Redemption

Originally published to eBridge on Saturday 30 June 2012

I'm really wishing that I'd watched this video (Beith, 2011) before everything else, because it's helped me to see more value in the concept of ePortfolios as an assessment tool.

Seeing a personal account of the reasons behind use of ePortfolios helps me to see ways that they can improve the assessment process. Getting insights into students' learning processes and using this in a non-judgemental way helps to take a lot of the uncomfortable scrutiny off teaching staff when it comes to reviewing the design of curricula. For my own background, I have to wonder if these kind of insights will matter to a government obsessed with numerical data and norm-referenced assessment. Or is that more the fault of society as a whole for not questioning their own expectations and behaviours? But that's an axe to grind another day!

Actually, I take back that comment about wishing I'd seen the video first, because then this little learning experience wouldn't have occurred and been recorded. Hope you readers take note....

Reference

• Beith, L. (2011). Using ePortfolios for Assessment. [video online] Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FUL1TYzG-w&feature=youtu.be> [Accessed 30 June 2012]

Confession time

Originally published to eBridge on Thursday 28 June 2012

OK, I really need to get this off my chest in some way so I can start to do something about it.... I hate ePortfolios right now!  Or should I say I hate talking about them without feeling empowered to actually do something with them? That's probably a bit closer to the truth actually! A quote from Jane Bozarth (2012) in one of the Learning & Skills Group yesterday was: 'Learning isn't learning until you can do something with it', and I honestly still don't feel confident in my ability to use ePortfolios productively within my own professional context, so anything I write about them is liable to be way out of context, and not conducive to further learning.

So how can I fix this? A little late to fix it for the purposes of this workshop, but some Professional Development Planning is overdue, plus I could ask my line manager at work about using an ePortfolio in conjunction with our Performance and Talent Management reviews. Having something that is constructed for a specific purpose like this might help me to put things in perspective and feel like I am building towards something of benefit to myself. I'm happy with current employer - they are after all funding me to do this course, and my line manager is supportive of my progression. She will need to be able to take some kind of evidence to senior management if I am to be recognised (and rewarded) for skills development, so perhaps an ePortfolio will help here.

OK, feeling a little better now....

Reference:

• Bozarth, J. (2012). The truth about social learning, Learning & Skills Group Conference 2012.  [webinar] June 2012. Available at: <http://learningandskillsgroup.ning.com/forum/topics/june-27th-the-truth-about-social-learning-jane-bozarth> [Accessed 28 June 2012]

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Discussion:

Query:

Or should I say I hate talking about them without feeling empowered to actually do something with them? 

I was hoping that the experience of keeping an e-portfolio in Pebblepad during the workshop would give you some sense of 'doing something'...or do you feel frustrated because it doesn't fit into your professional context at the moment? I've never used e-portfolios in my work and it doesn't look likely to be implemented in my department in the near future - for reasons I'm hoping to explore in my e-poster. 

I think your idea of using one to evidence your professional development is a great idea, and there seems to be a movement at the moment for e-portfolios to belong to the student / employee, not the institution / employer. For example, my college has just made Mahara available to students and their Mahara account is theirs for as long as they want it. So this would mean the e-portfolio you develop for your manager could also be used to highlight your skills should you ever look for another job.

However - this does end up sounding like a glorified CV, rather than a 'learning process'...I think in the end e-portfolios are slippery little buggers and hard to pin down!

Response:

I think part of my frustration stems from the fact that we're using ePortfolios in a way that's somewhere between that of a blog and a wiki. Without the time bound element of a blog I sometimes find it hard to pick up strands of thought effectively - I sometimes feel like I end up with disjointed bits that I've written whilst reading different source materials, and I'm not sure how to join them up into a coherent piece. For writing up my reflective assignment I'll try dropping in my blog posts & forum articles with a 'time stamp' on them so I can remember a little better where I was coming from!

With regards to using ePortfolios like CVs, I also feel a bit of frustration because I'm absolutely rotten at self-promotion like this.

Personal Knowledge Management

Originally published to eBridge on Wednesday 13 June 2012

I've managed to find a solution to my problems - I hope! I've got started on Harold Jarche's online course, and I've been thinking about the Seek - Sense - Share model that he presents for producing actionable knowledge from the vast amount of information available on the web. In particular the sharing aspect, particularly with people outside of the original group, gives us a greater chance of being able to find it again, not only because it's in multiple locations (helpful if one of them degrades!) but we've also made important decisions about what to share and how.

