Completing a mapped outcome qualification in a Reflective Portfolio with FE Tutors
Acknowledgements
Di Dawson of JISC TechDIs - Teacher, programme design and assessor
To my teaching colleagues at Thanet College who volunteered for the programme in their personal time & in addition to their College commitments.
Kirsty Bryant - Internal Verifier
The students:
Jenny Bean
Nigel Breadman
Ian Clarke
Nick Holbrook-Sutcliffe
Ray Holland
Paul Manning
Paula Stroud
Introduction
Oh Lord, make me radical…. But only if it’s safe….
Thanet College of Further Education serves the East Kent community. The college has over the last few years explored and experimented with different types of personal learning space and has recently completed a series of formal experiments in the use of reflective portfolios for staff and, in particular teachers. On the back of this work we wish to explore the possibility of completing formal training directly inside Reflect, (the portfolio offered by the Institute for Learning (IfL)), taking advantage of the reflective and storytelling properties of the portfolio over and above more traditional methods of capturing and cataloguing completion of learning outcomes. If this approach works in one college, it can work amongst the remaining 180,000 members who all own the same portfolio, taking advantage of the extraordinary occurrence of every FE teacher being given the same technology at the same time. This phenomena has still not yet been truly exploited, nor the value of the work done by the IfL in leading this. To this end 7 of 9 teachers started an ITQ in participative technologies, designed by JISC TechDIs and validated by City & Guilds.
It is generally accepted that reflective thinking and writing allows the demonstration of more profoundly personal learning and that this, coupled with the personalised nature of portfolio ownership meant that students would be able to capture idiosyncratic, deeply reflective stories of their learning encounters and the portfolio would be robust enough to support the individual journeys taken, notwithstanding that each learner ends up with a set of common learning outcomes completed. Indeed we found that learners found many different ways in order to demonstrate through real-life experiences the completion of learning outcomes or, in the case of the qualification we use performance criteria.
The Perfect Storm
The work we are doing is based on three emergent and converging aspects of e-learning.
- the rise of the reflective learner
- The emergence of the technology “for the one” available in personal learning space (E portfolios)
- a recognition that improvement in effectiveness as professional teachers comes from the work of the individual, accounting themselves and managing their own journey rather than taking part in group training exercises.
These three aspects, having risen at the same time gave rise to our exploration of portfolio based learning.
The method
The qualification requires the completion of 6 units, each with between 15 and 20 specific competencies, requiring learners to find and map evidence in support of a claim. However, rather than just listing and mapping these, the student activity in thinking, creating, using and criticising the evidence was described in a narrative, in a webfolio for each of the Units. The 6 were then put together as web pages in a larger Portfolio, who page was an introduction to the work and to the student. A profile of competencies was then added as a final page with the claims to evidence made. Podcasting and monthly lessons, delivered by an expert through Elluminate provided the direction of learning. The student met regularly and blogged, providing the challenge and stretch for the course. 7 teachers completed an ITQ in participative technologies. All were reasonably familiar with Pebble Pad (Reflect) and understood the conceptual nature of using personal learning space for reflective thinking and recording.
A pre-prepared web folio for each Unit was downloaded from a unit gateway that contains the criteria and instructions for what content needed to be added to each page.
During the course students were able to claim the evidence against each of them that were then assessed for massively. Each completed my portfolio was then posted to a gateway for summit of assessment and internal and external verification.
Reflect
We wanted to see if it was possible to complete a recognised course that had specific and required outcomes through a process of reflective thinking and writing, a design that at first sight, appears paradoxical. The course design required the signing-off of evidence as a secondary and consequential action to the main event which was the story of the journey of learning and the understanding gained from it. We wanted to test whether it was possible to deliver any kind of training in reflective manner so that we were able to show how any training undertaken by teacher in further education could be captured directly inside the reflect portfolio, making it available also for annual appraisal and CPT purposes. To us, we wanted the learning to be a story of individual discovery, using the outcomes and evidence ‘sign-off’ as the scaffolding behind the story and a mechanism against which a formal qualification could be awarded.
Pedagogical value of this
The introduction of personal learning space is regularly discussed in the champions list yet it’s introduction sets formidable conceptual challenges in getting the best pedagogical value for the learner through their correct use. Portfolios can be simply a place for learners to capture and catalogue learning experiences but it is possible for them to become areas in the management of learning in a wider sense and to have value way beyond simply claiming evidence. Further, when not using a reflective portfolio, any evidence that is gathered away from the spine of the story can appear as going ‘off-piste’, abstract in nature and lacking in authenticity, without relevance to the individual learner and without the opportunity for reflection and consideration of “next steps”.
