Features

Users are divided into five categories: Administrators, Managers, Teachers, Students and Moderators. Each category has different access to the system, for example Administrators have full control of the system, whilst students have only access to their work.

System Administrators can create individual accounts or bulk import users from a comma separated file, which can be exported from your MIS. One or more users can be deleted using the bulk deletion page.

To ease management of users they are grouped together, for example all ICT Teachers could be one group, students could be grouped by their year groups. Once grouped you just add the group to a course and all the users within the group will be available to be selected for the classes associated with that course.

Courses are created in two steps: The first step is to enter the course information, such as name, title, where the files are to be stored and groups to be associated with the course. The second step is to create the units that belong to it. The following information can be set for units: Name, title, Close Date, Seal Date, Quota, TCP/IP Restrictions, HTML File Checking and Allowed File Types. The Close date is when the system automatically prevents any further work being submitted or changed. Once this has been passed a Manager can reopen the unit to allow modifications to be made. After the seal date has passed the work is considered ready for moderation and is permenantly locked.

The system maintains a list of recognised file types (which can be modified by system administrators) one or more of these can be added to the unit. Only these allowed file types will be accepted into the students' portfolio. You can easily copy a course including its units to create a new course.

ePortfolio Manager gives students and teachers the ability to view the files in a portfolio with an online file manager. With the file manager you can create, rename and remove folders, create files and edit them with a simple text editor. Up to ten files can be uploaded at one time with the file upload page. The file manager will only allow recognised file types to be created or uploaded to the portfolio. HTML files (if allowed) are checked as they are uploaded for common errors, for example absolute file references or invalid document formatting.

ePortfolio Manager allows portfolios to be moderated without having to send any files to the exam board. Using the Moderator Wizard system administrators can select the students requested by the exam board to be moderated and assign them to a moderator account. When that account is accessed the requested list of students is displayed, the moderator can access the files by clicking on the student they want to view. (This facility requires external access to the server to be made available.)

Users have different access to the system, from System Administrators who have full control to Moderators who have view only access. ePortfolio Manager also provides security using TCP/IP addresses. Only known addresses will have read/write access (unless it has been overridden for a specific course). If a person logs in from an unknown address they will by default have read only access to the system (except system administrators). The system administrator can also deny access to the program from a specific IP Address as well, preventing unwanted users from even being able to log in. Almost all actions are written to log files which can be used by a system administrator to keep track of the usage of the system.