October 2004 Newsletter

Volume 8 Issue 8  October 2004

e-Portfolios & The Inquiry Learning Process:

Where to start and where we could go

"People who talk about education have forever been mouthing aphorisms about teaching students to think for themselves.  It is the holy grail of teaching.  Everyone believes it, but very few do much about it."

Roger Hutchins P19 www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hillis04/hillis04_index.html

The idea of students compiling portfolios of their work has a considerable history but it gathered momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with professional development programs being run for teachers to encourage the practice among students. The outcome was often a collection of "random" work samples rather than portfolios with a specific purpose.  For many teachers portfolios became impractical and very time-consuming and at the very best were simply a collection of the students’ best work with appropriate teacher comments, and the fact remained that in most cases neither the intent nor the rationale behind the development of portfolios was being achieved. 

One of the key intentions of portfolios was to provide a more authentic assessment process rather than simply setting a test at the conclusion of a given unit of work.  In other words the intent of portfolios was to represent the learning process that the student had gone through in coming to understand the concepts that underpinned the objective of the unit or topic.  We have already discussed at some length in previous newsletters the transition from the first education paradigm [where information was rare, expensive but reliable, and where the focus of learning was on gaining knowledge]; into the second education paradigm [where the supply of information was overwhelming. It was also cheap but unreliable and the focus of learning was on understanding]. 

The graph below represents the various transitions that are enabled as schools and teachers change the fundamental pedagogy from the first to the second paradigm.

Electronic portfolios are a key element in successfully making this paradigm shift, and if you examine the first paradigm focus points above and their transitions you will see that electronic portfolios marry up perfectly with the second education paradigm school program.

So what exactly are electronic portfolios?  One of the fundamental purposes of assessment is to gather evidence of what students can do, what they understand and how well they are able to apply the new knowledge or concept.  Assessment is not just a measurement of student capability but an integral part of the teaching and learning process which should benefit both student and teacher. The teacher learns how successful the teaching processes have been, and the feedback from the assessment process acts as a guide towards further learning for both student and teacher where it is evident that concepts on knowledge have not been firmly established. For the student it is also a form of encouragement. “ePortfolios contents and services can be shared with others in order to support Prior Learning Accreditation and Recognition (PLAR), complete or replace exams, reflect on one’s learning or career, support continuing professional development, plan learning or search a job.” http://www.qwiki.info/projects/Europortfolio

Authentic assessment focuses on the second paradigm outputs, and in particular on demonstrating understanding rather than just the recall of any given knowledge set.  Electronic portfolios focus on the learning process that the student has been engaged in, and represents this process through a collection of artifacts.  These artifacts could include but are not limited to: written work, video clips of presentations, digital photographs of three-dimensional artifacts, taped oral presentations, logs or journals, project and research work, links to online documentation that has influenced the author, original or digital photographs of visual language work, interviews, information planning, links to online blogs and discussions, links to material within the Knowledge NET or intranet, cooperative work, graphic organisers, self or peer assessments, simulations, design processes, flow charts, strategic management documentation. . . . . The list is almost endless.

From the list above it can be seen that one of the difficulties with collating physical portfolios was the amount of space they required and the difficulty in presenting this information in total to an interested third party, such as the parent/caregiver.  This difficulty has been overcome considerably with our capacity to present almost all the various types of artifacts above in an electronic format.  However it now becomes necessary to store the selection of information within an intranet or Knowledge NET environment in a format which is easily accessible by anyone, anywhere, any time [A³].

As mentioned earlier, the temptation with any portfolio is to simply collect samples of the student’s best work, a practice that does not conform to our requirements of gathering a representation of work that shows the learning process or the authentic assessment of the process in which the learner has been engaged.  For this reason certain key issues must be addressed when attempting to use electronic portfolios successfully.

·         The need for students to be very clear as to the specific purpose of the portfolio as this purpose will vary depending upon the objectives set by the teacher, the student or the collaborative objective(s) that have been set.

·         The use of inquiry learning, and the setting of well structured questions including the essential or key question as well as subsidiary questions, all of which allow students to build the knowledge and concepts necessary to answer the key/essential question through the inquiry process model.

The specific purpose of a portfolio could be any of the following:

·         Present a portfolio that shows the design process that your group went through in order to create your final product, system or environment.

·         Your portfolio should show the development of the ideas behind your final work of art.

·         The focus of this unit in social studies is on looking at differences and similarities in cultures.  Create an electronic portfolio that will become a "time capsule" which will be "dug up" in 50 years time.  Create the portfolio with the discoverers of your time in mind and write about them from this perspective.

