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 I'm excited to be speaking with Marie Fisher, who is known as Bernie in the Australasian ePortfolio community. I've known Bernie for quite a while now because she is a member of the ePortfolios Australia Organising Committee and very active in portfolio research and also sharing her knowledge with everybody in the community. So I'm stoked to be talking with her primarily about her reflective practices today. Hello Bernie.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 1:02

Thank you for asking me, Kristina. Appreciate that.

Kristina Hoeppner: 1:05

Bernie, what do you do now at the University of New England?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 1:10

I've changed trajectory since late 2023. I'm now doing my PhD full time, which is unusual because usually you do it before your academic career, but I'm taking a break from an academic career, and I'm studying for a PhD full time in IT and education. I'm looking at resilience in how academics derive resilience from using technology to complete their educative work. Portfolios do feature in that in some way. So that's what I'm doing. I'm not doing paid work in the sector, but I'm a scholarship student at the University of New England, full time, working fully online.

Kristina Hoeppner: 1:45

You did already mention portfolios. When did you encounter them for the first time?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 1:50

Oh, gosh, many decades ago, which perhaps our listeners might be a bit worried if they know exactly when. But when I was in my late teens and I was at TAFE at Technical and Further Education college, that's what we call it in Australia and in the UK, I had to keep a portfolio of evidence, and it was a manual portfolio, like you would type it up, but you would print it, and then you would keep it as evidence. That was evidence of having met certain standards in the vocational education and training sector, primarily in business, but also initially, I trained as a shorthand typist, amongst other things. So that was a very, very long time ago. From there, I didn't really look at them so much. I always had a portfolio of evidence because you needed that for a career. But then I retrained a few times in different careers, and I worked as an IT systems designer and developer. We had to keep a journal, if you like, just of what we were testing, how we tested it, and that's when I started keeping an ePortfolio because I had to show evidence of having tested particular financial software. So that was in the IT or digital sector. Then I used it in a postgraduate degree when I trained as a school teacher in secondary education because I decided I wanted to do something a little different and liked helping people learn about things. I had to keep an ePortfolio of evidence which was profiled and supported and informed by theoretical models. So it was like a reflective portfolio that had support there by research. It was a different way of writing. I suppose that's something I've been developing and evolving, and I've taught in that sort of space as well.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:25

What did you think about reflection when you started with your portfolio practice?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 3:29

As an IT person, when I put my IT in my more linear, if you like conservative side, I really wasn't so happy about sharing feelings. I could see how you could do something differently and that would be a way of improving. But I really had to train myself to think about what reflection actually meant and why it was so important to have self in there. Initially, I was a bit reluctant. When I studied postgraduate education, I was a little bit more open to it, and I found that I was actually quite competent at it. I'd say curious and competent. I don't like to say an expert because you could always learn something new. I found that it actually got me a job. I was hired by the university to teach the undergraduates because they said, "You're very good at reflection, and you're good at explaining this to other students. Why don't you come and work for us for a semester, get some extra money?" So I did. From there, I worked as a school teacher for a while, and I taught students how to use ePortfolios. I taught some VET units, some vocational education and training units, in a course called Business Administration. I also taught in IT. So I helped students keep all these different aspects of their portfolio, which was a continuing, living document, but not just a document. There were artefacts in there as well. I found it quite exciting actually, because there was always something new to teach, but also something new to learn as a practitioner.

Kristina Hoeppner: 4:51

Bernie, what has helped you actually get into reflection? Because you did say that you had been reluctant at first, until you realised you were quite competent, and people also praised you for it.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 5:04

I think it was because it gives a person who's reading it or engaging with you and talking to you about it, gives them an insight into what you're like as a person, that I have high empathy, I am a competent teacher, but I'm also willing to change myself to move forward or learn something new or adapt, if you like. It helped me adapt. And when I saw it as an adaption tool to perhaps even in my own PhD research, I thought, actually, this is quite valuable. I was able to write professional so I had that balance between the personal, but not too personal, because, you know, that's something in professional jobs that we have to be a little careful of enough of oneself in there, but also to say that I'm the type of person that you might want to employ, or you might want me to teach your students, or you might want me to engage in research. It's difficult to pin it down to a simple answer, but I think it opened my mind up to ways that I could adapt my practice. And it was a realisation that came over time. I'd applied for jobs where you'd had to actually reflect on your experience and how you'd improved, not shown your weaknesses, but areas that you could improve that perhaps you weren't as strong as others. So for example, if I was good at programming more complex things, then why was I struggling with the simple ones? It was maybe changing your thinking, but also changing the way you collaborate. That's how I gradually got into that space, and of course, I published in that space as well. I was keen to write reflections that would help others, that were informed by theory and supported by theory and literature, but that it wasn't just a nod to literature, it was really showing you this is an issue that's happening, and this is how I managed it, and this is how you could look at it or solve that problem.

