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Curating all the practice, reflections, and learning ... in portfolio format for this @YearsEd book club episode.
25 Years of Ed Tech is a serialized audio version of the book 25 Years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller of the Open University and published by AU Press. The audio version of the book is a collaborative project with a global community of volunteers contributing their voices to narrate a chapter of the book. Bonus episodes are a series of conversations called "Between the Chapters" to chat about these topics and more!
"In this lively and approachable volume based on his popular blog series, Martin Weller demonstrates a rich history of innovation and effective implementation of ed tech across higher education. From Bulletin Board Systems to blockchain, Weller follows the trajectory of education by focusing each chapter on a technology, theory, or concept that has influenced each year since 1994. Calling for both caution and enthusiasm, Weller advocates for a critical and research-based approach to new technologies, particularly in light of disinformation, the impact of social media on politics, and data surveillance trends. A concise and necessary retrospective, this book will be valuable to educators, ed tech practitioners, and higher education administrators, as well as students."
Credits:
Text in quotes from the book website published by Athabasca University Press CC-BY-NC-ND
BG music Abstract Corporate by Gribsound released under a CC-BY license. Track was edited for time.
Artwork X-Ray Specs by @visualthinkery is licenced under CC-BY-SA.
Audio book chapters produced by Clint Lalonde.
Between the Chapters bonus podcast episodes produced by Laura Pasquini.
0:03
Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book, 25 years of Ed Tech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura Pasquini.
0:15
Well, welcome to chapter 15. It's 2008. And we're here to talk about e portfolios. I'm so excited to welcome Orna Farrell and David Wicks to the book club chat. Hi.
0:27
Hi. Good. Well,
0:29
2008 feels like eons ago, I'm wondering what was going on the world of E portfolios? These are that digital gathering of things, outputs, assessments, resources, quote from the chapter in your world, if you care to share?
0:45
Well, thanks, Laura, I suppose I'll go first or earlier on, I was trying to remember what I was doing in 2008. And as far as I can remember, I was very early career academic, working in a private university in Dublin. And I was just dipping my toe into the world of portfolio at that time. And the reason was this, I was given a module about professional, sorry, personal development, and I knew nothing about this. And I was kind of struggling to come up with a plan for the module, and a colleague said to me, maybe maybe you could try a portfolio approach with that, that might work well. So I started reading up on portfolios. And I saw people were talking about e portfolios, and I thought, well, they sound kind of cool. Maybe I'll try one of those. And then I found some of the disk resources. So I'm not sure if you've come across just but they had a big project, actually, in 2008. And that's kind of was my starting point into a portfolio. I worked with a group of about 25 students that year, we used kind of a Moodle plugin for that first portfolio. So I think it's the diary plugin in Moodle. And it worked really well. One thing I really remember about it was, I really knew the students after I got them to do a little presentation of their portfolio, I really didn't have a clue. I was feeling my way. But I do remember thinking, Wow, that was interesting. I learned a lot about my students, they seem to enjoy what they did as well. One thing we did do is get very bogged down in the technical side of hyperlinking, and adding images and things like that. But maybe that was just the time it was as well, it's interesting that you had something called personal development, cuz I actually taught a class like that for
2:24
a few years when I was an academic. So we always want our learners to grow. David, what were you doing around this time around e portfolios?
2:31
Yeah, I'm not really certain of the exact year right now. But I mean, my entrance to it was a dean, I was working in a, you know, the ed tech department at that time, and the school of ed d contacted me and said, we, you know, accredited tations coming up. And we have to have, like a portfolio like the, you know, there was language that just specifically said that they had to have a portfolio assessment. And I don't remember if it was like, a year away or something, but they needed a solution now. And so, you know, at that time, there were a bunch of these companies that were just portfolio assessment companies, I don't even know, I just haven't heard about them in years. Maybe because I'm not using them. But But, you know, we picked one, I won't name them, but, you know, went all in and it was just really prescriptive, you know, we just had to hear it, here's the exact template, everybody's portfolio will look exactly the same. Here's where you upload artifacts, and probably the worst part of that was students, you know, got nicked for, like $100 fee to do it. So you were, you know, no creativity, no personal choice, just upload these assignments, so to speak, to show that you have competency on these standards. And it was it was not well received by faculty or students.
