Shari Bowker: Establish good feedback practices in your portfolio

Kristina Hoeppner: 0:05

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. Today, my guest is Shari Bowker from The University of Queensland, which in this interview we are abbreviating as UQ. She's the university's Learning Designer (ePortfolios) and works in ITaLI. No, that's not quite the Italy in Europe, but the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation at UQ. A quick disclaimer before we continue. UQ does not use Mahara, but a different technology to create portfolios. This podcast is more about portfolio pedagogy than the technical platforms that organisations use. Therefore, I'm happy that I had the opportunity to chat with Shari. Shari holds a Bachelors of Science and a Bachelors of Education and also a Master's of Education focusing on inclusive educational practices. So who better to talk to about portfolios and learn a bit more especially about the feedback practices that Shari is employing at her University? Welcome to the podcast Shari.

Shari Bowker: 1:30

Hi Kristina. Thanks so much for having me today. I'm really excited to be able to talk to everyone about ePortfolios and my work about ePortfolios.

Kristina Hoeppner: 1:37

I'm also so excited that you wanted to participate because we've now known each other quite a while already, especially through ePortfolios Australia, but also now the Digital Ethics Task Force where you are participating in the analysis of the research that we are doing there around usage of portfolios at universities in Australia and New Zealand. So it's good to catch up outside of our regular meetings. Shari, how did you actually get involved with portfolios?

Shari Bowker: 2:05

Prior to my current role as a learning designer in 2017, I worked as a project officer in the School of Medicine on the ePortfolio project. So The University of Queensland had just adopted an enterprise level ePortfolio platform, and they were piloting it in various schools, and the Medical programme was keen to try it out and adopt an ePortfolio approach to track and monitor student development of competencies and professionalism over the programme, rather than in siloed units as it had been doing. So we ran a small pilot of ePortfolio using one workplace based assessment. The academic assessment lead at the time, Associate Professor Helen Wozniak, she's innovative with regards to ed tech, and she's an ePortfolio advocate and medical education expert. She pushed for this consistent approach, for this assessment across the programme. So in my role as a project officer, I led the roll-out of ePortfolio across about 10 courses after the initial pilot and 17 clinical schools, training all professional staff, like 80 staff or so, academics, as well internal and external to the school, and students to adopt the ePortfolio. And that was my first exposure. But it was really getting into the ePortfolio community, which you mentioned, that sold me on ePortfolios. I think I attended the ePortfolios Australia Forum that year, and I was blown away by the expertise and the passion for ePortfolios, and I learned about how they could support rich and meaningful learning and all the wonderful things we could do with ePortfolios. So in 2018, I wrote my first short paper about how we'd used ePortfolio for workplace based assessment and the lessons learned for the Forum. And I think it was hooked from there. You know, getting into that community really hooked me in. So when my current role to be LD, the learning designer for ePortfolios at UQ, was advertised I jumped on it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:58

So I think you've already worked quite early on then with Christine Slade, who has been at UQ for many years as well.

Shari Bowker: 4:07

Yes, that's right. Yes, because she's also in the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, and her research focus and interest is ePortfolios as well.

Kristina Hoeppner: 4:15

She definitely roped you into some of the activities that we are doing on the task force.

Shari Bowker: 4:19

Yes, that's right. She's always tapping me with cool things to work on.

Kristina Hoeppner: 4:24

It's fantastic that you are actually as learning designer focusing on the ePortfolio instead of the ePortfolio just being a tag on for you, but that you can focus your energy directly just on those activities.

Shari Bowker: 4:36

Yes, that's right.

Kristina Hoeppner: 4:37

You've been involved now with portfolios for a number of years. Why are you a fan of them? Why have you stuck with them and actually made it your day job?

