Debra Hoven & Margaret Rauliuk: Disrupt the dissertation with an ePortfolio

Kristina Hoeppner: 0:04

Welcome to'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast about portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on 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. In the last episode, Dr Debra Hoven was my guest, and she shared the autoethnographic research project she is running. Today we are back at Athabasca University in Canada and Margaret Rauliuk is joining Debra for a conversation around creating portfolios instead of writing a doctoral monograph. Thank you, Debra and Margaret for speaking with me today.

Debra Hoven: 0:50

Thank you, Kristina.

Margaret Rauliuk: 0:52

It's great to be here.

Kristina Hoeppner: 0:53

Margaret, you are a registered nurse, nurse practitioner, and also nurse practitioner educator and were the Founding Director and first Vice-Chair of the Association of Regulated Nurses of Manitoba. How did you discover portfolios?

Margaret Rauliuk: 1:10

Well, I discovered portfolios through my doctoral studies. Two of my doctoral courses had ePortfolios as really a capstone of the course where we were expected to demonstrate through examples of our work, how we met the course outcomes. And I really appreciated the space for the kind of creative, multimodal reflection that ePortfolios allowed, also the component of receiving peer feedback on the work and sharing the work in a wider sense because, you know, in most courses traditionally, the big assessment work is only seen by your instructor, whereas within the ePortfolio environment, it can be more widely shared and the ideas more widely disseminated.

Kristina Hoeppner: 2:04

In New Zealand, Margaret, nurses do create portfolios themselves as well for their registration every three years, but they are not very multimodal, they are mainly text based portfolios because of course, we do have the concern about sharing photos of patients and keeping patient information confidential. As a registered nurse in Canada, do you also create something like a portfolio to stay registered?

Margaret Rauliuk: 2:31

That is a great question. This is very new in Canada. I'm a member of the British Columbia College of Registered Nurses and Midwives, and just last year, as part of the ongoing continuing competency process that we engage in here, I had the opportunity to develop my learning goals within an ePortfolio structure within the college database. And actually, we did some of that back in Manitoba, but it seems to be a little more developed here in British Columbia. That is starting, but really what I'm doing is a different thing. You know, I'm doing critical autoethnography, whereas this is more of a professional portfolio that lists places you worked and more of a résumé sort of format along with ongoing learning goals and reflections on that learning.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:30

Yeah. That also shows that the portfolio can be really flexible and used in many different ways.

Margaret Rauliuk: 3:36

Absolutely.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:37

Thank you, Margaret. Over to you, Debra. We are not going to rehash all the things that you have already shared with us. So I will put a link into the episode notes so that people can check out that interview where we talked more about the autoethnographic research that you have done. There I asked you why you started using portfolios. So today, my question for you is why do you continue with the practice in your 22nd year and counting?

Debra Hoven: 4:07

Persistence, I think it's called [laughs]. Before I get into that, could I just follow up on what Margaret said and the question you asked her about nurses and ePortfolios because at Athabasca University for many years, we have used portfolios and now ePortfolios for prior learning assessment because as Canada's Open University, we accept students into our bachelor degrees without necessarily having a high school graduation or diploma as they call it here. And also, for the master's level, we accept students who don't necessarily have a prior bachelor degree. So the prior learning assessment recognition is critically important for those people who have broad experience in their professions or in the corporate world or in their personal lives, for Indigenous peoples in their communities have positions of standing. So it's important for access to our Bachelor and Master's degrees that potential students can demonstrate through now, ePortfolios, the breadth of their knowledge and experience and their reflections on it that contribute towards admission to bachelor and master's degrees under those circumstances. So your question, why am I still advocating for ePortfolios after more than 22 years of ePortfolio practice? So I think the heart of it is my belief in the value of reflection on reading, practice, and learning and the value of peer and instructor feedback in this process as well, but also the interplay between individual reading and reflection at the research level in master's and doctoral work, then the collaborative process so the mutual interdependence between ecological constructivism, which is a learning theory that I created, thunk up several years ago, and mainstream constructivist learning theories. So basically, that's dependent on an ecology of interactions between individuals, individual thought, individual self-introspection, and then collaborative introspection, collaborative exchange of ideas, and that leads into the peer and instructor feedback aspect of ePortfolios. In terms of higher education, theses and dissertation processes, like Margaret, I'm committed to [laughs] disrupting patriarchal processes and models of what constitutes innovative scholarship, which is always a question that's on the list of points for an external examiner to decide on in reviewing a student's work, a higher education student's work. So to open up the conversation about this further and then building on the initiatives of the 2018 Canadian Association of Graduate Studies Task Force on the Doctorate and the ongoing Carnegie project in the States on the educational doctorate, or professional doctorates in general, but specifically also educational doctorates, and most importantly, creating a safe academic space for Indigenous approaches to respectful and appropriate knowledge dissemination, including digital storytelling, which can also be communicated and disseminated through ePortfolios in a good and respectful way. Like Margaret, I'm disturbed by the terms 'de' or 'anti' in the context of colonialism because the very use of these terms centres and prefaces discussion and attitudes on colonial and patriarchal beliefs, values, and ways of thinking, interpreting, and understanding the world around us, and therefore, academic scholarship. And I also see it as timely for us to expand the uses and applications of ePortfolios to really open the dissemination of scholarship and scholarly and intellectual discussion and expand ePortfolio pedagogy and how this can be interpreted and used, and I'm sure that Margaret will have more to say about that [laughs].

