Derrin Kent: Skills Bootcamps using portfolios

Kristina Hoeppner 00:05

Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast about portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on the integrating portfolios with their education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. My name is Kristina Hoeppner. 

Kristina Hoeppner 00:29

My guest today is Derrin Kent. He is Founder and Managing Director at TDM, The Development Manager, in the UK. Derrin and his team were one of the first people actually that I've been in touch with when I joined the Mahara team at Catalyst because they were a partner from the early days on and have been using Mahara now for well over 15 years. It was also his team that wrote the 'Mahara 1.2 ePortfolios beginner's guide', released in 2010, and a new edition in 2012. 

Kristina Hoeppner 01:03

Today, we are not really going down history lane, but rather want to look at the future of portfolios in the apprenticeship space. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me, Derrin.

Derrin Kent 01:15

It's lovely to be here, Kristina. Absolute pleasure.

Kristina Hoeppner 01:18

Derrin, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do?

Derrin Kent 01:22

Oh, what me personally? Okay. So I'm an educator, always have been, obsessed with skills, really, and contextualised, experiential learning, and Kolb's reflective learning cycle. That's what defines me professionally, really, the idea of working with people in experiential circumstances and trying to get into that sort of zone of proximal development that Vygotsky might talk about, and getting into that space where people are learning and then putting a scaffold around as Bruner might talk about in order to pull it into a space where I want people to learn.

Derrin Kent 01:55

I started out, funnily enough, myself in foreign language learning, English as a foreign language. And then I became a teacher trainer around that, got interested in something called task based learning within that. So you can't construct a language learning cycle necessarily around a curriculum of sort of grammar points, but you are better to put people into a task. And so that task based learning approach of a curriculum around tasks in language learning then was a natural flow on for me to get involved with work based learning, which was a natural flow on for me to get involved with Mahara. It all matched up.

Kristina Hoeppner 02:28

Derrin, that explains a lot from your background why you became interested in portfolios. So can you please share a bit more of why you made portfolios so central at TDM, so that is you and your colleagues, over the many years that you've been using it already?

Derrin Kent 02:46

There's a natural match between the way I want it to deliver learning and the way Mahara is structured and operates. It doesn't mean that it doesn't sit beautifully as a counterpart with a sort of course or learning management system like Moodle or Tōtara. But the concept that learning is learner owned has always been my central driver. And it's interesting actually, the point you raise, that it's central to how we operate. Interestingly, we've been working with degree apprenticeships recently, and excitedly we've aligned with a degree apprenticeship organisation, but in house, the team have said, "Oh, we don't need ePortfolios any more, do we?" Or they'll say things like, "Oh, we could do the ePortfolio in a Word document, couldn't we?" And these little challenges come up, and I'm always, "Absolutely not. Mahara defines who we are because there's a match in integrity between the approach to learning and the understanding of how learning happens, and who we are as an organisation, which is the very reason we call The Development Manager." 

Derrin Kent 03:42

One thing that I'm really proud of, Kristina, when the Ofsted inspectors came in, I remember the HMI (His Majesty's Inspectors) from Ofsted walking out of TDM and said, "You know what's different about you guys?" He said, "I see so many providers who believe in apprenticeships because they deliver them. But the weird thing about TDM is basically you deliver apprenticeships because you believe in them." So it's a totally different sort of flip of that concept basically. So what he's saying is we have an educational approach. Whatever funding comes along, Mahara will never go. The funding rules can change, Mahara will never go away. There's an absolute match between Mahara and how we deliver.

Kristina Hoeppner 04:21

And yes, congratulations on having received that Ofsted grading of outstanding in three of the evaluation criteria, namely the quality of education, the apprenticeships, including the degree apprenticeships that you had mentioned, and adult learning programmes. Derrin, for those of us that do not live in the UK and may not be so familiar with degree apprenticeships, can you please explain what the difference is to the other apprenticeships?

Derrin Kent 04:51

It's the robustness of higher education. It brings in all of the beauty of the history of the skill sector. So the individualised learning plan, the kind of work based response, the employer responsiveness, and the idea of assessing evidence, artefacts, or Mahara kind of concepts of artefacts of learning in practice, and then the ability to assess and to plan the reflective narrative around that aggregation of artefacts that you get from an application in practice.

