MAPS (“Managed Assessment Portfolio System”) represents the culmination of TAG’ Development’s efforts to support teachers creatively in managing the assessment for learning process through a number of projects over the last 10+ years.  MAPS has been specifically designed to support schools, teachers and learners.

TAG Development’s work in the area of ePortfolios began in 1997 with a LAN based product for the London Borough of Newham called Portfolio Builder, and which ultimately introduced TAG Developments to the advisory team in Worcestershire.  In late 2001, TAG Developments began working on an online assessment portfolio system for Worcestershire to facilitate teacher assessments and model the work flow of assessment verification and moderation for the upcoming KS3 ICT strategy.   The resulting product, MAPS, became commercially available throughout the UK in September 2002 and has continued to evolve and expand as a result of user demand and feedback.

TAG Developments was approached by a number of awarding bodies to enable assessment portfolios to support their qualification coursework verification process.   For TAG Developments, this has meant designing and evolving a data schema for describing qualifications, units within qualifications, mark blocks and mark schemes, assessment objectives and referencing and marking requirements. This Schema is now sophisticated enough to profile qualifications ranging from skills-based IT ones such as OCR’s CLAiT and SQA’s PC Passport, to cutting edge New Media Qualifications such as Edexcel’s DiDA and OCR’s iMedia and OCR’s Nationals, not to mention a host of AQA GCSE and GCE and the new Diploma qualifications.   Click here for a complete list of the qualifications that MAPS supports.

MAPS now provides summative and formative assessment tools for over 140,000 learners in a range of contexts:

• A learner-centred portfolio to support the assessment process in all subject areas from KS1 – KS5;
• A management system for assessors to assign, track and mark evidence, and for assessors and learners to access resources and support materials, chart progress, engage in a dialogue about the work being done, and for assessors to view the actual work electronically; and
• A mechanism for assessors and learners to manage coursework, and mark evidence against awarding body mark schemes, to submit this evidence electronically to those awarding bodies who are able to accept evidence electronically.

Most recently, MAPS has served as the basis of an eportfolio management and handling system for a number of awarding bodies, including both OCR and AQA.   As such, the MAPS engine now provides the power for an Awarding Body system to facilitate digital evidence collection; moderator allocation; verification; assessment; marking and administration and includes a full suite of communication and reporting tools.

MAPS Awards include:

• BETT 2004 – School Management Award;
• BECTA 2004 - ICT in Practice Award for Innovation and Change
• BETT 2007 – e-Assessment Award.
• Education Resources Award 2007 – Finalist in the category 'Innovations'.

For more information about MAPS, please click here.