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. You know, I love doing these interviews because they are my chance to catch up with a lot of fascinating people that I have gotten to know over the years and have either been staying in touch or following their professional activities. Dr Helen Chen from Stanford University introduced me to the work of Dr Sheetal Patel, and actually also to her herself, in 2020 during a workshop that we had at the AAEEBL Annual Meeting, and I also had the honour of being in one of her workshops last year. Sheetal, I'm so happy that our calendars finally aligned for us to have this chat today. So welcome to the podcast.

Sheetal Patel: 1:07

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kristina Hoeppner: 1:10

Sheetal, you are the fourth member of the Integrative Learning Portfolio Lab at Stanford University that I'm interviewing. So it's fantastic to have yet another perspective. Before going into that though, can you please tell us a bit about yourself? What do you do?

Sheetal Patel: 1:28

I really try to work on positive change for global impact. So really empowering people in organisations to be their own change agents, usually through learning. So just finding those aha moments or those moments where learning kind of clicks, and then they can connect to opportunity. I do that in a lot of different ways. So obviously, as you mentioned, as part of the Integrative Learning Portfolio Lab, it's really having people have their aha moments about their own stories and then be able to communicate that, for instance, in an ePortfolio for the opportunity that they want. But I also do this in a few other ways. At Aha! to Opportunities, which is my own company, I do career coaching, helping individuals really understand what it is about their career that they want to shift, pivot, what they want to achieve, opportunities that they want. I'm able to work on those, and then I also have a company with a partner of mine called Ninety-Five Z where we help facilitate upskilling, both at an organisational level and then also at an individual level. And then lastly, I work at LinkedIn Learning, and at LinkedIn Learning, I help upskill millions of learners across the globe on many different subjects. But again, so they're upskilling, they're finding that aha moment, that learning moment that gets them to the next opportunity. I will say, I'm also a mom, and that also has some impact as well[laughs]. Hopefully, it'll have some positive impact in the future, but trying to upskill my own little kids [laughs] is always a journey, too.

Kristina Hoeppner: 2:49

That's a lot of different roles and lots of different hats during each day that you are wearing, and so thank you so, so much for your time today to put on yet another hat of being an interviewee and seeing how you can bring all of that together. Sheetal, when were you introduced to portfolios?

Sheetal Patel: 3:09

If we're not thinking about the 'e' in ePortfolios for 'electronic'[laughs], then way back in high school, we had to have portfolios for graduation. That was really be able to reflect on all the things we had done over our high school experience and be able to gather that all into one big binder, and then they actually had us using the reflections, the accomplishments in our essays for college and things like that. That was kind of my first introduction to a portfolio. In college and undergrad, I was in the creative advertising major, so doing copy writing and art direction, and we had to have a portfolio for that, too. So pre scenes for ePortfolios and everything that we do online now.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:45

It sure does, and it seems like you still enjoy working with it because you have been doing it since high school now.

Sheetal Patel: 3:52

Yeah, absolutely. I think the reflection piece is so critical and it's so important. I think that's probably one of the best parts about doing ePortfolios as you might have the actual portfolio, but the reflection you get along the journey, to me, is so important, has been, obviously, for my whole career [laughs].

Kristina Hoeppner: 4:07

Is that then also why you became a founding member of the Integrative Learning Portfolio Lab, ILPL, as we are going to refer to it throughout this episode?

Sheetal Patel: 4:17

Yeah, I think there were some different factors, that constellation of stars that came together in a really amazing way so that I could work with the amazing team at ILPL. I think also to me, it was so important throughout any job that I've had, anybody that I've worked with, to really just have ownership of your story, to really have the space to reflect and understand what your story is, and then to be able to communicate it in a way that you own to whoever you want to to get that opportunity. Not only did I have these prior experiences, but I started working with Dr Helen Chen back in 2014, I think, through my previous role at Stanford in Career Ed(ucation), understanding from her perspective and her research about reflection and all the theoretical pieces of it brought to life all the practical pieces that I had already been working on and already been talking with students on through my various roles. For instance, I used to be faculty in advertising and trying to work with students to come up with their portfolios in advertising as well. Another key piece for ILPL was the key need for it across the campus. I think there were lots of different pockets of need for portfolios, and once Helen and I started tapping into that, we started hearing it across campus. So having one place to be able to talk about that,

whether it was: 5:25

research, workshops, being able to partner with different people was really important, too. Another aspect of that also was just DEI. In our individual workshops, we were hearing more and more students just have questions that were really important, and so all of those things together were great foundations for why we started ILPL.