Derrin Kent 05:21

It matches that with the rigour that you get from the tradition of the university sector, which is a clear articulation of learning outcomes per module and the match of those learning outcomes to overarching learning outcomes which match bodies of knowledge in the country, the sort of rigour of making sure that when people write they reference, they're challenged to read, they're challenged to reference other thinkers in the way they work, they're challenged to construct an argument. And so all of that complement of the university tradition with the skills tradition results in this notion of degree apprenticeships. It's a really an exciting time in history to be working on that.

Kristina Hoeppner 05:57

I think we will need to have a separate episode for the degree apprenticeships and what you do with them, how the portfolio works in there, but today, we wanted to focus on the Skills Bootcamp that you have developed. Can you please outline what it does?

Derrin Kent 06:18

We're a Department for Education funded organisation. The funding may be channelled through different funding agencies, for example, a West Midlands Combined Authority or a Worcestershire County Council, but essentially all the funding comes from the Department for Education. Skills Bootcamps and apprenticeships are in the same conceptual space. They are employer responsive programmes. So the conceptual space is that you're starting from what an employer needs. So you're just going "Okay, how can we create a learning programme, which is actually going to have an impact?" 

Derrin Kent 06:49

One of the reasons we got the Ofsted as standard for quality of education was because we don't sequence necessarily on our terms as what we think it's important that people learn. We have a scaffold of knowledge and skills that people need to learn, but we sequence and adapt the learning deliverables against that scaffold to what the employer defines, and the Skills Bootcamp works like that, too, in essence. It's been misinterpreted by many, but the essence of it is, it's an employer responsive programme where skills are developed for an employer who wants to take people on, basically.

Kristina Hoeppner 07:22

So that makes it actually really responsive to your employers because if they are changing something, and say, if they need a different programming language or adding a different programming language or adding a new stream of revenue, then they can come to you and say, "Hey, in addition to the skills that the apprentices or the current employees that are re-training are already getting, can you please add this to your programme" and then you work with the employer in how to get that into your programme?

Derrin Kent 07:52

Correct. I'll come into this in a minute. Both apprenticeships and Skills Bootcamps can be for recruits, but also for existing employees that you might think of as reskillers, okay? But the major difference between them is an apprenticeship is an ON the job learning programme, and the Skills Bootcamp is a FOR the job learning programme. So that person hasn't yet secured the job. If it's an employed person, they're looking for a new responsibility at work. If it's an unemployed person, they're looking for their new job role or then ideally, their new apprenticeship break because an apprenticeship is a job with bells on it. An apprenticeship is a better version of a job because it's a job with a commitment statement, a learning plan, a coach, a mentor, it's just a fantastic job; better than a job. So ideally, people would end with an apprenticeship at the end of the Skills Bootcamp, but if not, at least they get the job outcome as a fallback.

Derrin Kent 08:43

So the Skills Bootcamp then, again, I think a lot of providers out there have kind of got the wrong concept because if you understand it's a for the job learning programme, which is tailored to what that employer needs, Mahara is a very, very natural match to the problem. We have a sequence of training modules. So every week, there's a module, they do prep, and they do consolidation in the classroom, and then their application tasks, and they come back, and consolidate again, etc. 

Derrin Kent 09:07

The other question that the learner has and that they look at, they get another type of coaching that helps them construct their portfolio. And what they're asking is the employer, so there's always one employer they're going for, but we asked them to run three employer prospects all the time. So what they're essentially doing is going for a fast no in application to the employer. So what they do is the employers that they've looked at, and obviously they will want to work for Google and Microsoft, Kristina, but we kind of like say, "Well temper expectations a little bit, shall we look at an employer that's more local that could benefit from your work and be a bit more pragmatic about it?" Nothing wrong with going for the big one, but let's go for the pragmatic ones as well.