Kristina Hoeppner: 6:48

Do you have a favourite question that gets you into the reflective frame of mind?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 6:55

I suppose it might be something like 'What happened today?' or what I would call, as a nod to Meziro, the theorist who was known for transformative learning, a disorienting dilemma. So something happened that just wasn't what you wanted to happen. That can trigger me to start reflecting. For example, it might be when I changed to do my PhD, I was in a situation where there was a lot of change in the sector across the world, not just in Australia and New Zealand, but across the world, and I had an opportunity to do something different, but it was disorienting because it was outside of my comfort zone. To answer that question, I'd say yes, something outside of my comfort zone will start me off. It might not be something I will publish or share straight away. I might come back to it, but I'd certainly start with some key questions, and that would be the first question, What was the disorienting dilemma? One particular article I can think about was HDR resilience. People will say, "Well, what are you writing about?" And I'd say,"Well, a lot of students don't know, they may be older people, they may be younger people, they don't know how to start their HDR application. They don't know what questions to ask." It's daunting. You have to have an ePortfolio, pretty much, to apply for a PhD. So I reflected on it, my own experience, and I wrote about it. While that might seem like to some more experienced researcher a minor piece of research, it is an important piece of research if you are going to move forward and learn to reflect on things that challenge you and make you feel uncomfortable.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:24

Mhh. What is HDR?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 8:25

HDR is Higher Degree by Research. We refer to our students like PhD or Master of Philosophy students or Master of Science by research students as HDR students.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:37

So Bernie, if I'm hearing that correctly, then you use the reflection pretty much for yourself, initially...

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 8:44

Yes.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:44

... and then if you want to make it available to somebody else in the form of a portfolio for a particular purpose, you might revise it and might only share part of it, and not necessarily your entire reflection.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 8:58

That's right, yes. And students, more recently, I suppose, I'm not teaching HDR students or postgraduate students at the moment, but they struggle with putting themselves on the line and saying there's something they don't understand, particularly if they're training to be teachers or training to be people who are programmers or technology support people or even learning designers. I think once they realise, and that's what I would share with them, once they realise that it's okay to be uncomfortable, this is a learning point, you won't understand everything that you're studying at first. You just have to work out what are the building blocks for that. I find that helping students like providing a reflection template, and I have done this actually in my PhD research, I provided a very short template based on Gibbs' 1988 model. There are other models of reflection, as I've spoken about in previous other podcasts or video vignettes that I've been invited to participate in. What was the incident that happened? Why was it confronting? What did you learn? What would you do differently? How would you link this to the next step learning? That kind of thing. So it could be very simple questions to get them started, but as they advance, and they need a bit more scaffolding, if you like, then I would look at, you know, what are the learning outcomes in that particular course? Like I'd look at it overall, what are the learning outcomes in that unit? But not just be driven by the learning outcomes, be guided by them, because obviously they can be interpreted in different ways by the students, as long as they meet a particular standard, particularly in teacher education, like the teaching standards we have in Australia.

Kristina Hoeppner: 10:33

You're supporting your students in their own reflection, in building their portfolio using that template and guided by Gibbs's reflective cycle.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 10:43

