randy bass - e-portfolios and learning

E-Portfolios and the Problem of Learning in the Post-Course Era

Randy Bass, Georgetown University

AAC&U Pre-Conference Symposium January 20,2010

“Why did the Articles of Confederation fail so completely?

“Most historians believe the Founding Fathers spent a great deal of their first cons8tu8onal conven8on dra9ing the Declara'on of Independence and only realized on July 3rd that the Ar8cles were also due.” 

From America, by Jon Stewart & Co.

Sir Ken Robinson, “How Education Kills Creativity”

ted.com

Sir Ken Robinson, “How Education Kills Creativity”

ted.com

“What we need is a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.”

E-Portfolios and the Problem of Learning in the Post-Course Era

“You know. It was taught as a Gen Ed course and I took it as

a Gen Ed course.”

Georgetown student, end of first year, focus group: reflecting a particular course in which, he claimed, he was not asked to engage with the material.

“You know. It was taught as a Gen Ed course and I took it as

a Gen Ed course.”

“What we ask students to do is who we ask students to be.” Kathleen Yancey

(quoted by Liz Clark this morning)

  “...what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” The Atlantic, July/August 2008

Is Gen Ed Making Us Stupid?

Student Focus Groups

What students are saying:

  In many courses, they are not asked to engage with the material--just to listen and to give it back.

  Often they are not being challenged, asked to think critically, or able to bring relevance to their learning.

“Call to Action” Student Focus Groups

  They are all very satisfied.

  They all agreed there is a big difference between a Georgetown education and a Georgetown degree.

  For the most part--of course there are exceptions--their coursework is not where their meaningful learning is taking place.

High Impact Practices (National Survey of Student Engagement--NSSE)

•  First-year seminars and experiences

•  Learning communities

•  Writing intensive courses

•  Collaborative assignments

•  Undergraduate research

•  Global learning/ study abroad

•  Internships

•  Capstone courses and projects

High Impact Activities and Outcomes

  High Impact Practices:

•  First-year seminars and experiences

•  Learning communities

•  Writing intensive courses

•  Collaborative assignments

•  Undergraduate research

•  Global learning/ study abroad

•  Internships

•  Capstone courses and projects

  Outcomes associated with High impact practices

•  Attend to underlying meaning

•  Integrate and synthesize

•  Discern patterns

•  Apply knowledge in diverse situations

•  View issues from multiple perspectives

•  Gains in Skills, knowledge, practical competence , personal and social development

So, if high impact practices are largely in the extra curriculum, then where are the low-impact

practices?

The Post-Course Era

If the formal curriculum is not where the high impact experiences are

then there are three options

(1) Make courses higher impact

(2) Create better connections between courses and the high impact experiences outside the formal curriculum

(3) Start shifting resources from from the formal to the high impact (experiential) curriculum

All of the above…

Whether we turn to improving the quality of courses, or try harder to connect courses to experiences, “courses” will no longer be the bounded experiences they have been.

changing nature of learning in the culture

…will drive changing nature of learning in the classroom

…will drive the way we need to support and assess student learning

E-Portfolios are the natural extension of the logic of the learning paradigm (Barr and Tagg, 1995).

John Seely Brown: Practice to Content

content

practice

Looking from the Web in…

How do we make formal learning environments more like informal learning?

How do we make classroom learning more like participatory culture?

Participatory Culture

  Features of participatory culture

  Low barriers to entry

  Strong support for sharing one’s contributions

  Informal mentorship, experienced to novice

  Members feel a sense of connection to each other

  Students feel a sense of ownership of what is being created

  Strong collective sense that something is at stake

How do we make classroom learning more like participatory culture?

