TLC2016 - Experiences and strategies used for implementing a portfolio didactic using Blackboards portfolio

Editor's Notes

• #2: My name is Bo Lüders. I am working at the University College South in Denmark. I work parttime as a senior lecture why my topics are sport, moovement science and health. Not professor ;-) The rest of the time I work in a unit called Academic IT where the focus is how to implement ICT in our teaching at out I should have had my colleague Lars besides me
• #4: My name is Bo Lüders. I am working at the University College South in Denmark. I work parttime as a senior lecture why my topics are sport, moovement science and health. Not professor ;-) The rest of the time I work in a unit called Academic IT where the focus is how to implement ICT in our teaching at out I should have had my colleague Lars besides me
• #6: Located on 5 campuses Esbjerg main Campus
• #11: We have been using learn and community engagement for a long time But this summer we decided to go into a managed hosted solution after being self hosted for more than 10 years – which we so far are quite happy with As a part of this we added the content part – which gave us the possibility of using the portfolio tool which was interesting for us, since there for quite some time have been and increasing wish and demand of using portfolio in different educations We have been rolling out the tool at 3 smaller educations using the sec. inst. Roles to give access Why not all in? Due to earlier experiences with different Blackboard tools we decided to be close to the first experiences to be able to give good guidance and be able to see what possibilities and challenges occurring before rolling out institution wide. This autumn primarily rolled out in one education and preliminary talks have been talking with two other educations. But now I will give the word to Lars since he is the one who have been driving this project both as a teacher and counselor at the teachers educations
• #13: If you imagine a photographer running around with a file of his best pictures. Then you have the idea of a port folio, e.g. simply a collection of your work. Not necessary the best in an educational context but all your work that displays your learning. So we have visible learning to use a phrase or book title of John Hattie. Lets look at the first bullet where it is stated that an Educational port folio is a collected file of all academic work. And as stated in the second bullet the port folio ”… give student new avenues for integrating learning form their courses and extracurricular activities; they help students see ways that courses … fit into the larger picture…” As an educator I must say that this is true from our research so far – through the port folio in Blackboard we can see that students state reflections that we have not experienced before – I believe the reason is that they fill in the port folio during studies and where they are in the flow of studying and there comes with deeper reflections and thereby deeper learning. We have just worked with the port folio at my University college for seven month, but I am sure that the point of the last bullet will come true, since we do see that in the port folio we can support so called “feed forward” where student must reflect on what the can bring from one module or experience in the school to another module or next time in school. The concept of “feed forward” can be studied in the books of John Hattie From the concept of Educational Port folio – lets look of the context that it is used in at our University college.
• #14: In this presentation focus will be how the port folio in Blackboard has been an essential part in a 100 % digital Teacher Education. At our Teacher Education we have experience with blended learning teacher education since 2001. Personally I have not been impressed with out pedagogy within that education since we had not developed the education around a strong pedagogy whereby it was my experience that students were not very active students or motivated. When I together with colleagues developed the 100 % digital Teacher Education we had focus on both that students should be active students and when they were active we where sure that they also became motivated. As stated in bullet one The target group was husbands and wife's of employees stationed abroad. Our ideas was that these husbands and wife's could take a full Danish teacher education so they could work as a teacher when they came home and become a teacher with an international foundation and experience that would benefit the pupils. As you can see in bullet 2. We build the education around Project based Learning modules. I have long been inspired by the French pedagogical thinker Celestin Freinet and his ideas that pupils must work with authentic problems in schools and present these problems and their solutions to others whereby school suddenly makes sense since school work with real problems and their solution. The pedagogical concept was taken into our digital teacher education so in all modules the students must study theory and then find an issue in schools to examine and the examine theoretical and observe that issue as it takes place in schools. As stated in the bullet we did actually experience that the students became very motivated by creating their own “question of examination” and doing a real research even as a first year student. Let me give you an example of “question of examination”. Today there are developed online Math programs where pupils can do their math. Students of us have examined weather online math programs have improved the understanding of math or the opposite. The question was if working without paper and not doing the calculations on paper makes it harder to understand math. The examinations showed that it actually is important that kids still do their calculations on paper and not just do it on the computer. The writing on paper with a pencil – e.g. the slowness and the creation of symbols and numbers with the arm and pen helps the kid to understand and solve the Math question. From the beginning we were aware that a teacher education is a lot about the connection between teacher and pupil. Especially in Denmark and the more widely the Nordic countries. So we had to make sure that students worked with the theory and observations in schools and with the observations worked together with educated teachers. And how would we do that? We wanted the students to write port folios. Luckily we upgraded our Blackboard platform in August 2015 to the platform that had the Port folio tool. And I must say that having the students work in the port folio on blackboard have been quite fantastic experience from at educators point of view. Why I also am delighted to speak to you here, so you maybe can be inspired at home in your education.
