Randy Bass - E-Portfolios and Learning

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Randy Bass, Georgetown University

E-Portfolios and the Problem of Learning in the Post-Course Era AAC&U Pre-Conference Symposium January 20,2010


Why did the Articles of Confederation fail so completely?

“Most historians believe the Founding Fathers spent a great deal of their first cons8tu8onal conven8on dra9ing the Declara'on of Independence and only realized on July 3rd that the Ar8cles were also due.” From America, by Jon Stewart & Co.


Sir Ken Robinson, “How Education Kills Creativity”

ted.com


Sir Ken Robinson, “How Education Kills Creativity” “What we need is a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.”

ted.com


E-Portfolios and the Problem of Learning in the Post-Course Era


“You know. It was taught as a Gen Ed course and I took it as a Gen Ed course.� Georgetown student, end of first year, focus group: reflecting a particular course in which, he claimed, he was not asked to engage with the material.


“You know. It was taught as a Gen Ed course and I took it as a Gen Ed course.” “What we ask students to do is who we ask students to be.” Kathleen Yancey (quoted by Liz Clark this morning)


  “...what the Net seems to be doing is

chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” The Atlantic, July/August 2008


Is Gen Ed Making Us Stupid?


Student Focus Groups What students are saying:   In many courses, they are not asked to engage with

the material--just to listen and to give it back.   Often they are not being challenged, asked to think

critically, or able to bring relevance to their learning.


“Call to Action” Student Focus Groups

  They are all very satisfied.   They all agreed there is a big difference

between a Georgetown education and a Georgetown degree.

  For the most part--of course there are

exceptions--their coursework is not where their meaningful learning is taking place.


High Impact Practices (National Survey of Student Engagement--NSSE) •

First-year seminars and experiences

Learning communities

Writing intensive courses

Collaborative assignments

Undergraduate research

Global learning/ study abroad

Internships

Capstone courses and projects


High Impact Activities and Outcomes 

High Impact Practices:

  Outcomes associated with High

impact practices

First-year seminars and experiences

Learning communities

Writing intensive courses

Collaborative assignments

Attend to underlying meaning

Integrate and synthesize

Undergraduate research

Discern patterns

Global learning/ study abroad

Internships

Apply knowledge in diverse situations

Capstone courses and projects

View issues from multiple perspectives

Gains in Skills, knowledge, practical competence , personal and social development


So, if high impact practices are largely in the extra curriculum, then where are the low-impact practices?


The Post-Course Era


If the formal curriculum is not where the high impact experiences are then there are three options (1) Make courses higher impact (2) Create better connections between courses and the high impact experiences outside the formal curriculum (3) Start shifting resources from from the formal to the high impact (experiential) curriculum


All of the above… changing nature of learning in the culture …will drive changing nature of learning in the classroom …will drive the way we need to support and assess student learning Whether we turn to improving the quality of courses, or try harder to connect courses to experiences, “courses” will no longer be the bounded experiences they have been.


E-Portfolios are the natural extension of the logic of the learning paradigm (Barr and Tagg, 1995).


John Seely Brown: Practice to Content content

practice


Looking from the Web in‌ How do we make formal learning environments more like informal learning? How do we make classroom learning more like participatory culture?


Participatory Culture How do we make classroom learning more like participatory culture?   Features of participatory culture   Low barriers to entry   Strong support for sharing one’s contributions   Informal mentorship, experienced to novice   Members feel a sense of connection to each other   Students feel a sense of ownership of what is being

created   Strong collective sense that something is at stake

Jenkins, et. al., The Challege of Participatory Culture


Six Characteristics of high impact practices AND definition of participatory learning   Features of participatory

culture (on the Web)

  Low barriers to entry   Strong support for sharing   

one’s contributions Informal mentorship, experienced to novice Members feel a sense of connection to each other Students feel a sense of ownership of what is being created Strong collective sense that something is at stake

  High impact experiences

(extra curriculum)

  Attend to underlying

meaning

  Integrate and synthesize   Discern patterns   Apply knowledge in diverse

situations

  View issues from multiple

perspectives

  Skills, knowledge, practical

competence , personal and social development


Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

NOVICE

MIRACLE

product

Bass & Elmendorf, 2007

EXPERT product


Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

LEARNING processes

NOVICE processes

LEARNING processes

EXPERT practice

LEARNING processes

How can we better understand these intermediate processes?

evidence of process

How might we design to foster and capture them?


Connecting Intermediate Processes to Practice

LEARNING processes

NOVICE processes

LEARNING processes

“Thin slices” of online discussion or blog

LEARNING processes

Traces of collaborative practice

evidence of Process

EXPERT practice Microreflections on the cutting room floor ePortfolio samples: drafts, reflections


#1: Social Pedagogies and a Large Lecture Course Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University Foundations of Biology BIOL-103

1st year Biology course

250 students

science majors & pre-meds


nd al a e rson nc f Pe gnifica i se o Sen ctual S lle Inte

Student Learning Goals (Students develop…)

A Sense of Audience and Voice

Participatory learning

Course Design Elements

Social   Pedagogies

Readings & On-line Conversation   Class & Think-Pair-Share   Lab & Partnered Inquiry   Problem Sets & Group Effort

around Authentic and Challenging Problems

  Research Paper & Shared Steps   Exams & Room for Uncertainty Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University


Prof Elmendorf’s Instructions to her Students for the Discussion Board

• Communicate about the reading. One of the best ways to learn something is to talk about it. Air your bafflement, express your wonder, ask your questions, try out a new idea of your own…And while I hope you will talk often about biology this semester with your classmates, I want to be sure you have an official forum for these conversations – and that you are rewarded for the effort you will expend having them.