Shari Bowker: 4:48

It's such a wonderful space to be in. I feel really, really lucky to be able to work with portfolios every day. I think they have so many benefits for students and educators as well as broader educational processes in higher education. So they have capacity as we know to show progress and learning over time through ipsative assessment and feedback processes, not just for the institution, but to make that learning visible for students as well. I believe they have so much more to offer than traditional assessment types, like exams and quizzes and even essays. So if we look at that and break that down further, and my experience with working with them, I think about when it comes to portfolios as authentic assessment. So most unis prioritise authentic assessment as a key element in their teaching and learning strategies where we have relevant tasks, authentic to the real world. But in ePortfolio, we can take that further because we can have many authentic assessments, which enables students to demonstrate their achievement against a framework of learning objectives or graduate attributes or professional competencies over time, at a programme level. So authentic assessment. The next one, inclusive learning another key priority for most institutions. And I think portfolios are great because they can offer choice and flexibility, whether that's through which type of artefact a student uploads to the portfolio, whether that's written or video or podcast or anything. And on the assessor side, too, it can be quite inclusive with regards to feedback. Feedback can come in many forms, audio or written, on a rubric, either in line like on that artefact or within maybe timestamped on a video, and then back to that rubric on a criteria, specifically or overall on the whole instrument. You know, the portfolio acts as this cornerstone linking student to academics to whatever else they're doing externally to the university with the student at the centre of it all. The next one I like to think about as work-integrated learning. So at The University of Queensland, we primarily see ePortfolios associated with work-integrated learning. They're great to get the university in touch with the student while they're away on placement, and the student can submit some work to their placement supervisor or practice educator, some work to their course coordinator, and the uni can oversee any marking and feedback and can support the student at any time. We see a lot of competency tracking with regards to work-integrated learning over time. And then a key one, of course, which we always talk about is reflective practice. The underpinning of a great portfolio is reflective practice, enabling students to make connections between their experiences and skill or competency development, supporting them to challenge norms and thinking about complex concepts and issues that we face in the world today. The lens that I view portfolios through is supporting feedback literacy. So I did mention feedback. But we want to support students to develop the capacity for lifelong learning through supporting their ability to set goals and actively participate in and use feedback to improve their learning or strategies, which can lead to self-regulated learning as well. Finally, the big reason is the development of professional identity. I mean, we don't see this with other types of assessment forms. So again, usually through reflective practice and feedback, but where else do we support students to narrate their professional narrative or personal narrative about who they are, who they're becoming career aspirations, and how that aligns with their chosen industry or profession? So I mean, it does heaps, and that's why I'm a fan.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:10

If I weren't already a fan, I'd certainly be one now with how varied the portfolio practice is, and you mentioned so many items that are also very important for me, which makes it so fantastic because the portfolio can be used in such a flexible way and is not just for this one type of assignment or task, but you can use it yes in a classroom setting for assessment purposes, but you can also use it outside of the classroom.

Shari Bowker: 8:37

Yeah, exactly.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:38

You can use in the workplace for your next employment opportunity or for tracking professional competencies. Shari, do you know how many students are actually using portfolios? Or do you have some sort of idea of how widespread the practice is at UQ?

Shari Bowker: 8:58

It's pretty widespread across couple faculties. I would love for it to go a bit further. Predominantly, it's used by our Health and Behavioural Sciences Faculty because of the professional programmes, nursing, midwifery, we've got dentistry, pharmacy that have a professional framework, a set of competencies, that we use as the backbone. It's hard to say how many students because we do have quite a few. We were looking at about 30 programmes that were using it at one stage, but they come and go, courses come and go depending on who's teaching it. So it is difficult to track but it is pretty widespread.

Kristina Hoeppner: 9:33

Kudos to you also as being the only person responsible for working with all of these different educators and faculties.

Shari Bowker: 9:41

Thanks, Kristina. I will say that I do have help. As of last year, there is another learning designer, my colleague, Tanya Henry, who's helping me charge in this space. So I do have some help now, which is amazing.

Kristina Hoeppner: 9:53

Fantastic. As the UQ portfolio champion, and I think nobody can deny that you're the champion in holding up the flag for portfolios at UQ, and you've also just mentioned that portfolios are used in a lot of programmes, while not yet university wide, but still in a lot of programmes. I mean 30 programmes that's quite a bit, even if not all of them using them consistently. Then Shari, what is your process for supporting all of these lecturers and seeing if portfolios are actually a fit for their classes?