4:11
I think I just fell asleep and you say compensated standard. So I understand why. No, and it's so funny. It's so funny. No, but that's how people felt though we just said let's put these things of yours that you done into a thing with the word e in front of it. And I just like was reading this line that Martin wrote the reason why he portfolios were kind of argued for was they provide a place to store all the evidence of a learner gathers to exhibit their learning, both formal and formal, in order to support lifelong learning and career development. And it's funny, the lifelong learning and career development are two reasons why I do the things I do anywhere in life. Like that's my, my kind of focus and vision or my why and I laugh because we force people to do that sharing in such a weird, systematic institutional way that maybe that's not the purpose of what they were supposed to do. But that's how it felt was really awkward. But I think that's one of the big challenges, and also maybe
5:11
affordances of portfolios is that they're nearly too flexible, they can be so many different things. And one thing I always say, what's it supporting people to develop portfolios is, you know, what's the purpose of this? Is it assessment? Is it professional development is a personal development, you know, you know, name what it's for, and then, you know, create the prompts and the task around that purpose. And because people, students can be very confused by portfolios, I found and so, you know, you have to have a clear aim and a clear objective, and you have to communicate that to everyone. And, but, but I think that's actually one of their both the flexibility is, is great, but it's also a hindrance. And Martin, I think in that chapter, he says something about, like, it could be a blog, he always says that when I talk to him about their portfolios, and, and in some ways, it could be a blog, but I think there's some personal stuff that people put in portfolios that maybe you wouldn't necessarily want to publish. So I think maybe that's where the differences,
6:11
can we give some examples for listeners, because I do want to distinguish a little bit cuz I was kind of like, is my blog or website a portfolio, because we put this word e in front of a few chapters in this book on 25 years of edtech. And this is one of the one that he gets attached to portfolio like elearning ees e learning standards. So what makes an E portfolio kind of a portfolio? In your world or your mind view?
6:36
Yeah, for us, you know, so we have, actually, I mean, we call ours A B portfolio, because it actually is a block portfolio. And our problem was, we were too prescriptive. And so the flexibility is what changed it all for us. I mean, opening it at wide open, and we still, you know, we asked our students, so we're, you know, the other thing that really helped us out was Jim groom's Domain of One's Own, that that movement really put us in a position where we could tell students, Hey, get a get a domain, get a WordPress server set up. And here are categories that we want you to consider. You can have some of your own, but do whatever you want. And then at the end of the day, you know, here's what we're assessing, as part of this, this portfolio.
7:30
Okay, that's great. Now, what would go in and E portfolio? How would you describe that to someone?
7:34
Yeah. So for us, you know, we are it is, you know, even though standards are boring, I mean, we have to deal with them. And so it gives us a way, you know, we're actually doing it in with inquiry based learning. So we're, we're with the steer standards, we just have a student say, Okay, here's what the standard says, what is your question? What is a question related to your field of study that you have about this standard, go research it, write about it, get feedback from others about it, and then, you know, share your solution, your resolution to your, your problem? And we're, we started using the practical inquiry model from from community of inquiry and that we've developed our own that's, that's quick Called Quest, which basically has them, you know, every letter request stands for something that they're asking a question. They're, they're trying to understand it, they're trying to educate others, they come up with a solution. And then there in the end, it's, it's used in teaching. And they work all the way through that process, in kind of a learning portfolio model, and then at the end of their study, they have a capstone course where they're coming up with kind of a, either a showcase or a capstone portfolio where they really are then kind of reflecting on all that they've done all the evidence they've either gathered informally or formally in their learning, and then saying this is this is why I should be considered Why should people should think that I have mastery over this subject.
9:21
So it sounds like your group, Seattle have done like CLU Pacific you have done like kind of a framework around it. So the committee of inquiry. I like that quest idea. That's an interesting way to frame it, like where they have to find things. And is this in? This isn't a school of education, like an education domain? Yeah. So this is where it reminds me of like my first portfolio was in a Master's of Science and Education. I was in upstate New York and Niagara University and also having it have like an artifact or reflect on it a share and showcase so it could be like, a lesson I did or it could be something I did want around accessibility for teaching, reading and Yeah, I was kind of like a deep dive into the thing you created. So it may not be a blog. But I wonder, are we using it in other domains? And what does that look like? Hmm,
10:12
well, first so can I just answer the previous question first is I actually don't like the word e portfolio at all. Because, right, it's very technocentric. I also think it's like a product of the 90s, or maybe the naughties. Like where you put e in front of everything, like, you know, e commerce, e commerce, guys, I think the same about e portfolio, it's the portfolio. You know, it's really, you know, I prefer learning portfolio myself. And that's the phrase we use in my university. And, and we have loads of different purposes going on and adoptions. So we use a kind of a customized Mahara, called loop reflex, which integrates very nicely with Moodle, a similar kind of user experience is nice. It meets all those quality assurance things that you know that people tend to go for systems over blogs, like, you know, you can lock down the submission. So the external examiner can view it. So that boring stuff that may be a blog is less developed for and but you've got people in education using it, One very common use in education is placement, or practicum. So teaching placement, so people are reflecting on their experiences. And that net wouldn't necessarily be assessed, that would be used as part of the kind of supervision process. But another use in science is labs. So they're using kind of portfolio type lab books again, you know, you write up the experiment, but then you think a bit about what you learned. So some reflection there too. In business, when we had study abroad, back pre COVID, when people went places, so they would have had a very big study abroad program. And it was kind of pastoral care, they had people in all sorts of countries and stuff like that, and they really had a problem where they at least loose, they could lose track of people. And something something serious would happen to, you know, marry in France, and the university would have no idea what was going on with her. So they brought it in initially for that kind of pastoral care element. But then they realized, actually, this is fantastic. You know, it's really capturing that kind of experiential learning of being in a different country and culture. And so they actually modified the, the module assessment to suit that. And one thing they did there, which was very nice, was they had the students submit them like weekly like a diary. And then they chose their best kind of four or five from the year and made it into a showcase. And then shared that, so they didn't share the kind of messy bit, which is the where the where the learning happens, I think, because I think there's something there about what you share and what you don't share. Cuz some some of your feelings and thoughts could be very private and personal. You wouldn't necessarily want to showcase them to, you know, different audiences. So I think that's always something to think about. Though, I
13:03
think that's great to hear, though, I think your rates that murky, messy part that we allow our learners and maybe ourselves to work out, and not everyone has those affordances, or privileges to use a public space, like a website or a blog. And it's it's interesting to hear, because I had a group of my learners that were in broadcast journalism, PR and communication. And they did use public facing tools, like they heavily relied on WordPress and Twitter. But that was like probably in the early aughts to like mid to like I think, to late 2000s, I do think they see it's a different landscape. Now, if we if we're asking people to be in public spaces that are owned by other companies. And that's the other question I have for all of you is like, where do people take those portfolios when they leave? If it's under a learning management system, or it's a different hub that's not theirs? Can they walk away with it? So they can share their formal and informal kind of experiences, the ones they do want to share publicly?