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:29

Which takes us directly into the topic for the conversation with the two of you, really, but before going into that, and thank you so much, Debra, for outlining and providing us this wider context of the research and also the project really, that Margaret is involved in as part of her doctoral studies is that you just mentioned that the two of you and others do not really prefer to use the terms'decolonisation' or something with 'anti' because it always puts it as that secondary part already, because you're denouncing something. Which term do you prefer then to use instead of decolonisation?

Margaret Rauliuk: 9:07

If I may respond to this? As Debra said, I have been struggling with the word 'decolonisation'. Sandra Styres,, who is a Métis scholar, talks about decolonisation like a needle in her brain, and I really get that these days. You know, anti colonial doesn't really sit well either. Although the work I'm doing is in response to colonialism. I'm still figuring out language that doesn't centre whiteness as the benchmark of normal. For me right now that's conciliation because in Canada, we have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, in 2015 had a number of calls to action and they talk about reconciliation as being a Canadian problem, not an Indigenous problem. Non-Indigenous people have work and a responsibility, and for me as a social, planetary justice seeking person...

Debra Hoven: 10:16

You forgot ecofeminist.

Margaret Rauliuk: 10:18

Oh yes[laughs], ecofeminist. There's a history that needs to be acknowledged in order to move forward and find a new way. It's that new way I'm trying to find a word for and as I said, currently, it's 'conciliation'.

Debra Hoven: 10:37

'Conciliation' is preferred rather than'reconciliation' because there has not been conciliation yet. And truth needs to come first and remembering needs to come before that.

Margaret Rauliuk: 10:51

So part of my project is remembering.

Kristina Hoeppner: 10:54

It will be interesting to see how the terminology changes over the coming years when more people talk about the topic and make it also the focus of their research. Margaret, you are creating, and Debra, you're supporting that Margaret is creating a portfolio as action of conciliation then of the traditional monograph as requirement for her doctorate in education. Can you please explain how the portfolio supports your efforts in that area?

Margaret Rauliuk: 11:26

My third research question for my study With regard to how the portfolio supports decolonisation efforts, is 'How can this non-traditional, multimodal, critical autoethnographic dissertation support decolonisation and disruption in higher education?' Before I move forward, I'm gonna do something I meant to do when I first began our conversation, and that is acknowledge that I am in Esquimalt, British Columbia, on a traditional land of the Lekwungen speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. Where I live, right beside moving tidal water, it's a beautiful, beautiful place, and I just want to give acknowledgement to the land where I'm sitting. it goes really back to what we were just talking about and the idea of the word'decolonisation' and moving towards pedagogies and digital platforms that support conciliation. I see that as a step towards educational reconciliation that Canadians are called to do from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. I am also responding to calls to action from Indigenous nurse scholars who have put forth that non-Indigenous, specifically white nurse educators, need to move into those uncomfortable and shadowed spaces of truth. That is part of the history of Canadian nursing education, as well as part of historical and current nursing education and practice. In 2021, in British Columbia, there was a provincial review called to look at anti Indigenous racism in British Columbia healthcare systems, and the report found that shockingly high numbers of both Indigenous patients or people accessing care as well as Indigenous staff delivering care experienced racism within the healthcare environment. I think you need culturally safe learning spaces in order to support culturally safe practice spaces. So the ePortfolio using the ePortfolio pedagogy invites people into that conversation about how do we perform, act, enact nursing care in a good way that is respectful of the person we have the privilege to be part of their health, wellness, or illness journey. It's also about opening doors. You know, when I came to Debra with the idea of doing an ePortfolio dissertation, I was encouraged [laughs] not to hold my breath because no one had done that at the university, and it took two years of behind the scenes work for me to get permission. Somebody needs to do it first and go through all of those steps in order to open doors for others. Although I get to do this, and it's so awesome, it's not about me. It's about making space for others to be able to express their knowledge in new ways, in different ways...