That's right. It might be that I asked them to collect artefacts or evidence. It might be that they if it was teacher education in one of my previous roles as an academic at university, I'd said to them, "Okay, so you're on a practicum. This is your first practicum. There are certain things you have to achieve on that practicum. We can help you design your reflection around that, but you need to write regularly." It's very easy for me to say that as a teacher or academic to a student, but when I sit down to do it, and if I'm on a roll, I will do as much as I can and come back to it with key questions. So I might write even on a notepad or on a document, some key questions that I have to address. So it might be in my own situation where I'd say to the students, so I'm interviewing someone, and I need to ask some probing questions, but if they're looking a little uncomfortable, perhaps I need to have a different tack and say, "So why don't you tell me about this" and share that story about when things didn't quite go to plan. I'll give you an example of my own. So I might say, "I had all this material planned. I had templates, and the students decided they weren't in the headspace to do it, and we had to approach it from a different way." And then it puts my interviewees at ease. Then they're willing to share. I must admit that as time went on, even though I'd interviewed people before, this got easier. Similarly, I taught large cohorts of students for many years, and I found that I could manage them in a digital space really well. But we also used the tools, perhaps in Zoom or if it was Teams or another piece of software that allowed us to automatically save say questions in the chat, it might be a working document where they'd said, "Oh, here's some ideas for a template" that they'd shared together. So it was a chance to build that rapport and comfort so that people would engage with those things. So I'd say that's probably the most important thing you have to do to build that relationship with them and show that you're not perfect, that you're learning as well as a teacher, that what makes you a competent teacher, you're continually learning.

Kristina Hoeppner: 12:46

Yeah, that vulnerability getting to the point to be open about sharing something that we can't do perfectly or where we are still learning - sometimes might be very easy to do and other times, when we think we are expected to know all of those things, it would be more difficult. So you leading by example and sharing one of your moments where you struggled and therefore making the students more comfortable, I think, is a really good way to do that. Have you had any feedback from your students on whether that or from the reactions that you saw during the interviews that that did put them at ease and that they were a bit more open then afterwards?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 13:29

I'll just comment on the interviews, because, I mean, I have got ethics for it, and it won't identify anyone. So that's all fine. One experienced senior academic in a particular higher ed institution in Australia because I was only looking at Australia, just to narrow down that field, and it is qualitative research that I'm doing. She said that I should be a professional interviewer. And I said, "Oh, thank you, I think, why is that?" And she said, "You put me at ease really quickly. Because although I was happy to do this, I felt a little bit nervous." She didn't say why, but what I thought it was possibly because, obviously, I'm wearing the PhD student hat now. She might have viewed me as PhD student, not as an academic. Most of the others viewed me as an academic. By the end of that particular interview, that senior academic was viewing me as a working academic, but I had to work hard to build that rapport and keep her comfortable. Another one was there was something else going on. I picked that up. So I said,"Well, tell me about ePortfolios." "Don't want to talk about those. They've all gone wrong." So I said, "Okay, well, we could come back to those if you want to." Anyway, we did. She brought it up and said, "I'm ready to come back to them now. I think what I was trying to say was the technology wasn't working, and what I should have been thinking about" and this is what she said to me,"I should have been thinking about how to design the reflection for that particular unit so it linked into the others." she said, "and just by talking with you about it and sharing a story, it came to me. So I'm happy to share that now, and that's what I'm going to do." With students - a student came to see me in my office when I was working at my previous university. Oh, gosh, it was a couple of years after I taught her, and she said, "Thank you so much for teaching me about ePortfolios." And I said, "Okay, what specifically?" And she said, "Oh, that reflection model. You know, I was struggling, and I found that very simple template, and I used it so that I could apply for a more senior job." She could tell me it was about the reflection, it was about now making sense of why that was needed to guide her, why she had to do it, and how she was going to show that she was competent for that particular job, even though she'd not got as many years experience as perhaps some of the others and she got the job. And the online courses - during COVID, I had about 80[students], I said to them, it's like a portfolio because you'll be able to have the recording. You'll be able to have all the questions that will help you. This will save you time. It will save you reading through. It will save you jumping straight to the theoretical models and getting lost. Anyway, the students feed back in the chat,"This has been really helpful," or private chat to me, "I didn't understand what I was doing. I didn't want to say I didn't understand, but I feel comfortable now." So it's about that comfort and empathy.

Kristina Hoeppner: 16:04

Yeah, have you changed how you talk about reflection to your students based on your experience, your face-to-face teaching, your online teaching? Does it differ how you introduce students to the reflection and how you continue with them in it?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 16:21