Shari Bowker: 10:27

We have this structured onboarding deployment and ongoing support process, which I can't take credit for as it was in place when I started with the Institute of Teaching and Learning Innovation, ITaLI, in 2019. This, I think you're going to share this with your listeners because I shared it with the TELedvisors network a few years ago. It's a centrally supported process where we have, as I mentioned, my colleague, Tanya and I, leading the pedagogy, championing the process. And we have eLearning support for the tech and training side. And we have a third and very important party supporting us as well, which is our frontline student support called 'Ask us' at the library, and they provide that ongoing support for students. So it's sort of this triangle of support between learning design, eLearning, and student support that makes it work. So the process starts with a link on a website for staff to request a meeting to discuss ePortfolios in their teaching and assessment, and then that is picked up by our central eLearning team. All together, we come together in a meeting. So I lead that first meeting, which I believe is so crucial in a good ePortfolio deployment to ascertain fit and provide a framework for good design, demonstrate the tech affordances and constraints, and discuss timelines and deadlines to really set up those expectations. So we call that the 'Programme readiness', but it's essentially an ePortfolio overview meeting. We need those main stakeholders in the room, who are the decision makers, to move forward from there. So we get an eLearning team member, the course team, anyone in that teaching team, the school learning designer, as well, it's great to collaborate with anybody that'll help support that pedagogy and that team and myself, and really, that's where we're ascertaining that fit. It's a chance for the course team, the teaching team, to say'No' and the bailout before the real work begins with the design. In the meeting, we discussed what the purpose of ePortfolio will be, like why they want to use it, what sort of tasks that students will be doing. And that gives us a good idea of how to personalise that meeting towards what they're interested in seeing, since the portfolios I mentioned can support so many different structures and processes. I then present portfolios as a pedagogy, making visible the learning process over time underpinned by critical reflection, supporting critical thinking. I talk about how the design can support a curation which is student-centred and underpinned, of course, by critical reflections where students seek feedback on their work, and they demonstrate and evidence growth and development ideally across that programme. So I provide after we talk about the deployment process, I provide a diagram which again, I think you'll share with the listeners, showing old design versus new design. I promote a shift in paradigm to how I believe ePortfolios should be used rather than I think how they've been used in the past. So if we picture a diagram with two boxes, the box on the left has the 'Old design', and the box on the right has 'New design'. In the old design, we've got three elements, we've got the word 'Mandated', which means mandated is tasks and assessments. So there's nothing, any room for student agency of what they're going to do. The next element is 'Siloed' where we might see just one course or a unit or siloed in one particular area. And then the last element is 'Feedback as delivery'. So we think of those in the literature as transmission feedback, so feedback from the teacher to the student only. There's an arrow depicting good design. And then we get into the right hand side, the first element against 'Mandated' is'Choice and flexibility', which we know is part of inclusive learning, where we can offer some agency to the students to choose which tasks they do and when they do them. Instead of'Siloed', ideally, it's'Programmatic' or at least integrated in a couple of courses, where it's integrated with learning objectives and standards, so it's clear to the students what the purpose is and consists of a series of tasks that enable them to demonstrate, like I said, growth and achievements. And the third one, which I think is really important, instead of 'Feedback as delivery', looking at how can we promote 'Active participation in feedback'. This one's from Naomi Winstone and David Carless' book called 'Designing effective feedback processes in higher education'. So translating a bit of that work into the portfolio really make sense. Out of that I ask three questions. Could we offer more choice or flexibility in this task? What do the students do before this task and what do they do next? This helps us link learning and feedback between tasks and courses across the programme.

Kristina Hoeppner: 14:58

So that the feedback is not just at the end of a sequence, but is in between the task and is really integrated also in the learning and the students are encouraged to take up the feedback then and reflect on it for a second task?

Shari Bowker: 15:14

That's right and prompting them to go back to a previous task and think about what they learned and then have them articulate what they learned in this task or how they can use that to improve their learning in this task. Along that line so that question is what is the student's role and feedback here? Look at incorporating various mechanisms to ensure that the student is active.

Kristina Hoeppner: 15:34

In a minimum, in a couple of podcast episodes, we've talked about the importance of the programmatic approach to using ePortfolios. Very recently with Mark Glynn, who had that experience at Dublin City University, but also prior to that with Kate Mitchell, also from Australia, a colleague that you know, really, really well, and I know you've been working with her on a number of your projects. Shari, what I'd like to focus on then with you and delve a little deeper is the aspect of the feedback because you had mentioned that that is incredibly important to you to include as part of the good portfolio practice besides of course, reflected also being one of those crucial elements that make a portfolio a portfolio. Why is that feedback so important to you?