Derrin Kent 09:44

What they're doing is they're making a pitch and saying "I'm your next apprentice because" or "I'm your next employee because" and this is what the recruits are doing, you see? They construct a portfolio where they research the target employer. There are various things that they can use to research the employer, the search engine [laughs], LinkedIn, where they can get information, you can even get things out of ChatGPT, or you can get information about the software that that type of employer might use or that that type of employee does use as an example. And then they can say, right, "based on my research, I've established that you probably need these skills."

Derrin Kent 10:19

So then we've got content aggregator platforms like O'Reilly and Plural Sight, and they go and search content within that. Then they construct a portfolio to say what they've learned from the content that they've selected in relation to the target employer. They showed some sort of tasks that they've done, proving that they're skilled for the target employer, and the other thing they research is the vision and mission and aims and the identity of the employer organisation. They basically construct an Mahara page, set up a secret URL, and that gets sent out on LinkedIn or email, as a pitch to the employer and a request for an interview.

Derrin Kent 10:55

We've had extraordinary success. So a lot of the big thing in the country is Milestone Three, is job outcomes, and a lot of Skills Bootcamp providers have struggled with the Milestone Threes, but we've done really well at job outcomes because the whole programme, the learning experience, if you like, falls back from the job outcome rather than fooling ourselves, if we teach 12 topics, they're going to be employable. We say no, let's start from employer expectation and design a learning program,me that's responsive to that. So that's the way we're using in Mahara.

Kristina Hoeppner 11:24

What is Milestone Three, please, Derrin?

Derrin Kent 11:27

The way we're funded is in funding milestones on this particular programme. And Milestone Three is the job outcome. So it's just over 33% of the funding. The whole spirit of the thing is to get people's career started. I was never content with the idea of achieving Milestone Two, which is the completion of the course. Why would we want that? What we want is that job outcome. So they do complete the course, but the exciting part is getting somebody's career started. That's what gets us out of bed.

Kristina Hoeppner 11:56

Exactly, right? That also means then that pretty much every one of your learners who goes through the Skills Bootcamp has their own learning path, and you're adopting your overall programme to them and individualise it very much, aren't you? 

Derrin Kent 12:11

So TDM, we refer to as an independent training provider. I actually think of us as a coaching organisation. And so do we do training? Of course we do. But that's merely contributory to this highly personalised individual learning plan. We always talk about what we call the tripartite individual learning plan. That learning plan is of course owned by that individual we're working with, and we as a coaching organisation are a party, and the third party is the employer organisation, whether that be the employer that's apprenticing you or the employer that you want to be apprenticed by, in both cases, that's the third party in the learning plan.

Kristina Hoeppner 12:47

How do your students react to the portfolio when you give them the task to start creating one because I assume many of them have not had the chance in the past or had been exposed to creating something like that, reflecting on their practice, and so on? 

Derrin Kent 13:03

Exactly. That's a really, really good question. A lot of people join us having recently exited institutional education, and they've been there their whole life. So they're either joining us from school or from sixth form or from college or from university, or they've been at work for a few years, but they think that education is this institutional approach. So we have a conversation with them before we even look at the mechanics of Mahara, around what we call the three R's for the 21st century. So you had the three R's for the 20th century, which were reading, writing, and arithmetic, never check the spelling. The three R's for the 21st century, for us, and this works for us because we're in the tech industry, we talk about basically reflection, research, and responsibility. And those are the three R's: reflection, research, and responsibility.

Derrin Kent 13:49

Now, the truth is, if you're going to join the tech and digital sector, which is what we apprentice people in, you can't arrive at a problem in your everyday work, and when it's difficult, sit there and just go, "I don't know what to do," and just sit waiting for the teacher to come along and sort of pick you up. You need to become a supplier of your learning and work, really. So when you're at work, if you hit a problem, you're expected to research a resolution to it. If you do something and it goes wrong, you're expected at work to reflect on what went wrong. And you're expected to have the responsibility for managing your own learning programme.

Derrin Kent 14:23

You're right, Kristina, when people first arrive to us, we shock them a little bit. One distinction we make, I don't know if you've heard of this, but everybody talks about pedagogy, but there's actually andragogy from Knowles and heutagogy as an extension of that. And we say, "Look, we're a bit like a university, really, in that we're effectively andragogues rather than pedagogues." So what does that mean? Well, that means is, you're an adult, I'm an adult, you're in control of learning, I'm your assistant here.

