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 integrating portfolios with higher education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara Team at Catalyst IT. My name is Kristina Hoeppner, and I look forward to speaking with Bas Bakker today. Bas holds a Master's in Business Administration with specialisation in marketing and has been a learning designer for many years working in the Netherlands. 

This is the first time that we are sitting down to talk portfolios, and I'm looking forward to our chat to learn how portfolios are used in Dutch institutions of higher education. Thank you for your time to speak with me today, Bass.

Bas Bakker 00:53

Thank you.

Kristina Hoeppner 00:54

Can you please tell us a bit about yourself? What do you do?

Bas Bakker 00:58

You just mentioned, I'm a learning designer. But it's not what I started. I started as more like in marketing and market research. In the beginning of my career, I worked in Hong Kong. So only after that when I came back, I thought of the job in education, first as a teacher and the lecturer and later on more and more as a learning designer, also more involved in the IT part of the teaching and learning.

Kristina Hoeppner 01:25

So how did you stumble into becoming a learning designer from marketing?

Bas Bakker 01:30

Well, that was quite by coincidence because well, as I mentioned, I've worked in marketing and market research, and I did that in Hong Kong, and we lived there for almost four years. We also got two children at the time. When we came back to the Netherlands, one of us, me or my wife, had to work less or more flexible hours. And we chose for me that I was the one. Yeah, we were thinking about what is a good environment to work more flexible hours, and that was of course, education. But yeah, it was funny, not too easy. Like, how do you come from a marketing job into education. And it happened quite by coincidence because in the afternoon on the school yard, I was chatting to one of the mothers by a friend of my daughter, and while we were chatting and she said, 'Well, are you available to maybe you have some job with us because we can use people with the experience you have.' Well, we can just talk and two weeks later, I was just in front of a class of 100 students for my first lecture. So it was quite surprising for me, but I find it very interesting, and from that on I'm still working in an educational environment.

Kristina Hoeppner 02:44

Do you see any parallels between marketing and learning design?

Bas Bakker 02:50

Well, of course, yes. You have to understand the needs of the client or customer, and if you see the student as your clients, yes, that is very important to see what they need for learning. And I think I still use that in my work. So I tried to understand the needs, well not only the students', but also the teachers'. And I think that's maybe also the reason I'm not a lecturer any more, but more like a learning designer because I find it more fun and interesting to do to do research on these kind of things.

Kristina Hoeppner 03:21

Great. Thank you, Bas. And yes, I think sometimes it actually helps when you come sideways into a career because you can bring all of that other experience that somebody might not have actually ever thought about to bring to a job with you because you have that different perspective.

Bas Bakker 03:40

Yeah, I think that is also something which is of course, from your background, from Business Administration, you learn to look at different angles. You learn to do a different perspective. If you look into the area of portfolios, there's also different perspective, you have a specific group of students, the programme, and also the IT department. They also have different needs, you should try to find something which works for them all. And that's not easy.

Kristina Hoeppner 04:06

That sure is not easy. You're right there. You mentioned that you are a learning designer now and that you're doing quite a bit of research. In what area of learning design is that research for you? Are you're looking into different tools or more into how to use the technology in a sound pedagogical way? Or is it both?

Bas Bakker 04:29

It's both actually because I've different roles because in one of my projects, I'm more the functional application admin. So I really do the functional analysis of the system we use at the moment. We have to make a decision, can we use it or not? Or should we look for another tool? And in another fields and other projects, I'm closer to the programme and I'm more like the learning designer, which really helps the programme to fix the tool or to use the tool in the proper way so that the students and the teachers they have an effective learning environment.

Kristina Hoeppner 05:07

What are you actually looking for in a portfolio platform when you're looking at it from the learning design the research side of things?

Bas Bakker 05:15

Actually, it should support the learning of the students on the one side, but it also should support the whole assessment process of the programme. So you have both sides, actually, the learning process and more like the accountability side of the portfolio. And that's not always easy because there's different needs for that, and there, you always have to look to balance the two sides. I would say I would look into both sides. You can do these things in the portfolio to itself, but most of the times you want to have also the learning management system involved because my vision is more likely the portfolio is the personal learning environment of the students, of the learner, and the learning management system is more the environment of the programme or the institution. And if you really define these two environments clear, then the student will not really be free to express their own ideas and to really reflect on their own learning in a very honest way.

Kristina Hoeppner 06:26

At the organisations where you work at, do you use portfolios more for assessment purposes or for developmental purposes or kind of what some people also call the learning portfolio?

Bas Bakker 06:38

Well, it's both, actually, and I think it's more of a matter how much they are integrated because a lot of programmes, they use them both. They have the one side and the other side, and there's a gap between these. You also have programmes, which are really, really integrated, and they use it really on a very integrated way. I don't know which one is better because you can have both. But I feel that in a more integrated environment, from my experience, students really see more advantage of the portfolio.