Debra Hoven: 15:15

in their own ways.

Margaret Rauliuk: 15:17

In their own ways. Yes.

Kristina Hoeppner: 15:20

Is that then, Debra, also the first dissertation that is done as portfolio in all of Canada?

Debra Hoven: 15:26

Certainly in education, it's the first. Supervising firsts is not new to me, I'm afraid [laughs].

Kristina Hoeppner: 15:35

Well, congratulations, that you could get that through. Kudos to the two of you for having persevered, having been resilient, and then successful in getting that through.

Debra Hoven: 15:47

We're very lucky that our Faculty of Graduate Studies people are flexible minded enough to have the early conversations with. That took a bit of nudging and pushing and suggesting, but certainly, there were other levers that I used to open space for an ePortfolio dissertation, as well as other kinds of presentations of scholarly work. However, that may be defined.

Kristina Hoeppner: 16:20

Because it's different knowledge traditions that are currently not respected there.

Debra Hoven: 16:26

Exactly. But also, I think the biggest hurdle along the way that I observed was not so much our own people, but the guidelines and policies that were already in place, that were part of the external accreditation process for a doctoral degree, a doctoral dissertation. And also the feeling that, okay, we have to be as good if not better than everybody else because we are Canada's open, online, distance university, and therefore there's a little bit of much more so than in Australia and New Zealand, but there's quite a bit of culture cringe in North America, and including Canada, about the value and quality of a distance degree.

Kristina Hoeppner: 17:19

Margaret, now that you have approval to do your doctorate in education as a portfolio, what are your plans for it? How do you want to disrupt that traditional monograph and work with a portfolio and use it to its best effects and use its benefits?

Margaret Rauliuk: 17:38

Well, I am planning an engaging, interactive, multimodal, critical autoethnography. So I am inviting others into my own journey where I ask difficult questions of myself and look at the literature, use stories from my own family history. You know, for example, two of my sisters attended residential school as day students in the 1950s when my family lived in remote Alberta. I have offered what I'm currently [laughs] calling an example of critical music pedagogy within the dissertation in that I have a musical soundtrack or soundscape because one day I thought, why can't I[laughs] have a musical soundtrack within this ePortfolio? And so I've curated music, primarily playlists from CBC Music, which is our national broadcaster, of Indigenous music. I've discovered I have quite an affinity for Indigenous hip hop music, and so I started thinking about using Indigenous hip hop music, which is music of resistance and social justice and change and intergenerational justice and responsibility to the ones who are coming in the future. How could that be used in nursing education? So at the beginning of the work, I have a piece about the musical soundtrack and kind of pop these questions for reflection for the person who is reading it to brew or sit at the back of their minds as they explore other parts of the dissertation. Then, towards the end of the dissertation, I will come back to that conversation about music and explore ways of using music in nursing education as part of critical pedagogy. I'll be using audio, video, text, graphics, I take film of the tide moving up and down on the estuary where I live that I expect all superimpose some audio on top of and create different ways of showing the reflective process that I've been through.

Kristina Hoeppner: 20:10

That is amazing to hear how you're going to blend the academic with the artistic with different knowledge traditions, and then bringing all of that together as educator.