Kristina Hoeppner: 5:45

ILPL is located in the Career Center, which also shows that it has the central character and the central spot on campus.

Sheetal Patel: 5:53

So it is in career education, but I think one of the great pieces is that we have so many cross campus partners that we work with, whether it's departments, it could be a faculty member, it could be students. It has so many different people that contribute to it across campus.

Kristina Hoeppner: 6:08

One of those groups Mario mentioned in his interview, when we talked about the workshop that he ran where he incorporated AI, is that you and your team, and also a lot of the student ambassadors that you have, you're running workshops for different groups of people, including, for example, also underserved communities. Can you therefore share more about that and why the topic of, you mentioned DEI, in the AAEEBL context we often talk about DEIBD, we add a couple more letters to that acronym so that it comes out to diversity, equity, inclusion, your DEI, and we are adding also belonging and decolonisation to it, why these principles are so important to you from the work that you have done and also how you want to help the students that you work with?

Sheetal Patel: 7:01

On the acronym piece, I've also had accessibility in there, and a few others. In terms of DEI, there's a few different pieces there. On a very personal level, I'm a person of intersectional identity across different places and that has provided bias, for instance, in the career context or others, where I didn't necessarily have access to things that would help me get to certain opportunities. In addition to that, we hear not just from students, but people of many different communities, both on and off campus, of just the challenges they run into trying to tell their story. If I'm an international student, I have to be very careful, at least in the United States, what I say online about my status. If you're a PhD student, for example, you may not want to say that you want to go into industry. You may need to walk that line between academic and industry, depending on your needs. We have students who are first generation and low income, and some students want to tell that story and some don't. The same thing with LGBTQIA students, we get questions about, 'Hey, do I share this? Do I not share this? I don't want to share this. What should I share? What would be the consequence of that?' Really important questions, but also tough questions that we can't necessarily give a student an answer to, but they need the tools to be able to make those decisions. That's been a really key piece of us developing the DEIB sort of framework or module. So we've developed curriculum around it, but not just the curriculum, the like, 'How do you think about this? What's a framework that you can use as a student, that's accessible' because these are really deep questions, but also that we're having those conversations within a safe community, a place that can be trusted. When our student ambassadors go out, we usually ask our student ambassadors, choose communities that you identify with, that you want to have those conversations with. Then we work with them to develop content specific to that community based off the framework that we have. That framework is really based on three components. It's really thinking about understanding your current values right now. What are they? What are you okay with? What are you not okay with? For instance, our students that are really politically active, are you okay with what the consequences might be in a job opportunity if those are seen because we can't control the person on the other side. So it's that piece first, and then once you understand that, starting to look at what are the pieces you want to share, and what do you maybe not want to share? Having conversations with people, whether that's in Career Ed, whether it's through ILPL, whether it's with other students, whether it's with your own community members, whoever those people are, which we call your feedback network. Having those conversations to really then reflect on what do I really want to share? What don't I give in my own context? The last piece is really taking action and being accountable, knowing what you've just laid out, let's go ahead and start to create your ePortfolio and how is that resonating and going back and saying, 'Okay, is this resonating with me, personally and my own values, is also resonating with the audience that I'm trying to reach for that opportunity, whatever that might be, and is it coming across the way I think I want to come across?' Those really big questions then become tangible enough to try to answer, and then we're trying to provide the spaces to really have more conversation about it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 10:08

I love that you give the student ambassadors and also the rest of the team the freedom to also choose the communities they want to work with. Of course, it might not work all the time, but that they can bring those communities into the workshops and also share their lived experience, therefore also showing them this is how I've navigated it, and have those conversation starters, making it very practical, but also giving people those choices, and not talking about solutions, but having them reflect on what have you experienced so far, what have others experienced in order to navigate the space and then come to an idea or to a way forward that works uniquely for them.

