Activity 3.1 - personal & professional development objectives

What have I learned about my strengths and weaknesses?

Weaknesses?
On the whole I'm most vulnerable in a few key areas... researching new developments, issues and academic findings stands out as the most pressing one. When I think about it, I'm more of a "handson" learner .. and thus I tend to avoid it or at the very least only "do" it when something becomes topical enough that it requires learning more about it in formal ways. I'm not one to devote time to do it on a regular basis (and I'm now really curious how others address the same need for it) but the exercise of doing a detailed review of my job description made it pretty obvious that my current strategy won't be enough. I also realized the importance of promoting effective community building - something that I highly value and yet I haven't committed time and resources to learning more on how to effectively realize it in ages and certainly not much in the way of realizing it online.

It's now looking pretty obvious that in addressing these two shortcomings, my game as an Education Technology Specialist is raised .. and it should help feed the other "stronger cards in my hand".

Strengths?
I really wanted to avoid declaring myself an expert of anything. I'm not fond of the term because I don't consider it something that anyone should really be"annointing themselves with. Perhaps with the formal recognition of my peers on the same topic, I would feel more comfortable using the term.. but that hasn't happened anywhere often enough nor with much fanfare for me to do it. I've only learned since being hired how I have a reputation for making and using learning objects effectively. As a result, I managed to convince myself that perhaps I could be bold enough to apply the term "expert" for my effective use of technology / projects in teaching and learning. But only after carefully reviewing it and even still, I'm bound to be brown nosed by someone else out there. My grounds? A now 20 year period of relatively uninterrupted experience with and increased understandng of the use of technology in teaching and learning.

The matter of comparing myself with my peers brought up a number of other interesting problems and unearthed another set of issues. Our rather small department hardly gives me much of anyone to compare myself with and to go outside the University, I'd be hard pressed to know others of our ilke who I could meet to compare notes. Which raises the issue of professional "isolation" and the need to make a conscious effort to overcome this. Thus the only really viable option seems to be online communities. This theme is emerging more and more.

Activity 3.4 - choosing an ePortfolio system

Recall as part of the University's mission, that our student's expect to graduate as bilingual, it literate, global citizens and leaders. The eportfolio concept offers our undergraduates a number of opportunites to evidence their development in these core areas. As possible examples,

• language development via the collection of speaking and writing samples
• IT development via the production and assembly of evidence and in the design of the eportfolio to hold them
• global citizenship realized via the use of ICT tools to facilitate constructive dialogue with people from other cultures around the world
• leadership skill development via documentation of reflection on community based issues and their choice of actions

To support this we should expect to provide students with an eportfolio strategy that addresses the following four key points.

promoting reflection
Fundamental to any strategy's selection will be its ability to promote more than the collection of evidence but a reflection activity cycle (Richards) and host the lifelong and lifewide benefits that it brings (Moon, Richards). To realize this, students may need templates with guided focus questions that encourage them to inter relate concepts learned across their courses of study and to revist these themes throughout their undergrad studies.

flexibility vs structure
It should be flexibile enough to address changing student needs, levels of competency and choice. Undergraduates collecting evidence for the first time may require the highly structured environment as noted above(Stefani, 2005). Yet as students progress, they may wish to customize or even opt out of this structured environment to use the eportfolio strategy to meet other needs as they prepare to move on from their undergrad studies (Jafari).

Ease of Use
During their stay, students may differ widely in their interest in IT skills development. Note they may also need to communicate in both Arabic (L1) and English (L2) . Thus to support the portfolio strategy's development, it needs to facilitate the use of IT at these varying levels of interest and it must do so in two languages (Jafari) Thus the chosen eportfolio strategy needs to be easy enough to master and realizable in such a manner that it does not draw the student away from its prime purpose - to support documentation of evidence and to facilitate reflection.

collaboration
Per work by Vuorikari and Batson, the eportfolio strategy should facilitate interaction and sharing of knowledge with ones peers, advisors and instructors. To do so provides students with both immediate support and learning opportunites via the exchanges with peers. These have also been found to encourage the much sought after higher order learning, thinking and knowledge construction (Richards).

The current review of "off the shelf" eportfolio products leads me to conclude that few come close to addressing the mix of needs listed above. Many provide forms of structure but without much room for student customization at later stages of development (i.e. graduation). Little or no mention is also made of their ability to support the use of languages other than English.

In lieu of these shortcomings, I recommend investigating the use of the growing prevelance of web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and aggregators. All such utilities are readily available and often for free. Some like blogs inherently support reflection, others like wikis support easy editing, high degrees of customization and personalization. Yet can be readily supported via the use of the same strategies noted above. Via the use of aggregators, mashups of these various tools and their contents are also possible (Batson, 2008) thus making them a much more attractive proposition.

Sources

Batson, Trent (2008) ‘ePortfolios: Hot Once Again’, Campus Technology, [online] Available from: http://campustechnology.com/articles/60933/ (Accessed 26 September 2008).

