If ePARs are coming sooner or later, is it worthwhile developing paper-based ones now?
Yes. Like the paper-based PARs, ePARs are a concept, not a prescribed system. The kind of customisation possible with the paper version is accommodated within the electronic version. This means that: • the academic policy decisions required to develop a PAR in a School are the same whether the medium is paper or IT • it will be perfectly feasible to transfer the features of a customised paper PAR into IT. Experience so far shows that the key to the quality of PAR systems is the defining and handling of the processes involved for staff and students, and that these are often thought through more satisfactorily on paper than in IT form. Unless educational principles are firmly fixed beforehand, the data-crunching to which IT lends itself can easily dictate and over-dominate the content of an ePAR.