Shari Bowker: 16:22

It's such an interesting question because what I've seen is as ePortfolio practitioners, we live and breathe portfolios as active student learning and student driven, or we talk about student centred pedagogies. But when it comes to feedback, I've seen that we often fall back on outdated feedback practices, which as a literature argues, is transmission from assessor to student perhaps at the end of the semester, you mentioned that as well, you know, the timing of feedback at the end of the semester, where there's no follow-up or linked task for the student to implement the feedback, and the student's voice is left out of the process. We know that learning is so tied into feedback and feedback, like the portfolio design, should not be a bolt-on consideration. It's not something that we can do at the end of the assessment design. It needs to be at the forefront, something we do first. EPortfolios are the perfect pedagogy and platform to support effective feedback processes. In the design process, I focus a lot on feedback as a process, which is centred, like I mentioned, on the students' role and what they do with the feedback. I think this is more important now than ever because with AI, we're shifting from assessing students' artefacts, just solely their artefacts, because we know that Chat(GPT) can produce them so well. Instead, I like to think about how we can assess the learning process where feedback is paramount to where they - and how they seek and engage with feedback, how they manage, process the feedback, and enact it to improve their work in their specific context that's personalised to them. And that needs to be part of the assessment process.

Kristina Hoeppner: 17:58

Mhh. So Shari, do you then use a framework for that in order to visualise it or bring it closer to the educators to have something that they can use in order to improve their feedback practices and how they're using feedback with their students?

Shari Bowker: 18:16

Yes, absolutely. I've got a couple of frameworks that I use. There are a few frameworks, student centred feedback frameworks in the literature. At big one is Carless and Boud's 2018 student feedback literacy framework. Associate Professor Christine Slade and I wrote a paper in 2021, where we applied their framework to how we might consider using that in ePortfolio design. Those authors argue that there's four elements to student feedback literacy. So the first one is 'Supporting student appreciation of feedback'. Within the portfolio, enabling students to understand that they've got an active role in engaging in feedback dialogue. It's up to them to seek and manage feedback. We do that through a few ways. We've designed feedback journals where students have an opportunity to take that feedback and reflect on it and decide how they're going to use it. Another way to support them from the beginning is through a feedback cover sheet. So that's when students are submitting an assessment. Rather than just submitting it and they're done, they do a pre-task, which involves a few questions to promote dialogue with the marker where students might answer, you know, what are the strong points of your work? Which points did you struggle with and why? And what would you most appreciate your assessor's feedback on? Yeah, puts them back in that driver's seat. That's, yeah, that's one to help them appreciate. I also love to go and talk to the students about why we designed the assessments like this, you know, and when you explain it to them, it really helps them appreciate it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 19:41

I love the second point that you made asking those pre questions, what do you actually want to get out of the feedback from somebody who's looking at your text? Because that shifts the conversation then just from here's an assessment tasks that I did come back to me but whatever you think versus where do I think I might learn more from or what I'm expecting and where do I hope to develop, which of course, also fits really well into the portfolio practice that we are reflecting on things and then getting the best out of it.