Sheetal Patel: 10:48

Yeah.

Kristina Hoeppner: 10:48

I still remember that first workshop that you and Helen did at the AAEEBL conference, where you took us through some of those questions that you've just mentioned that international students sometimes change their names or prefer not to have photos of them because they can be biased, and then, on the other hand, when a year later, I talked to a black student from Auburn University, and she said,'I'm putting photos of myself into my portfolio because I only want to work with people that also value me, that know that I'm black and that I'm proud of it,' so really finding a way of what works best for the person themselves in the particular situation they are in.

Sheetal Patel: 11:30

Yeah, like you said, it really needs to be individualised because that might have been fine for that particular student, but there's other students who are like,'You know what? I just need to help my family and I need a job, so whatever's gonna get me in the door,' and then that's okay, as long as you're aware of that, and you're making that decision intentionally, and you have the tools to make it, I think, is what's really important. That is why we've tried to bring that piece alive, I think in ILPL.

Kristina Hoeppner: 11:54

How are you helping your student ambassadors because some of them might not come with that focus on DEIBD themselves, but growing into it?

Sheetal Patel: 12:03

For the student ambassadors specifically, we do spend a lot of time onboarding. The great thing is, we've had several students over the last few years, so they also now have examples. They can see prior workshops, and then we have the core modules. So the core framework that we work with, and then we say, 'Hey, think about that framework in your experience' if they've built a portfolio. They also get the entire ILPL framework as well. ILPL has its own framework of how do you develop any portfolio, and so all of that training through that we'll have conversations. We'll talk about here are common questions we get, wow we answer them. They're able to see other students talk through their workshops, too. So we do a lot of onboarding for those students, and then we help them through the first couple requests. But usually students, especially students who want to do that kind of work, are pretty quick in the uptake. The team itself, the whole lab, is very aware of these particular issues because we have career coaches that are career coaching with students every day. We are also talking constantly as a lab, we meet on a bi weekly basis, so we're also constantly bringing up, what are the new issues coming up? What are the new pieces we need to think about? What are the new questions we're hearing and things like that. Obviously, Gen AI has been a whole other conversation. We're constantly talking about these different things that are coming up.

Kristina Hoeppner: 13:18

It's wonderful that you provide that professional development opportunity within the team, and they can immediately then try it out in one of their workshops, and then change things as needed. Sheetal, you just mentioned, of course, the word AI, generative AI. I don't think we get around any more to not mention it in one conversation. And so what I've recently heard is that when people started hiring, and we've seen that also, even here in New Zealand now, is that lots of people seem to be using generative AI chat bots to create their CVs and create cover letters and the like. Of course, with ILPL focusing quite a bit on the public presence and the digital presence for job applications, and how am I presenting myself to others? How are you then navigating this space? What are your suggestions, ideas for the students? Because some might think they have to use these tools. How can they actually work with them in a worthwhile manner? What are you currently exploring?

