E-portfolio, identity and Personalised Learning : a broader higher education and employment context.

1. E-portfolio, identity and Personalised Learning: a broader higher education and employment context. Jamie Thompson/Rob Ward jamie.thompson@northumbria.ac.uk rob@recordingachievement.org

2. The Centre for Recording Achievement (UK) A cross-sectoral network organisation with institutional and individual members. Seeks to promote awareness and understanding of the processes associated with Personal Development Planning (review, reflection, planning) as an important element in improving learning and progression throughout the world of education, training and employment. An Associate Centre of the Higher Education Academy, with a remit to support the implementation of Personal Development Planning (PDP) and e-portfolio across the UKHE sector.

3. Our vision thing… e-PDP/e-portfolios are the latest in a long line of approaches to supporting people development, through schools, colleges, higher education, appraisal and continuing professional development. The provision of supported opportunities to review, reflect, record, review and plan are ‘core’ to such approaches.

4. 3. For individuals, such processes are intrinsically related to the development of a clearer sense of who they are, where they want to go, and how they might get there in the context of working and learning environments which are characterised by increasing change. • For business and professional bodies, such processes can be linked to people development through appraisal and continuing professional development processes. • Collectively, harnessing the potential of technology, we can make this vision much more real for many more people.

5. What progress… (From the e-portfolio survey for the Higher Education Academy, 2007). • 83% of respondents were using some form of electronic tool to support their PDP process. • Just over half of HEIs surveyed claimed to have an e-portfolio tool or system: nearly all cited as the main purposes for their systems ‘implementing PDP’ and ‘supporting overall development’. • Interoperability in terms of inter-institutional transfer of PDP data is not yet a high priority. • Most institutions regard themselves as being at a pilot stage in relation to e-portfolios … very few have committed the resources to run trials of different systems in-house.

6. Some propositions for/from today… • Identity is developed through interaction with others. • Professional identity is part of that, (and professional identities further develop as approaches to health care practice by individuals themselves develop) and part of a broader sense of personal development. • Portfolio Building is concerned with making meaning as well as presenting meaning.

7. Web 2.0 technologies in particular allow multiple identities to be presented and evaluated. • Web 2.0 technologies can facilitate personalisation but (contrary to some expectations) not everyone engages with them, and they are sometimes difficult to leave behind. • E-portfolios have multiple stakeholders, with different agendas. • Institutional e-portfolio systems may not sit well with the requirements of discipline communities, especially where professional requirements are involved.

8. What do we know about learning? • Some overarching theory • Achievement v Development • Blockages: Codification • Reflection, Assessment, Environments • Learning agendas and strategies

9. Some Theory • Learning as contextual • Situated learning • Androgogy

10. What’s learning for? Outcomes Academic competence – Functional competence Achievement? v Development?

11. Achievement Knowledge Skills Understanding Qualifications ‘passports to success’ Meritocratic sifting? Selection, ordering, policing standards; the legitimacy and power of Higher Education Development Lifelong learning Transferable skills Location and direction Personal values Motivation Resilience Starts where the learner is at Draws on and connects to the learner’s experience Not the exclusive preserve of Higher Education Far from it!

12. ELLI in HE • an orientation towards growth, adaptation and change • the capacity to make personal meaning from information • a critical curiosity • creativity, imagination and playfulness • strategic awareness • resilience • learning relationships.

13. Blockages: Codification • Problems with the codification of knowledge in formal systems in higher education and vocational education • Questions about the relationship between formal and informal learning. • Debate about the importance of different kinds of knowledge (tacit, implicit, ineffable) • What about values and emotions?

14. Three pedagogic themes • Reflection • Assessment • Learning environments

15. Reflection • What is reflection? Typologies of reflection • Beyond introspection (reflection v critical reflection) • Individual reflection, Interactional reflection, Organizational reflection • Can you measure it? Can you assess it?

16. World of Education Academic standards Academic excellence Able to write about Critical reflection World of Work Professional practice Competence Able to do Description Assessment(assessing what is valued)

17. Assessment(continued) • Situated learning theory might suggest that it is with a combination of knowledge and experience that we are able to solve problems. • Do solutions imply a grasp of propositional knowledge? • Can we assess solutions? • Uniformly? • Differences between what is valued in the worlds of work and HE. Who needs to shift?