Shari Bowker: 20:14

Yeah, absolutely. It's such an easy thing to add on. But we do need to ensure that we've explained the purpose of that because when you ask students, where would you most appreciate your assessor's feedback, often they write"everything" or "all aspects". So yeah, it's important to teach them a little bit about what we're expecting with that cover sheet. The next aspect of student feedback literacy in Carless and Boud's framework is 'Making judg ments'. Developing students' evaluative judgement, the ability to ascertain the quality of their own work and the work of others is such an important professional skill, and it takes practice. And we know you can't just have one instance of it, and they will have developed it. So it needs to happen in multiple instances, which again, we're lucky the portfolio can do that. I try to incorporate elements of self-evaluation and peer-evaluation and explain to the students, the processes involved in a good self-evaluation and what's happening in your brain when you're looking at your own work and comparing it to the standards, to the rubric that you're developing internal feedback. That voice in your head is a really important voice. And that is actually a source of feedback that they can use to implement and improve their work. It's using their comparisons, isn't it to get them to improve their own work? So yeah, that's another one is making judgements through self-assessment and peer-assessment. We also know from the research that feedback is emotional work. It can make us feel really negative and disappointed, or students often explain that they find feedback really scary. Or if it's disappointing, and it's not feedback, they were expecting, they don't engage with it. So supporting students to manage their emotions, their affect, when it comes to feedback, again, takes time. And it's great to bring them along that journey and explain that to them. So again, asking students what sort of feedback they prefer, what form, I find, doing that self-assessment, self-evaluation beforehand actually helps them prepare to receive feedback from assessors. I think it helps there with their emotions, and the reflection or like a journal feedback journal, where they have a space to reflect on, unpack what that feedback is, what it means, take the positives with it, and how they're going to action it can really help with their emotions as well. So that's, that's the next one. The final one that Carless and Boud talk about that if the top three I just mentioned are interrelated and they are all in play, it's more likely that we can get students to 'Action feedback'. So there's quite a bit of work we need to do developing their awareness to action in a subsequent task. And again, it shifts us into feedback loops, rather than point in time feedback, and the portfolio does this. You know, where we have the structure, these flows of tasks. And so we can do that through multistage assessments, multiple tasks. There's another intervention in the literature called a feedback action plan. This is following the task. So we had the initial one, the feedback cover sheet, which is with the task at the start, but then this one follows the task. So this one is an opportunity for students to articulate what was the feedback they've received and how did it make them feel, again, touching into those emotions in get them to evaluate the feedback. Was the feedback you received good or poor and why? Was there any feedback you didn't understand? That's a great way for them to ask questions about it because sometimes they don't understand the language, you know. If we use so much academic language with students, they might not be able to understand it. And then finally, what three plans of action will you take to implement this feedback? So the feedback action plan is something I love to put in that portfolio following any assessment task, especially report from a supervisor on placement, perhaps before they have a final supervisory report. And that gives them a chance, again, to action, that feedback while they're still in that context. And that's really important.

Kristina Hoeppner: 23:49

That sounds like a really good plan to ensure also that the students read the feedback because of course, any any general assessment when once you get your grade, you might look at it but most students will actually look at the grade and at least a piece of paper somewhere else, but never go back to any of the remarks in the margins. So with that feedback loop, you ensure that they are engaging with it, that they really have a think about it. So Shari, you mentioned that you use a second framework in other circumstances or in other learning scenarios. Can you share some details on that one, please.

Shari Bowker: 24:22

So the other framework that I use to underpin feedback designs is for students who are on clinical placement, and they're completing workplace based assessments that are signed off in real time. That's Malloy and Boud's 'Feedback Mark 2'. This one is a series of steps, again, that is student driven, where it starts off with a picture or a series of boxes, starts off with the orientation of what the work is going to be in the standard of that work. And then this student completes the task. So the first activity whether that's a skill or in medicine they talk a lot about direct observation and procedural skills or mini CXs, which are mini clinical evaluation exercises. Firstly, the student judges their own work. Then they ask for specific feedback, could you please give me feedback on the following things. And then the other, so the assessor, judges their work. And then it's up to the student to compare those judges. And then they plan for improved work, and then to create that feedback loop, they need to do another activity, they then seek that second activity. So I use that framework to create assessment workflows within those particular courses that have these workplace based assessments. In both frameworks, a big part of that to be successful is bringing the course coordinators along in that journey because for some academics, these frameworks and the concept of feedback literacy is quite new. So I do quite a bit of professional development in that area where we review the research together and talk about how it could look within these tasks that they have. And then the next big piece of the puzzle is the students. And so I try to get some face-to-face time with them to pull them on their previous experiences and try to establish what their current concepts of feedback and feedback literacy are. Then we introduce the relevant framework so that they can see how it aligns to the tasks. So the tasks, I believe, are more meaningful, and they understand what we're trying to achieve.

Kristina Hoeppner: 26:17

How do the students take you up on that invitation to change their feedback practices once they have been introduced to one of those frameworks? Do they feel like their learning is improving then or is it just a regular task for them still?

Shari Bowker: 26:32

No, I think they really do appreciate it and see the difference. The research I did for my masters, where I did interview students after they had completed a series of what we call feedback interventions in the Master's of Dietetic Studies, the students noticed it right away how different things were, and they really appreciate it to be able to be part of that process and understood how important it was for them to self-assess, self-evaluate, reflect on that feedback, and use it. I think, really get it and they pick it up. It's been quite successful in every course that we have designed with student feedback literacy, with the assessment for student feedback literacy at the forefront. The feedback from students, and also assessors, is really positive. So it seems yeah, it seems to be really successful.

