
Create. Share. Engage.
Portfolios for learning and more brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. Host Kristina Hoeppner talks with portfolio practitioners, researchers, learning designers, students, and others about their portfolio story.
Create. Share. Engage.
Matthew E. Mueller: Create and control your own narrative with a portfolio
Matthew E. Mueller, CRC, MA, MBA, is the Director of Accessibility and Disability Services at Dominican University of California where he's also finished his MBA in December 2024. He's also one of the integrative coaches of the Student Success Center.
In this episode, Matthew talks about how all of his roles at Dominican contribute to him being able to support students holistically, coach them, and provide services to them that help them navigate college successfully. He also shares a bit about his own portfolio journey.
This episode is the fifth and last interview with portfolio authors from Dominican University of California whom I was privileged to meet in preparation for the first AAEEBL ePortfolio Retreat that was held at Dominican on 18 October 2024.
Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn
Resources
- Matthew's portfolio and his Dominican web page
- The Dominican Experience, of which the portfolio work is part
- Digital portfolio support at Dominican
- Christina Mayes, MS, Manager of the Fletcher Jones Digital Portfolio Lab
- Naomi Elvolve, MA, Executive Director of the Student Success Center, Integrative Coach
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Related Dominican University of California episodes:
- Solena Ornelas: Set goals and achieve them with a portfolio
- Starlight (José) Lain-Straus: The portfolio as impactful practice for students
- KatieAnn Nguyen: Showcase your achievements in a portfolio and be proud of them
- Arturo Flores, Jr.: The portfolio is a reflection of yourself
Related episodes
- Kate Mitchell: Deliberate and programmatic design
- Mark Glynn: Take a programmatic approach to assessment with portfolios
- Kevin Kelly & Kristina Hoeppner: Digital ethics principles and UDL guidelines
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Production information
Production: Catalyst IT
Host: Kristina Hoeppner
Artwork: Evonne Cheung
Music: The Mahara tune by Josh Woodward
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 I'm speaking with Matthew Mueller who works at and is a student at Dominican University of California. We are recording this interview mid-October 2024 because I'm visiting the university for the first AAEEBL ePortfolio Retreat. Christina Mayes, the Manager of the Fletcher Jones Digital Portfolio Lab, roped Matthew into this interview, probably also because one of his hobbies is podcasting. So this interview concludes the excursion to Dominican where we've already heard from a number of students. Now at the end, I have the chance to speak with Matthew, who is heavily involved in the portfolio work on campus. So let's dive in. Thank you so much, Matthew, for making time on such short notice.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, of course. I'm glad to be here.
Kristina Hoeppner:Usually, I ask what your role is at the university, but in your case, you actually have so many different roles. So what do you do here at Dominican?
Matthew Mueller:My primary role is I'm the Director of Accessibility and Disability Services (ADS). That means I work with students, I work with faculty and support the entire university around disability, accessibility accommodations to ensure that students are supported, that faculty know how to support those students, and that we're all kind of working well together to create an inclusive, accessible learning environment. My other role, I'm an integrative coach, part of the integrative coaching team through the Student Success Center here at Dominican, and in that role, I do a lot of one-to-one work with students to support them as holistically as possible to support their academic goals, their personal goals, their career goals, and anything else in between that might come up.
Kristina Hoeppner:How many students are actually at Dominican?
Matthew Mueller:So including undergraduate and graduate students, I believe it's about 1,850 students.
Kristina Hoeppner:That's a really nice-sized campus, and you've got a beautiful campus with lots of greenery around here.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, it's an absolutely gorgeous place to work. And yeah, it's a good-sized school. I've worked at generally smaller universities and colleges across the United States, and so when I was looking for a role outside of New York, where I'm originally from, I saw Dominican, the beautiful campus, but the student body size, I definitely thought this was a good fit for me.
Kristina Hoeppner:With how many students do you then work on a regular basis because you said you're the Director of Accessibility Services. How many are your regular clientèle?
Matthew Mueller:There are approximately 200 students who are registered with Accessibility and Disability Services, and so that means that they work with myself or another ADS coach who happen to also be integrative coaches, and we support them with accommodations and other sorts of supports. My particular case load, I just checked yesterday actually, it's about 81 students.