I'm continually changing how I approach them. When I talk about reflection, I tell them, you know, you could hold up a mirror, which is something I've talked about before, you can hold up a mirror. You can look in the mirror and you might say,'Oh, I'm happy with my hair, and I'm happy with how I look' in a physical side. Or you look in the mirror and go, 'I look stressed.' Why I'm thinking about something? So I said, "You can be literal, or you can use the metaphor of the mirror. What is a stressable incident for me or a dilemma for me as a teacher, might not be the same for you as a student. You might be worried about passing prac(ticum). What steps do you need to take? There's your little reflection model building- I need to do this, to do that, to do the other, and then you flesh it out." With my peers, the HDR students, the Higher Degree by Research students. I've talked about reflection. It was something that came up when we were talking about publishing, and I said, "Well, I'm in a different situation now. I am a student. I have to forget, in a way, I'm an academic because otherwise I'm thinking, I need to be doing this, whereas my actual reflection is on my practice. It's about keeping field notes for my research. It's about engaging with all of you, and if you have questions about my research, or we have questions, generally, I'm happy to offer what I think will help." So reflection, when I hear the questions that come up in those sessions, I'm thinking about how I can help those students, but I'm not thinking of them as my students. I have to think of them as my peers. At the beginning, I mean, they were lovely, but it was uncomfortable for me because I had come out of one role and was into another one, that my perception was, I'm going down a role, and it wasn't like that at all. It was an academic who's getting that milestone out of the way, but also learning new ways to do research. I've come from when I first started attending, when I became full time, because I was able to then to this stage now. I would say it's the different angles and perspectives and the different purposes. I explained to the students, there's a different purpose. It might not be that you're doing your PhD or your MPhil. It might be that you are working as an academic casually, and you're trying to build up, you know, whether you continue being an academic or a learning designer or whether you use those skills you reflect on where you need to be. So sometimes it's comfortable to stay in one place for a long time. And I'm sort of, I suppose, because I'm English, perhaps, and the employment situation has always been different in England to other places. You tend to stay in a place to show stability, but the world has changed. So now, when you reflect on it, you might stay one or two years in a place and then you're doing something else, and that's not considered negatively. You've got to reimagine how you are engaging, and reflection helps you do that.

Kristina Hoeppner: 19:07

Bernie, do you then also give feedback to your students on their reflections that they do want to share with you?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 19:14

Yes, what I would do is I'd have two points where I would give feed forward, acknowledging the things that were real gems in there that I felt that they could develop a bit more deeply. For example, I might say to them, 'what about a story or a vignette, an example that shows how this came to light?' So in my case, I changed roles, and I can say how I was feeling, mixed feelings, obviously, but I had to think about, what are the benefits? What are the benefits and costs? And the costs, of course, are usually financial when you decide you're going to study full time because it's not cheap to study. But there are other benefits. I have been able to do all the things I wanted to do that were difficult to do in my previous role because of the flexibilities and the need for PhD students to continue their networking, but not networking for the sake of it, actually doing something, engaging in community service, keeping going with ePortfolios networks, which are really important, and things like PARE, which I know you're going to ask me about at some point. I would say the benefits and costs, it's a tough conversation you have to have with yourself, but you don't necessarily sit there and talk to yourself, but you might write notes, and I do a lot of writing, some of which, of course, will never get published, which is fine, but it helps me clarify my thoughts and clarify what it is I need to do, and that is part of my reflection.

Kristina Hoeppner: 20:34

What is your writing practice then? You said that for you it is important to write down. Is that like a stream of consciousness, or do you have particular questions that you're coming back to all the time? And for how long do you write?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 20:49

It's a bit of both. Although I prefer to use computers because it's easy to edit and change things around. I do always keep a running notebook. So I keep an A5 notebook. I detail what I'm doing each day in there, but I balance it with the stream of consciousness and then with questions. So for example, if I'm keeping reflective field notes, and as I said, I'm feeling a bit behind there. I think everyone always does. I try to do free writing. It might be I've interviewed someone, I've taken a short break, because usually the interviews are about an hour, although I could write the whole way through, because they're on video, I'm treating it as if I'm face-to-face, and I'm recording it so that I can review the transcript that's automatically recorded. That has saved me a lot of hours. I think about it might be a dilemma, or it might be how I felt about the interview, for example, with the participant, and then I'll come back to it, and then I might just write 'the interviewee relaxed quickly.' So, you know, obvious things, but then I might say, 'These key questions came up. They were interesting. They were relating to the research questions.' And then other times, I'll come back and go, right, I'm going to look now at participant one. These are my general feelings about what's come up and whether they've answered my question and how they've answered my questions. That's for research. If I'm writing a paper, I try to have subheadings that inform me or a question under the subheadings, I feel it's a more efficient way of writing. It's not always the best way of writing, but because I was a busy academic working in an environment that did not lend itself to that, even at the end of the day, you don't feel like doing it. But if you've got a little questions under headings, you might go, oh, can write about this bit. So you write about that bit, and it's a stream of consciousness that you can come back to and edit. How long do I write for? It depends. Sometimes I might write for several hours, like I'll take a break. I'm in several online communities, and I feel that that's the sort of community I need to be in to make me write and make me reflect and think about things. And I can honestly tell you, I can go to an ePortfolios(Australia) meeting, whether it's an organising meeting for the conference or whether it's just a general meeting, and I'll go away and I'll go right. I really feel like I've been able to engage with these people and share things and learn from them. More importantly, learn, I like learning things. So that's how I do my writing. That's the type of writing I do. I do do other writing. I do do story writing. Sometimes I'll do reflection in lists and then expand on it. I have yet to redesign myself an ePortfolio, which I'm going to do, probably in Google or something similar, or maybe even Mahara. I might go back to Mahara because I use LinkedIn as my ePortfolio so that, that way people need to find people interested in common interests, I'm connected to certain groups to show the interests in professional networks that I have.