Margaret Rauliuk: 20:24

Well, you know, Kristina, I am in such a unique and privileged position doing this work. Right now, I have a partner [laughs] who is just encouraging me to stick with it. I'm not working, except on this very important project right now. I don't have obligations or responsibilities to any particular faculty of nursing in this country. My interest is upholding Joyce's Principle which supports health, spiritual, physical health and wellbeing for all Indigenous people and access to service when they need it. I really don't have conflict of interest in this. I can come with an open heart and a pure intent, and hopefully, you know, do this in a good way that someone [laughs] finds some value and use in the work that I'm doing. Using ePortfolio pedagogy and platforms allows for a more natural knowledge dissemination because I can share the work on different networks that I'm part of, as well. I'm very excited. It's so fun. The joy that I find in doing this work compared to the tears [laughs] of suffering that came with some of the early part of this process. You know, it's just - I'm so thrilled to have the opportunity. It's just, yeah, I'm very grateful. The other part of my own story is I spent the first 10 years of my nursing career living and working in remote Indigenous communities. That experience which included being adopted into a family in the community of Bella Bella, where I lived for six years, it really informs my worldview. That period of time was such an influential time in my life. And this is in response to those relationships. I could never repay the love and kindness and generosity that was shown to my young family, living in a remote community away from our own birth families. The Heiltsuk Nation welcomed us and embraced us. Yeah, I could never repay that kindness. This is one small effort toward that.

Kristina Hoeppner: 22:58

Thank you so much for sharing that, Margaret. I really appreciate (you) giving us a glimpse into your personal story and how it relates now to what you're achieving and what you're planning on doing. Now, Debra, you are the supervisor of Margaret's doctorate. In this new context of a dissertation created as a portfolio, how does your role change? Or does it not change at all?

Debra Hoven: 23:28

It's changed and is changing in many multiple and an exciting ways, started with brainstorming with Margaret about how and where her work could proceed. I think more as a more experienced colleague and friend, Margaret may disagree, rather than the 'super' element of a supervisor that moved into advocacy and advocacy on Margaret's behalf has been a fairly significant part of the early stages of the journey. Now I see it more as a mentorship, and also, as I said earlier, more experienced colleague who can direct, ask questions, good questions, at appropriate times, and also keep the enthusiasm going in spite of some of the hurdles and blocks that have happened along the way, and just communicating some of the broader implications that I can see from my standpoint that Margaret hasn't yet reached. Things like a how do you approach an ethics application when your work only includes yourself as the participant as an autoethnography? And then how do you anticipate possible harm that might come to people who read your work and interact with it? What are you perhaps triggering, stimulating, what memories, painful thoughts, trauma? So that aspect of ethics being an open piece of work and inviting interactions, as Margaret's dissertation is in an ePortfolio, then there's no control that Margaret has. Margaret cannot determine who might come to her work and who might see it, who might read it. So those aspects also have expanded and changed from the perspective of myself as a more experienced mentor.

Kristina Hoeppner: 25:43

Do you then have any tips for people in your position, mentors, supervisors, but also students who want to take this approach of creating a portfolio as dissertation, but it might be the first at the institution?

Debra Hoven: 25:57

That's a good question. It's an interesting question. And I looked and thought deeply about it, have done it on many occasions, most recently at the International Conference on Distance Education, where Margaret and I presented together with other students of mine as well. So start small, find the gaps in the policies and the regulations, use numerous examples that are starting to become available around the world and draw comparisons with their work and the policies and guidelines of the universities. Luckily, we do have the Canadian Association for Grad Studies Taskforce on the Doctorate from 2018 to springboard from and that really talked about, not so much an ePortfolio as a dissertation, but more about opening up the policies and guidelines about what constitutes a dissertation. So we have that to work from. They were mainly looking more at project based work from the perspective of the smaller percentage these days of doctoral graduates who go into academia, compared to industry or the corporate world or other areas of human endeavour. So we have that to work from in Canada, and then the Carnegie project in the States, they are starting from way behind because they had this template that said five chapters, and this is what the chapters should contain. So they have further to go than we do. So yes, that and also be vocal[laughs], be a needle in the brains of others, volunteer, be on committees, be on task forces, be on working groups, do the work of helping to frame and revise and rework the guidelines and policies, make suggestions, repeatedly, about how this could be done and how it could be opened up in other areas and for other purposes. I'll stop there[laughs].

Kristina Hoeppner: 28:08

Margaret, do you have anything to add there from your perspective as the student?