Derrin Kent 14:49

And so because in the tech sector, you're not going to survive unless you research and reflect and take responsibility for things, let's start that assumption today in terms of how it's going to work for you as a learner on this Skills Bootcamp. So we're expecting you to research, we're expecting you to go and find learning content, we're expecting you to take the responsibility for creating your own portfolio and putting yourself through relevant tasks for the employer, and then to reflect on how effective you were at those and reflect as to when things went wrong, why they went wrong. So that big conversation opens from the beginning.

Derrin Kent 15:21

From there, again, Mahara fits beautifully, doesn't it? Features in Mahara that are very helpful are obviously the different types of artefacts that you can put into the portfolio pages, the fact that you can create collections that are relevant there, different themes, if you like, that's very, very useful. The reflective journal as a kind of narrative over learning over time becomes quite useful as a contributor, and the other useful thing is communities of interest that you can establish in groups. So you've got different people who are sort of like sharing ideas of how they prepare their content for employers.

Kristina Hoeppner 15:54

We've learned about your three R's, and I find them really, really wonderful. You told us that your learners create those portfolios, do they fully get into that practice then? Do you have that evidence that they are really also reflecting on their learning and making that part of their work then?

Derrin Kent 16:13

So two points there. Number one, I don't know if you have, but I've never met a homogeneous group of learners. Every character is different, and they respond in different ways. That whole conversation about the three R's is part of our initial assessment. Where we compare badly against other providers, we don't start lots of learners. But that's not because we can't, it's because we won't. What we do is we've got a very robust initial assessment process for our programme, and that conversation around this is, in order to get a job outcome, we are going to try to get a job outcome and apprenticeship is the ideal. 

Derrin Kent 16:50

So all of these things are set up and we call it the GWC (Gets it. Wants it. Capacity to do it.). They get it in terms of what this programme is going to do, and how we're going to approach education and learning. That they want that that's a big question set. And the third one is capacity to do it. That does involve intelligence, but more importantly than that, the reality is, it's a timing thing to join this programme. If you're very busy at home because you've got a poorly relative and you're in a rock band and you play football all the time, maybe one of those things are going to give? And it's not going to be the poorly relative. What are we going to do here to make sure that you've got enough time to focus on this portfolio creation work that you're going to need to do to get put through to the different job opportunities and the research that underpins that? 

Derrin Kent 17:34

The initial assessment is robust. To be honest, the mechanics of Mahara, it's the easiest thing in the world. It's a very easy platform for people to learn how to use. So that's not the problem. But the approach of being a reflective learner and building a reflective portfolio is a challenge for some. I'm very proud of our success rates, and it does work. We're getting kind of 60% of people who we engage are getting through to jobs, and it is as a consequence of creating portfolios. Some people's portfolios are a bit bland, other people's portfolios tell more of a story. Some are just an aggregation of things that they can prove that they can do. And it doesn't matter how hard we work as educators, they don't get the idea that it's more compelling to sort of talk about how much you've learned and how you want to go on learning. But we're getting better as well, Kristina, are all the time. 

Kristina Hoeppner 18:23

Since those portfolios are shared with the employer that they really find out what this person can bring to the table and how they could fit into their company, what are their reactions to that different approach that you're taking over other providers?

Derrin Kent 18:40

Two different things to notice on that. We've got some trusted employer partners who are very willing to give formative feedback against portfolios as they're being developed. And we appreciate that generosity from employers because although they may not take these people on themselves, they give informative feedback to the guys as to what they're doing. That's helpful. Yeah, no, we appreciate them. That's a kindness on their part. So they are normally looking for someone, but they're willing to interview a lot of applicants in order to find that person, and they know that they're not going to take them on. But it's a generous act, and they give two sentences of formative feedback.

Derrin Kent 19:14

The more typical employer is receiving cold and ePortfolio page, which has got a video clip of the person introducing themselves and the aggregated artefacts. What the learners do, if they're targeting a particular employer, the introductory video will reference the employer themselves and talk to them. The amount of interviews that we get as a consequence of doing that. It doesn't always work, but it usually does, and what we do we sort of target three or four different people within the organisation and somebody nearly always picks it up. I think if we just sent a CV, we wouldn't get the same response. Because it's a very effortful learning towards that prospect employer, it's kind of rude for the employer to not give them an opportunity to pitch themselves at some point. They don't always get the jobs, but we're doing very well.