Kristina Hoeppner:That's quite a lot of different students to always keep in mind what they need and how best to support them.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, absolutely. It's having to be agile, every day is always going to be a little bit different. You never know what type of email you're going to get in your inbox or who's going to knock on your door and working on both solving problems and crises that might come up, but also being able to just have really nice, meaningful conversations with students, whoever might want to get some support or talk with you that day.
Kristina Hoeppner:What do you do as integrative coach?
Matthew Mueller:So integrative coaching is a programme that my supervisor, Naomi Elvolve, when she arrived at Dominican over a decade ago, she wanted to bring this coaching programme. So it's a holistic type of coaching where we do work with students to support them in literally every aspect of their life, integrative really, bringing to mind, like holistic sort of coaching. And so I tell students that we are life coaches, we're academic coaches, we're career coaches. I have a background in executive function coaching, and so it really is whatever a student might need support with, we can help problem solve, provide strategies and tools, just be a sounding board for students, connect them to resources and things like that.
Kristina Hoeppner:That is fantastic because there you really look at them, as you said, holistically, rather than putting them into pigeon-holes, but can work with them as a person.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, absolutely, and so it really is such an amazing part of my job, just being able to have a student come in who might be dealing with something academically, struggling to prepare for an exam, but then from that, we talk about their personal goals and their strengths and areas where they're not so strong and how to support them and just really meaningful because students will share when they feel like there's an ear that is ready to listen.
Kristina Hoeppner:How does then your role as Director for Accessibility and Disability Services match up with your role as integrative coach?
Matthew Mueller:I would say that they work hand in hand, right? So my role as a Director of Accessibility and Disability Services that is the primary role that I have where I'm really handling a lot of the administrative and logistic and procedural aspects of accommodations, of ensuring that students have the supports that they need. If there's a student who needs American Sign Language interpreting or alternative print for their textbooks or exam accommodations, handling a lot of that work to make sure that things run smoothly here, but at the end of the day, it really all comes back to that coaching mindset of there's a student and they need supports, and some of those supports can be a tool like an accommodation, extended time on exams, or being able to have a note taker in one of their classes. But beyond that because accommodations are just tools helping students to explore how to use that tool well and how to imagine other types of supports and resources that can complement a lot of that work that we do just in ADS, I really think more big picture about what this means as a student in along their academic journey.
Kristina Hoeppner:That's fantastic to give students so many support options, to also show them what they can do in the future, when there might not be such services available any more to them in the workplace and develop strategies and ideas around how to master their daily lives.
Matthew Mueller:It really is a developmental process, right? Of really thinking about where they are today, where have they come from, and where ultimately are they going? And how can we scaffold some things, and how can we work with them to give them tools in their tool kit that won't just help them during their four years at Dominican, but throughout the rest of their lives?
Kristina Hoeppner:One of the tools is actually why we are talking today [Yes], and that is the portfolio because you created a portfolio yourself. Was that your first one that you've created?
Matthew Mueller:Yes, so I've never taken the time, you know, I have a LinkedIn profile and things like that, but obviously, the digital portfolio is a bit more expansive, and it's distinct from that LinkedIn profile. This is, yeah, the first experience that I've had with really sitting down and thinking, how can I put myself on the screen like that?
Kristina Hoeppner:Why did you create it?
Matthew Mueller:I work closely with Christina. She's a champion of digital portfolios, and she showcases how and why it is high impact activity to have students do. And so I do teach'Navigating college', which is a first-year experience course, and I've done that for four years now. And when I share the idea of this is what a digital portfolio is when Christina comes in to talk with them about it, it's good, I think, to have my own to not just say, 'Oh, you need to do this because you're a student, but this actually is something that is valuable, that there's so many benefits that you can get from even just creating it, right? The idea of it being reflective and creative, and just an opportunity for you to create and control your own narrative, that this is who I am, is how I want to present myself to the world, that way.' And so I wanted to do that because I think it is something that can be a nice artefact for students to hold on to, but also you learn a lot about yourself doing it.
Kristina Hoeppner:I learned another thing about you. You are also an MBA student. Do the graduate students also have to create portfolios? Or is that more something that is encouraged for undergrads?
Matthew Mueller:So that's a good question. So in the MBA programme, it's not necessarily something that is so highly focused on recognising, I think, a lot of us are folks in our middle of our careers, and so that's not something that I've experienced much in the MBA programme, but I do know that there are other graduate programmes that do engage in the digital portfolio work, I believe. Occupational Therapy, the Applied Sports and Performance Psychology programme does, and so there are a lot of graduate programmes that do that, and I think Christina is continuing to wave that flag and say that this is something that's important. So we're continuing to see momentum towards this being actually something that is not just an undergraduate thing, but something for all students here.
Kristina Hoeppner:Especially also looking at the type of portfolios that are created here that are all public facing, at least the ones that I've of course, seen so far where you really nicely complement that LinkedIn profile or that regular CV or résumé that you would be writing so that there's a bit more about yourself displayed there.
Matthew Mueller:I took the activity of creating the digital portfolio as a way to think about if someone else was going to look at this, which I hope they do, what would be nice for them to know, right? And so having my CV there, which is, I guess, always a nice thing for folks to know, but also taking an opportunity to include a LinkedIn profile or include a link to my GitHub, where I've been learning Python in one of my MBA classes. And so having an opportunity for it to be more than just what someone might see on my résumé or CV or on a cover letter and really being able to showcase that I'm a whole person and not just the words on my application.
Kristina Hoeppner:Exactly, Yeah. Then Matthew, how do you support students in their portfolio work?
Matthew Mueller:In 'Navigating college', we do a lot of...
Kristina Hoeppner:That's a first-year course, right?
Matthew Mueller:Correct. Yeah. So not all first years, but I would say probably eight out of 10 first-year students will take the 'Navigating college' course. In that course, we not only introduce the idea of a digital portfolio, but we also set the groundwork for that by helping students to think about who they are, where are they today, what are they engaged in, where they come from, and where are they going, helping to create a thread between all those things. And so using the digital portfolio is a really useful tool and platform for us to explore interests and skills and identity and experiences. And so through the course of a semester, we'll touch on a number of those topics, and then throughout the course of their work in the digital portfolios, they'll be able to showcase that a little bit more. So that's, I would say, a primary way that I do that. But I would also say, just in my individual work with students as an integrative coach, every experience that we have, my hope is, is that we are helping students to develop awareness, develop new skills, new strategies, helping them to better articulate and understand who they are as a student, and so through that, being able to then have that awareness that they can then put into the digital portfolio in that way as well.
Kristina Hoeppner:Do you also then make it clear to them that some of the experiences they have with you or with other services on campus that they should reflect on them a bit more and put them into the portfolio because some students that are new to the practice might not realise, even though they work in a quite holistic environment here, that they might want to put that into writing a bit or making a recording of it and reflecting on that experience?
Matthew Mueller:That is something that I've been slowly trying to integrate more. I think with coaching, there is this big reflective piece of not just okay, we did something great, but in the moment, how does that feel? And also the next time I see them, what that looked like in their life. And so really asking them to think about what is new for them, what's changed for them, how have they grown? Because I think that story in their digital portfolio is a really powerful one. I started here, and this is where I ended up. And so through coaching, being able to help facilitate those conversations with themselves and then the screen a little bit more.
Kristina Hoeppner:Do you then also have specific questions that you typically ask your students to help them reflect?
Matthew Mueller:Yes, probably just asking them to reflect on what the process was like to share their story with me that day. Often, I feel really privileged to get the opportunity because the work I do in Accessibility and Disability Services, I'm asking students to share very personal things. In a way, I say to them,"you probably don't share this with anyone except your doctors and maybe some friends and family, but you just met me today, and I want you to be very open and vulnerable in some ways, and to share that." And so through those conversations, I do ask them to reflect just "how does it feel to articulate these things, and what is it like for you to share these pieces of you?" And as we're talking,"what is it that you might be learning or better understanding about yourself through this" We talk about strengths and how you can leverage your strengths to help you in areas that you're not so strong and so really helping them to think about and process through what we're talking about, to make it feel like they're not just having a regular old conversation, but it is something that really is part of the journey that they're on.
Kristina Hoeppner:That is wonderful, and I've seen that in some of the portfolios that Christina had shared, that the students very openly also talk about why they've come to Dominican, or what their background was, how they are fitting in here, and really, from what I can see in the writing, are very comfortable as people and also comfortable as members of the community here.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, I think that just speaks to Christina's framing of the digital portfolio as, in some ways, a journal and in some ways an opportunity to interrogate those intersecting identities and the stories that students come with and connecting all of those dots together of what's not just a portfolio where, 'oh, I have all these experiences that are disconnected,' but what is, again, that thread, and what is the link? And often it is the students who are the thing that connects all those pieces together. So helping students to look to understand not just what they've done, but who they are and who they're becoming through those experiences. Christina, again, is doing such amazing work to make that a central piece to the process.