14:04
So So in our case, you know, we are using WordPress, and it is a public facing blog. But what we're using that those opportunities where they have to decide, is this something I should share publicly or privately. We're leaving that decision to the student, you know, we're hopefully giving them some guidance in that area. But these are, you know, I also should say our learners are adult learner, they're mostly people that are in masters or doctoral programs. So, so, you know, these aren't 18 year old students going through this process. But, you know, I think with that, you know, there's constant questions about Okay, you asked me to interview, you know, the head of it at my school or my university, and to write about, you know, whether we're, you know, kind of a needs assessment on a particular situation, my university would not want that information to be on a public blog, that's not going to go well, if somebody reads that what I've written about that, okay, well, then what we'll say is, that's where, you know, we've got this LMS that we're using, and you submit the document there, that completes the assignment. But within, we're still asking you to reflect on the experience. So what is it that you learn from that situation? What could you say, without, you know, being you know, doing harm, if you don't feel like that's something that needs that shouldn't be shared in a public space. And then, you know, there they are going through that process throughout the year, we have, like a hackathon at some point where they learn how to create their their final portfolio. And, you know, the first thing that they want to do is go back and fix all their posts where they've either said, I don't believe that, you know, what I said, you know, in my first course about these are, you know, you know, this is kind of my technology and educational technology, creed. And these are the things I believe in and that I think are important for protecting, I don't believe some of those things anymore, I want, I want to go back and change that post, we say, well, it's a blog, you can do whatever you want. It's your blog, you choose your domain, you can rewrite the whole thing, if you want, maybe correct the spelling mistakes, if you if you want to do something, at this point, we're most interested in you completing the final portfolio. And then, you know, what you what you choose to do with your public your public space? It's, it's completely up to you, you own it, you take it with you, you know, some students keep blogging. Most don't, most don't. And that's, that's a piece that I want to figure out is how do we, I mean, how do we keep them in a kind of this reflective mindset, they're probably doing it, but they're not, you know, writing it down anymore. And they've shared so much, so many valuable things over that two year experience, that if they continue to do that, in their work, I think, you know, everyone would learn from them. But it's just, you know, it's how we all are, we just move on. And other than you are you, you continue to always write down everything that you learn. I mean, your your, your blog is amazing.
17:23
I try to but it's hard actually all yours making me think about like putting awkward things out there. And real things out there and not being like, I don't want to put content out there, I want to put real meaningful reflections out there. That's hard. It's a vulnerability, it's awkward, and you'll get real about if you really want to get real about stuff, then that's the good piece. It could be damaging for folks. And I get that like our learners, from 18 to like, 85 is who I used to teach. Not everyone feels comfortable putting things in open public spaces, and the internet's changed so much. So I talked with Jim about this on an episode earlier, Jim groom, because taking back what we do online, is going to be a big thing. And I like that or not, you hate the word he in front of portfolio, I think much of it is just putting things out there and sharing your experiences or what you're learning. But not everyone's comfortable doing that. Because they don't want to say, I don't know, I failed, I messed up or my bad. So how do we support our learners in that kind of way?
18:29
It's such good learning and failure, though, as well, we should be celebrating more failure. I mean, if you think about it was think the things I failed that I probably know better now. And and I think what you say Laura is interesting about the public, the private, our identities and what we've put online, I mean, if we think back to 2008, people had no filter online. No, I had very little fear about putting things online. Whereas now, you know, people are much more wary about their privacy. What happens to their data and their right to be wary? And just back to the question of ownership, I think what you were saying there, David, about the students owning the role, and I think that's, that's really important. And our students as well, the same, they keep their portfolio for life. And so they keep access to the platform, and they can export it, and they can share it with you. It's totally up to them, whether they use it or not. And I'm, I'm curious also whether how much they're using it because we only started using it at a large scale about four years ago. So it'll be probably next year, we have graduates and we'll be curious to see if they use it. But one thing I did find interesting, I was interviewing for staff recently, and someone did have a portfolio included with your CV. Now, it was a little one made on Padlet It was very nice though. So I thought wow, if people are putting their portfolios on their CV, like, that's kind of interesting. I don't know if that's happening in your part of the world.