18. Learning environments • What makes a learning environment? • Is this related to notions of a learning organization? • Does this help us think about what work based learners need? • Learning v Productivity

19. E-portfolios in professional areas… tend to be within a standardised rather than an expressive paradigm... But… e-portfolios can support community building amongst distributed groups of learners. Such approaches may be characterised by a more expressive paradigm…

20. May present related messages… • ‘Unless the e-portfolio is tied in closely with the professional training regime, employers will be unlikely to take it up as an additional tool for PDP/CPD; • It is recognised that the role of the mentor is crucial and therefore an associated concern is that this role will become more onerous with an e-portfolio system;

21. Employers have valued particular aspects of the portfolio concept such as the shift in responsibility on to the trainee to provide evidence of learning; increased reflection on their strengths and weaknesses; and more focus on planning for future personal development.’ • negative (user) comments emphasised issues with the technology or the software applications in use. Participants were also concerned about the time it took e.g. ‘time consuming and more form filling’, ‘too much detail to input’ Using e-portfolios in legal education Evaluation Report - October 2007 http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/research/projects/eportfoliosupdate2.html

22. Implementing e-portfolio… the wider picture… • Many students don’t know what to write/record as ‘reflection’. • Students who perceive [the process] as useful are likely to perform better academically. • Students often take a period of time to recognise “usefulness”. • Most students value one-to-one interaction with a tutor. • Most students prefer electronic to paper. • Portfolios can demonstrate a richer picture of an individual’s qualities and achievements than other forms of assessment.

23. What do we know about reflection? Many students don’t know what to write. Probable variables: previous experience, age/level, subject/discipline, academic v. work-based contexts, individual differences. What we don’t know so well: • which strategies are likely to work best with which students • which students might react badly to high levels of structure • how best to use non-text-based strategies • how much any of these strategies affect learning/performance

24. What do we know: about perceptions of ‘usefulness’? Students who perceive [the process] as useful are likely to perform better academically. What we don’t know so well: • Whether this is a causal link or just a correlation. • Whether the relationship holds for any aspect of the process of specific aspect(s) – if specific, which? Students often take a period of time to recognise “usefulness” What we don’t know so well: • What kind of experiences ‘trigger’ this perception? • What variables affect the length of time taken?

25. What do we know?About the significance of the tutor? Most students value one-to-one interaction with a tutor. What we don’t know so well: • What are the important characteristics of the tutor (mentor/coach)? • How to judge how much support is optimal. • How best to move the learner from a high-support to less-supported environment.

26. What do we know: about the use of technology? Most students prefer electronic to paper. What we don’t know so well: • For those who don’t, what are the key factors? ‘it appears that e-portfolios are initially more empowering for some students than others: whilst some are already using them to develop a positive, holistic view of their progress towards specified goals and their confidence as learners, others appear to have focused more narrowly on their weaknesses and shortcomings.’ Bufton et al Using e-portfolios to help students reflect upon and improve their learning: A longitudinal research project. (PDP-UK Newsletter Issue 12 December 2007) • Which aspects of technology/functions of a system are most attractive to which students?

27. What do we know: about portfolios at transition? Portfolios can demonstrate a richer picture of an individual’s qualities and achievements than other forms of assessment. What we don’t know so well: • How (if) employers will use these pictures. • The effect on staff workloads. • The relative importance of/difficulty in teaching the principles of collection, connection and selection which will ensure rich pictures become coherent ones. • The relative importance of the technology in relation to the above.

28. Agenda the quality of relationships between learners and their teachers the nature of the curriculum the emotional climate of the environment the forms of pedagogy engaged in by teachers the quality and nature of educational leadership. Strategies creating healthy learning relationships holding dialogues about learning providing role models for learning reflecting on the learning process assessing for learning providing challenge and choice creating a stimulating and safe learning environment Challenges for the ePortfolio community

29. And on implementation,some questions now are: • What makes a good tutor/mentor/coach? • What influences the acceptance by students and staff/workplace mentors? • Management What is their critical role? • The medium? • Functionality, fitness for purpose, scalable!!!! • Managing complexities of research into e-portfolio practice.