assessment for learning: use of eportfolios in teacher education programs

1. assessment for learning: use of eportfolios in teacher education programs Assoc Prof Glenn Finger celebrating teachingseminar09

2. The presentation... • Celebrate the central importance of teaching Supporting data: 11% of CSP in Australian Universities are studying in Faculties of Education. The ‘other’ 89% were taught by those prepared in Faculties of Education. – Prof Sue Willis, President, ACDE, 2009 • Share some thoughts about ePortfolio possibilities celebrating teachingseminar09

3. Our Griffith University vision... • In our teaching, we will offer our students a high-quality learning experience. We will equip them to be the global citizens of the future, to challenge orthodoxies and create new solutions to shape our global community positively. We will do this by providing curriculum that engages with global issues and perspectives, and by providing opportunities to integrate learning with work or engagement with our communities. celebrating teachingseminar09

4. Our guiding principles... celebrating teachingseminar09

5. Our L & T Strategic Plan... celebrating teachingseminar09

6. Something about me... celebrating teachingseminar09

7. Inside the actor’s studio Originated by Bernard Pivot , the ten questions Lipton asks are: • What is your favorite word? • What is your least favorite word? • What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? • What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally? • What sound or noise do you love? • What sound or noise do you hate? • What is your favorite curse word? • What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? • What profession would you not like to do? • If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? celebrating teachingseminar09

8. What turns me on? • human purpose of learning • - making connections, relationships • making a difference, which implies some • change or transformation • storytelling • - powerful, reflective stories of learning that inspire • - ‘the road less traveled by’ (Robert Frost) • creativedesignprocess – especially ‘dreaming’, students as designers celebrating teachingseminar09

9. The teaching technologies... celebrating teachingseminar09

10. What I tell my students... • ICT are the digital lubricants of globalisation • There are no future possibilities that can be imagined which cannot be designed using ICT now • Given the range of technologies available, there has never been a better time to teach than now • No technology has ever been beneficial – Acknowledgements to Ian Lowe • Adopt a technochoice perspective – determine the relative advantage of the technologies you choose for particular purposes and contexts – what’s the educational rationale? –Acknowledgements to Sachs, Russell & Chataway, and to Roblyer You must be the change - Ghandi Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation - Mandela celebrating teachingseminar09

11. Teacher education... • Shulman (1986, 1987, 1992) - Model of Pedagogical Reasoning - a cycle of several activities that a teacher should complete for good teaching: - comprehension, transformation,instruction, evaluation, reflection, and new comprehension. • Transformation. The key to distinguishing the knowledge base of teaching lies at the intersection of content and pedagogy in the teacher’s capacity to transform content knowledge into forms that are pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive to the variety of student abilities and backgrounds. Requires: • Preparation which includes the process of critical interpretation, including multimedia and hypermedia • Representation of the ideas in the form of new analogies and metaphors  • Instructional selections  from among an array of teaching methods and models and technologies • Adaptation of student materials, technologies and activities to reflect the characteristics of student learning styles • Tailoringthe adaptations to the specific students in the classroom celebrating teachingseminar09

12. TPACK (formerly TPCK) AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology, 2008 Mishra & Koehler, 2006 celebrating teachingseminar09

