio template to create an own portfolio.
- Creating a new portfolio based on a template is possible
- on my Personal Desktop » Portfolio (ILIAS shows a list of available templates for this user)
- in the repository where the user has READ access to a portfolio template.
- Important: One cannot create a portfolio straight from another portfolio but only via a template. Therefore, only user with a role that gives CREATE permission for portfolio templates at a selected node of the repository are able to create portfolio templates.
- Creating a new portfolio based on a template is possible
- A portfolio template can already contain content (text, media objects, ...) as well as block placeholders (e.g. data of public profile /vCard).
- All content in a template has to be copied (not linked) when a portfolio is created that uses this template. Checking the user's disk quota before copying media objects is necessary.
- Embedded page elements of a portfolio template (like the personal data block) has to be presented in a way to make every user clear that ILIAS shows always and only the data of the portfolio owner (user-sensitive).
- Blocks for competences are presented as placeholders. A user is asked if the embedded competences shall be added to the user's competence management.
- Blocks for certificates are presented as placeholders where a user can add certificates later.
- If the portfolio templates embeds a blog, ILIAS offers options to create a new blog, to re-use an existing blog or not to use a blog.
- A portfolio template can only be created from own portfolios.
- A portfolio template has the default Availability settings (Online, Access).
1.2 Former Requests - Deprecated
The following concept is driven by the idea of offering a repository object "Template Pool". This idea has been dispelled by the members of the portfolio workshop on June 26, 2013 (see below).
Case 1 : Storing templates
- A new repository object "Template Pool" should be introduced and offer the possibility to store templates and offer them for re-use. A preview for each template is supported but creating and editing a template might be postponed to a later version due to time and budget restrictions.
- The inner structure of the pool could be similar to the media pool where one can create folders to structure the pool content.
- Read permission allows to use templates from the entire pool, write permissions allows to edit and to add templates.
- In a first version the template pool object supports the mentioned templates for a (1) Portfolio, (2) Portfolio pages and (3) Blog pages. In later versions other templates could be possible (e.g. wiki pages or category pages).
Case 2 : Saving a template
- In a first version it is sufficient to create a template out of an exisiting portfolio, portfolio page or blog page.
- The process to create a template should start in the template pool where the template will be stored. After selecting the type of template one would like to create, the user needs to select the existing portfolio, portfolio page or blog page and define it as template (this requires to prepare the page or portfolio before - but it avoids to implement an editor in the template pool).
- Templates can be set online or offline (depending if they should be used at the time being) but this setting affects only the creation of new portfolios or pages based on a template.
Case 3 : Selecting a template
- If a user creates a new portfolio, a new portfolio page or a new blog page and this user has read access to at least one template pool, ILIAS will offer a button to create a new page or portfolio based on a template: "Use page template" / "Use portfolio template".
- If clicked, a new page with a list of available templates should be displayed. Each template is listed with title and description and offers a preview. A filter for selecting templates from all or from a specific pool is appreciated. The folder title of the pool could be used as headlines and help to group the templates.
- The user selects the desired template with a checkbox and clicks on "Adopt".
Case 4 : Forcing the use of a template
- Blogs and portfolios should offer the option to define one or more page template that can only be used. Advantage: a user would always start a new page with a predefined structure.
- The portfolio should also have an option to define one or more portfolio templates. Advantage: a user would always start with a structured and predefined portfolio.
Das Umwandeln eines Portfolios oder das Umwandeln von Seiten von Blogs oder Portfolios in „Blogseiten-Vorlagen“, „Portfolio-Seiten-Vorlagen“, „Portfolio-Vorlagen“ in Magazin-Objekte soll möglich sein. Beim Erstellen von Portfolios oder Portfolio-Seiten oder Blog-Seiten muss dann im Editor die Option „Vorlage aus Magazin“ einfügen, vorhanden sein.
Schritt 1: Umwandlung (von Portfolios/Portfolio-Seiten/Blogseiten) in jeweilige Vorlagen
Schritt 2: Bereitstellung der Vorlage(n) im Magazin
Schritt 3: Import einer Vorlage
Schritt 4: Bereitstellung des/r Portfolios/Portfolio-Seite/Blogseite
Problemstellung: Für größere Gruppen im begleiteten Selbststudium, die ggf. noch nicht mit ILIAS gearbeitet haben und daher ohne Erfahrung sind, kann die Nutzung des Portfolio schwierig werden. Um diese Hürde bei der Nutzung zu relativieren, sollen Vorlagen einen Einstieg deutlich erleichtern. Ferner wäre auch eine bessere Vergleichbarkeit (durch Grundstrukturierung) gegeben.