Kristina Hoeppner:I think it's though also a testament to you as integrative coaches and everybody who's involved in especially that first year course, but then also the peer mentors to bring that vision to life. Because it can't just be one person on campus who does all of that. It is everybody standing behind the idea and seeing that it is something that helps both students, but also the instructors, when the students can reflect on and can bring all of those practices also into other classes.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, absolutely, and so I think there is a lot of modelling of those types of practices, of being very open to sharing our experiences and being open to engaging with students. When we ask a student, "how are you" not just to accept, "oh, good, how are you?" But really to have Dominican be a space where students can be their whole selves and to understand all those different pieces, and so having people who are not just comfortable, but are encouraging of students doing that sort of exploring. I think it's through our integrative coaching programme and through our amazing peer mentors, the work that they do of creating that community where those conversations are happening consistently.
Kristina Hoeppner:You use reflection quite a bit in your coaching practice. Are there elements from your work in Accessibility and Disability Services that influence how you teach the portfolio or how you represent the ideas of a portfolio?
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, that's a really good question. I think, as I've been reflecting on that[laughs] again, reflection, within accessibility and disability within universities, we really try to push this idea of a universal design for learning that not all students engage most regularly with reading and writing only, right, and that you can share information more than just by text on a page. Through UDL, Universal Design for Learning, thinking about how can we share information multimodally? The digital portfolio, I think, is A lot of our students, and myself included, we created our perfect for that. portfolios using Google Sites. With that you can import documents, you can upload videos and images, and so helping students to think about how their portfolios don't have to just be paragraphs of them writing reflections and things like that, that they can be creative in how they share that information, how they want to put themselves on the screen. I think that is something that I think is central to the work that I do with students. In 'Navigating college' we do presentations about a part of their portfolio, and a lot of times, early on, students will just share a lot of information in textual form, which I think is very useful from like a articulating and reflection place, but not leaving it at that and really thinking, helping students to think, is there a new or novel way to share that information through a YouTube video that they create or through a series of images that might reflect things more than just what is on a screen. And so I would say that's probably one of the benefits from having the lens that I do, of really wanting students to engage creatively, recognising that words can only tell you so much, I suppose, right, a picture is worth 1,000 of them. I've worked with students with dyslexia. They might not immediately be drawn to the idea of having to write out a whole bunch of things, but through their digital portfolio, they're able to really showcase themselves by putting pictures of their art or them engage in the community or them on a sports team. And so that can be a showcase for more than what you can just type out at any one time. I would say that's probably one of the big things that my ADS perspective lends itself to of really embracing the idea that you've got a whole canvas that you can work with, and you've got lots of ways to putting things on there.
Kristina Hoeppner:It's great that you mention UDL because we shouldn't just design with one group of people in mind, but make it possible for everybody to engage. Often it is also said that not every student who actually would need an accommodation goes to a service like yours because that is also already a vulnerability for them to expose, 'well, actually I do need help.' Whereas if through UDL, the classes are already designed in a way that an accommodation might not even be necessary because they can provide text in different formats or hand in assignments in different ways, then that makes it much more equity related.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, absolutely. We've done for many years series of professional development on Universal Design for Learning and helping faculty to just reimagine what their courses could look like, what an assignment could look like, how students can engage differently and meaningfully, maybe even more so than if they're just writing a paper, but how they can think outside the box in those ways. I do think that there is a lot of really good work that we're doing here. I think it definitely connects to all the work we're doing around digital portfolio as well.
Kristina Hoeppner:It's good to bring everything together there. For how long have you then been using portfolios now?
Matthew Mueller:Have my own portfolio [Mhh]? So I've had it for about a year, and I've really - since Christina had asked me to do this episode with you, I really worked to update some things and bring in some new pieces to it. So but about a year where I've really had my own as opposed to just pieces. I think when I first got here four years ago, I created a site and left it there for a while and didn't really engage to it. I don't know, maybe I just needed the spark. I'm not sure.
Kristina Hoeppner:It's all about sparks tomorrow as well at our spark talks then. So Matthew, is there now that you've taught portfolios to students, you have created your own, you are now gone the second portfolio of yours, left one behind, is there anything that you can't just yet really do with portfolios, but you'd wish to be able to?