Margaret Rauliuk: 28:14

This has been a very organic kind of process. When I came into my doctoral programme, I had this plan to be done and out in three and a half years. We're five years into the story. I've had a cross country move, I've had retired from one job, left another, have been focusing on settling into a new place. So it takes the time it takes for doctoral studies in general, but certainly in this. When I began this, I really opened myself to reading across disciplines. And I start within the project itself because I'm rather soaked in relational ontology. I'm starting at the planetary level, and then I bring it down to the local level and specifically to nursing education and then online nursing education. The goal in this is to support the creation of online learning environments that are more likely to be culturally safe, peaceful, sustainable, equitable, and excellent online nursing experiences that graduates come out practising through a lens of equity, social and planetary justice, and I see this as living pedagogy, as emerging scholarship.

Kristina Hoeppner: 29:41

Before we get to our quick answer round, is there anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't yet touched on in regards to your portfolio project?

Debra Hoven: 29:54

Margaret, your visitor data?

Margaret Rauliuk: 29:56

Oh yes. I would like to be able to collect visitor data. I'm currently using Foliotek. I haven't had a lot of experience with Mahara, but I'm looking more seriously at that platform as well as possibly doing a website because I know, for example, with my research seminar portfolio that I've been creating that there have been a number of people who have visited it because I have an informal poll that's been answered, but I'm not capturing data of how many people or where they are from. And I've discovered that I'm actually interested in that information. I'd like to know, you know, how widely the work is reaching people. Yeah, that is really the main thing that's come forward in the last little while for me.

Kristina Hoeppner: 30:47

Then the last three questions for the two of you each. Which words do you use to describe portfolio work?

Margaret Rauliuk: 30:55

I would say deeply, reflective, fun.

Kristina Hoeppner: 31:00

Debra, do you want to add three more words to the ones you shared last time?

Debra Hoven: 31:04

I think I'll sit with the ones I shared last time. I have many more, but I think they encompass it, tahnks.

Margaret Rauliuk: 31:11

Do you remember what the words were, Debra?

Debra Hoven: 31:14

I think said fascinating, enlightening, and mind opening.

Kristina Hoeppner: 31:19

Thank you for resharing them. What tip do you have for learning designers or instructors who create portfolio activities? If you want to make it more topical for the doctoral portfolio dissertation, do you have any tips there that you haven't already shared earlier?

Margaret Rauliuk: 31:40

For me, it's not specific to ePortfolios, but is I think related to ePortfolios is starting a new class or seminar or workshop inviting people to respond to a question that creates a word cloud that can be included in the portfolio. For me, the question is, what values or characteristics or words come to mind when you think about what culturally safe online space looks like? I use Mentimeter and invite people to add words that help set the tone for the environment that we're creating together as the learning community.

Kristina Hoeppner: 32:27

Debra, do you have one more tip?

Debra Hoven: 32:29

Push the boundaries. Don't accept the status quo.

Margaret Rauliuk: 32:33

Have fun.

Debra Hoven: 32:34

Yeah, be creative in your thoughts and enjoy the process.

Kristina Hoeppner: 32:39

Is that then also your advice for portfolio authors?

Debra Hoven: 32:43

Yes [laughs]. Yeah, push the boundaries, open your mind and don't take guidelines and policies as necessary givens. See where your wiggle space is [laughs].

Margaret Rauliuk: 32:57

And explore new ways of demonstrating your knowledge and seek joy.

Debra Hoven: 33:02

Demonstrating and disseminating and also helping other people out there to see what else they have to offer. I think that's the fun and joy of it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:14

That's an awesome group of tips there. Thank you so much for sharing all of that on your not just the beginning of the journey to this portfolio dissertation, but you're right in the middle of it. And so I look forward to learning more, Margaret, of what you're going to do over the coming months and years, and also Debra that might start another revolution and get more students at the doctoral level interested in creating a non traditional dissertation and also knowing where they can go for support and how to approach that then in order to make it happen. So thank you so much to the two of you for your time today.

Debra Hoven: 33:56

Thank you, Kristina.

Margaret Rauliuk: 33:58

Thank you, Kristina.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:59

Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Dr Debra Hoven and Margaret Rauliuk. 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.