20:00
Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that because I recently did a job change and that we've talked about this even in my in the industry and role I'm in now is people are talking about showcasing the work they're doing. And maybe they've done like ad hoc pieces, or they're like, I could do these Whiteboard Animation designs, or I create these voiceover things. And I was like, Well, where do you have it? I think having the digital find of cool things you're working on, actually helps people do that better. And I think everything that in this chapter talks about the problem, if we could focus on like keeping it simple, like doing the opposite, keep it simple. Focus on the user, the person, the person that's using it, think about the skills you can show and giving ownership, I think the power of a portfolio in the in an online space, because there's so many cool ways to showcase like what we do. And in different kind of professional fields. It's an interesting way to stumble on people you want to meet, and also communities you want to find. And I think that's kind of been the value of putting them into open online spaces. In this it's funny, this chapter does sit before we hit Twitter and Social Media before we hit. It's actually just after it's ironically after blogs. So I see where Martin's preferences come Martin, we see you, blogger, and then
21:16
we know he loves blogs. You know, I
21:17
know we can't get away from that. And like, it's just so fascinating to me that I think it's going to be kind of how we share because I just come later, and what credentialing might come later. So I think this is gonna grow. I'm fascinated to see where your learners take this as well, both yours orna. And David.
21:35
And I also I think we're saying there, but blogs and Twitter. I mean, for me, it's very intertwined. And, and the whole show real thing, because you're right, if you work in educational technology, or whatever word you want to describe what we do, I think it's much more effective, rather than telling someone what you can do to show them what you can do see, you know, a well crafted video, or a nice piece of animation or a podcast, you know, look, this is what I can do. It's just, it's I think it's just stronger, it's evidence based. People will respond, I think more to it.
22:07
Yeah, our students, you know, they have reported, you know, using these in and when they're seeking employment and have found that it's been given them a leg up, but that people are impressed. And, you know, it's it's full of their reflections there. Because it is the combination of their learning portfolio and their Capstone portfolio. And so they, they do have, you know, maybe things that they aren't as proud of included in it, but they they said it's well received. And I do think that people are starting to look at it as, okay, this is somebody who reflects on their learning, that's what we want, you know, regardless of whether they've changed their mind, we all do what regardless of if they make mistakes. Somebody just tweeted me a tweet that I shared in 2010, which was a Larry Cuban prediction of 2020. He missed it. He he had no idea that was going to be a pandemic. I'm not, I'm not sure what he was thinking about. But he, he completely missed it. So he he actually, you know, talks about there, you know, that that online learning, well will grow, but probably not that much. I think it's grown quite a bit more than he anticipated quite quite fast. In fact, this last year,
23:25
be curious to see what hangs on after the Yeah, it's really all go back to whatever normal will look like, what will remain, you know, what bits Do people really like? Yeah, they keep they keep, they'll be like Mike pies, they keep the bits they like, discard the bits. They don't?
23:41
Well, it's funny, we talked we're kind of weaving in portfolio self is, I think there's a neat way to see an evolution of it. I'm in my doctoral program, one of the instead of doing like a kandacy, a comprehensive exam, we had the option to do portfolio based, right. And so this is kind of where David script does this as well. You would show and share artifacts. And so for a PhD, we had some, we had to have some obviously articles published in peer reviewed journals. We had to do some presentations someplace, and you could pick and choose other pieces. And you would show and tell it in a portfolio. It's like it was called my doctoral portfolio defense. And I was trying to find it now because I put it on some of their website. And I was like, why did I just put this on my website? Because I think it was looking I was trying to work to the standard or requirements that fits that program. I talked about it on my blog and website but I look back and even looking back at my own blog, which I think is my I guess ongoing portfolio. You can edit it and you can take away those cringy things and those grammar and spelling mistakes you can find them with Grammarly online and fix those. It's okay to put something out there and go oh wow, I left out a whole word or sentence let me fix that. Do we not teach her learners that or maybe we don't Teacher staff and faculty that that they could be fluid with these portfolios.
25:04
Yeah, but I think what you were hitting on there is that you've didn't maybe put it on your blog, your main blog, because that's a different identity. Like that was like that's your, your work self perhaps. And the other one was your students self. And sometimes it's weird how these multiple identities are at play sometimes, you know, I have I like my Twitter identity is my professional one. But my Facebook is my is my social and family when and I think that's something that's that's evolved as well. The blurring of the lines.
25:33
Yeah, I don't know, if I did that. I just thought it was an ugly looking portfolio. I just asked that I aesthetically didn't like like, I think I talked about my work stuff. But that's a good question, though. Like, how does this how do the things in our portfolios, ie or not impact where our learners are, right? Because I have had a lot of adult learners that would pick and choose of what they want to share. And one of the showcases, or one of the kind of tools they explored in further demean they posted there was using LinkedIn to go find informational interviews or connect with communities related to their pharmaceutical occupational therapy or law, things they want to do. So I wonder what it means to ask them to play in like, quote, unquote, real spaces outside of the walls of the university or college. Does that because your students do that to David? Right.