• #15: As I stated on the previous slide – This education with project based Learning modules and the use of port folio have been a fantastic experience for us educators – since we have more insight of the learning of our online students than students we normally engage with in face to face teaching. And at our University college we even do classroom teaching with a lot of group work so I thought that I had a good feeling of the learning of the different students. But we experienced that we do not compared to the insight we have with the learning of the digital students… I hope you can read the irony when I write that for students is had been less fantastic – since no student can hide and do nothing since the portfolio will display that when it is empty. I have had several students – and I must say all boys… - who have said that they had read so much but when they shared the port folio with me it was blank or the so called abstract of literature studied was of a poor quality… So I told them to study and not just skim a text… Some we send to student counselors so they could support them in how to handle a university study. What is very interesting has been – that all students have stated that studying project based and the demand of stating everything in a port folio is demanding and time consuming but that is also makes them understand the field to a high degree. So maybe this way of doing an education is actually quite fantastic. Let us in the next slide see how the port folio looks like…
• #16: Here you see the first page of the Port Folio of Miriam – Miriam have accepted that her port folio becomes world wide famous… To the left you see the different courses of Miriam – At the education we have created mandatory subjects through a template. A template that the student later can change or work since their port folio is completely personal. We made a structure with a portrait – so we could get some information about the student – where he/she lives, interests and background. All information that we somehow can support them and encourage them to use in their education. You here see the portrait and the different modules of Miriam. If you Danish is not good, then I can tell that Miriam have Math and geometri, Digital competences, Math numbers and algebra etc. On the next slide we will look into the Subject ”Dannelse i den mangfoldige skole” (which is subject 1 of Miriam) The course title would translated mean Formation (or Buildung in German) in the versatile school
• #17: What we look at now is the written abstracts of theorical texts studied by Miriam. Here you can see that Aristoteles – Ethics have been studied as well as Sura 2 of the Choran. We experienced that students need to be supported in how to study texts and write abstracts of the text. We have scaffolded the writing of abstracts in the white textbox. In our education we want the students to state their knowledge on the theme after just reading the title and preface of the text, since the student will then realize when writing about the points and research found in the text that the student after studying knows a lot more… Quite simple but quite effect full. We also what the student to reflect on how the text can be used for creating a “question of examination” whereby we want the student to work with the text and put it into the context of school all the time! When the student have written abstracts to texts of between 300 – 600 page the can book an hours Skype-for-business counseling with their educator. Lets look at that on the next slide.
• #18: As you can see in the first bullet the student must plan the meeting with their educator. I must say that this has been a delight when the meetings are well-structured. In the meeting we agree on the so-called ”mile-stones” in their project so we secure that the student can handle their work and plan it so it will be fruitful. Do note that the port folios are personal so the student have to share the port folio with me every time they want me to read their new work. The port folio in Blackboard is not shared with me all the time whereby the student actually have some privacy. Lets summon up the work so far. The student study theory and writes abstracts in the port folio. The educator and the student plan the project and find so called milestones and dates for these so the student can work with their project and accomplish the project. During the project the student can share their port folio with the educator so the educator can read new abstract and questions from the student. Lets see how the commenting in the port folio works.