Kristina Hoeppner 07:12

What does such an integrated environment look like?

Bas Bakker 07:15

It's more about the objects like students learn in learning activities and the learning activities, they have some outcomes, they have a project or they have posts or data designs. And when you do it both, they reflect not only on the task but they also reflect more on a higher level, a more meta cognitive level. And that means that they think about how would it help me to be a better whatever profession they study for, and that is more like, if you do both things, you see the stronger use of the portfolio system because it's not only collecting evidence, but it's also using this collected evidence to really reflect on their learning and also on their professional level where they want to be in the future. 

Kristina Hoeppner 08:06

How do you then support the students with their reflections? Do you have a favourite reflective framework?

Bas Bakker 08:14

I don't it [laughter]. Some programmes have it. It also depends on how they work with templates. Because some of the programmes really have a scaffold programme with a lot of forms and reflection forms, and they're also our programmes, which is really they give a lot of freedom to the students to just ask, 'Well, if you want to reflect there's a learning journal' and well do the reflection, and that is really up to the student in the course in that programme.

Kristina Hoeppner 08:46

Now Bas, you live in the Netherlands, and there of course, Dutch is the official language. Mahara comes in English by default, but there are also translations into other languages, including Dutch, and that is thanks to the efforts in most recent years, in particular to Joost Elshoff. But previously, also a Koen Roggemans who also translated Moodle for many, many years. Do your students use that translation of the software tools that they're using? Do you find that it is an advantage to have a software available in the language that is their mother tongue or their preferred language?

Bas Bakker 09:29

Yes, I think so. But also, a lot of our students are also quite familiar in English, but still, I think it's good to have it in Dutch. But there's also one other thing like we have the Flemish or Belgian, it's a bit of a difference than the Dutch language. So some of the translations we can see is not really Dutch, it's more like Belgian [laughter]. Though we have one language, but then still you see very small differences. I think it's very good to also have a native version of the interface. I think it would be better if we could, well, if the Dutch community could really work together to come up with a good translation to some words because it's from English to Dutch is sometimes difficult because our words tend to be longer than the English words. So they do not fit on the screen, so it's not always easy to make that translation that it is still fits.

Kristina Hoeppner 10:19

That's certainly something to talk with the Dutch translators about at some point and see what can be done there. Now Bas you've mentioned that your students use portfolios in many different ways that you are very much in favour of integrating systems so that you can get the benefits from both of them or maybe even more than two systems. What trends have you observed in portfolio work over the years in the area that you've been involved in?

Bas Bakker 10:49

What I see now in the Netherlands, but I think also in Belgium, that there is increasingly more large scale implementations rather than fragmented pilots. Also, what you see is tat the institution's place of higher demands on functionality and integrations with other applications. That's API or LTI integrations. There's also I think, increasing interest in alternative ways of certification, for example, badges or microcredentialing. We see that a lot of in Holland. We have also, edu badges in the Netherlands. Also, learning management and portfolios are more and more integrated but not always. It would be best if you have both integrated that the one we use now in Rotterdam, for example, there's an older one, which is really good for higher education, but then the newer one, it's more focused to K-12 and not higher education. So I think higher education cannot work any more without an ePortfolio. We really need one. If now a supplier says, 'Well, we focus on totally different area' is a problem. We have to find something else and that is not easy. 

Also, what I see is in the Netherlands at least, we call it programmatic assessment. This is a lot of programmes are going that way, and that means that you don't assess subjects anymore, like small subjects, but you assess the whole, not the parts anymore. And this is interesting, but also not easy to design because you have not to have only one part of your curriculum, but you should look at the whole. It's also something to find out what works best and also what is the role and how do you use the portfolio in that kind of context.

Kristina Hoeppner 12:40

What do you think is the reason why there are more large scale implementations of portfolios in the Netherlands at the moment? Is it because portfolios are currently trendy or have people realised that that kind of assessment or continuous learning is very useful for students to then also continue in their career?

Bas Bakker 13:04

It's more like the shift in approach to what you know is what you can do. There's more focus on the ability of students, not only what you got in the class, like some kind of book or knowledge, but it's about what you can do with this knowledge. And I think it's not easy to assess all this with just a test. You need a portfolio to do a wider assessment of these qualities of the students. So you need a system which looks at a broader scope than only one part of the learning of the students.

Kristina Hoeppner 13:38

Do you also see portfolios being used in the workplace or that students continue their portfolios once they leave the university?

Bas Bakker 13:47

Not yet. Not in all fields. I think it's in especially in the medical field. Yes. But not in the auto fields yet, but maybe I think it's changing because lifelong learning is still on the roads in the medical area, yes, I see it, but in the other ones, it's coming. But it's not very broad implemented.

Kristina Hoeppner 14:09

That kind of really takes me to our next question, namely, what would you like to be able to do with portfolios that you currently can't yet?