26:18
Yeah, I mean, we actually in this quest model, that the end of it is that they're sharing their peers work in social media, or just we just refer to it as their PLN. So we want them to say, okay, you found what, you know, what your peers were working on for this module meaningful. share that with somebody to you know, share it kind of in the, you know, in this in the faculty Lounge at your school, you know, so to speak, that the, the digital one if that, you know, if there's like a list that, that you all share that you could post something, post a link to both, but they also share their, their Twitter, on Twitter and other social media. And that just, you know, what we're trying to do is just have people engage with them. And in some cases, they might not agree with what with what you've written, but most times what they're doing is they're finding out hey, here's one more source of information for you that you could have used in what you came up for with your solution.
27:25
PLN for the listeners, personal learning networks, big fan, longtime, longtime supporter,
27:31
longtime supporter that too, yeah, exactly. And it's funny, there isn't a chapter on PLN there's a PL E, personal learning environment, which I'm good, I think the PLN there was more powerful personally, for me anyway, that that's I I find Twitter huge source of information. And, like, I keep research just by following certain people, and also even connection. I mean, I've met people at conferences, I've followed them on Twitter and never met them in person before. I think I think there's huge potential, but I think students can be a bit uncomfortable with it. Sometimes. I've been working with a nursing faculty recently getting student nurses to engage at Twitter, because they can use that to go towards their CPD points. And there's I mean, education. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, exactly. And there's a big nursing community on Twitter, and they're sharing, you know, they're sharing information. They're sharing resources, a good good network for the students to be in. But some of the students found it very uncomfortable. I'm not sure why I think they felt quite exposed by it. Sure.
28:35
Yeah, I've heard this in other professions, like I know, some social workers online that use the space. And then you also have some other like, lawyers and things that like they just are cautious of what to say, because they don't want to bring in clients or, but they do want to talk about some of these issues. So yeah, Twitter has been one for folks, people have found community on LinkedIn. And then they're going to these quite channels like slack now, because they want to have private spaces to have open conversations and chats. So I think that's true. I did find my portfolio and I'll share it with you too. It's because it's ugly. I really was like, I think I look older in this one. And I will probably put in the show notes. But like, have you been forced to fit into an E portfolio. And I think this is one of the things that Barton brings up is these tools or whatever we require for our domains or disciplines. They're like fit do these, like seven points, or six areas? reflect on it, put them into these buckets? Um, I find it boring, but I guess that's because we have to assess them in some way. Or you have to have a standard.
29:39
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, here's the Google Sites when I have a look at that. Now, Lori, and I have millions of half finished portfolios on different passwords because at one point, my PhD is writing portfolios. So at one point I was going around trying at any any system I could get my hands on and just building one just to see what it was like, but I know what you mean. can be very prescriptive. And some of my early efforts with students were very prescriptive, you know, you now have five pieces of evidence and three text boxes, and use this template. But as I went on, a lot of that fell away, the only thing I you did used to do is get kind of good prompts. And so if you're adding evidence, make sure, you know, you explain why it's there. Because students, sometimes they'll have a picture of a cat or something, and you're like, you know, give me give me some context, please explain why it's there. And I put a word limit on it as well, because students can go mental with portfolios, and that that's one thing about doing portfolio assessment. Like, it's lovely, it's real, it's authentic, it's different to writing a paper or an essay, like, you know, much more personal experience, but students sometimes can go crazy and give you everything. So some limits, because then when you're the poor person marking 100, portfolios, you know, over your Christmas dinner, you know, so, so some limits, but I do think the less boundaries I gave them, the more creative the results. So yeah, I totally agree. So some boundaries, but not too many
31:12
more your use of Google Sites reminded me that my my mentor in the transformation from this kind of corporate tool that, you know, just had people filling in boxes to just more open spaces was Helen Barrett, I don't know if you know the name. But Helen was the grandmother
31:35
of portfolios.
31:37
Yeah, she, I mean, she lived, lived in Seattle, and just kind of just mentor. I mean, she just convinced me and, you know, I just, she just always amazed me, because she was always looking to make a portfolio out of any new tool that showed up. So any new blogging tool that came out, she, like, took her portfolio and, and made it into, you know, whatever tool, you know, medium, or whatever came out the latest thing she just said, I wonder how that would be as a portfolio tool, and she could turn it into a portfolio. And yeah, I just really appreciate all she did for for diversity. Yeah. And
32:23
that Lister if she had and actually I, that was one of the early things I read, too, was was her e portfolio, website slash blog. And she did come to Dublin a couple of years ago as well, I met her then, gosh, when was that? At five years ago, maybe three, and
32:39
I'll put a link to her website. And
32:41
I it's a great, it's, it's great. It's a nice, I was even looking at it recently, out to write I wrote a history of portfolio recently. And I was looking at the website again, because I was trying to track down the date of that listserv she started. And I think it's 1998 because I was trying to track down the earliest reference portfolio, which is h E, portfolio eight and 1989.
33:05
Yeah, your article. I like this, the Puerto foad, Julio to E portfolio. So that word,
33:13
portfolio,
33:15
it's Latin, very good. And the evolution of portfolio in higher ed, you look at the decade of the 2000s to 2010. Because that's really in 2008 is where this chapters couched, but that's really where it blew up. And what are some things you learned about that decade, a deep dive into higher ed portfolios?