Kristina Hoeppner: 27:19

That's I think, then also where your programmatic approach can help because you teach them once, they learn about that better feedback, and they use it again and again in other courses and not just once and then might forget about it. So if they can have that repetition throughout other classes, then as well, it becomes more natural to them. It is not this foreign thing any more.

Shari Bowker: 27:39

Yeah, and it's tricky for them at the start because we are asking them to shift a feedback culture. They are so used to receiving feedback. And we know that's especially how it is in the clinical environment. But yeah, they do appreciate, and they do see that they learn so much more when they're in charge of the process, and they have assessments designed to enable them to use feedback.

Kristina Hoeppner: 27:59

And also for the students to know that transparently that you give them that upfront information so that they don't wonder why are we suddenly doing something different and they can't connect the dots.

Shari Bowker: 28:10

Yeah, that's so important. Yeah, that's been new this year, me having the opportunity to come and talk to the students. It's made a big difference.

Kristina Hoeppner: 28:17

You introduced us to the two feedback frameworks that you are using in different learning scenarios. Is there actually maybe also a point when feedback can be too much or when it can be too overwhelming for students when they have to give feedback on everything?

Shari Bowker: 28:36

Yeah, that's interesting. Most students, and what's shown in the literature is most students want more feedback. And when I pull students and ask them, you know, who would like more feedback, or I would like more feedback, agree or disagree most agree, and they want more. But in one instance with a colleague of mine, and Christine Slade and I wrote a paper with him last year for the Forum, calling enhancing workplace integrated learning the opposite of approach to closing the feedback loop. And he provides quite a bit of feedback while the students are on clinical placement. Students have not complained but asked for almost less feedback. They can find it overwhelming when there's a sheer amount of feedback coming in every week, and they're expected to action it. That's where bringing the students along in the process and asking them what kind of feedback they prefer and when is important incorporate their voice because they can be too much in some instances.

Kristina Hoeppner: 29:28

It always comes down to the balance of things like we also don't really want to have portfolio activities in every single class every single week because that can also overwhelm. It needs to be planned purposefully, and that is I think, also where your involvement then can assist educators to make it so that you have that variety of activities and also a variety of different activities in there for the students.

Shari Bowker: 29:55

That's right. And that's where it Kate Mitchell has spoken in this area as well around having a really solid programmatic assessment and feedback map. I put the feedback map in there to ensure that we're not getting them to self-assess on every single task, or we're not doing a cover sheet on every single task. And like he said, yeah, you can't have a portfolio activity for every single task. So it's around good and deliberate planning and mapping.

Kristina Hoeppner: 30:18

If you now had a wish to improve feedback literacy amongst your students, what would that be, Shari?

Shari Bowker: 30:25

I would wish that they could slow down, that they have the space and the time to really think about their practice and their work, what they're doing. Lift their heads up, look around, observe others, get curious, ask questions, ask for feedback on what they're doing, listen to the feedback, incorporate that information in improving their own work, and then repeat that. It's interesting, where we have courses or units that are graded and the students are focused on grades, that it's really tough for them. They can miss what the purpose of that task is, what it's designed to do in terms of supporting their development and really just focus on in terms of a self-evaluation, it becomes a tick box, they just need to get through it as quickly as possible. So yeah, I just wish that they would slow down and appreciate what we're trying to achieve with feedback literacy. Usually they do, but there's a few that don't quite get there.

Kristina Hoeppner: 31:22

How can you as learning designer support that process that the students can get to that point?

Shari Bowker: 31:29

I think it is through that iterative practice. If we do have a programme of assessment, if we do have the same processes conducted iteratively, over a number of years, I think they get there. If we have it in one course and then they might not do it again, if we don't have buy-in from other academics in the programme, so you know, they have one instance of it, then they're not going to get that full understanding of it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 31:52

It's a tough one, because of course, every academic needs to get through so much content, typically. And that of course, dictates the speed. But on the other hand, the students do need that space to actually think and digest what they have learned. Yeah. I've learned a lot about different feedback frameworks today and will make sure that we put all the resources into the episode notes that others can also follow up on them. So is there anything in portfolios that you'd love to do, but can't yet just really do?

Shari Bowker: 32:34

A big one for me right now is group work. Our current platforms don't support collaboration in a shared space or the assessment, workflows, and the marking involved with group work. So I would love to have an opportunity or see a development in that space. The next one is integration. Imagine if all of our systems talked to each other. I also wish we had enhanced integration with other assessment platforms, I think would be really helpful, especially in terms of programmatic assessment and pulling in all data into one space. And the last one, I wish that portfolios had a rich student dashboard where students themselves can easily track their progress across a programme, view their results and feedback with the option as well with viewing other students' feedback as a way to develop more shared communities and to help everyone learn from each other's experiences. So while we do have some dashboards, it's not quite what I'm envisioning, which are more rich forms of information for students.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:37

Which can also make it difficult to display especially when there's lots of activity because there's lots going on.

Shari Bowker: 33:43

It's not an easy task. Yeah, absolutely.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:46

No, but a very interesting one because, incidentally, on our long term roadmap for Mahara, which is not the platform that you're using, but there we do have an item on it that is around visualising content in portfolios because yeah, the more and more you create, at some point, you don't even know where something is. If we have visual aids that help us in a dashboard view to drill deeply into something and pull things out that might be of interest right now or something that I'm working on, and I need to find the things that I've done in the past and can just visualise them, I think would be very interesting to look at together with your ideas of the dashboard there.

Shari Bowker: 34:27

Yes, that's great.

Kristina Hoeppner: 34:29

Now getting to the end of our chat, Shari, is the last three quick questions. Are you up for them?

Shari Bowker: 34:37

I'm ready.

Kristina Hoeppner: 34:37

You're ready. Great. So first question, which words do you use to describe portfolio work?

Shari Bowker: 34:45

Originally, I was thinking 'important' because it is important work. But I'm going to shift that one to'innovative'. This is where I think we can try new things, often with forward thinking academics who are hungry for change. So innovate. The second one's 'collaborative' because we know it takes a village to create and deploy a really excellent ePortfolio. The final one which is most important is'transformative'. The impact that we have on teaching and learning and assessment practices often is so transformative for the educator, but also the students, of course, really see a difference in how they're displaying and achieving their learning achievements.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:27

Thank you so much for these three words. Now, you've already given us a whole bunch of tips on how to improve[laughs] our feedback strategy and...

Shari Bowker: 35:35

So many tips.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:36

I hope everybody's taking notes. And if not, there is a transcript associated with his audio file so you can copy and paste things out and leave notes, but what about a final tip for learning designers and instructors who create portfolio activities?

Shari Bowker: 35:52

I would recommend that you first develop or adopt a framework and process for ePortfolios, which lead with pedagogy and purpose and use it. Next is stay on top of the literature, use it to translate it to good evidence based practice. And finally, collaborate with others, join networks and communities to find out what's working and seek feedback on what you're doing.

Kristina Hoeppner: 36:19

Thank you for not just this one tip, but again, multiple tips in there. You had already mentioned one community that you're involved in that is ePortfolios Australia, which actually also has regular PARE sessions where you can practice your own portfolio work, create your own portfolio, and also seek feedback from others that are participating. So I think in general ePortfolios Australia is a wonderful community to engage with. And then we also have AAEEBL, the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning that originated in the United States, but is actually also operating worldwide, like ePortfolios Australia increasingly as well, because the Eportfolio Forums that are happening every year, they are always hybrid now and so that's fantastic to bring in those voices from other regions as well and not just ones of one's own country. Many opportunities to connect with people.

Shari Bowker: 37:19

Yes, absolutely.

Kristina Hoeppner: 37:20

No to the final advice, what would you tell our portfolio authors, portfolio creators, and essentially our learners? What tip do you have for them?

Shari Bowker: 37:30

If you have an ePortfolio as part of your programme, then I think you're pretty lucky, and you should really dive in and take advantage of it. If it's not part of your programme, you can always have your own portfolio using a free tool out there or perhaps it's just a set of folders and start with simply some goal setting. Collect everything you're doing somewhere and take a minute to think about how it went, what you learned, and what you'd improve or do differently next time. Be consistent. It will pay off. I think portfolios for learning are like exercising or investing. We're looking at small commitments consistently, and it will make for a big payoff.

Kristina Hoeppner: 38:10

Thank you so much, Shari. It was wonderful to chat with you today and hear a bit more about the research that you have been doing. So thank you so much for sharing all of that.

Shari Bowker: 38:20

Thank you so much, Kristina, for having me today. That was really fun.

Kristina Hoeppner: 38:23

I enjoyed it as well. Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Shari Bowker. 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 our podcast so they can subscribe. Until then, create, share, and engage.