• #19: When questions come up – the student state these in the Port Folio and share the Port Folio with the educator... The educator then comments (and hopefully answers the question). When the student has shared their portfolio I can press the bottom in the right upper corner which says “comment”. Then a new frame will open where all comments for all teachers are collected. I can add a comment which in Danish is “tilføj kommentarer”. For me as an educator it has been rewarding to follow comments from colleagues since in some cases I have spotted that the student could use theory from another subject and even in some cases the student have developed a “question of examination” that covers three modules. And there it is essential that I can see comments from my colleagues.
• #20: You have now heard good stories about the port folio in Blackboard. We have had less good experiences as well and I will run through some on them here. At one education a lot went wrong. First the team thought they agreed on using the port folio – but none actually changed their teaching and the students found the port folio extremely irrelevant – and actually the teachers as well since they had not adapted their teaching on working with the reflections of the students. We kind of agreed to skip the port folio in a team since the teachers is not open to change in their pedagogy in practice. As you can see in the picture of a evaluation the students did not fancy the use of port folio in the education. One student wrote. “I hope that a meaning with the port folio will occur. I seems a bit overrated”. 19 students agreed and one with the emphasis “Fuck, Yes” This was an evaluation on a module teaching about “innovative methods”. The teachers had an idea of why to work with the port folio but were not explicit with that and had not aligned their ideas in the lesson plan and to the specific goals and working methods. Ironic some of the students in the end did like the port folio and stated that they learnt better through reflecting in writing the port folio. As I state that was all girls who did everything right and did what the teachers asked them to do. The important learning must be – which research back up – that everyone can improve their learning by writing. But that is only accomplished if scaffolded by the teacher.
• #21: At another education we delayed the implemenation since the implementation of port folio was seen as tool of controlling the teachers and not seen as a pedagogical tool of learning. It would be best if all in a team can agree on using port folio so the students get used to using it. And here their is a fine line between the management telling a teacher to follow the rest of the team and accepting different methods in teaching. If management or a team is dissatisfied with the teaching of a colleague implementation of port folio will not change that at all. Actually we only see that the port folio then would cause dissatisfaction and change focus from learning to the so-called extra work of port folio writing – as stated in the previous slide. If a team og teacher wants to use port folio he must implement the port folio in the lesson plan and state for himself and the students what the port folio can do for the learning. And the writing must be actively used in the classroom. Thereby theory and practice can come to life. The teachers must meet a lot in the beginning so they can support each other and also very important back up the decision. And finally the teachers must have access to support. For instance I was standby on the cell phone the first weeks during the implementation, and at another education I was showing the students how to use the portfolio. All that to make the teachers fell relaxed about this tool which works very good.
• #22: A few things have irritated the students. Many students copy text from a work document into the port folio – and in that process the format can change – Even format can change while writing directly in the portfolio – as can be seen in the picture with the highlight. Finally the students would like to be able to be able to work with the menu so submenus can be taken away in order to minimize scrolling. These things are quite minor. In all we must say that the port folio in Bb works very well and with no big problems.
• #23: We have a lot of different educations within our University Collegeh and we have to work well together with super users how have to make the templates for each module or the total education. And thereby also support the super users in pedagogical thinking on how to align the port folio to the goals of the module. Luckily our superusers will all be teachers so they know the issues and can have focus on the learning and not only of all the wonderful things a new tool can do for the teacher… There will be a lot of templates in the system – and they must be named so they can be easily found by teachers and students We need to make sure that the port folio template will be evaluated together with the normal evaluation performed by the teacher. And also the use of the port folio in the day to day teaching. Finally we need to make a plan for deleting old templates that are not used.
• #24: I will end my presentation with this slide from earlier. It has been positive for us using port folio – and the port folio in Blackboard has been a good experience. I especially like that the port folio can include all four years of study and the 24 different modules in one handy tool. I will end with a quote of John Biggs in the fantastic book “Teaching for Quality Learning at University”. It goes like this: : “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” And with that I will ask if there is any questions? Questions?