13. Our students? – 2003 audit celebrating teachingseminar09

14. Our students? – 2003 audit celebrating teachingseminar09

15. School-home difference celebrating teachingseminar09

16. Queensland College of Teachers • Professional standards for teachers...some examples Note: This course – 1074EPS - relates specifically to all of the following standards. The specific indicators are included to demonstrate this. The standards which it most relates to are Standards One, Two, Three, Four, and Ten. Standard One- Design and implement engaging and flexible learning experiences for individuals and groups • P1.5 identify and use teaching, learning and assessment strategies and resources in which ICT is embedded • K1.8 ways of identifying, evaluating and selecting teaching, learning and assessment strategies, resources and technology • K1.9 effective teaching, learning and assessment strategies and resources where ICT is embedded Standard Two - Design and implement learning experiences that develop language, literacy and numeracy • P2.4 identify, select and use teaching and learning strategies and resources that build on and support the development of students’ language, literacy and numeracy skills. • K2.11 how ICT supports, enhances, enables and transforms language, literacy and numeracy expectations and development Standard Three - Design and implement intellectually challenging learning experiences • P3.4 plan and implement learning experiences in which students actively use ICT to access, organise, research, interpret, analyse, create, communicate and represent knowledge. • K3.8 teaching and learning strategies that incorporate the purposeful use of ICT by teacher and student Standard Four - Design and implement learning experiences that value diversity • P4.6 apply ICT to empower students with diverse backgrounds, characteristics and abilities and enable their learning. • K4.7 how to use ICT to increase opportunities for learning and address the individual learning needs of students Standard Ten - Commit to reflective practice and ongoing professional renewal • P10.4 identify and access learning communities and professional networks • K10.6 how to access educational research, contribute to learning communities and professional networks, including through the use ICT, to support professional learning, self-assessment and development celebrating teachingseminar09

17. 1074EPS Learning with ICT • The major assessment the design and creation of an ePortfolio which has webpages organised according to: Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice, Professional Values, and Professional Relationships. This provides the framework for students to collect, select, reflect, direct and publish evidence related to the QCT professional standards throughout their program, as well as the potential for using this as the basis for demonstrating evidence for acquiring Education Queensland’s ICT Certificate. The ePortfolio requires students to demonstrate their ICT capabilities in relation to ICT Knowledge, skills, and more importantly the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment application possibilities. celebrating teachingseminar09

18. ePortfolios and assessment • ePortfolios for assessment purposes – what kind of assessment do we require? (Barrett, 2006) • assessment for learning and assessment of learning are different not dichotomous (Matters, 2006) celebrating teachingseminar09

19. ICT enhanced ePortfolio Process • The major assessment celebrating teachingseminar09

20. ePortfolios • Purpose and process celebrating teachingseminar09

21. ePortfolio possibilities... • Institutional ePortfolios celebrating teachingseminar09

22. ePortfolio possibilities... • Learner Centred ePortfolios celebrating teachingseminar09

23. ePortfolio Possibilities... • Web 1.0 tended to be characterised by the webpage with hyperlinks • Web 2.0 technologies - enable linking and exchanging information, data and communication over the web - involves connections and collaborations between people, and connections between ideas and hypermedia. - design the social aspect of the application into the architecture (Kelly, 2007) - unlike economic theory where the increasing use of a resource results in a depreciation of its value, the more that a resource is used in the Web 2.0 environment, the greater the value it aggregates (Brickin, 2001, cited in Kelly). - can “take advantage of and cultivate collective knowledge” (Kelly, 2007, p. 2). • Connectivism attempts to account for learning in a digital age, where knowledge is growing exponentially, where new information is being acquired and reconstituted or remixed, and where know-how and know-what is being supplemented by know-where (Siemens, 2004). • Thomas Friedman in his revised version of The World is Flat, “changed his fourth ‘flattener’ from ‘Open-Sourcing’ (Self-Organizing Collaborative Communities) to ‘Uploading’ (Online Communities, Open Source, Blogging, Wikipedia and social networks)” (Barrett, 2006, p. 5). celebrating teachingseminar09

24. ePortfolios 2.0 celebrating teachingseminar09

25. ePortfolios 2.0 • ePortfolio 2.0, used within a paradigm of assessment for learning, has the potential for enabling students to perceive their ePortfolios as an “academic MySpace” (Barrett, 2006, p. 8). • With Web 2.0 tools, student work can be posted and feedback invited (e.g. through blogging), collaboration invited (e.g. through wikis and Google.docs) and, if necessary, authorship can be tracked, for accountability. • While commercial learning environment systems such as Blackboard™ and Open Source such as Moodle provide discussion forums, blogs and wiki support, a key criticism is that those tools are limited to the students, instructor and teaching assistants, and collaborative content needs to be able to connect to course materials and ePortfolio systems in the online, networked digital world of the student outside formal education (Zhang et al., 2007). celebrating teachingseminar09