Jenkins, et. al., The Challege of Participatory Culture

Six Characteristics of high impact practices AND definition of participatory

learning

  Features of participatory culture (on the Web)   Low barriers to entry   Strong support for sharing

one’s contributions   Informal mentorship,

experienced to novice   Members feel a sense of

connection to each other

  Students feel a sense of ownership of what is being created

  Strong collective sense that something is at stake

  High impact experiences (extra curriculum)

  Attend to underlying meaning

  Integrate and synthesize

  Discern patterns

  Apply knowledge in diverse situations

  View issues from multiple perspectives

  Skills, knowledge, practical competence , personal and

social development

NOVICE MIRACLE EXPERT

product product

Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

Bass & Elmendorf, 2007

NOVICE processes

EXPERT practice

LEARNING processes

LEARNING processes

How can we better understand these intermediate processes?

How might we design to foster and capture them?

evidence of process

Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

LEARNING processes

NOVICE processes

LEARNING processes

EXPERT practice

evidence of

Process

LEARNING processes

LEARNING processes

“Thin slices” of online discussion or blog

Traces of collaborative practice

Micro-reflections on the cutting room floor

ePortfolio samples: drafts, reflections

Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

#1: Social Pedagogies and a Large Lecture Course

Foundations of Biology BIOL-103

1st year Biology course

250 students

science majors & pre-meds

Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University

Sense of Personal and

Intellectual Significance

Student Learning Goals (Students develop…)

A Sense of Audience and Voice

Social Pedagogies

Participatory learning

Course Design Elements

  Readings & On-line Conversation

  Class & Think-Pair-Share

  Lab & Partnered Inquiry

  Problem Sets & Group Effort around Authentic and Challenging Problems

  Research Paper & Shared Steps

  Exams & Room for Uncertainty

Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University

• Communicate about the reading. One of the best ways to learn something is to talk about it. Air your bafflement, express your wonder, ask your questions, try out a new idea of your own…And while I hope you will talk often about biology this semester with your classmates, I want to be sure you have an official forum for these conversations – and that you are rewarded for the effort you will expend having them.

Prof Elmendorf’s Instructions to her Students for the Discussion Board

Holding Conversations

Online Conversation

Jose Feito, on the importance of “not knowing”

“The theme of not-knowing [has] emerged as a key factor in the maintenance of a truly collaborative intellectual community within the classroom.

In order for a shared inquiry to proceed productively, the participants must be able to regularly acknowledge their lack of understanding, offer partial understandings, and collectively digest the resulting discourse.

Not-knowing is characterized by a group’s ability to defer meaning, tolerate ambiguity, hold divergent perspectives, and postpone closure. In order to develop, it requires a relatively non-judgmental classroom atmosphere, but not an uncritical one.”

Jose Feito, St. Mary’s University (Moraga, California, U.S.A.)

Online Conversation

Thin slices of learning

Voice, agency, adaptive thinking all begin here…

Sense of Personal and

Intellectual Significance

Student Learning Goals (Students develop…)

A Sense of Audience and Voice

Social Pedagogies

Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University

Part of the process of capturing student work in a portfolio will increasingly be capturing the process of coming to know.

Social Pedagogies and an Introductory Writing Class

Writing, Invention, Media HUMW-011

1st year writing course

20 students

Gen Ed

Randy Bass, Georgetown University

Humanities & Writing 011

  First-year required writing course

  Section theme: “Writing, Invention, Media”

  Core concept: “writing is a social act”

  Core theme: Changes modes of learning, the participatory culture of Web, and the nature of the University

CORE

Important

Worthwhile

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe,

Understanding by Design

What is worth knowing and doing?

What is important to know and do?

What is a core or enduring understanding?

CORE

Important

Worthwhile Opening Day exercise:

Writing in school?

Writing on the Web?

HUMW011: Writing, Invention, Media

Core Values of Writing in School: Week One

Cor

e

Impo

rtan

t W

orth

whi

le

Core Understandings--writing in school (week one)

Core Understandings--digital, Writing on the web (week one)

Semester-long Project

  Collectively write an essay responding to the claim that Universities are radically out of step with new modes of learning (“participatory culture”) of the Web.