Bas Bakker 14:19

A lot of questions I get lately is about how would it be possible to visualize the learning of the students Better. So how would it be to show progress of their learning for the students themselves because everybody's talking about dashboards nowadays. We like to have a dashboard. But that question is not so easy to answer because what should the dashboard tell? Is it the amount of feedback you get or is it about the feedback you get, how much feedback you get? Because that is all quantitative information. But it's more about you need really have to analyse your understanding. When has a student grown? It's more qualitative than quantitative. So it's really not easy to think and come up with kind of dashboard. But we work quite a lot with SmartEvidence already, but I think SmartEvidence could be improved with some kind of spider diagram. I think there's are some proposals for that already. That would be very interesting.

Kristina Hoeppner 15:20

Why do you think the spider diagram would be very interesting? And of course, I'll link in the episodes notes to it, so that listeners can check it out.

Bas Bakker 15:29

It could be very interesting to have your own view, for example, for the student has a self review and compare it to review or to an expert review and then reflect on that. So your idea about how good you are can be quite subjective, especially when you have like an expert looking at your own performance. That would be like a mirror like you see someone else's opinion about what you show, and then I think it's good to learn from that. Visualise the gaps between your own ideas about where you are and the ideas about the experts or your peers.

Kristina Hoeppner 16:07

So kind of do have some automatic aggregation of what you have been doing in the portfolio, but not solely relying on that and still giving students the choice to also voice their opinion and bring themselves in with how they see themselves. Where do you think then learning analytics falls into it? Where do you see its place in the portfolio world?

Bas Bakker 16:33

That could be, but then it should be very student learning analytics. So it should be analytics for the students. I think you'll really aggravate them and also, I don't know what kind of figures that should be, that should have to do with your goals, the things you've set yourself, and you have to have feedback from the system. But what kind of feedback from the system would you get? I think, a few years ago, JISC in the UK did a really large research on student learning analytics. And I think, it'd be very interesting to look into that to see what is useful information for students to learn from what they do. 

And of course, you have also the question about, can the programme or the teacher also learn from that? But that's, I think, not easy because you always come in the situation, which is what is allowed and what is not allowed to show because you have a privacy standards, GDPR and all these things is really difficult. And in Holland, we are really thinking about it. A lot of people are thinking about it. So I see a picture, but it's not easy, especially in the field of portfolio because the portfolio is really a personal learning environment. So should be also a personal learning dashboard.

Kristina Hoeppner 17:46

There are certainly lots still to research and keeping our learning designers busy in that area. Now we are coming to the end of our interview today, Bas. I'd like to ask you three questions. The first one is, which words do you use to describe portfolio work?

Bas Bakker 18:04

I was thinking about the words you have in this programme. I thought about these three words, create, share, and again, and I think yes, they are good words. And I think well, I can mention these words. But I think there's another three I can mention. I came up with curate, reflect, learn.

Kristina Hoeppner 18:24

Curate, reflect, and learn, right?

Bas Bakker 18:26

Yes. I think these are really important because especially when you collect a lot of evidence, it's not about all the evidence. It's about what is the evidence which shows best where you are and what you are and where you stand in your learning journey. Of course, to do that, you need to reflect and because of the feedback and reflection you learn, that's a very interesting part of the portfolio.

Kristina Hoeppner 18:50

Thank you for those three additional words. I really look forward to putting all of these together in a word cloud so that we get an idea of what everybody's thinking in terms of portfolios and what is important to them in that work. What tip do you have for learning designers or instructors who create portfolio activities?

Bas Bakker 19:13

I think especially these learning activities should be designed in such a way that these activities help students learn more effectively with an ePortfolio. They should be challenging and interesting for students, and they also should be something where they can understand why they do it and where they are leading to. Because in a program you have many learning activities that together they form interesting learning journey. Try to develop challenging learning activities that make it more effective for students to learn within a portfolio.

Kristina Hoeppner 19:46

That now takes us to the last question. What advice do you then have for portfolio authors, for your students, for your learners?

Bas Bakker 19:55

That was for me quite a difficult question because it really depends on the context because some of the programmes really let their students very free, they give them a free space. But other programmes give them a really narrow space, but what I should say to both of them, try to be as creative as you can, so that you will be more aware to select the evidence to show what your learning improvements are. Also, what I always say is, keep a learning journal because most of the portfolio tools, also Mahara, has a blog, especially keeping a learning journal is very interesting to look back later on in your study.

Kristina Hoeppner 20:32

Thank you, Bas. Thank you also for giving us a glimpse into your work as a learning designer who has been using portfolios and also different portfolio tools with students for so many years. 

Bas Bakker 20:44

Thank you very much. 

Kristina Hoeppner 20:45

Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice?

This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Bas Bakker. Head to our website podcast.mahara.org where you can find links 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. I hope you'll listen again and tell a colleague about our podcast so they can subscribe. Until then, create, share, and engage.