26. an alternative model...LPWS • “rather than limit people to the e-portfolio model, why not develop a model providing a personal Web space for everyone, for their lifetimes and beyond?” (Cohn & Hibbits, 2004, p. 1). • They refer to this as the Lifetime Personal Web Space (LPWS) • Could store searchable content (personal, business, social, and educational) that was important in a user’s past and will be accessible for future use, as well as for use in current projects. • The virtual structure of the LPWS could consist of multiple cells with flexible entry points, allowing internal cells and connections to external web based courses, mentors, per reviewers and libraries. • The primary user of the LPWS would decide what sections were public or private, and it would be available anywhere, anytime. celebrating teachingseminar09

27. a Universal ePortfolio... Tolley (2008) proposes the Universal ePortfolio and identifies the ‘prime directives’ for any ePortfolio must be: • Portable. It cannot be located in any one institution or embedded within a proprietary Virtual Learning Environment (VLE); • Personal. It is ‘owned’ by the user and is customisable to the user’s age, stage and style; • Generic. It is not modelled on any particular curriculum delivery system nor content; • Web 2.0. It should be compliant with all generic formats within the application; • MIS-free. It is not ‘hard-wired’ to any institution’s MIS infrastructure; • ‘Light’. It is not a permanent repository of all of a user’s files, rather a ‘transit camp’; • Lifelong. Ownership must be maintainable as a continuity, ages ‘5-95’ [Glenn: 5-95 is insufficient – why not from -100 to the 22nd Century?]; • Lifewide. It is capable of being used by all ages and abilities through a wide range of assistive templates; • Accessible. It must recognise common standards of accessibility in terms of both outputs and inputs; • Credible. Evidence of any summative assessment must be linked to a secure repository; i.e. the awarding body or a central MIAP/Minerva archive. (Tolley, 2008, pp. 5-6) celebrating teachingseminar09

28. ePortfolios and TPCK • I think a lot of the problem with the implementation of electronic portfolios is that they are being implemented without TPCK. There isn't a lot of knowledge about the pedagogical content of using portfolios for learning… (Helen Barrett, Feb 2007) Glenn’s cautions • ‘Hoops’ and ‘hurdles’ – just another form of assessment • Focus on select and reflect • Avoid designing to a formula – what do I have to do to pass the course? – consider digital timelines… celebrating teachingseminar09

29. Some reflections... • Drawing upon my research on ePortfolios, this innovation • transformed the assessment from being traditional print-based to multimedia and hypermedia, • enabled a richer presentation of evidence of students’ deep learning • Positions students to achieve TPCK, QCT standards... • Student evaluations highlighted • the intellectual challenge ePortfolios created, and • many students presented powerful comments about becoming inspired to teach from their learning experiences. celebrating teachingseminar09

30. Some reflections... “For me, this course has been an absolute treasure, I started off thinking, they are kidding right – design a website! After cursing and grumbling, we started; we made mistakes; we grumbled some more; we continued; …the final design is ready now…the road I have travelled to get to where I am with my web design has been the most stimulating, educational experience I have had since starting my degree. …thanks for the challenge and the learning experience, this is precisely why I want to teach, to offer challenge, stimulation and excitement – which you clearly set out to do and have attained with me.” (Student Comment) celebrating teachingseminar09

31. Australian ePortfolio Project • Recommendation 6 It is recommended that academic policy in higher education institutions recognises the value of ePortfolio practice as a component of different pedagogies that enhance the quality of learning and teaching across the institution. • Recommendation 10 It is recommended that the Australian Learning and Teaching Council adopt a leading role to foster and support further research into the educational benefits of ePortfolio practice. Compared with many other countries such as the United Kingdom, United States of America and the Netherlands, Australia is in the early stages of ePortfolio practice and research.. celebrating teachingseminar09

32. The hypothetical question... • If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? • You have taught thousands to enable them to improve their life prospects and the life prospects of others. They are creating a better world... celebrating teachingseminar09