  20 students acting collectively as “author”   Write it together through crowd-sourcing and

collaborative editing—test the hypothesis that all of them together could write something better than any one of them

  Intent from the beginning is to publish it on the Web

Working in the Wiki

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking

Collaborative Editing

CommentPress

CommentPress

Thin Slices

Participatory learning + Web 2.0 tools

Student work is in process, in practice—not just in summative work

Networked research group

Networked research group

Yahoo Pipes

Networked research group

Participatory Culture and Formal Learning

Student team

Student team

Student team

Shared course blog or teacher / tutor space

Any mechanism for aggregating, feeding, filtering, tagging…

Capstone Course in Engineering

(Design competition)

70+ students 12 teams two projects

Central RSS feed

Team blogs

Central RSS feed

Team blogs

Teacher watches, coaches

(key source of capture for intermediate processes)

Thin Slices

If we are to connect courses to the “holistic self-portrait” of the learner (Bret Eynon), then we not only to link out but in..

Sense of Personal and

Intellectual Significance

Student Learning

Goals

A Sense of Audience and Voice

PRACTICE: Features of Participatory

Process

• Help students create markers of certainty and

uncertainty

• Provide opportunities for relearning

• Design opportunities for meaningful reflection on

Practice

Sense of Personal and

Intellectual Significance

Student Learning

Goals

A Sense of Audience and Voice

PRACTICE: Features of Participatory

Process

• Help students create markers of certainty and

uncertainty

• Provide opportunities for relearning

• Design opportunities for meaningful reflection on

Practice

Connecting to faculty?

Make courses portfolio-aware, portfolio-adapted

Link to eportfolios

Tim Kastelle University of Queensland, “Successful Open Business Models”

“Successful Open Business Models on the Web”

Aggregate

Filter

Tim Kastelle

Tim Kastelle University of Queensland, “Successful Open Business Models”

In the 21st Century, how do colleges and universities “add value”?

• Aggregate

• Filter

Tim Kastelle

Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models”

The important business model idea here is that the role of the person putting the course together is not necessarily to create content, or to transfer it into the heads of the students. The main jobs here are aggregating and filtering – compiling information, figuring out what is essential, and then creating a framework within which students can explore this knowledge using all of tools (mental, physical and digital) at their disposal.

Tim Kastelle

Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models”

In general, this [participatory learning] is where students gain value in this kind of setting. It’s a very challenging way to teach. There’s no set of slides to guide you, your primary resource is what you know, and there is a small but measurable chance that things can go completely haywire. On the other hand, when it works, it is exhilarating. So I’m adding a third key value adding activity for digital business models: connecting.

Tim Kastelle

Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models”

“Successful Open Business Models” (higher education)

• Aggregate • Information resources

• Filter • Knowledge (what knowledge is worth knowing) • Scholarship (peer review) • Graduates (employability)

• Connect • Ideas, experiences, people

Shift in How We Add Value

AGGREGATE

FILTER

CONNECT

Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models”

Connecting is critically important both in journalism and in education. So that makes three value adding activities in the digital economy: aggregating, filtering, and connecting.

The lesson to take from the current states of both the music industry and journalism is that you have to have a clear understanding of how you’re creating value so that you build and protect the correct parts of your business model.

Perhaps universities can learn this lesson before educational business models are disrupted as well.

Tim Kastelle

Shift in How We Add Value

AGGREGATE

FILTER

CONNECT

COURSE ERA

POST-COURSE ERA

E-PORTFOLIOS ARE TOOLS that PUT FILTERING and CONNECTION

in STUDENT HANDS

Sense of Personal and

Intellectual Significance

Student Learning

Goals

A Sense of Audience and Voice

PRACTICE: Features of Participatory

Process

• Help students create markers of certainty and

uncertainty

• Provide opportunities for relearning

• Design opportunities for meaningful reflection on

Practice and integration of experience

We have had our why's, how's, and what's upside-down, focusing too much on what should be learned, than how, and often forgetting the why altogether.