·         In doing your research there were many different inputs that had an effect on your final result, and your portfolio should represents these and their relative significance to your final research document.

·         Use your electronic portfolio to show evidence of the following qualities that you/your team have had to call into play throughout this unit of work:

§         Persistence

§         Teamwork (belonging, participating and contributing)

§         Reflective practices

§         Problem solving

§         Critical literacy

§         Managing your time effectively

§         Confidence

·         Your portfolio should be in the form of a log/blog which represents the history of your personal learning journey through this topic.

·         Your portfolio should represent a reflective process (Journal) on how your fitness levels increased over the three-month period, and should include the encouragements and/or discouragements that you encountered, and their affect on your attitude towards the fitness program that you developed.

·         At the beginning of the science unit you will have had an understanding of the idea of "floating and sinking" and at the end of the unit your ideas may vary between considerably different and somewhat modified. Your portfolio should reflect a flowchart showing your initial ideas and how they evolved to become your final understanding of why things float or sink.

·         Your portfolio should include a collection of 8 one-minute videotape clips showing how the play production process evolved. Your presentation should demonstrate four key elements: attitudes, your understanding of the play's messages, the development of the set and your ability to work as a team.

·         Using your understanding of the seven different intelligences (Gardner: Multiple Intelligences) demonstrate how each of these intelligences was applied through this unit of work, showing the development of your ideas by highlighting two pieces of work that in your view are representative of as many of the different intelligences as possible.

As you can see, the potential for electronic portfolios covers a vast landscape of possibilities, limited only by the imagination of the teacher.  However the exemplar above merely focuses on the presentation of the portfolio, while the earlier reference is about the setting of the key/essential and underpinning support questions, along with the effective use of resources to support the question via a process known as the Inquiry Method of teaching and learning.

The inquiry method of teaching and learning is built on some of the principles espoused by John Dewey who asserted that children are natural learners and are naturally curious.  From the New Zealand web site "living heritage" http://www.livingheritage.org.nz/started/inquirylearn.shtml

"Memorizing facts and information is not the most important skill in today's world.  Facts change, and information is readily available – what’s needed is an understanding of how to find, make sense of, and use relevant information for specific purposes."

Inquiry learning begins with an essential or key question that is: either proposed by the teacher, negotiated between the teacher and students or proposed entirely by the students themselves.  Setting an essential or key question requires a good working knowledge of how to set effective, motivational questions which will open up a topic for students to explore. However, for the students to successfully answer the key question it is important to either provide or negotiate with them, a collection of subsidiary questions that will enable them to build knowledge and concepts necessary for them to answer the essential or key question from an informed position.

Once the essential or key question is set and the subsidiary questions negotiated the students will need to decide how they are going to answer this question. They could for instance, put together a strategic plan that would include the resources and processes required to gather the appropriate knowledge, and create the conceptual framework that will be required in order to answer the question.  They will also need to focus on how they are going to share their newly found knowledge with others. This will in turn frame up what sort of resources they will have to create in order to share the knowledge and understanding effectively with their chosen group.

The questioning issue is one of considerable concern.  Setting effective, fertile (stimulating and motivational), clever, high order (according to the modified Blooms taxonomy http://www.i-learnt.com/Paradigm_Questioning.html), connected (contextual to the student) or open questions (without necessarily a right or wrong answer), is an art, and to begin with it would be desirable that the teacher set some sample questions while at the same time setting aside some class time to ensure that students build up their skills in this area.  In rich information environments it is not just the resource content that is critical to the success of student research but rather the capability of the student to access information through the ability to ask the right question.

“The ability to pose questions to understand ourselves and our world is at the heart of what it means to be human. Unfortunately, this essential human trait is distorted in many schools by an answering pedagogy: When questions arise, knowledgeable teachers ask the ignorant students questions primarily in the form of an examination.” Yoram Harpaz and Adam Lefstein: Communities of Thinking http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/200011/abstracts.html#harpaz

There are numerous web sites dealing with questioning strategies but an excellent starting place is with the work of Jamie McKenzie: "A Questioning Toolkit" and "Filling the Toolbox" http://questioning.org/Q7/toolkit.html are both good reference points when it comes to asking a wide range of different types of questions which “shift the focus of classrooms from teacher orchestrated mastery and memory of information, to student processing of information to create understanding and improve problem solving” Jamie McKenzie.