2 Status
- Scheduled for: ILIAS 4.4
- Funding: Funded by Hochschule Bremen
- Development: Feature is to be developed by Leifos
3 Additional Information
- If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Karola Koch / kkoch@hsu-hh.de or Oliver Samoila / oliver.samoila@hs-owl.de
4 Discussion
Matthias Kunkel, 17 Mar 2013: Please do not schedule features by your own! Only the Jour Fixe is allowed to do this, see How To Suggest A New Feature.
Matthias Kunkel, 06 June 2013: I have translated the original text into English and described it in more detail
- "Template Pool": The idea of a template pool that stores all kind of templates (portfolio, portfolio page, blog pages, wiki pages, category pages, ...) contradicts the general modular approach of the ILIAS system. A portfolio e.g. is a very different thing than a wiki page. Portfolios and Wikis are separate components, provide different features, are implemented by different developers and so on. Furthermore a general template concept (like the term "Template Pool" is a general one) must take into account the need for templates for repository objects, too, e.g. course templates.
- "...editing a template might be postponed...": Offering support for the ILIAS page editor does not come with high costs.
- "If a user creates a new portfolio, a new portfolio page or a new blog page and this user has read access to at least one template pool": This can have severe performance implications, since checking the whole repository for objects with a certain permission can take very long.
- "Forcing the use of a template... ": I do not understand on what level this setting is provided, especially for portfolios. Globally in the administration, for all users that create a portfolio? This seems to be not feasible. Or should this be defined within the object? This seems to be impossible, if the object does not exist yet or is created by the learner.
- We have an existing implementation for global portfolio page "templates" (Administration > Layout and Styles > Page Layout). This implementation already suffers from the fact that two different types (SCORM and portfolios) are mixed. Portfolios offer other page content elements than SCORM. Separating these pages would be necessary here, too. Whatever we are going to implement, should take into account (and improve) this implementation.
- Corcerning the template pool: you are right that such a pool would be a inter-module tool - what does not exist up to now. But I see only the other option to create a pool for each module - and this would mean a lot more repository objects. What is your suggestion?
- If we show a button to add a portfolio or blog page instead of creating a new one, we would also need to check if the user has read permission on a template pool - at least when one hits the button. Maybe we can use AJAX to make this permission check when the page has already been delivered.
- We can force the use of a portfolio with a predefined structure only globally as portfolios are user-related (unless we can use organisational units for it). I do not see a general problem to do this if an institution agrees on the default structure of a portfolio. The user creates a new portfolio and this comes already with a certain number of pages and page elements. At the end it is the learner who can delete and edit these page elements anyway. But the user does not need to start with an empty portfolio.
Portfolio Jour Fixe, 26 Jun 2013: We have discussed the requirement for portfolio templates as well as for blog and portfolio page templates. We decided to choose a different way as described in the original request to implement portfolio templates.
We highly aprreciate this usability improvement and schedule a first implementation of portfolio templates for 4.4. We will focus on the portfolio templates and postpone the implementation of blog page templates and an extension of portfolio page templates to 4.5. For a better handling of this feature request we will move the request for portfolio page templates and blog page templates to a new feature wiki page "Page Templates for Blog and Portfolio" and discussed and decided separately.
Matthias Kunkel, 27 Aug 2013: Due to the different positions in the discussion above it is not clear how this feature has been implemented for 4.4. Please provide some more information in the "Implementation" section. This helps user to use this extension of the portfolio feature.
5 Implementation
The implementation details are:
- Portfolio templates can be created as repository object, a personal portfolio can be used as "source"
- In the portfolio list a portfolio template can be used as "source" for a new portfolio (with sufficient permissions)
- In portfolio templates placeholders can be used for text, media items and certificates.
Competences can be pre-selected. On importing a template any competence which is not yet part of the personal competences can be optionally added by the user. - Blog pages in portfolio templates are more or less a named placeholders
- On creating a portfolio from a template
- the combined size of media items, "embedded" files and such is checked against the personal workspace disk quota (if any)
- all media items, files are copied
- every blog page is processed and the user has to select an existing blog, create a new one or discard the page
- Portfolio templates can be exported and imported (xml-based, ILIAS standard procedure)
JL 07 Nov 2013: Consultation hours are currently not supported in portfolio templates.
JL 10 Dec 2013: Competences are now fully supported.
Last edited: 17. Apr 2025, 15:02, Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]