33:35
Oh, that people just thought they're the best thing since sliced bread. They just thought like, it was gonna solve world hunger and shit, you know, you name it, they thought portfolios, it was it was ridiculously enthusiastic. So you know, it's it's like it was like nearly any new invention. They were totally enthusiastic. And all those companies that David mentioned, sprung up. You know, there's that real edtech proliferation, like that's happened this year around video conferencing and proctoring is similar kind of explosion. So yeah, mainly, it was the hyperbole, but also the lack of evidence, there was absolutely hardly any research based evidence at that point. And any kind of research that was there was all about the technology. So you have this kind of maturity happening in the next decade, where people actually did a bit of decent research to see, you know, does this do anything for students in terms of learning? And, and the kind of body of evidence really grows and builds during the next decade 2010 to 2020. And there is a pretty good body of evidence there now. But during that time, people were just, you know, it's like back of the envelope stuff.
34:42
It's one of your last question in that article with a shift in higher ed thinking towards alternative assessment like a portfolio become permanent after the pandemic. And these alternatives you mentioned were wikis, podcasts videos, US jumping to zoom rooms, like that's a great question of the permanency versus Like, we always look at these shiny new objects. And this is this happens in educational technology and just focus on higher ed hoping to like get the next best thing to be caught up behind that technology curve, I guess that's a solid question to ask. And I think that's a good one to ask everyone else is, what will stick and maintain some staying ground? And will we assess it further to like dig into? Is this actually quality teaching and learning for us? And could we do better?
35:29
I really think you know, that the thing that drew me, especially to the use of blogs for portfolio was was, especially with WordPress is just the ability to, you know, categorize and tag because we want our students, you know, to be able to organize their work to be able to be reflective on it, and, you know, anything that they can do to, you know, be able to quickly go back and find what it is that they need to reflect on for that Capstone. And so as they're going through the portfolio, the entities, that that category piece, we just talked about it as like a super tag, like they're able to take, in our case, the standards and use those and just check boxes, like when I write this post, I can look at that list of standards and see that I'm actually addressing three of them. So it got us out of thinking of standards as silos, like I'm doing standard one in this core standard two, and this core standard three in this course. And so we started looking at it, like, Okay, this post, actually, as I'm talking about three of these standards, and so I'm checking those boxes. And then when I come back at my under my program, and having to say that I have mastery over this, I'm able to go back and look at those posts, just quickly by clicking on it. So I think, you know, when I'm looking at it, I'm thinking like portfolios have been around forever, because teachers had these big stacks of papers, or these notebooks on their desks where they were, at some time going through them. But by digitizing it, we've made it so now we can have peer assessment, we can have, you know, external assessment, we can have people giving you feedback from anywhere in the world, when you're talking about an author's work, the author most likely will be having a, you know, a Google search, whenever their name is mentioned, and might jump in and give you feedback and maybe correct you or maybe compliment you on where you understand their theory. And so those are the kinds of things I think that we see, with the with, you know, the type of portfolio we're using, as being important. And something that just keeps going on, it is not just a substitution of a paper portfolio. I mean, we feel like we are doing something that's more transformative, that it's making the learning better.
38:04
Well, I'd like to two things I will call out on the you're a tech, you say sandbox. So and you have the word play. And I think we don't associate those kind of words with teaching and learning often enough, that it's going to be a space where people can tinker and hop in and give some input. I think it's really it's really cool that you're asking them to think about building things in their worlds. I do think universities still real world, but outside of their university or college curriculum environments like that you want them to have release of that boundary. So forget about the public, private, but the idea of, they could be working full time and they should be doing a training session that they might apply in their actual workplace, and then talk about it as an artifact and what they learned. I love that.
38:54
Yeah, and I don't know, if you go to AdSense sandbox right now one of the students read some book that has nothing to do with our program and wrote a blog post about it. And my initial thought on that was, we need to filter that out. But actually, I don't, I don't care. I mean, he's reflecting on something he learned, I don't even I haven't read the post, it's actually something I don't have to assess. So I don't know if I will read it or not. But But, you know, the, the most of what's on there is other than the original message which I kept, which is hello world, which is important, you know, artifact and all blogs to have the original hello world post from 2014. But other than that everything is just, you know, something that the students have shared during that time. And, you know, I just feel like it's, it's like a value of this aggregated piece that we have is really it's something our students use this you When they asked me, where's the exemplars for this project? First of all, I say, I don't really believe in that I don't, you know, I don't, I want you to shoot for your own mark, I want you to be original in your thinking. But if you need something, if you need something to generate some ideas, go search on a tech sandbox for that project. And you'll find a bunch of examples of what people have done in the past. And then you can work from there. If that's, that's something that, that benefits you and you're learning, that's a really cool idea.
40:31
I like that it works on many levels, you're getting them to share, you're getting them to reflect you're getting them to blog. And then you've got all these like, models that you can refer back to. It's a lovely, lovely process.