Kristina Hoeppner: 23:35

Speaking of the professional networks, you have been an active member of the ePortfolios Australia Organising Committee for many years...

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 23:44

Yeah, since about 2010, yeah.

Kristina Hoeppner: 23:46

Fifteen years, that's a very long time.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 23:49

Yeah, yeah.

Kristina Hoeppner: 23:50

You facilitated some of the PARE sessions, and PARE stands for plan, act, reflect, and ePortfolio, in which professionals, in particular, those working with portfolios, have time to work on their portfolios, do some reflections. Why are in a way, I think you've already answered the question, why are these sessions important to you?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 24:14

For me, personally and professionally, it's an opportunity to give back to help others, ease them in so that they can get the most out of it. I like the idea of giving back. It's a form of teaching. It is facilitation. We keep it as a very simple concept. We're here to focus on a particular piece of writing. We're reflecting on either a dilemma or it could be a piece of teaching. It could be some education issue. We're going to spend that time writing about it. I suggest they have a couple of questions. I try and pick something that I have been putting off and I work on it. But the primary thing for me is helping them work out what it is they're going to write about. It was originally an idea from a very nice colleague of mine, Sandra Stewart, an adaption of the 'Shut up and write!' which, in academia, people engaged in. I'm not sure I like 'Shut up and write!' because of the negative connotations. I like the PARE. It makes me think about a pear as in the piece of fruit, and when you are paring it with a knife and taking out segments, that's a metaphor that I find interesting for me anyway.

Kristina Hoeppner: 25:23

And then you're paired with others...

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 25:26

... and you're paired with others in terms of pairs. Yes, that's right. Or you can be working in a breakout room and helping someone. We had a lady from Madrid in Spain. She spoke very little English. I have not spoken fluent French and Spanish for many years. I did use Google to help me a bit, but I conducted the session with her in a breakout room in Spanish. I showed her how to do an ePortfolio. We had a discussion in Spanish about how, I mean I had to pause and ask her to repeat, or could she say it a little bit more simply, but I pretty much by the end of the session, I felt, oh, I can remember. It was a lovely, disorienting dilemma. This lady had taken the time out of a teaching to come and attend. It was the evening in Europe, and she sent me a message in Spanish afterwards on LinkedIn. That would have been one of my sort of encouragers, if you like, to keep engaging, because help one person, but other people have got back to me and said, "Oh, we really enjoyed the PARE session. We felt we weren't judged. We felt we could ask whatever we wanted. We felt well supported, and it was a very nice, empathetic environment."

Kristina Hoeppner: 26:30

Yeah, in general, ePortfolios Australia and also the AAEEBL communities, they're very, very network oriented, community of practice and helpful because we do want to further everybody's understanding of portfolios. It's very much about sharing. So I really appreciate all the work you do.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 26:47

Oh, thank you.

Kristina Hoeppner: 26:48

Bernie, since you've been involved with the community for such a long time, have you seen any trend in Portfolio usage in the conversations that you're having with other academics and practitioners?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 27:01

Yes, certainly in HERDSA that's the Higher Education Research Association that is an international society that runs across New Zealand, Australia, Singapore now, and hopefully one day, Europe will be nice. Occasionally, we do get people from America who come, but we don't have a HERDSA are over there. In that sort of space, people are using some off the shelf products. There has been a trend, I think, in the highest levels of universities. I say this generally, and I say this to be something I have observed and I have experienced, that people make decisions without fully understanding the strengths of ePortfolios. They see it as another tool for students, but it's a lot more than the tool. So I think things like Portfolium have been mentioned. Obviously, Mahara, which I've used myself for years, as you know, would have been open source, and it having lots of affordances that you might not get with something that is already organised with templates for you in a less flexible way, if you like. One of the trends that worried me a little bit, I think, I say this not to criticise any particular university, but just the decision making process. You need people involved who are not just invested in ePortfolios, but who can be balanced and say this is what we need to fit our institutional needs. So for staff, this will help staff do this. We want to keep it nice and simple, but we don't want them just profiling their evidence for promotion or for performance review. We want them to think more broadly about how their practice is changing, how they are evolving as an academic, how they are now contributing more to the knowledge. If they're a learning designer, how they are developing their careers, how they are able to more broadly target their evidence and their journey into new fields. Because obviously, with AI and so forth coming into play a lot more, that's something that seems to be taking over, in some ways, the ePortfolio tool. What I mean by that is not take over, as in, replace it, but it seems to be the buzz technology. It worries me that people don't think more broadly about the usage because no one product would necessarily fit all. But the idea of the tools is to support. It's a framework. It's a hosting system where you can store and profile that evidence. It doesn't need to do everything. It's nice if it does, but if it can store artefacts, but also allow people to showcase artefacts in a way that promotes learning and teaching and career development, I think that's a great thing.

Kristina Hoeppner: 29:32

Yeah, we do have the two sides of ePortfolios, where we have the technology side, of course, which makes it easier to showcase the evidence and do the reflection, but then, can't forget the educational side, which is the really, really important one, where the portfolio also distinguishes itself from a lot of other educational uses because it has that reflective element in it.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 29:55

That's right, yes. The reflective element in there is usually lways informed, supported, and guided by a theoretical framework or a theoretical base that is not just about constructive learning or transformative learning, if you like, selects aspects of those theories so that it will help that person better profile themselves. I see it as a conceptual framework that a person might be building of their own practice. If you want to get more in terms of that pedagogy and educational base. So I see mine as a conceptual framework. And if I'm doing one portfolio for HDR, which I sort of have one, but it's still a bit separate to my academic identity, because if they said,"Submit your portfolio," I would have it compartmentalised. I might have my PhD study and research. I might have my independent scholar or community engagement, and they may be doorways to go in and have a look, but my journey might look quite different. And certainly, if I had drawings and conceptual diagrams in there, it would be for my own benefit, so they may be locked off so I could remind myself it is informed by a conceptual framework or aspects of theoretical, educational theory.

Kristina Hoeppner: 31:07

That Bernie, really is the beauty of the portfolio. Because while we often talk about 'the' portfolio, it is actually multiple portfolios. Because, as you say, you have a portfolio for this, for that, you have your public one on LinkedIn, but you have a lot of other reflections and thoughts and ideas written down somewhere else, and not everything needs to be public. Your portfolio does not always just have to be shared with everyone or just even a select group.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 31:35

It's becoming interesting when you look at a portfolio like system, like LinkedIn. You need a professional one. It's sort of set up so you can do the basics, but you don't have to necessarily put dates in, and they're going to have you written off if you're older or written off if you're a beginning academic because people still make judgments. That's the key thing. I think that puts students on edge with ePortfolios, and sometimes staff as well. They don't want to be judged. But if you said to me,"Send me your ePortfolio, I need to know what you've published or what your experience is," I'd say to you, "Have a look at LinkedIn," or I'd say,"Kristina, do you want me to send you a link to a particular part of it so that you can just have a look at it?" And you'd probably say, "Yeah, just send me a link to part of it." So I can do that pretty quickly.

Kristina Hoeppner: 32:20

It's a curation of your evidence and your reflection.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 32:20

That's something I perhaps wasn't as good at, but I know how to curate. And when I was doing my application for my PhD, I was just able to send ePortfolio links to answer certain questions. There is a link to other articles. Here are the top five. So it was good.