The Personal learning space as the constant companion
Whilst providing a personal learning approach we were open to the possibility that each learner may choose a different path and that it would be idiosyncratic to each learner. As long as there is a story to tell and evidence to sign-off we needed to accommodate that. The advantage of a portfolio is that it remains a constant companion of a learner regardless of where they go to find their evidence, what they choose to show, where they choose to house it, and how they choose to make sense of it. One student decided to complete the uploading of evidence and narration using Posterous and simply link to their completed work from one page within their portfolio. This worked perfectly well and fitted within the bounds of the project.
The personal element and companionship means that any experience can be synthesised in to new understanding that is contextualised to the learner, authentic to their experience, validated to themselves and by themselves first by their reflection, owned through their practice, contributing to the management of own learning, thereby offering a deeper learning experience. What is particularly pleasing is the ability of learners to share aspects of their learning that they find exciting and of value to their friends. There is still in this approach a strong sense of the traditional FE model of social constructivist learning model.
Successes and problems
We believe we have demonstrated how a design might be made to accommodate an ITQ in a portfolio and as a consequence of this any training that has learning outcomes attached can be captured directly into reflector and that our work therefore has relevance to all IfL members for any training offered by LSIS or other awarding bodies such as city and Guilds etc.
The group cohesion was strained by the lack of a forum in Reflect for the class although we attempted to make use of blogs to compensate. Learners met regularly both formally and informally, but the lack of a forum for mutual support and sharing was noticed. We decided not to offer an alternative as we attempted to continue the course without resorting to the use of a forum elsewhere in order to make a true assessment of the ability of the course to be run exclusively through a reflective portfolio. Having a suitable forum space would have improved the progress of the course particularly in circumstances where learners are unlikely to meet each other on a regular basis.
Conclusions
For FE teachers to complete any learning experience in this way brings coherence to Continuous Professional Development (CPD).
Traditionally in FE staff have completed programmes of work set by their college, attested by mere attendance at a training event. CPD offers a challenge to this approach as a method of developing, but rather than replace traditional staff development, it offers a preparatory process where CPD is seen as creating a reflective practitioner better conditioned to meet the staff training needs of the College as well as meet their personal professional interests. The difference and complimentary position of the two processes (staff training and COD) can be summed up as follows:
Next steps
- College staff development processes needs to recognise that the new CPD imperative, guided by the IfL should be embraced as a method of improving the professional effectiveness of teachers. College requirements should be directly built into Reflect so teachers are able to merge the needs of self and college.
- We would challenge LSIS to allow course participants to capture the activity and outcome of learning directly into Reflect Portfolio as a means of enhancing its relevance to the purposes of continuing professional development and as a way of capturing in one place the rounded learning journey of every professional teacher.
- We would propose to awarding bodies like City & Guilds that they accept and encourage the completion of ITQs directly worked onto the Reflect portfolio and that they work with the IfL in creating an ITQ in higher-level thinking skills for new teachers.
- We would propose to the IfL give publicity to their members of the value of completing qualifications directly into the Reflect portfolio as a means of enhancing, yet simplifying the collection and presentation of CPD. This would require the IfL to offer Gateways to each provider to support local work.
- We would also like to share our work with JISC as a contribution to the academic discourse on the development of personal learning space for students.
Appendix A (No longer available)
Portfolios of:
Paula Stroud
Jenny Bean
Nick Holbrook-Sutcliffe
Nigel Breadman
Ray Holland
Ian Clark
Paul Manning
Appendix B What the students said:
It was a worthwhile experience and one I am glad I offered to participate in as a pilot project.
That this must be the way we learn in the future. Making resources fit for all, but tailoring for the individual. The resources themselves need to grow with content from the learners and enable them to 'flex' around the subject.
It has become very important to me that we do not segregate people with a disability by the content available to them online. I don’t want to create 'special' material to cater for these learners, I want my resources to embed the things they require to make the experience (genuinely) equal for all. As technology becomes more sophisticated the capability to do more for all learners is expanded, but it could also begin to become a barrier if we do not consider the basic need of each.
All teachers should do this course so they can start to change what they do, adapting with technologies as they emerge and creating resources which cater for all, unless they start now they will fall further behind and inadvertently create 'pockets' of good practice, rather than general expectation for the profession.
Completing the ITQ has given me the drive and enthusiasm to try different methods of delivery. I feel the methods I have investigated and used whilst completing the units will have a positive impact on my teaching and the way in which my students learn through the creation of interesting, interactive resources for the learners
Try it - like age it gets better with the living
Geoff Rebbeck QTLS FIfL Page no. 1