Decision making is a vital aspect of learning more deeply, and I'm hoping to bring this into future designs of learning resources, particularly as I've been asked to get involved with some anti-bribery e-learning. The banality of compliance e-learning has been rearing its head in the background for some time, but now I feel ready to take on the beast with a new perspective. I could throw a stream of information and multiple choice questions at learners, but I've come to know better than expecting mere information recall!

Asking people to make decisions and seeing believable feedback can help to make the desired behaviours come more instinctively. Ask people to become experts in quoting rules back at you and they'll either switch off straight away, or develop bad ideas about how to use them because they haven't got the time to become an expert on the subject. Either way you're hitting the limit of time that they have to pay attention to you, which is either little or zero. If you can get them to make a few decisions within an engaging scenario, perhaps a little of the desired message will really stick, perhaps they'll even come back for a second helping - one can only hope!

Keep an eye out for the PKM course running again and remember that it's not just the raw material on the course that counts, but the opportunity to connect with people from across the world.

'Chance favours the connected mind' (Steven Johnson)

Background reading

Originally published to eBridge on Wednesday 23 May 2012

I've started reading a new book this week: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction

by Karl Kapp. It should prove to be an interesting read - the foreword alone has got thoughts racing through my head! There are plenty of factors in common with other books on the subject that I have read lately, such as McGonigal (2011), about aspects of human motivation (which Kapp himself has written about in detail) that persist throughout the ages, and suggest that the recurring cycle of economic depressions may be evidence that humanity is pursuing the wrong dream for happiness, not to mention financial well-being!

References:

• Kapp, K. (2012).  The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-Based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education.  San Francisco: Pfeiffer
• McGonigal, J. (2011).  Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.  New York: The Penguin Press

Philosophical interlude

Originally posted to eBridge on Sunday 25 March 2012

'I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious

thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions'

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Perhaps I'm being a little random here, but is there a certain parallel between this statement and depth of learning? We often overload ourselves with facts in our conceptions of what it means to learn, but unless those facts translate into practical action, what good has the 'learning' done us? Can we even be said to have learned it, or have our working memories managed to capture words and spit them back out as a parrot might?

If our assessment of our own work is to have any real meaning, we must consider for ourselves what actions may come from it. What good is it that we create a poster, or talk over our collaborative work, if we do not define actions that we desire to take based upon our new understanding? Simply maintaining the status quo in assessment is not enough, in fact reinforcing existing errors in the digital context will lead us only to faster iteration of those errors. Not something that a Masters degree should lead one to do I think.

During the course of this module I will be involved in setting up our new talent management approach - an assessment of sorts I suppose but traditionally a very subjective and individual one. Everybody within a company could be considered to be collaborating with each other to some extent, and they need a worthwhile framework to operate within, receiving meaningful feedback - and feed forward. This is one thing that the new approach should exceed its predecessor on , but only if it is implemented correctly, and I look forward to contributing effective online support to it!

Getting started

Originally posted to eBridge on Monday 19 March 2012

This is going to be an interesting module as we start to look into the culture of assessment itself. My first and most resounding revelation has come from reading one of favourite books on education, Making Learning Happen (Race, 2010). Throughout the course to date, the primary means through which I have been assessed is essays. Race is particularly critical of the use of essays for assessment, and one of the key areas in which essays generally fail is validity, since the skill that is actually being assessed is the ability to write essays, which isn't valued outside of the higher education context.

So this brings about uncomfortable questions, such as:

• Have I developed any skills other than essay writing?
• Have I really mastered the content, or just learned to write eloquently about it?
• Will I be able to convince my employers (present or future) that I have developed during the course?
• What will I be able to do differently as a result of being on this course?
• Have I been valuing the right kind of skills?
• Will my skills enhance my future practice and make a difference to others?

I think my participation on the course constitutes more than just writing a few essays, since I have developed my critical thinking. I have always been drawn to introspection, but perhaps not been so good at communicating my thoughts to others, so taking the time to develop my writing skills has been of benefit, as evidenced through my keeping a public blog to communicate to others within a new medium - some people actually seem to have taken notice too! My colleagues do seem to appreciate that I have been pushing the boundaries of what I do, although how I progress within the organisation seems to be a very uncertain issue, particularly as we are undergoing reorganisation at the moment, although perhaps that's a good environment for finding new opportunities?

For the future I am resolved to thinking and questioning how the assessment process is really working, and how I can influence others to make a real difference; after all I am working for the largest of the assessment bodies in the country...

References:

• Race, P. 2010, Making Learning Happen: A Guide for Post-Compulsory Education. 2^nd ed. Sage.