40:42
Thank you. Something I'm looking at, while I'm thinking about e portfolios is, and portfolios in general is, yeah, maybe he needs to be taken away. And I like to be portfolio because it's blogging. But maybe we need an H portfolio, like the humanity portfolio, because what is coming out of everything we're talking about is people being real people sharing more of themselves in these spaces. And the aspect of it being digitized and digital is cool, because they can take it with them, or it can live on and it's kind of a an artifact of that learning time and space. So like, I still cringe at things I put out there. Even that photo on my portfolio, which I will share with this audience. But I think it's that's who I was at that time. And we never do look back and take a pause. So portfolios has that aspect of thinking about who you were at a certain time, how you've grown from that time, and then maybe how you continue to build if you still use it YouTube keep kind of a personal portfolio. It doesn't have to be public or online. But you either have you keep one out there.
41:44
I have various I still kind of keep up to date have a WordPress one. I've got a Mahara one as well. I've actually I'm actually a big notebook person. I do I write old school a lot. And so I keep keep kind of a mixture of notes and diary and ideas. And, and I do look back on the my thing, sometimes. There's an interesting thing about looking back, I was noticing there that your E portfolios from 2012 has a very 2012 look and feel as well. No, it's been the text and the colors, the styling, so but it was it just it feels like it feels like that kind of period of time. That's what that's what websites look like.
42:25
Yeah, I do have my own WordPress site. And and I also have all of the things that I'm going to put in it that I haven't put in it yet. But one of the nice things about WordPress is you know, you don't have it doesn't have to show up as today's date. So at some point, when I get time to catch up, I usually put in about, you know, nine months to two years worth of articles that get back dated, and it looks like it. You know, for at some point I was very consistent in blogging, but when actually, I did it all in one day.
42:59
That's very sneaky of you, David, I should do that I've only blogged three or four times this year. So that's a pro tip from David. Now, I think it's I think it's kind of cool, though. And something I will call out on portfolios being on digital and accessible. If you want to open them up, I think they do introduce you to other folks. And whether it's a website or you're active on Twitter, or you actually I have a number of colleagues now that like use LinkedIn a whole lot to share their thought process. It's kind of a nice doorway into someone else's work and world and what they're passionate about. And sometimes they'll share just work and sometimes they'll share random things as well. And that's kind of what piques my interest with people. I don't think we talk about portfolios as much in a lot of domains I have seen in the business school and some of the labs like you talked about orna. But I think we're gonna have this been a growing artifact of self online because there aren't, it's rare for me not see a resume at my work that doesn't have a link to something somewhere for an online space. So what what are some things that you're thinking about that we should ask maybe the higher ed community, or even Martin, of where he portfolios and these tools could go in the coming years?
44:13
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's an interesting one. I'm part of a community of practice, a portfolio, Ireland. And we're working on a special issue of a journal like a local Irish edtech journal. And we're just thinking about that very question. Now, we did a bit of a landscape snapshot of practice in Ireland last year. We just did another round of data collection about a couple of weeks ago, and we were kind of curious, you know, what's changed as the pandemic pushed people's engagement with this type of practice? our instinct was Yes, from talking to people in our kind of community. And there was a lot of falling away of traditional assessment. Obviously, exams, Canvas based exams really fell away. And also proctoring hasn't landed very well in Ireland. People, you know, there is a few universities using it. But generally, people are like, don't like what it stands for. Is that con too controversial to say that? Oh,
45:10
no, we need you leading on the GDPR. And that privacy and data, we can
45:15
see that GDP are kind of pushes it that way. But also, it's just the culture of distrust. I mean, drawing on to someone like Maha Bali or Sheila McNeil wrote about this as well. I mean, it's just great creates a culture that That isn't what we're about, you know, it's distrust, questioning surveillance. But but the kind of questions we're thinking about is, you know, what will be the long term impact? And, you know, is this is this it for a traditional assessment? I hope it is. by traditional assessment, I mean, your closed book exam? And and is this kind of, has this opened up the whole wave of new and interesting alternative assessment approaches? So they're my questions.
45:54
Yeah, I think, you know, in terms of, I really liked what you were saying, Laura, about you had an alternative procomp exams to do a portfolio. And I think that's still something that people question like, somehow in education, we've decided that up for our tell us everything, you know, without any notes, exam is somehow better than somebody like reflecting over time and actually using and having access to resources that they would use in their real work, and demonstrating how they're taking advantage of those to form their thinking that we've decided that those, you know, the, the, the, the four hour exam is somehow a better representation of their, of their knowledge and their, their, their work. And I, you know, we've got to get over that, at some point. And then I really want to see, you know, students often will tell me that they're going to keep blogging, and they're going to keep doing it. And I want to see, I guess, I sometimes wonder if my requiring them to blog, that then they're just so glad when the program is over that they don't have anybody telling them to that they just don't get back to it. And so I want to find what is that balance? What is it that I could do to you know, we've we've, we've given them voice and choice on their, on their portfolio? Now, how do we make it more freeing in terms of when they when they actually do it, so that they want to do it rather than feel like they're required to do it?
