assessment for learning: use of eportfolios in teacher education programs

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assessment for learning use of eportfolios in
teacher education programs

• Assoc Prof Glenn Finger

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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

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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.

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Our guiding principles...
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Our L T Strategic Plan...
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Something about me...
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Inside the actors 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?

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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

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The teaching technologies...
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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 whats 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
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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
  teachers 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
• Tailoring the adaptations to the specific
  students in the classroom

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TPACK (formerly TPCK)
AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology,
2008
Mishra Koehler, 2006
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Our students? 2003 audit
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Our students? 2003 audit
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School-home difference
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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

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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
  Queenslands 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.

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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)

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ICT enhanced ePortfolio Process

• The major assessment

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ePortfolios

• Purpose and process

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ePortfolio possibilities...

• Institutional ePortfolios

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ePortfolio possibilities...

• Learner Centred ePortfolios

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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).

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ePortfolios 2.0
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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).

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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 users 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.

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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 users 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
  institutions MIS infrastructure
• Light. It is not a permanent repository of all
  of a users 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)

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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)
• Glenns 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

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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.

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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 nowthe 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)

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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..
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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...

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