Felicity McKinnion - A hypothetical scenario of an NZ Cert

Estate Agent Student

Image source

Background

Felicity McKinnion lives in Warkworth, New Zealand, is thirty-one-years-old, and is enrolled on the
The NZ Certificate of Real Estate at Unitec New Zealand. She would has been working as a real
estate agent for five years, initially with a large company, but has recently moved and would like
to take on a more responsible role within the organisation. She is finding some of the course at
Unitec NZ a little challenging at times, but is enjoying opportunities to share professional practice
experiences with peers, deepen her knowledge of the legal aspects of Real Estate in New Zealand,
while also developing an ePortfolio that she plans to keep up to date once she has graduated from
the programme. Felicity enjoys working in groups some of the time and often takes on a
leadership role, but as a self-directed individual she also enjoys work where she can concentrate
on things by herself. She feels she is reasonably competent with using Information
Communication Tools (ICT) such as Word, PowerPoint and emails, but she has never really used
social networking forums. The one time Felicity decided to try Facebook she did not really see the
purpose, but she has been using Skype a lot to stay in contact with family overseas. However, she
has recently noticed a growing number of Real Estate Communities and blogs, and is aware that
there are increasing opportunities for marketing herself and the company with whom she works.
Example of an international, onlineEstate Agent community

Participation and Preferences

Having just completing the Unit Standard 23138 (Level 3, Credits 3), Felicity has been pleased to
have the chance to work in face-to-face formats, but has also been really grateful for the
opportunity to head home before the traffic, and do a lot of her work remotely, even when she
has been collaborating on projects. Felicity has found it relatively simple to set up the Moodle,
ELGG, and Ning accounts she needed to use on the programme, as there were links to videos that
showed her how to set everything up, as well as a links to Ask IT. The videos were also great for
illustrating some of the more abstract concepts or legislative grey areas, such as easement. There
were also times when she was completely stuck with a task, and then she contacted her 'buddy'
via Skype or mobile phone, and they were usually able to work out what they needed to do.

When first starting the programme, Felicity and her classmates were introduced to the blended
approach to learning, as well as some key study skills. Time was given initially for students to log
in to Moodle, ELGG, Ning, and then to create profiles, look around the site, ask questions, and
also to contribute to a discussion forum in the Ning Community site introducing themselves, their
background, and why they were studying on the certificate. Through these activities, Felicity
became aware that Moodle represented the 'formal' aspect of the programme, and it was there
that she could find information and content for each course, scaffolding and support for
fundamental concepts, a base for finding further help, and links to academic and pastoral support.
The Ning, in contrast, was the student space, where they could share ideas, comment, give
feedback, create their own discussion forums and blogs, and also share videos and images. ELGG,
her ePortfolio, she realised was an organic tool that not only contained a record of her work, but
also changed as she did. Felicity considers that she is building a body of evidence and reflection
for use during the course she is studying, as well as being easy to adapt to a showcase graduate
portfolio once she has left Unitec NZ. As such, at the moment her ePortfolio is designed around
the key competencies and learning outcomes required by the course she is studying even though
she believes her ePortfolio will be something that is going to accompany throughout the rest of
her working life. Although time is an issue, she enjoys the fact that she can plan, set milestones,
and really unpack thoughts and ideas in her ePortfolio, especially around the learning process
itself. Blog posts (her 'testing ground' for initial thinking around some of the key concepts of
estate agency, and associated assignments) she has made public, and has been thrilled by the
comments that are frequently left from people from all around the world, as well as other students
participating in her course. Felicity now feels comfortable contacting (via email or Skype) some of
the leading lights of estate agency in New Zealand and beyond, and has been delighted with the
supportive, informative responses that she has received. All of these responses she keeps in her
ePortfolio, partly for later acknowledgement purposes, but also to illustrate her research and
networking abilities.
Example of an existing Real Estate Community Ning

Ways of working

While completing the requirement of the Unit Standard 23138, Felicity worked in groups and
individually to complete a range of tasks that had enough variety to really keep her interest, but
were not so different that she found the tools and the sheer volume of content were getting in the
way of the learning. Some of her interactions and completed artefacts included:

• Working with a team to complete a collaborative glossary. As a more visual learner, Felicity
chose to find from Creative Commons sources, a range of images to illustrate the
definitions her team developed. Where she could not find suitable images online, she took
some of her own. Her team found resources such as the REINZ online estate agent
terminology resource, and the Real Estate Webmasters' Glossary invaluable. The latter in
particular was useful as it had the contributors' links included, and on a couple of
occassions the team were able to contact the contributor for clarification. They did have to
bear in mind, however, that each source had to be evaluated for its relevance to New
Zealand legislation, so there was a fair bit of extra evaluative work to be done. The team
was very pleased with the results though, in particular because they were able to download
the glossary and include it in their own ePortfolios. The final rating task, Felicity did not
find particularly useful as it did not have enough depth for her, but a couple of her
classmates really got involved with it, and there was some lively discussions around some
of the ratings, which in turn led to some clarification in her own thinking about some of the
terminology.
• Her least favourite task was the collaborative team development of a table and charts. The
case studies were complex, and meant that the team had to work hard to identify, extract,
summarise, interpret and apply the information around site uses and compliant activity for
a specific property. Having looked long and hard at the scaffolding provided, the grading
rubric, the time frame, and the frequently asked questions forum, the team decided to
equally divide their case studies. They set up a Google Spreadsheet, shared it with all
members of the team, and worked out that they would need some way of 'meeting' online
as they were all living miles apart. Given that they all wanted to see each other as well as
share audio, links, and the Google Doc, they decided to use Flashmeeting, as there was
nothing to download, and looked pretty easy to use. One of the team members discovered
a really useful discussion forum in a professional community (Propertytalk.com) and they
were able to post a couple of points for clarification, which was promptly provided by the
community members. Althought they were able to find supporting documents, and blogs
online, the team were rather disappointed not to find more immediately relevant
multimedia that would help them with the case studies. However, they did find some that
provided some ideas, background information, and trends for the future- many in the New
Zealand context. While working together, and locating all of the resources, the teamused
Twine to share links, carefully describing, categorising and tagging them so that they
could all find and use them with the minimal of further time investment.
• The final task, Felicity felt was probably one of the most useful in her day-to-day role. The
newsletter inspired her as not only did she have to 'translate' the technical jargon and
legalise into something a member of the public would enjoy reading, but she could also be
creative. Working by herself she ventured into Flickr and also discovered the free online
tool, Gliffy, which she used to create a diagram and a flowchart.
Example of a Flashmeeting

Tools Felicity McKinnon and the team used for Unit Standard 23138
(Level 3, Credits 3)

Some of the tools, sites and spaces Felicity used to create and host content for her ePortfolio are
listed below. Please note that although she has a large amount of content online, she is critical of
this content and selective of what she chooses to show in the public view(s) of her ePortfolio. She
also tailors views of her ePortfolio for specific people and events:
• Moodle - key centre for communication and collaboration, as well as information and
content for each course, scaffolding and support for fundamental concepts, a base for
finding further help, and a source for academic and pastoral support

• ELGG - an ePortfolio platform

• A programme Ning - enables contributions to forums, blog posts, comments on other

students' posts, links to interesting resources, and embedding useful videos/images

• Google Docs - collaborates with peers on projects and papers

• Gliffy - create, and share diagrams and flowcharts

• Flashmeeting - online, synchronous meetings with peers and tutors

• Twine - a social bookmarking tool

• Flickr - images / diagrams of theories

 • Blip TV, You Tube and Vimeo - accessing and hosting videos

• A range of professional Estate Agent Blogs, Forums, sites and communities

If you have any questions, please contact: Hazel Owen (ethosconsultancynz@gmail.com) or Helen
Martin (ethosconsultancynz@gmail.com).

http://www.mindmeister.com/25663129/Chan Sook: A learner ePortfolio scenario/design by Hazel

Owen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
New Zealand License.
Based on a work at www.mindmeister.com.