Matthew Mueller:I think we've got a lot of momentum and work towards building a really robust digital portfolio programme. I think that there are some ways that we could help students to better understand what they can do with their portfolio once they have it, that there is a piece of turning this into more than just some school assignment, but into a way that their portfolio can be living and breathing just like they are. And so in what ways does your portfolio support you to graduate college? In what way does it help you to find that job? And what can you do? Or how can you transform the work that you've been doing in your portfolio after you graduate? Or maybe you don't continue to put things on Google Sites. What does that look like in your future to continue to be reflective and creative and wanting to connect all of the new experiences that you have into your life? It's the 'what next' or the 'what now' that I think there's still some important room to grow to help students to recognise that this is not just a high impact activity because we say it is, but because there actually are a lot of tangible benefits to that type of thinking about ourselves, our lives, and where we want to go.
Kristina Hoeppner:Then it might be good to bring back some of your alumni, for example, Solena Ornelas, whom I interviewed, and have them talk about their portfolio experiences post Dominican, whether they are using it for job search.
Matthew Mueller:Again, not having a Google Site that you continue to update, but maybe that turns into just having a journal or having a blog or having other ways that you can share your ideas and to make connections between the things that you're doing and how to showcase that to other people as I do like the idea of having alumni come back because I think well. students really respond to that, of seeing models or even success stories of what that could look like. I think when it comes to digital portfolio, making that feel more alive, that certainly feels really valuable.
Kristina Hoeppner:And as you say, not make it look like this is just an assignment I do in first year, and then after that, maybe I don't continue with it, but weaving it throughout the entire study programme and also showing the benefits for beyond that.
Matthew Mueller:Absolutely, I think one piece that I wish even in my MBA programme, you know, we're taking all these classes that are in some way sequential, and you're growing from each one to the next. And it's the same thing with Nursing. It's the same thing with Political Science or Occupational Therapy or whatever it is, but helping students to see the growth from one class to the next, I think, is something that as we're reflecting on some new ways to approach this, integrating it and interweaving it in, I think, having faculty partner in that way to be helping to facilitate that type of reflection from course to course, week to week, or even saying, 'hey, that assignment that you just did was great. You should add that to your digital portfolio' because that speaks volumes about your analytical skills or your hard work or your ability to do research or teamwork or presentations or whatever it might be.
Kristina Hoeppner:Coming back a bit to that scaffolding that, at least in the beginning, sometimes you just need that extra nudge to realise, 'oh yes, I have learned something there, and this is something that I want to capture.'
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, absolutely. It's funny actually, in our integrative coaching meetings that we have weekly, where we do a lot of checking in about things, but also a lot of professional development, we've been talking about how our role as coaches is to help students recognise that they do have skills. Often, a student will say, 'Oh, yeah, I just did the thing.' But actually, no, there are a number of discrete skills that they had to use in order to do that. And so helping them to put a name to those things, them being able to then showcase that in some way on their portfolio or to help to make some of those connections with them, yeah, I think that is really, really essential.
Kristina Hoeppner:Yeah, because something that is normal for one student might be something completely extraordinary for another...
Matthew Mueller:Absolutely.
Kristina Hoeppner:... so can't take that for a given.
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, and I think for the students that we work with, a lot of them are first generation students, and so they don't necessarily have that experience of what it looks like to be a 'college student', right? And so a lot of them, they're learning this as they go, and so having us as touch points, and having their faculty there to support them well to help them to recognise that the work that they're doing is developmental, that it is them growing in these good and amazing ways and helping them to recognise what those skills and ways in which that they're engaging is actually helping them to grow in these new and exciting ways.
Kristina Hoeppner:Matthew, now the last three questions for you, which words or short phrases do you use to describe portfolio work?
Matthew Mueller:I think I've been using this word a lot, and so it almost feels a little unfair to use it again, but, yeah, I think 'reflective', you know, is that first thing. But I think it's more than just reflection. It's 'critical thinking'. It's really'introspection'. It's a skill to look inward that is an important piece to this. It also is'creative' thinking about how to share your story in a way that makes sense to you, but also can make sense to other people. And then maybe it's related to creativity, but I think there is a piece of like 'thinking outside the box', of being comfortable with doing things differently and thinking differently about yourself and about how you share. I think, yeah, those are probably the three I would use.