Once the question is set and subsidiary questions established it is then up to the student to plan how to attack and interrogate the information and resources provided in order to be able to answer the essential/key question successfully.  The plan will include a wide range of different tools and resources, and provide the basis for creating the presentation.  The format for the presentation is primarily up to the students and will be based on good teaching and learning theory.  In essence students require the same knowledge and skills that teachers use when carrying out similar planning.  Once again, students are being asked to learn a new range of skills that have traditionally not been taught within our education systems.  This implies that in order to accommodate the teaching of the skills the amount of content has to reduce considerably over the next 5-10 years, or sooner if possible. 

Presentational formats should be fully interactive, containing a good balance of oral, visual and written language material reflecting the student’s everyday life happenings.  The sooner we remove the focus (in some cases paranoia) on written language being the primary communication tool for adults, the sooner we can communicate more effectively and more efficiently our ideas, concerns and our visions.

It is essential that once students have done their research and presented their learning to their audience they have time to reflect on that learning and their rate of progress in its understanding.  Reflective practice is a critical element of the inquiry learning process and needs to be given sufficient time and resources in order to be successful.

When students work either individually or in teams on well researched questions it almost goes without saying that they will want to engage in some specific desired action following their research, presentation and reflective practice.  Well- researched questions almost inevitably engender passion, and passion by its very nature engenders action.  It is crucial that the inquiry learning process provides the opportunity for students to take an action step following their research, as this can have a considerable impact on their "community", in the widest sense of the word.

Electronic portfolios when embedded in a web based world are the perfect environment for carrying out inquiry based learning.  With new WYSIWYG editor’s embedded communication tools, and specifically designed electronic portfolios within the Knowledge NET or intranet it is easy and simple to add content in an online environment.  The online environment should also contain a range of discussion, blogging and content sharing tools in order for the students to record their learning progress and their understanding as it develops.  The portfolio should reflect the learning process, not just the product of the learning process.

In order to record the inquiry learning process effectively an electronic portfolio requires the following "spaces", tools and resources.

·         Some simple project management tools.

·         An online blog in order to record reflective comments and encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas between members of a team and members of other teams who may share common interests.

·         WYSIWYG spaces where students can cooperatively create multimedia presentations online, 24/7.

·         An online library of reviewed resources that students can access from any Internet enabled computer, eliminating the need for them to spend hours sifting through the vast unfiltered libraries of resources (Google et al).

·         Discussion areas where students can share their ideas with other students and also invite experts to come and be involved in their learning process.

·         Access to software that will enable students to create resource material and share their resulting discoveries and the learning process with their peers, parents/caregivers, teachers and the world.

The above objectives are quite achievable in today's electronic world, and the necessary software should be inexpensive and available on any Internet enabled computer at any time.  If you wish to trial an example of this type of environment you can e-mail mark@knolwedge-networks.co.nz and be provided with a Knowledge NET environment at no cost for a trial period.

The concept of the e-portfolio is seen as so powerful some countries are predicting that every citizen will have their own e-portfolio

“It is our belief that in 2010, every citizen will have an ePortfolio; this belief is supported by strong evidence such as the forward looking eLearning policy of Wales, which has already decided that each Welsh citizen will have an ePortfolio, the Italian Ministry of Education that has decided to provide each pupil and school with an ePortfolio.”  http://www.qwiki.info/projects/Europortfolio/ep2004/index_html  

The transition into the second education paradigm requires a teaching and learning culture that is considerably different from the one that is presently being delivered in most schools. Realistically we know that changes in culture can take many years especially when the traditions and infrastructure of the given culture are well entrenched. Nevertheless undoubtedly the innovators will make the transition in double-fast time, while the late adopters/"recalcitrants" will probably take somewhere between 5-15 years to make this transition.

This is the most exciting time to be an educator! We now have the capability to take advantage of this teaching pedagogy to teach for understanding, to provide students with effective tool sets in the 21st century, and to re-engage the large percentage of students who have disengaged themselves from the schooling system which is, philosophically and practically, at complete odds with the espoused desires of ministries and departments of education, of parents, of communities and most importantly of the students themselves who currently simply “don't get it!".  It is highly probable that those students who have managed to work successfully in the present system will do even better when exposed to the new paradigm.  What is most exciting though is the dramatic changes that are waiting in the wings for those students who have disengaged themselves from any institution-based learning system.  These are indeed exciting times to be an educator and a learner!

Comments and suggestions to

Mark Treadwell

Teachers@work.co.nz

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