Kristina Hoeppner: 32:36

Bernie, what do you wish everybody knew about portfolios?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 32:41

They're not scary, they're not things to be avoided. They are things that can help you in many aspects of life outside of career. They can show what kind of person you are, what kind of fit you are for a job, but they can also show you what kind of fit you might be for an organisation, a network, a particular role, something in the voluntary sector that is needed. It's a living evolving story with many parts, some of which should be shared or can be shared, but not all of them need to be shared.

Kristina Hoeppner: 33:12

Now before we go into our last three questions in the quick answer round, let's put in a short commercial break and talk about the upcoming Eportfolio Forum because that's the annual event where you, Allison [Miller], Christine[Slade], and many, many others that are on the committee bring together practitioners, academics, and also researchers. What's the focus of this year's Forum, and why should everybody attend?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 33:39

Two bits that stick out are resolution to do something and revolution - change completely the way you are approaching this. Those are the things that resonate with me. A revolution or a resolution, the resolution for new people. Decide to do it, follow it through. There's help available. This is a supportive, collegial education with high profile people, colleagues of mine, who also have dear friends of mine, led by Allison Miller. They bring a wealth of experience, but also a wealth of support. Come if you want to make a resolution to do something different, if you want to engage in a revolution, as in completely turn your practice on its head and approach it differently. That's what I recommend.

Kristina Hoeppner: 34:21

And then also come along if you want to evolve your own portfolio practice.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 34:26

Oh yes, of course, if you want to evolve your practice and learn about some of the software programmes and tools that can help you realise what it is you need to do. There are so many of them. Look, having used Mahara and enjoyed using that. We were very lucky at the previous institution, we had a wonderful person there. He was a learning designer who I won't mention his name because he probably doesn't want me to mention his name. He likes to be low key, but he did a great job there, working with yourself and the Mahara group. But also some of these other packages, while I might have used them many years ago, and I might. Have used them when I was beginning. I like the affordances of something more flexible that I can take parts in and out of. I can use that if I want, or I can keep it extremely simple and just have it so it's almost a flat file that I can use to bring things in and out and then put into something like Mahara.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:17

At the Forum, will people be able to find you at the University of Tasmania, or are you like me going to be one of the online participants?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 35:26

I'll probably be online.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:28

so we'll see if we can see each other online on the 12th and 13th of November 2025 then, and for everybody else who can make it to the University of Tasmania, then they will have the opportunity to catch everybody in person, and also have the hallway track.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 35:44

It's a great time to go to Tasmania. The weather is usually better, and it is worthwhile having a look not just at the north, but at the south as well, if you can. Lovely place.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:54

It sure is a wonderful part of the country. Now to our last three questions, the quick answer round, Bernie. Which words or short phrases do you use to describe portfolio work?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 36:07

I thought about this, and I decided, diversified, informed, and professional.

Kristina Hoeppner: 36:12

Awesome. What tip do you have for learning designers or instructors who create portfolio activities?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 36:19

Oh, gosh.

Kristina Hoeppner: 36:21

So many, right?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 36:22

There's so many. For a short sentence, I would just encourage relate it to professional practice and learning or career development because this will not only help the people you're trying to support take this up, but it will also give you some insights into things that perhaps, as a learning designer, you may not have had before. Because although we work closely with learning designers as academics, sometimes we don't always understand the nitty gritty and the fine things that they do behind the scenes. And similarly, with us, it probably looks sometimes that we've got all this time on our hands to do stuff, but we don't, and I think that would promote learning and a better understanding of what it is that academics and students need.

Kristina Hoeppner: 37:02

Yeah and support that lifelong learning that we do want to encourage. Now, what is your advice for portfolio authors, be that your students or fellow academics or any fellow practitioners?

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 37:16

Start off with a question that you would like to answer. It might be, how do I profile my experience? Start from there to start with something very, very simple. If you're better doing lists, do a list of all your personal versus all your professional that would be the suggestion I would have.

Kristina Hoeppner: 37:34

Thank you so much. I really appreciate having had the chance to chat with you today, Bernie, because oftentimes we do see each other only at conferences. It's fantastic to have learned more about your personal journey and also your reflective practice and how you marry that up with your professional journey and professional path. So thank you very much.

Marie 'Bernie' Fisher: 37:57

Thank you very much, Kristina.

Kristina Hoeppner: 38:00

Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Marie'Bernie' Fisher. Head to our website, podcast.mahara.org, where you can find resources and the transcript for this episode. It would be great if you shared our podcast with a colleague of yours so they can listen as well. Until then, create, share, and engage.