ELLIMent

Online mentoring tool for the ELLI framework for lifelong learning

ELLIMent is an online tool which aims to support mentors and mentees with reflection on their dispositions for lifelong learning. It helps to organize the workflow between mentors and mentees through

(1) Keeping lifelong learning dispositions at the heart of the reflection process

(2) Enabling mentors and mentees to exchange reflection and action notes

(3) Enabling mentors and mentees to determine which reflections they share with each other and which they keep private

(4) Keeping track of the history of the mentoring sessions.

ELLIMent is based on on ELLI, the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (link to the ELLI research project page: http://www.ellionline.co.uk/), a self-report questionnaire designed to find out how learners perceive themselves in relation to the key dimensions of learning power. These dimensions are:

(1) changing and learning - a sense of myself as someone who learns and changes over time;

(2) critical curiosity – an orientation to want to ‘get beneath the surface’;

(3) meaning making – making connections and seeing that learning ‘matters to me’;

(4) creativity – risk-taking, playfulness, imagination and intuition;

(5) learning relationships – learning with and from others and also able to manage without them;

(6) strategic awareness – being aware of my thoughts, feelings and actions as a learner and able to use that awareness to manage learning processes;

(7) resilience – the readiness to persevere in the development of my own learning power.

ELLIMent represents a learner’s self-report in term of these dimensions as a spider diagram, giving mentors and mentees the opportunity to reflect on it, choosing dimensions and interventions to work on, to develop learning power.

Partners

• SocialLearn Project
• University of Bristol/ViTaL Partnerships ELLI research project

Ullmann, T., Ferguson, R., Buckingham Shum, S. and Deakin-Crick, R. (2011) Designing an Online Mentoring System for Self-Awareness and Reflection on Lifelong Learning Skills, Workshop: 1st Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in Personal Learning Environments at The PLE Conference, Southampon, United Kingdom