Holding Conversations


Online Conversation


Jose Feito, on the importance of “not knowing”

“The theme of not-knowing [has] emerged as a key factor in the maintenance of a truly collaborative intellectual community within the classroom. In order for a shared inquiry to proceed productively, the participants must be able to regularly acknowledge their lack of understanding, offer partial understandings, and collectively digest the resulting discourse. Not-knowing is characterized by a group’s ability to defer meaning, tolerate ambiguity, hold divergent perspectives, and postpone closure. In order to develop, it requires a relatively non-judgmental classroom atmosphere, but not an uncritical one.”

Jose Feito, St. Mary’s University (Moraga, California, U.S.A.)


Online Conversation


Thin slices of learning Voice, agency, adaptive thinking all begin here‌


nd al a e rson nc f Pe gnifica i se o Sen ctual S lle Inte

Student Learning Goals (Students develop‌)

A Sense of Audience and Voice

Social Pedagogies

Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University

Part of the process of capturing student work in a portfolio will increasingly be capturing the process of coming to know.


Social Pedagogies and an Introductory Writing Class Writing, Invention, Media HUMW-011

1st year writing course

20 students

Gen Ed

Randy Bass, Georgetown University


Humanities & Writing 011   First-year required writing course   Section theme: “Writing, Invention, Media”   Core concept: “writing is a social act”   Core theme: Changes modes of learning, the

participatory culture of Web, and the nature of the University


Worthwhile Important

What is worth knowing and doing?

What is important to know and do?

CORE What is a core or enduring understanding? Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design


HUMW011: Writing, Invention, Media

Opening Day exercise: Writing in school?

Worthwhile Important

CORE Writing on the Web?


Core Values of Writing in School: Week One


Core Important Worthwhile


Core Understandings--writing in school (week one)

Core Understandings--digital, Writing on the web (week one)


Semester-long Project   Collectively write an essay responding to the claim

that Universities are radically out of step with new modes of learning (“participatory culture”) of the Web.

  20 students acting collectively as “author”   Write it together through crowd-sourcing and

collaborative editing—test the hypothesis that all of them together could write something better than any one of them

  Intent from the beginning is to publish it on the Web


Working in the Wiki


Social Bookmarking


Social Bookmarking


Collaborative Editing


CommentPress


CommentPress


Thin Slices Participatory learning + Web 2.0 tools Student work is in process, in practice— not just in summative work


Networked research group


Networked research group Yahoo Pipes


Networked research group


Participatory Culture and Formal Learning

Student team

Student team

Any mechanism for aggregating, feeding, filtering, tagging‌

Shared course blog or teacher / tutor space

Student team


Capstone Course in Engineering (Design competition) 70+ students

12 teams

Central RSS feed

Central RSS feed

Team blogs

two projects

Teacher watches, coaches (key source of capture for intermediate processes)

Team blogs


Thin Slices If we are to connect courses to the “holistic self-portrait� of the learner (Bret Eynon), then we not only to link out but in..


A Sense of Audience and Voice

nd al a e rson nc f Pe gnifica i se o Sen ctual S lle Inte

Student Learning Goals

PRACTICE: Features of Participatory Process

• Help students create markers of certainty and uncertainty • Provide opportunities for relearning • Design opportunities for meaningful reflection on Practice


A Sense of Audience and Voice

nd al a e rson nc f Pe gnifica i se o Sen ctual S lle Inte

Student Learning Goals

PRACTICE: Features of Participatory Process

• Help students create markers of certainty and uncertainty • Provide opportunities for relearning • Design opportunities for meaningful reflection on Practice

Link to eportfolios Connecting to faculty?

Make courses portfolioaware, portfolioadapted


Tim Kastelle University of Queensland, “Successful Open Business Models”

Tim Kastelle “Successful Open Business Models on the Web”

Aggregate Filter


Tim Kastelle University of Queensland, “Successful Open Business Models”

Tim Kastelle In the 21st Century, how do colleges and universities “add value”? • Aggregate • Filter


Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models�

Tim Kastelle The important business model idea here is that the role of the person putting the course together is not necessarily to create content, or to transfer it into the heads of the students. The main jobs here are aggregating and filtering – compiling information, figuring out what is essential, and then creating a framework within which students can explore this knowledge using all of tools (mental, physical and digital) at their disposal.


Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models”

Tim Kastelle In general, this [participatory learning] is where students gain value in this kind of setting. It’s a very challenging way to teach. There’s no set of slides to guide you, your primary resource is what you know, and there is a small but measurable chance that things can go completely haywire. On the other hand, when it works, it is exhilarating. So I’m adding a third key value adding activity for digital business models: connecting.


Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models” “Successful Open Business Models” (higher education) • Aggregate • Information resources • Filter • Knowledge (what knowledge is worth knowing) • Scholarship (peer review) • Graduates (employability) • Connect • Ideas, experiences, people


Shift in How We Add Value

AGGREGATE FILTER

CONNECT


Tim Kastelle, “Successful Open Business Models�

Tim Kastelle Connecting is critically important both in journalism and in education. So that makes three value adding activities in the digital economy: aggregating, filtering, and connecting. The lesson to take from the current states of both the music industry and journalism is that you have to have a clear understanding of how you’re creating value so that you build and protect the correct parts of your business model. Perhaps universities can learn this lesson before educational business models are disrupted as well.


Shift in How We Add Value

COURSE ERA

AGGREGATE FILTER

CONNECT

POSTCOURSE ERA


E-PORTFOLIOS ARE TOOLS that PUT FILTERING and CONNECTION in STUDENT HANDS




A Sense of Audience and Voice

nd al a e rson nc f Pe gnifica i se o Sen ctual S lle Inte

Student Learning Goals

PRACTICE: Features of Participatory Process

• Help students create markers of certainty and uncertainty • Provide opportunities for relearning • Design opportunities for meaningful reflection on Practice and integration of experience


We have had our why's, how's, and what's upside-down, focusing too much on what should be learned, than how, and often forgetting the why altogether. In a world of nearly infinite information, we must first address why, facilitate how, and let the what generate naturally from there.

Michael Wesch, “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able,� Academic Commons, January 2009 (academiccommons.org)


But even as we shift our focus to the “how” of learning, there is still the question of “what” is to be learned. After all, our courses have to be about something. Usually our courses are arranged around “subjects”…. As an alternative, I like to think that we are not teaching subjects but subjectivities: ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world.

Michael Wesch, “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able,” Academic Commons, January 2009


E-Portfolios are the critical apparatus of the shift from subjects to subjectivities

Implementing E-portfolios is a way of catching up to where we already are: the end of the course as a bounded learning experience


JAMES F. SLEVIN 1948-2005


“My Final Wish… May all your electronic portfolios become dynamic celebrations and stories of deep learning across the lifespan.”

Dr. Helen Barrett


Visible Knowledge Project (Bass and Eynon)

Academiccommons.org


Randy Bass contact (for slides, follow up): bassr@georgeotwn.edu


Visible Knowledge Project Findings

  Adaptive expertise   Embodied learning   Socially situated learning


Visible Knowledge Project Findings   Adaptive expertise:   Process   Practice   Metacognition   “judgment in uncertainty”   Embodied pedagogies:   Beyond the cognitive   Integrative   Socially situated pedagogies:   Social, participatory learning changes intellectual development


Threshold Concepts

“A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress…. Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.


“As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over a considerable period of time, with the transition to understanding proving troublesome. Such a transformed view or landscape may represent how people ‘think’ in a particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend, or experience particular phenomena within that discipline (or more generally).” Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.


Examples (acc to Meyer and Land)   Economics: Concept of Opportunity cost   Mathematics: Concept of a Limit   Literary and Cultural Studies: Concept of

signification


When someone truly understands a threshold concepts, it is... •  Transformative: may occasion a significant shift in perception of a subject (or even personal identity) •  Irreversible: unlikely to be forgotten or unlearned •  Integrative: exposes previously hidden interrelatedness of something


Among the reasons why a learner might not be able to truly understand a threshold concept is because it presents...   Troublesome Knowledge (Perkins, 1999):

  “A threshold concept may on its own

constitute, or in its application lead to… troublesome knowledge.” (Meyer and Land, 2003) -troublesomeness protracts or blocks crossing the threshold: putting the learner in a liminal or stuck place


  Threshold Concepts are not really “concepts”

but conceptually-driven intellectual moves particular to a knowledge domain and a community that can really only be understood through application.


Not just about knowledge to be acquired, but

Ways of thinking

Embodied

Ways of acting (practice) Ways of talking A sense of identity Not just knowing, but the experience of knowing (and coming to know)


Not just about knowledge to be acquired, but

Ways of thinking

Embodied

Ways of acting (practice) Ways of talking A sense of identity Not just knowing, but the experience of knowing (and coming to know)


References and Collaborations Randy Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, “Examining the Value of Social Pedagogies: A Paradigm for Deepening Disciplinary Engagement among Undergraduate Students,” ISSOTL 2009. Heidi Elmendorf, Georgetown University (Biolgy): Foundations of Biology. John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0” Educause Review (Jan/Feb 2008) Henry Jenkins, et. al., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, MacArthur Foundation Occasional Paper, 2007. Tim Kastelle, (University of Queensland) Innovation Leadership Network, http:// timkastelle.org/blog/ George Kuh, High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter, AAC&U, 2008. Lee Shulman. “The Pedagogies of Uncertainty,” Liberal Education Spring 2005. William Sullivan and Matt Rosin, A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping the Life of the Mind for Practice. Jossey-Bass, 2008.


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