Jafari, Ali (2004) ‘The “Sticky” ePortfolio System: Tackling Challenges and Identifying Attribute’, Educause Review, [online] Available from: http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/TheStickyePortfolioSystem/40485?time=1222282897 (Accessed 24 September 2008).

Moon, Jenny (2001) ‘PDP working paper 4: reflection in higher education learning’, document, [online] Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id72_Reflection_in_Higher_Education_Learning.rtf (Accessed 2 October 2008).

Richards, Cameron (2005) ‘Activity-reflection e-portfolios: An approach to the problem of effectively integrating ICTs in teaching and learning’, Murdoch University - Teaching & Learning Forum 2005, [online] Available from: http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf2005/refereed/richards.html (Accessed 5 October 2008).

Stefani, Lorraine (2005) ‘The Role of CPD in Teaching Quality Enhancement’, pdf, Auckland, New Zealand , [online] Available from: http://64.233.183.104/u/LearningTechnology?q=cache:YRY_ajTIbh0J:www.alt.ac.uk/docs/lorraine_stefani_paper.doc+Stefani&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&ie=UTF-8 (Accessed 30 September 2008).

Vuorikari , R. (2006) ‘‘National policies and case studies on the use of portfolios in teacher training' - European Schoolnet 2006’, [online] Available from: http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/insight/documents/e_portfolio_teacher_training_final_10_05.pdf (Accessed 28 September 2008).

Activity 3.3 Understanding eportfolio software (preview)

I'm speculating before I begin this review that the following features will be most important to me or to my hypothetical students..

1) ease of use
It has to be easy enough to learn. That can be achieved with built in support or readily available JIT tutorials.

2) flexibility yet structure
Dichotomy here, one wants flexibility yet there is a certain amount of structure needed, certainly for an absolute beginner who may need a set of guided questions. But a more experienced user may opt to drop this structure in favour of getting more freedom to design as they see fit.

3) interoperability / portability
If I'm going to invest so much time and energy into something and over an extended period of time.. then I need to feel confident that whatever I'm using will be transferable to another system.

4) support / modelling of benefits
For anyone just starting on this trek to build an eportfolio, their ability to "see" the benefits of an eportfolio and how those benefits can be easily realized is fundamental to realizing "buying in" ... That equates to providing clear models / examples and constantly available support. That support can come in many forms - interaction / collaboration with ones peers, and/or IT support agents.

Reflection - PDP needs analysis proves to be difficult

PDP needs analysis proved to be more difficult than I had imagined it might be. I found myself swimming in too much choice. I'm leaning towards making the main focus of it my new job. I sense that this would be a natural focus for most any other person in my situation. However, I'm also aware of how a review of these areas risks moving away from personal development ..This challenges what I thought was the importance I place on a holistic view of things. This was something that I learned about myself in the life coaching sessions I had earlier this year.

It seems I have some more thinking to do.

Summary - eFolio Minnesota for Lifewide & Lifelong Learning

eFolio article from Minnesota was very informative.. I had a sense that the H808 course was modelling its approach on the Univ of Minnesota's eFolio initiative AND drawing on the research findings to improve upon it.

Key items that stood out for me?

Process of efolio development
experimentation / living document / archiving

In short, experimentation on what can be added, what should be added, in what form should it should take, and what structure might it take... but also key to it is having a chance to share ideas with peers (getting feedback, learning about other approaches, etc.) to sort out what its purpose is (and it can be multiple). Once this has been sorted out, the portfolio becomes a living document .. something to be added to.

Realizing Integrity
Ties into audience and projecting authenticity. An integration of both the professional & personal really helps realize this. I read this to mean displaying one's underlying values & how they come out in both one's professional / personal worlds. Perhaps best realized through the selection / display of diverse forms of evidence from all spheres of one's life.

Variety of uses
Impressive variety of common uses
- six main functions
* educational planning
* documenting knowledge, skills & abilities
* tracking development
* finding a job
* evaluating a course

Changing roles for users
How these roles can switch over time and even be concurrent. For example one can be a student (studying something) and a teacher (working in the day time) at the same time... which means being able / encouraged to draw in volunteer / community development work as well as one's professional work into the portfolio.

The concept of lifelong AND lifewide learning
I was aware of lifelong learning but I had never heard of the concept of "lifewide" learning. I interpret this to mean a holistic review of all aspects of my life - personal and professional development.

Critical need for Institutional Support
Research outlined the important need for the institution to promote collaboration between students in the development of their portfolios (something that most students found invaluable to their development). and to also support the "presentation" of the portfolio concept. It also needed to provide some sort of framework to make the task easier for learners to manage. Curiously enough, the eFolio made no effort to promote planning with it (which led to a suggestion that it should review this).

Good source of sample eportfolios
Especially useful for modelling how three different "users" could shape eportfolios using the same fundamental structure - students / educators / career (example - http://www.jasonschoch.efoliomn1.com/ )