Untitled Document

Nothing paperless about this large ring-binder! Thank you, Nessie!

This is the second chapter of our writings on Making NVQs easy.We have explained how the bulky all-paper NVQ portfolios of the 1980s and 1990s are now giving way to NVQ (and SVQ) portfolios which use newer technology. The bulky lever-arch files of the past are, we would like to hope, now things of the past. They were big, heavy and cost a fortune to send through the post. The biggest Monster Portfolio I have ever come across weighed 22 kilograms and arrived on a parcel delivery van!

There is an anecdote which purports to be based on an engineering works in the English Midlands which was staffed mainly by Sikhs. It seems they preferred to describe their jobs by speaking into a tape recorder, rather than having to write lengthy written accounts. They were candidates for Level 3 in Management at the time and the entire group gained the NVQ. Their portfolios consisted of about six cassette tapes apiece. By any reckoning these were paperless portfolios.

The Awarding Bodies have for years been discouraging methods of assessment which rely too heavily on paper documentation, but the tendency to check the quality of an assessment by examining the candidate’s paper portfolio dies very hard. Some years ago, in a widely distributed booklet, Dr. Chris Devereux advocated using recordings of what he called ‘Professional Discussions’. However he realised that “out there” were Verifiers who might feel cheated if they were not given something to read! Dr. Devereux advocated producing transcripts of key parts of the discussion so that Verifiers, both Internal and External, could read a summary. Personally, I hate having to transcribe anything!

In the event Dr. Devereux’s fears proved groundless. No Awarding Body made an issue of having to see ‘transcripts’, so full recordings of professional discussions soon came to be accepted, but the boxed cassette tape format was about to be superseded. It is now possible to use digital recording methods, which can be transferred to a computer and copied in a variety of electronic formats, such as WAV, AIFF, and, of course, MP3. Once digitised in this way, a PC user can ‘burn’ as many CDs or CD-ROMs as he or she wishes from a single original.