Kristina Hoeppner 19:57

That is fantastic that you do get this feedback from some of the employers or the learners get that feedback because that will then assist them in changing their portfolio and maybe refocusing it a bit, making certain things clearer and so on. We actually are your operating, Derrin, because if somebody is now interested in joining your programme, do they need to be in a particular area in the UK?

Derrin Kent 20:23

Yes and no. We work in the West Midlands of England primarily. That includes quite a large area. So there's anywhere that's in the West Midlands Combined Authority, which is around Coventry, into Birmingham, up to Telford, Wolverhampton, Black Country, and we also work in Westchester and the three counties. So we work around Cheltenham and Gloucester, and down into Bristol. The Skills Bootcamps are kind of restricted really by our funding opportunities, at the moment in Worcestershire and in the West Midlands Combined Authority. Our apprenticeships are delivered across the whole of England.

Kristina Hoeppner 20:54

Are they now a combination actually of in-person and also remote learning?

Derrin Kent 21:00

All of our learning delivery is done remotely. However, the bootcamps are also used, and this is important to note, Kristina, they're also used for reskiller agenda. So I'll give examples of how they've been used recently. There's an employer near, it's an engineering company that wanted people in different departments to use Power Platform. And so we've done an introductory course across Power Platform. They've essentially got a 12-week program where we cover different aspects of Power Platform. It's the flipped classroom as a concept. So they get learning materials as prep, then they get a classroom consolidation effort, then they use Mahara to evidence application tasks, and then we bring the Maharas into the classroom as a consolidating exercise as well. They go and learn how to do something, do it at work, come back, and we discuss the findings from that process. We do that around six topics. 

Derrin Kent 21:53

Another one we've done recently is a large water organisation that's very famous in England are very interested in data and data analytics, and the predictability of data, etc, etc. And so they've done a lot, not so much with Power BI, it's been mainly around Excel and the concepts of data analytics. And so that's been happening there. So you can use the Skills Bootcamp for already employed people who just need a burst and a focus on a particular skill set.

Kristina Hoeppner 22:20

How do you develop these custom programmes when a company comes and says, "I want you to train our workforce in this new tool?" Do you then have a subject matter expert from that company that helps you develop the initial training material and then you take it over into the portfolio? Or how does it work? 

Derrin Kent 22:39

We go through a sequence of phases. So our initial assessment of employers for the reskillers is just as robust as our initial assessment for candidates who want to be a recruit. The first stage is a learning and development consultant goes in and basically works out an initial training plan as to what the employer might need. That's sketched out as initial training plan. That then comes back to our academic team, and we take a view on that initial training plan, and we take a view as to whether we want to do it or not, if I'm being brutally honest [laughs]. And then we look at that, and then we start aggregating content, content that we think is useful for the prep activities.

Derrin Kent 23:18

Remember, the way we work, it's very much a reflective learning thing. So the content is the easy bit, if that makes sense, because that's freely available on content aggregator platforms, but the learning happens when you start doing it. So we gather whatever the topic is some useful content, we aggregate that, and then we go in for another meeting with the employer, and we put back to them the design that we've developed in response to their request, and that can be tailoring at that point. And then it's decided, every learner gets an individualised learning plan through the process. So whilst we start with the overall content coverage, it's just the same as the other one I've described. Yes, there's a sequence of courses which are pre prescribed, but the magic of it, what they're effectively doing in this bootcamp is they're the reskillers are presenting a business case to their employer that they can be given a new accountability at work. So it could be a new aspect of their job description or at least some agreed accountability. They have to put a business case against the proposal.

Derrin Kent 24:14

They're studying the content, but what they're really doing is working out how they can be useful in that workplace. Then they're creating a Mahara based business case basically, which doesn't only show how they think that they can make an impact in the future, it also shows how much they've already learned against the agenda which they need to continue learning. They make a pitch. 

