Dossier is an online tool from Interfolio that allows users to manage the documents (CVs, letters of recommendation, confidential records, etc.) required to apply for faculty jobs, fellowships, grants, postdocs, or graduate study. Users can request letters of recommendation, securely store their files, and curate and send collections of materials from within Dossier.
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Taskstream-Tk20 (discontinued)
Score 6.0 out of 10
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Taskstream-Tk20 is software for higher education institutions, that is now discontinued. It was designed to help users manage institutional effectiveness (accreditation, strategic planning & budgeting, assessment planning, program review, faculty credentialing, reporting & analytics), monitor and improve program quality (student management, clinical & field placements, course evaluations, surveys, ePortfolios), and assess student learning and track progress (outcomes assessment, course-embedded…
This product has always performed excellently since our documents are secure. It enhances electronic signature to ensure there are no cases of forging documents that are shared across the entire enterprise. It tracks all documents to ensure that they land at the right destination and no cyberattacks. It easily integrates with email to enhance reliable communication and provide notifications to our clients during marketing campaigns.
TS is well suited as an eportfolio system when documents need to be archived for accreditation or long term assessment profiles. It would not be suited for routine classroom assessment or daily integration into a mobile or online platform. It is also not suited for non-technology oriented students, faculty, or staff. The user needs some level of confidence when using TS
Students can be searched via department or program so that I can search for a specific student. I can scroll through all students and find the one I need to evaluate or I can choose the option to "show all work waiting evaluation" and it will bring up student submissions that I have waiting for me.
TaskStream easily links or embeds into online classroom portals. We use BlackBoard now and students have an ePortfolio link that takes them directly to their menu of student instructions etc.
TaskStream actually serves its purpose well of archiving portfolio assignments so they can be referenced for an individual reason or for accreditation or reporting. It accomplishes this important goal for educational institutions.
There is a steep learning curve with TaskStream as the searching and even evaluating process is not intuitive. Although it is visual like a flowchart or grid--which I think is an asset--sometimes I can lock others out of the document or I have choices of "returning to student and deleting all instances of this submission" or "returning to student later" or "returning to student now and not deleting this submission" . . . I am unsure what these different options MEAN to the programmer. What I think they mean has not always proved to be correct. As a result, it creates confusion or frustration in the process.
The way TaskStream is used in the education department, multiple people may evaluate a capstone project in order to verify approval to progress to the next step--or next capstone activity. If a faculty or staff user inappropriately marks a document inside TaskStream, it can undo the submissions and make the process begin all over again. I have had this happen accidentally--a colleague returned a document the wrong way. The student then had to resubmit, two other colleagues had to approve indvidually, and then the 3rd party had to approve it the correct way. So although some aspects or tools/buttons in TS may not be intuitive, making errors in process can be time-consuming and create frustrations as they affect other people's work as well.
TaskStream does not work on a mobile device very efficiently. Because it has pop up windows, I often cannot get it to cooperate on a tablet, ipad, or mobile device. This is problematic when I am travelling and need to attend to a document in TS.
I have not worked with a similar document management platform. My experience with Dossier has been great and all our document-based programs have been achieved. It has the audition capability that has helped us to monitor the management processes of all documents. It arranges all files following the right protocol to enhance faster access and save time for accessing workloads. The customer team is always ready to offer any assistance when contacted.
TS is the only e-portfolio system I have used for students. I have used Kenobi as a wiki for holding data that was interactive with other faculty members. I found it to be simple but lacking in ability to be robust or host dynamic data. Kenobi does not have the ability to score or complete rubrics in the same fashion--there is a place for rubrics, but it is not as dynamic as TS
Although I am not on the administrative side of my department, it has been and continues to be the e-portfolio management system of choice for Walden University. Walden is now a for-profit school that is trading on the market. With that in mind, they would not invest in a system that was not functioning to its expectations.
If you view TS from a faculty or user perspective, I have colleagues who are frustrated with TS and its not "intuitive" nature, and they have eventually quit working for Walden and TS and the multiple systems we have to use was cited as a reason.
it would be ideal if there was one overall system that could manage all the different data artifacts we have to collect as faculty in higher ed. Due to accreditation and liability standards, we have to maintain faculty quality, classroom quality, student-learning quality and many other aspects of the educational system. TS is ONE of the systems we use. In the perfect world, there would be just one or two that completed the job.
