Experiences and strategies used for implementing a portfolio didactic using Blackboards Portfolio

By Lars Holbæk Pedersen, lahp@ucsyd.dk, supported by Louise Lausted llau@ucsyd.dk and Bo Lüders blud@ucsyd.dk

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Questions and ideas

https://todaysmeet.com/BoTLC(find link under activity for this session in the TLC APP)

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Who are we?

• UC Syd

• University College South Denmark

Lars

Bo

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Who are we?

• UC Syd

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Who are we?

• UC Syd – 5 Campuses

• Esbjerg (main campus)

• Kolding

• Haderslev

• Aabenraa

• Sønderborg

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Who are we?

• UC Syd – 5 Campuses

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Who are we?

• UC Campus´s

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Who are we – UC Syd?

UC Syd – short facts

• 13 professional bachelor’s degree programs (3½ - 4 years)

• 2 Master degrees in collaboration with Norway (Health)

• 6000 BA students and 5000 students in continuing education

• 700 members of staff (academic and non-academic)

• 913 international students

UC SYD is organized in 4 institutes

• -Institute for Health Sciences

• -Institute for Social Education / pre school education

• -Institute for Social Sciences and Communication

• -Institute for Teacher Education

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AIT - Group

• AIT – Academic IT

• One year old group (5 people - CIO as leader, 3 lectures, 1 from ICT department)

• Works with a lot of different projects related to the pedagogical use of ICT in teaching and learning:– Using Blackboard for more than 10 years in some part of the organization

- others only 2 year– All Bb system admins– Course templates and basic course tools– Integration and use of other systems – Kaltura, Office 365/One drive– Didactical and pedagogical sessions with different departments related

to ICT in teaching and learning– Half time Lectures half time in AIT – good combination (but busy )

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Portfolio project

• Background– Using learn and Community engagement for a long time

– Went into at managed hosted solution summer 2015 and added the content part (portfolio)

– Increasing demand from different education in using portfolio

– Rolling out in smaller scale using institutional roles

– Why not all in?

– This autumn and spring tested at our new digital teachers education - Lars unfortunately not able to join the conference as intended

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Over to Lars – Senior Lecturer

• Teachers education - Haderslev

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Educational Portfolio – a didactical tool

• An Educational Portfolio is a ”file” with ”academic course work, such as research papers; skills and capabilities; educational work experiences, such as internships and practicum…” (Ralston, 2015, page 107).

• ”… give student new avenues for integrating learning from their courses and extracurricular activities; they help students see ways that courses … fit into the larger picture…” (Dubinsky, 2003, page 97)

• ”… building new ideas based on previous knowledge is of a primary importance in portfolio learning, rather than a segmented thinking that does not allow for integration or a connecting of knowledge over time” (Ralston, 2015, page 111).

Sources:

Anthony Ralston: ePortfolio Development and the Potential Relationship to Learning Theories in Ally, Mohamed and Kahn, Badrul H. (2015): International handbook of E-learning, Volume 2: Routledge

John Hattie (2011): Visible Learning for teachers, Routledge

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Our new 100 % Digital Teacher Education of September 2015

• Target group– Expatriates - husbands and wife's of persons stationed abroad for their company

• Developed from 2014 with focus on following focus points– Project based learning modules – the students must in each module create their own

“question of examination” (hypothesis: Ownership of the “question of examination” will keep the student motivated – even if he sits alone with his project in Seattle or Dubai…

– The students must examine their “question of examination” through theoretical reading and observation at a local school where ever in the world the student was.

• The Quality of the Education – Secured through Portfolio?– How can we secure the quality of the education – “relation work”, “theoretical

knowledge”, “understanding and experience with teaching” – Portfolio was from the beginning a key issue in order to secure the quality of the education

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The Portfolio in Blackboard – our experience so far…

• For educators it has been fantastic – As a educator I have more insight in the learning of my “digital students” then my “analog students” whom I see face-to-face 8 hours a week for classroom lectures (and group work).

• For students it has been less fantastic... – No student can hide and free-ride since the educator can follow the progress “black on white” and engage in dialogue. All our students have stated that they find the education very demanding with all the writing in the portfolio but all also state that they learn a lot by having to write and write and write… To summon up it has been fantastic to those students who were willing to put the workload into their education.

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The Portfolio of Miriam

• Portrain

• Subject 1

• Subject 2

• Subject 3

• Subject 4

• Subject 5

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Inside the portfolio

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Counselling departing from abstracts in the Portfolio

• When students have studied 300 – 600 pages and written abstracts they book time for a Skype-for-business session with their educator. The students must in the portfolio state the program for the meeting including questions, discussions points and the ”question of examination”

• Agreement of the work for the next ”milestone” in the project work – such as searching for new theory, ideas of observation in schools on the ”question of examination”, beginning writing an article on the chosen ”question of examination”

Theory studied

Abstracts in Portfolio

Project planning with milestones

Commenting on the Work in the portfolio

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Counselling through ”Commenting” in the Portfolio

When questions come up – the student state these in the Portfolio and share the Portfolio with the educator...

The educator then comments and answers the question

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Things to think about when starting implementing Portfolio

• The teacher must ”embody” the portfolio in their lesson plan – align writing and goals of the module– At one education the portfolio created much dissatisfaction since:

• The teachers did not implement the ideas about the portfolio in their lesson plan • The teachers did not explain the idea of the portfolio so it just seemed like extra work…

• Pupils above wrote: “I hope that a meaning with the portfolio will occur. I seems a bit overrated”. 19 students agreed and one with the emphasis “F…, Yes”

• At the end some of the students actually stated that using the portfolio improved their understanding of the material studied (It was all hard working girls…)

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The teachers must all want it – not only management…

• At one education we delayed the implement of portfolio since the teachers felt that is was a tool to control their teaching and not a pedagogical tool to improve learning

• We cannot support that a team force all team members to use the portfolio. The portfolio is only a tool and it itself will not – and can not – change the pedagogy of a teacher and the pedagogy of the team

• The teachers must together find out how to implement the portfolio and the ideas behind the portfolio - first in the lesson plan and secondly in the daily teaching.

• The teachers need regular meetings to follow up the use – a lot of meetings the first weeks.

• The teachers must have access to support – so they can relax and focus on teaching!

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Technical stuff that irritates students

• If they copy text from a word document into the portfolio the format can change

• Format within the portfolio

can change

• Possibility to choose not

to see submenus under the menus

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Our next focus –

• We have a lot of different educations within our University College and we have to work well together with super users how have to make the templates for each module or the total education.

• There will be a lot of templates – and they must be named so they can be easily found by teachers and students

• Support the super users in pedagogical thinking on how to align the portfolio to the goals of the module

• Implementing the evaluation of the portfolio template together with the normal evaluation performed by the teacher

• A plan for deleting old templates that are not used

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The Portfolio in Blackboard – our experience so far…

• For educators it has been fantastic – As a educator I have more insight in the learning of my “digital students” then my “analog students” whom I see face-to-face 8 hours a week for classroom lectures (and group work).

• For students it has been less fantastic... – No student can hide and free-ride since the educator can follow the progress “black on white” and engage in dialogue. All our students have stated that they find the education very demanding with all the writing in the portfolio but all also state that they learn a lot by having to write and write and write… To summon up it has been fantastic to those students who were willing to put the workload into their education.

John Biggs – Teaching for Quality Learning at University: “In professional programmes in particular, it is useful if students keep a reflective journal, in which they record any incidents or thoughts that help them reflect on the content of the course or programme. Such reflection is basic to proper professional functioning”. Page 261