Sheetal Patel: 14:23

You already talked to Mario, but he and I, along with other members of the lab, worked on a module where we took the ILPL framework. The framework, just in a nutshell, asks first, thinking about what your story is now, then thinking about your purpose and audience. Third is really building your story with the brand story building blocks that you have, and then really coming up with a tight knit story. Evidence is next. So really, like once you have the story, and you know those building blocks, and you know what you want to say, then really attaching evidence, so artefact plus meaning to those different words of your story, and then the last two pieces are really choosing the channels that you want to show that. So is it an ePortfolio or is it another piece of digital presence like a LinkedIn profile or something like that, and then customising that story and that evidence based on that channel. For AI, what we did was really think through given each of those steps, one have those steps changed at all? Is Gen AI taking over any of those steps? At this point, my answer is no, it's not. What it can do is enhance each of those steps of the framework. For example, in what's your story now, we ask students to really think about what's out there that's about you, and what message is it giving people. Normally in a workshop, we might ask students,'Hey, Google the person next to you and come up with the three word story that you're seeing. What are the three words that are popping up that you would associate with this person based on their Google search results?' Well, now you can use Gen AI to help you with that. So you can say, if you're in ChatGPT, you can ask it, what do you know about XYZ person? Give it a little bit of context if it doesn't know, and then you can tell it okay, based on what you found, generate those three words. It can give you some ideas of what's happening. So at each point, I would say, it can help students identify and brainstorm, and once they've identified and brainstormed, first thinking kind of like Bloom's Taxonomy [laughs], once they understand and seen what's out there, they can then start to use beyond brainstorming of applying and potentially creating some text. But the biggest piece is that, because you're starting with that story piece, and you need to know your own story first in that ePortfolio, Gen AI can't really generate that for you without input. So we're really focused on, like 'Students, what are you inputting?' And then all the issues of what you input, that's the other thing people don't think about, is what you're inputting, what context it has, what context you're giving it, what is it citing, what data is it using? We need to focus on understanding what a Gen AI tool is generating, why it's generating, and what it's generating from. That's a key piece. Once you have some of those building blocks, you can start to ask it to do other things, like, 'Hey, I need to make this headline concise, but I want to stick to this language,' and so it can help you generate some of that. There's probably some other deeper things it can do, but I would say, when I've been talking to students so far, they're still exploring it, too. I would actually analogise that to social media where we expect students to know how to apply social media when it first started coming out in a job or an academic setting, and they didn't necessarily know how to do it. They could use the tools for different things. Now maybe that's a little bit better, but I think this is probably the same thing, right? We need to be able to build Gen AI skills for students to use in these different contexts. I will say, with the cover letter and CV specifically, I haven't done a lot with students, but I have heard a lot of that happening, and it'll be really interesting to see what happens because not only are students using that, but recruiters are using Gen AI tools, too. The space is just moving so fast. It'll be interesting to see both how recruiters, students, faculty, all sort of try to keep up with upskilling at the same time on how to use those tools.

Kristina Hoeppner: 17:52

What Mario also said was really good because he had realised that generative AI can only do so much, but it might not have his tone in there or it might over emphasise what he had actually done and so he could pare it back. Really knowing how to reflect on the writing that is then presented and comparing it to well, have I actually done this? Is this how I would represent myself had I written it to then really make sure that you're not just putting something out only because it's there in writing on the screen, but still critically reflect on what has come down on paper or on the screen there.

Sheetal Patel: 18:30

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Mario on point, obviously had worked on building out that module. I think another key piece though, where I know there's kind of the negative side, but I think there's a positive side for students. Some of this work can be really hard, and sometimes they just don't know how to do it. One of the key things we run into is really being able to translate, for example, projects that you've done into skills, whether that be hard skills, soft skills. So if you have a course, for example, Engineering 101, a job or a recruiter, or somebody on the other side doesn't have to be a recruiter. Maybe you're going to grad school, maybe you have other opportunities you're trying to connect to, that person may not understand what that means, but you also may have a hard time translating it. So being able to say tp Gen AI, 'Hey, I worked on this project, help me generate the hard and soft skills that might appeal to a particular audience to help me brainstorm or understand how to translate this.' But to your point, you can't stop there. It's a place to start. It's not a place to end.

Kristina Hoeppner: 19:27

What are some other current ideas that you're exploring in the ILPL?

Sheetal Patel: 19:32

Gen AI and DEI continue to be the new pieces, but I think there's still basics we need to figure out. How do we market to students and make sure they're seeing the resources? How do we speak in their language and their terms? Gen Z is slowly moving out. We're gonna have Gen Alpha coming in, which I think will be the Gen AI Alpha generation [both laugh]. Some of the other things we tend to talk about, which I think people across higher ed can understand, is, how do I get students involved? How do I engage them? How do I make sure they're seeing the resources that they're really understanding them? Can I make really short things? Can I make longer workshops? How can I make the learning material applicable to several different types of students at Stanford, from freshman all the way through postdoc? That's always a constant conversation. So not necessarily new ideas, but trying to iterate on what are the new things under those categories [laughs]. That's, I think, also where your role as mom comes in because you're dealing with yet another completely new generation and see that generation grow up and stay on your toes and never get out of the learning process there. So being lifelong learner, My kids are five and nine, and I can see all the things coming when they get to high school and college. I'm like, 'Oh man, this is going to be interesting' [both laugh].

