Flexibility and devolved management
The system features devolved management in that appointed administrators can set up their own independent e-portfolio areas for their students, and contain their own custom web-forms and standard web pages designed to meet their own particular needs. The system replicates generic features of paper-based administrative systems:
• Distribution: a web-form can be 'released' to a particular type of user.
• Help: standard web-pages can be delivered to assist users.
• Sub-sections: parts of a web-form can be reserved for filling in by other users.
• Attachments: uploaded files can be 'electronically stapled' to a web-form.
• Hand-in: web-forms can be electronically 'signed off' which locks their content.
These features make the Profile system a very flexible tool. Instead of a programmer having to modify the underlying scripts that drive the system in order to deliver the required outcomes of a particular administrative task, those needs can be met by the person responsible for that administrative task creating a set of, to them, familiar forms that represents the process. The way the users interact with these forms within the Profile system then achieves the desired outcome. In a way, the person creating the forms to run on the Profile system is performing high-level programming, for the forms evoke certain responses in users designed to collect and collate data in a particular way. Seen in this way, forms within the Profile system are effectively "programs" that "run" on the users. The system is available to all higher education institutions.