Kristina Hoeppner 24:36

That is fantastic. Derrin, if you were to summarise the benefits of the Skills Bootcamp using portfolios for your learners, for the employer, and also for your company, what would those be?

Derrin Kent 24:51

Basically it's an employer responsive approach. Ofsted talk about three I's, not three R's, but three I's. They talk about impact, implementation, and intent. I think a lot of educational organisations make the mistake of starting from intent. They predetermine what it is that's going to be learned, and then go and teach that programme and hope that there's impact as a consequence of it [laughs]. Whereas we start from the analysis of impact first. So that's with the recruit and the reskiller, right? So how is this going to change the employer organisation and the person and give them the career and social mobility opportunities that they want? To answer your question in three words, I would say employer responsive, impact, and individual learning plan. Those are the big three things.

Kristina Hoeppner 25:36

Now that you've been using portfolios for so, so many years already, and you've gone, I assume, through many iterations of what you want to have in there, then of course, technology changed and all of that, are there any trends that you have observed in the portfolio world where you are with the apprentices, with the reskillers that you have seen? 

Derrin Kent 25:56

For me, it's less a conversation around technology. My experience, over the 15-16 years that we've known each other [laughs], I've basically grown an organisation from me, on my own in a bedroom, to having, I think, it's over 50 staff now, which isn't massive, but it's quite substantial. For me, people don't get it, they don't get the reflexive learning cycle. They don't get experiential learning. Whilst we might explain the approach to them, it takes them a while to sort of appreciate it. It's normally about 18 months before they actually start really understanding how this all comes together. And normally, if I'm honest with you, Kristina, it's the employer that teaches them what's important rather than us.

Derrin Kent 26:36

So the hymn we sing around experiential learning and Kolb and impact driven and employee responsiveness and the individualised learning plan, which comes in the Mahara technologies. That message basically comes as the employer starts expressing how much they want that. Basically, our Mahara portfolios are relatively simple, really. It's just kind of photos, files, and videos. And we don't do an awful lot more in terms of tools within the system. But the important part for us is the reflective narrative and the communities of interest. The learning problem is more challenging and more exciting and more fruitful than the media problem, if that makes sense?

Kristina Hoeppner 27:14

Yep. How do you then scaffold the reflections for your learners? 

Derrin Kent 27:20

Okay, so we send them two types of coach. The first one is the skills and knowledge coach. Whatever the course is, it can be data, cyber tech, software developer, that's the skills and knowledge and they're obsessed with guess what, not just skills, but also knowledge. I've done if you've read the book called 'Make It Stick', Kristina, have you heard of that one? It's a great little book. And so we're always having a conversation around spaced repetition, self testing, avoiding false illusions of knowing, etc., the concepts that come out from 'Make it stick'. So they're obsessed with that.

Derrin Kent 27:51

But the second type of coach is what's called a performance and development coach, and they have their own cycle during the Skills Bootcamp. What they're doing is they're asking the learner to develop in terms of their performance as a learner. The reflective journal is an analysis of their performance as somebody who's taking responsibility to do research and to do reflection around their work. That conversation around performance becomes a live and vibrant one.

Derrin Kent 28:19

There's a second agenda that they have, which is an agenda we have to have as an educational organisation in this country, and one which I embrace with enthusiasm and absolutely love, which is whole person development. That's all about being a decent member of society [laughs]. Performance becomes an issue where we discuss things like autonomy, critical thinking, English comes into it, the ability to write compellingly, it's not just spelling and grammar, it's the ability to write and compel and the ability to speak compellingly. In fact, one classroom day per week with the skills and knowledge coach and one classroom day per week with their performance and development coach, and the construction of a compelling portfolio comes out of those two sort of processes.

Kristina Hoeppner 28:59

Oh that's really fantastic to not just focus on the immediate skills that the employer wants, but making sure that also everything around it works for them, and you did mentioned storytelling earlier. So yes, making a compelling argument by telling your story. 