Kristina Hoeppner: 20:49

Sheetal, what excites you currently most about portfolios?

Sheetal Patel: 20:54

What excites me most about portfolios is really that reflection piece, that aha moment that I see in people's eyes when they're like, 'Oh, that's it. That's my story. That's what I'm gonna say.' Because they may start going,'Oh, I have to have a portfolio. That feels really big. How am I gonna take all my projects? How am I gonna take who I am and put it online for someone to see in a few minutes?' It could feel really overwhelming. What still excites me is this talking one on one to a student. They're like, 'Well, I think I want to say this, but I don't know how,' and you talk to them, you say,'Just have a conversation with me. Tell me out loud, what's your story.' Well, they don't realise is they already have it, but once you point it out to them, they're like, 'Oh yeah, that makes total sense.' I love the confidence that gives them. So that reflection point that people have and that aha moment, it's really what I love the most. And then you see them build out their portfolio and get opportunities, of course, that's great, but it's that moment where they're like, 'Yes, that's my story, and I'm gonna own it.'

Kristina Hoeppner: 21:47

Seeing that aha moment is so fantastic. And I hope you'll have many, many more with all the different generations of students that he'll be supporting, and actually also not just students. I mean, you also have faculty that are using a number of your resources because, of course, they also need to have a digital presence.

Sheetal Patel: 22:06

Yeah, absolutely. We've been so excited to help people, not only on campus, but off campus. Dr, Helen, Jen and I and other folks in the lab, we are talking to people that are either Train the Trainer, so folks trying to do this at their own places, or trying to understand an element, and so we're just so excited to be able to bring this to as many people as we can.

Kristina Hoeppner: 22:26

Now the final three questions for you, Sheetal. Which three words or short phrases do you use to describe portfolio work?

Sheetal Patel: 22:36

Reflection. I would probably go back to those aha moments, because they still think they're the best piece of it. And then story. Portfolios really help you own your own story.

Kristina Hoeppner: 22:46

Thank you. What tip do you have for learning designers, education designers, instructional designers, whatever they call themselves in different corners of the world, or instructors or educators in general, who create portfolio activities?

Sheetal Patel: 23:03

The biggest thing that's been helpful to me is very much listening to my audience when I can to shift it and influence whatever I'm doing at the moment. I mean, my background is in consumer research, so that's a key piece of what I do, but if I didn't listen and learn before I built, I shouldn't think it would work. So really, just empathising with the audience if we're thinking about design thinking, is the biggest thing that has helped me.

Kristina Hoeppner: 23:28

Thank you. And now last question and last advice. What would you tell portfolio authors?

Sheetal Patel: 23:35

There's so much,[laughs] but to boil it down, we talk a lot about our frameworks, but at the end of the day, being able to understand your own story, however you choose to go about that is really important. But a key piece of understanding that story is talking to people. We have a concept called the feedback network that we talk about, which is that at every single stage of developing and authoring your own portfolio that you're talking to different people, whether it's people in your audience, maybe it's people that you can speak to, for example, if it's on campus, maybe it's a career coach or it's a faculty member, it could be low stakes stakeholders. So could be if you have a significant other or parent or a friend that you feel super comfortable with, all the way to high stakes people. So maybe past employers or managers, but really getting feedback throughout the process with whoever you're comfortable at the moment, so that you're continuing to reflect and have feedback, so that your story is coming across the way you really want it to.

Kristina Hoeppner: 24:32

hank you so much for that final tip, Sheetal. It was absolutely fantastic to have had this chance to chat with you and hear more of your work and what excites you about portfolios.

Sheetal Patel: 24:44

Thank you so much for having me. It's been so great to have these kinds of conversations, and I really appreciate the conversations you're bringing whether again with the ILPL, but also everyone else, as we continue to think about portfolios in general, I think it's so important. So thanks so much.

Kristina Hoeppner: 24:58

Thank you, Sheetal. Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Dr Sheetal Patel. 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 listen again and tell a colleague about our podcast so they can subscribe. Until then, create share, and engage.