Kristina Hoeppner:Oh, I've heard five.
Matthew Mueller:Okay [laughs].
Kristina Hoeppner:so which is fantastic, and you can have five. I'm perfectly fine with that.
Matthew Mueller:Thank you.
Kristina Hoeppner:So I've heard reflection, critical thinking, introspection, creativity, and the last one was
Matthew Mueller:Thinking outside the box.
Kristina Hoeppner:[speak at the same time] Thinking, of course, thinking outside the box. Happy to take on these five. They are fantastic and work really well together and also in what you do, what you want to do with the students, and how you support them in their learning. What tip do you have for other educators, be that learning designers or instructors, or maybe even other integrative coaches?
Matthew Mueller:Yeah, I would say that digital portfolios is a different medium and different platform than I think a lot of students are used to. Maybe these days, I think with students with social media and they-re content creators on the side and things like that, that maybe that's a little bit more intuitive for them. But I do think this piece of unlocking that creativity and that way of thinking about yourself and how you want to present yourself to the world, I think is an important thing that we should all just keep in mind, like how do we help students to think about themselves? And I would say, related to that is helping students connect the dots of their life. In my graduate programme, this my second master's, but my first one is in Rehabilitation Counselling, and I took a career counselling class, and we did this activity called a career constellation where we took different experiences that we have to connect the dots to create a constellation of our careers, right? Exactly right.
Kristina Hoeppner:For the recording, we are both looking up at a ceiling where there are stars on it.
Matthew Mueller:So that idea of'Navigating college', I'll do an activity similar to that, where we create a education constellation or a personal constellation of some sort of what were the books, who were the people, what were the experiences that you've had in your life, and what is the story that you tell that connects all of those together? I think that is also really important because a portfolio should have some sort of theme or should some sort of thesis, almost, of this is who you are, and these are the ways that I'm going to show that off. And so I think that is an important thing that if I was going to give some advice or recommendations, those are two things that I would say have been important to the work of that I've done with the students that I've worked with.
Kristina Hoeppner:What I'm hearing is also bring it down to what people can understand or have a metaphor, have an analogy that they connect with in order to understand more easily what they're doing.
Matthew Mueller:Absolutely, people understand metaphors and analogies, and it's a thoughtful way to take a big idea and to break it down into those small pieces because then, connecting it back to accessibility, everyone will understand, regardless of how they're entering in.
Kristina Hoeppner:Yeah, now we are coming to the last question for today, and that is, what tip or advice do you have for portfolio authors, for your students, or maybe even fellow faculty members, right? It's not just students who can create portfolios.
Matthew Mueller:They're for everyone. Often we'll have our peer mentors sharing their portfolios, and these are, you know, juniors and seniors who have all these experiences, and they have a clear sense of where they're going and where they're going to be. And I think there's value in that modeling, and you can be inspired by that. But I think often students are like,'Oh, I'll never be like that. I'll never have all those skills.' So I think there is this sort of openness that I think a digital portfolio author needs to have of recognising that you're not finished and that's okay, and that the process of creating a portfolio is constructing your life in some way and of building things and that you can see your portfolio and say, 'Oh, it's not very good,' but, well, maybe it is for right now. But what do you think is missing? And so being okay with knowing that you still have work to do, that you still have skills and experiences to build and to have and that your portfolio will never be done, even after you graduate, you're still going to have some way of showcasing all the amazing things that you've done in your life and that you can start now to take this as a way of being intentional with how you want to develop and grow as a person.
Kristina Hoeppner:And also because your life still continues
Matthew Mueller:Exactly right[laughs].
Kristina Hoeppner:Ideally, you'll be a lifelong learner and continue developing new skills or gaining new competencies.
Matthew Mueller:Absolutely, that's what we hope for.
Kristina Hoeppner:Yeah. Thank you so very much, Matthew for this chat. It was wonderful hearing more about what you do as integrative codes and also how you connect that to your other role of being the Director for the Accessibility and Disability Services as well as being a student here. So lastly, also all the best for the sprint towards the end of your MBA. Now over to our listeners. What do you want
Matthew Mueller:Thank you. to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Matthew Mueller. His interview concludes our mini series with students and staff from Dominican University of California. At some point, I will need to invite Christina Mayes, who has been mentioned on all five episodes, to the podcast to share her views on the digital portfolio initiative at Dominican. But before that, 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.