Derrin Kent 29:14

The employers are increasingly clear, Kristina, because they will say things like this, they'll say, "Look, the hard skills, that's the last of our worries because we can teach that." So the truth is the technical skills that the guys guessed, the employer ones often miss the mark, but that really doesn't matter because what they're looking for is somebody that's had a go at learning and can self critique. It's the soft skills that matter more than the technical skills as a matter of fact, but the technical skills are the ground work, which you need to do in order to celebrate the soft skills that are relevant to that employer, basically.

Kristina Hoeppner 29:46

Is there anything that you would like to be able to do with portfolios, but can't just yet do? Does anything come to mind?

Derrin Kent 29:55

There's something you've already invented, Kristina, that we're not using and should be, which is SmartEvidence. I don't know what makes us shy about that. I think if I'm brutally honest, the complexity of the apprenticeship standards has disinclined us towards SmartEvidence because it becomes a bit of a monster to usefully construct it, and that's not SmartEvidence's fault. It's just the complexity of the standard [laughs]. So that's something which has made us shy away. I think we could be smarter, and we have said, "Right, what we're going to do," there's normally like 12 duties, what we said is "Right, let's put all of the other stuff underneath it and just map the pages against the 12 duties." But I'm talking apprenticeships now. In Skills Bootcamps, SmartEvidence isn't a fit because it's much more flexible according to what the employer is going to be needing and looking for. 

Derrin Kent 30:43

What would I like Mahara to be able to do that it doesn't currently do? I am going to say nothing. I'm content with the answer. It's giving us what we need. It's an aggregator of artefacts, it's constructed into pages. One thing I remember talking to you about which I desperately needed was the visual aspect of the exports. But now you've got that PDF export, that makes all the difference. That's so much better for us now. It looks nice when you produce the export.

Kristina Hoeppner 31:10

You still have all your files and audio and video that is linked, and that comes with the export.

Derrin Kent 31:16

That's it. So we were really struggling with it. But you fixed it. So thank you for that. That was great.

Kristina Hoeppner 31:22

That now already takes us to our last three questions, Derrin, to our quick answer round. Which words do you use to describe portfolio work?

Derrin Kent 31:32

Learning journeys, show how much you've grown, strengthening your reflective abilities.

Kristina Hoeppner 31:37

What tip do you have for learning designers or instructors who create portfolio activities, who are new to the field?

Derrin Kent 31:46

It's an incremental build, which requires coaching. I'm coming from our perspective, really. The building of the ePortfolios has to start early. They have to start collecting evidence of work in practice every day. So there's this constant collection process, and then the sit down and supervised construction of exemplar portfolios early is quite useful. And showing examples of good portfolios is a great idea for people so that they can see other people doing it. And then it is quite intensive one-to-one coaching support.

Derrin Kent 32:19

And the other thing is the word 'ePortfolio' in the apprenticeships and employer learning sector has been actually misused. The sector forgot an ePortfolio is effectively the same as the old portfolios were, which is a showcase of work with a reflective narrative accompanying that and describing how that work improved over time and the journey that you went on to produce that aggregation of work. What I'm saying is that concept being centred in the educator's approach is really, really important.

Kristina Hoeppner 32:46

What advice do you have for portfolio authors?

Derrin Kent 32:50

The same thing. Remember that you're not just creating a OneDrive folder; it's a storytelling thing. And it's a celebration. Celebration is the wrong word. People will respect you when you're vulnerable as well. So you celebrate your successes, but you're also using the portfolio to tell the story as to how things didn't work. That's really compelling for employers and endpoint assessors, and they're looking at somebody that can self critique. The portfolio gives the opportunity to display that really quite clearly.

Kristina Hoeppner 33:20

Thank you so much, Derrin, for outlining all the ways that you're using portfolios at TDM with your learners that are going through the Skills Bootcamp. That was a fantastic overview. Thank you. 

Derrin Kent 33:34

Thank you, Kristina.

Kristina Hoeppner 33:35

Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share.Engage.' with Derrin Kent. Head to our website podcast.mahara.org where you can find resources and the transcript for this episode. This podcast is produced by Catalyst IT, and I'm your host, Kristina Hoeppner, Project Lead and Product Manager of the portfolio platform Mahara. Our next episode will air in two weeks. I hope you'll listen again and tell a colleague about it so they can subscribe. Until then, create, share, and engage.