ELLIment:A Learning Futures Tool

What is ELLIMent?ElliMent is an online mentoring tool, which started as a student project at the Open University and was then developed by the University of Bristol in partnership with Vital Partnerships and Learning Warehouse. Its aim is to facilitate the journey of learning and change - for learners of all ages in all types of organisations.

It provides support for an online version of the mentoring that conventionally takes place face-to-face around ELLI profiles showing how learners see themselves as learners. The mentor and mentee have a shared view of the mentee's ELLI spider diagram, set aspirational 'stretches' on one or more ELLI dimensions, and can record notes and agreed actions in a textchat. It is intended as an added extra to phone or skype conversations rather than an alternative.

Please see the following slides for more information.

Log into the University of Bristol portal on Vital Hub by going to:www.bristol.vitalhub.org

Click here to access the portal

On the University of Bristol Portal Welcome Page, login using

your ELLI username and password

There is a link to ELLIMent in the menu here

As a Mentee, you are always in charge of the mentoring conversation. If there is a choice of more than one mentor, you decide who you want to work with. Your mentor will only be able to view your conversation while you have selected him/her to work with. If you choose to work with a different mentor, just select a different name from the drop down menu.

When you have completed your Elli questionnaire, this chart will show your Elli profile shape, which is an indication how you see your own Learning Power. The ELLI simply reflects back to you what you have said about your own learning habits, it is not somebody else's judgement of you. You will look at the profile together with your mentor and discuss what it means. You can use the sliders below the chart to pull it into a new shape that reflects your aims for yourself and how you would like to increase your Learning Power in different ways. You can then save this aimed for profile for future reference by clicking on the "Set Profile Aims" button.

You have several options when you use this part of Elliment. If you want, just write away as if in an email. When you're done you can either post the message so that its visible to both you and your mentor (press "Save Public"), or for your eyes only (press "Save Private"). You can also use the text editor buttons to do many of the things you would do in a word processor, or email program. You can change the text formatting, or add links to web pages.

Finally, you can also use the buttons below the text area to keep a record of which of the 7 dimensions of Learning Power that apply to what you have just written. Just click them and they will appear in your message. Hover your mouse over them if you're not sure what each one means.

As you work with your mentor, over time you will build up a shared conversation about what you have discussed. You can see both the messages you saved for each other to see and also private notes and reflections that you may have made. If you decide that a post you made should have been a private note to yourself, just click on the "open book" icon to the top right of each post, to close the book and make the note private. In the same way, if you wish to share a private note with your mentor, just click on the "closed book" icon to open it and share the message. If you create a set of aims for your Elli profile that you have stored, you will find a note of that here too. This way you can look at how your aims have changed in relation to other issues that you have discussed.