In a world of nearly infinite information, we must first address why, facilitate how, and let the what generate naturally from there.

Michael Wesch, “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able,” Academic Commons, January 2009 (academiccommons.org)

But even as we shift our focus to the “how” of learning, there is still the question of “what” is to be learned. After all, our courses have to be about something.

Michael Wesch, “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able,” Academic Commons, January 2009

Usually our courses are arranged around “subjects”…. As an alternative, I like to think that we are not teaching subjects but subjectivities: ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world.

E-Portfolios are the critical apparatus of the shift from

subjects to subjectivities

Implementing E-portfolios is a way of catching up to where we already are: the end of the course as a bounded learning experience

JAMES F. SLEVIN 1948-2005

Dr. Helen Barrett

“My Final Wish…

May all your electronic portfolios become dynamic celebrations and stories of deep learning across the lifespan.”

Visible Knowledge Project (Bass and Eynon)

Academiccommons.org

Randy Bass

contact (for slides, follow up):

bassr@georgeotwn.edu

Visible Knowledge Project Findings

 Adaptive expertise

  Embodied learning

  Socially situated learning

Visible Knowledge Project Findings

  Adaptive expertise:   Process   Practice   Metacognition   “judgment in uncertainty”

  Embodied pedagogies:   Beyond the cognitive   Integrative

  Socially situated pedagogies:   Social, participatory learning changes intellectual

development

“A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress….

Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.

Threshold Concepts

“As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over a considerable period of time, with the transition to understanding proving troublesome.

Such a transformed view or landscape may represent how people ‘think’ in a particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend, or experience particular phenomena within that discipline (or more generally).”

Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.

Examples (acc to Meyer and Land)

  Economics: Concept of Opportunity cost  Mathematics: Concept of a Limit   Literary and Cultural Studies: Concept of

signification

•  Transformative: may occasion a significant shift in perception of a subject (or even personal identity)

•  Irreversible: unlikely to be forgotten or unlearned

•  Integrative: exposes previously hidden interrelatedness of something

When someone truly understands a threshold concepts, it is...

  Troublesome Knowledge (Perkins, 1999):

  “A threshold concept may on its own constitute, or in its application lead to… troublesome knowledge.” (Meyer and Land, 2003)

-troublesomeness protracts or blocks crossing the threshold: putting the learner in a liminal or stuck place

Among the reasons why a learner might not be able to truly understand a threshold concept is because it presents...

  Threshold Concepts are not really “concepts” but conceptually-driven intellectual moves particular to a knowledge domain and a community that can really only be understood through application.

Not just about knowledge to be acquired, but

Ways of thinking

Ways of acting (practice)

Ways of talking

A sense of identity

Embodied

Not just knowing, but the experience of knowing (and coming to know)

Not just about knowledge to be acquired, but

Ways of thinking

Ways of acting (practice)

Ways of talking

A sense of identity

Embodied

Not just knowing, but the experience of knowing (and coming to know)

References and Collaborations

Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, “Examining the Value of Social Pedagogies: A Paradigm for Deepening Disciplinary Engagement among Undergraduate Students,” ISSOTL 2009.

Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University (Biolgy): Foundations of Biology.

John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0” Educause Review (Jan/Feb 2008)

Henry Jenkins, et. al., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, MacArthur Foundation Occasional Paper, 2007.

Tim Kastelle, (University of Queensland) Innovation Leadership Network, http://timkastelle.org/blog/

George Kuh, High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter, AAC&U, 2008.

Lee Shulman. “The Pedagogies of Uncertainty,” Liberal Education Spring 2005.

William Sullivan and Matt Rosin, A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping the Life of the Mind for Practice. Jossey-Bass, 2008.