47:42
I might be biased. But this is something I talked with, like Bonnie and Clint about in an earlier between the chapters is like, I think it's finding communities that they want to be a part of where they could share that voice. And I do think it's also Yeah, like, out of interest and time. That's a precious resource that we often forget about. But I think what's interesting to me is, if we think about if e portfolios does push assessments, maybe it also could push like, what actually is looked for on the job, like, I don't know the last time any of you done this, but I can share mine I've done like, I actually did an assessment on a job once like for a marketing research role last year, sorry, 2019. And I also did like a scenario based test for a place I'm in and like, so job, putting people into a job kind of example, like, there would be rare times you'd be assessed. But if I'm ever prompted for one of those jobs, like on an online screen, that's scary to me. And that says a lot about a company I'd work for. So I think higher ed, probably has some due diligence to say, Well, can we do this better? And is it opening up? The concept of portfolio itself? How are we valuing the idea of sharing and showcasing what we've learned in higher ed? And could we do better with supporting our learners and maybe even our professionals, clean staff and faculty on creating portfolios of the work they're doing? It doesn't have to look a certain way in a software system. But what would that look like for your kind of practice, or discipline or domain is a really good kind of call out? I wonder? I wonder about those spaces that are doing the work. So I think of engineering schools that have some opportunities in this I think of my like, friends in physical therapy and occupational theory, also can talk about sharing their practice in different ways. It just hasn't been opened up. And maybe it's sharing some of these practices and other worlds of work and occupations that will get us to think more about this broadly. Before we wrap up. I was wondering, is there anything in the chapter that either is missing or that we're going to take from in 2021 still living our best pandemic lives, but what are some things each of you are thinking about moving forward?
49:55
I actually think it's quite a nice overview of portfolio It's more complimentary than the blog post the original blog post that he based it on, come on, he's coming around, she's coming around. And but I think he could get into some of that there's there's more, there's some research there and more recent stuff that maybe could be looked at. I mean, the, the evidence base really, for the last kind of six years is improved a lot. And there's some pretty strong stuff or in self regulation, in particular, critical thinking. But that's just my two cents.
50:30
Yeah, I know. And maybe it's so funny. Some people are like, maybe he wants a guest author like you are not coming,
50:35
be Joe's. But also, I suppose, if you think about it, in the context of the pandemic, all the autonomous independent learning everyone's had to do like, self regulation is a really key skill, you know, the greater the distance, the greater the autonomy. And some students have really struggled with that, particularly your typical 18 year old undergrads who didn't sign up for online study, different matter if you're talking about your typical online students who kind of knew what they were getting into. But self regulation, staying on task, maintaining motivation, really challenging things this year, I think,
51:16
Hey, this is true of 40 something and other older learners as well, I think it's been hard for everyone to stay productive and be their best selves. They've had to manage like cats, dogs, little small children, competed, partners, spouses to interruptions they've had to do. So I think it's something I'd like the idea of portfolio actually has been its own kind of place where they could do the work asynchronously, and contribute and get feedback too.
51:43
Yeah, I, you know, I'm, I guess I'm mostly happy with with where our system is, one of the things that we're building in right now is kind of a mid program check in. So it's a two year program. And but you know, the, the assessment takes place that that that was the big assessment takes place at the very end. I mean, we are assessing they, they blog about five times a term, there's four terms a year. And, you know, we have feedback on all of those. But then when they're actually providing their, their final portfolio, that's just done at one time. And so we're, we're actually now going to have that we're going to add at the midpoint of the program, just provide a place where they can, they can check in again, for a first time. And I think it will address some of the concerns students have, because they, they, one of the things they really learn is just this, this idea of curating their writing. And if they don't learn that till the very end, like, oh, gosh, if I would have done a better job of categorizing my posts, this process, at the end of coming up with a final reflection on this topic would have been so much easier to find what I wrote, because I just failed to categorize the way I shut up. So we're hoping that that's a piece to it, but we're, you know, I just love the idea of finding better ways to help people curate, because I just think that is a skill many people lack. And so I think if we could do more with with portfolios in terms of helping people, you know, through this kind of self regulation, I guess, just curation of a piece of that.
53:36
The The final thing I wanted to think about is it's a cultural change of what we do. And if anything, I think a portfolio of portfolios, I hope give people a space to reflect like, I don't think we pause to do this kind of thing, where I'm forcing them my two colleagues now in a Zoom Room to chat with me on the podcast, but like to deep dig deep into like the why and the what and the meaning behind the work we do. And this isn't just our learners, like our faculty, instructors, our staff at that in higher ed, how often do we even have the time and the space to do that? Like, I think, portfolios I hope in this coming year will as a concept in general, whether you have one or not. You should be thinking back to some of the work you do and some of us have to do this and tenure promotion or each quarter or semester we do a deep dive but if you don't close out and think about kind of what you've done in the last little while or taking stock. I think this is a bigger case of where I think portfolio e portfolios and portfolios themselves could give yourself some gratitude recognition and celebrate the things you did and go. Wow, I really messed up these other things as well and feel feel like that's okay to do.
54:45
I agree. reflection is very powerful. But I also but you do need time and space to do it.
54:51
So church, there's so much going on right now. I say take 20 minutes, a week, a month to think on some of the things you've been working on and what you've done in the last While it's maybe it's just a simple start. Good call it I really want to thank you both for taking some time to have some reflect back and deep conversation about this. I really enjoyed the chat with both of you. So thank you, Lorna. And David.
55:12
Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Laura. And
55:13
thanks Martin for for giving us a topic to address. It's great book.
55:21
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host Laura pasquini. For more information for to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of Ed Tech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca