July 15, 2025 • 32 mins
Prof Dr David Hicks is a Professor of History and Social Science Education at Virginia Tech in the U.S.A. He's been teaching with portfolios for over 20 years supporting teacher candidates on their journey to become professionals.
In this episode he talks about how he and his team integrate portfolios into a capstone course in the teacher training programme at Virginia Tech (VT), what scaffolds they employ, and how the supports in place help students create portfolios that emphasise reflection. The basis of his portfolio work is folio thinking and the ePortfolio development framework that he and his team have developed over the course of time.
Resources
- Hicks, D., Allen, A., & Evers, S. (2025). Folio thinking in teacher education: A case study on the evolution of reflective ePortfolio assignments. AePR ePortfolio Review, Winter / Spring 2025, 19–29.
- Parkes, K. A., Dredger, K., & Hicks, D. (2013). ePortfolio as a measure of reflective practice. International Journal of ePortfolio, 3(2), 99–115.
- Penny Light, T., Chen, H. L., & Ittelson, J. C. (2011). Documenting learning with ePortfolios: A guide for college instructors. Jossey-Bass.
Connect with Virginia Tech School of Education in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
Related episodes
- Rita Zuba Prokopetz: Building a learning community
- Debra Hoven: The value of self-reflection and peer feedback
- Bob Reuter: Externalise your thinking with portfolios
Click through to the show notes for the transcript.
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Production information
Production: Catalyst IT
Host: Kristina Hoeppner
Artwork: Evonne Cheung
Music: The Mahara tune by Josh Woodward
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kristina Hoeppner (00:04):
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is
the podcast about portfolios forlearning and more for educators,
learning designers, and managerskeen on integrating portfolios
with their education andprofessional development
practices. 'Create. Share.
Engage.' is brought to you bythe Mahara team at Catalyst IT.
My name is Kristina Hoeppner.
(00:28):
Today I'm speaking withProfessor Dr David Hicks from
Virginia Tech. He, Dr Amy Allen,and newly minted Dr Sara Evers
wrote the article 'Foliothinking in teacher education: A
case study on the evolution ofreflective ePortfolio
assignments' in the latest issueof the AAEEBL ePortfolio Review.
David, thank you so much formaking time today for our chat.
David Hicks (00:52):
Thank you. Thanks for the invite.
Kristina Hoeppner (00:54):
David, what do you do at Virginia Tech,
please?
David Hicks (00:58):
I am a Professor of History and Social Science
Education, and so I work withundergraduates and graduate
students, basically preparingteachers. And then I also have a
PhD programme for people whowant to be university professors
or Social Studies supervisors,and Sara was one of my doctoral
students, and actually justgraduated this May.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:21):
David, with you being a Professor of History
and Social Science Education, itdoes make good sense that in
your biography, you do put ahistorical marker in it; just
looking at the AePR one, yousaid, "He is a great" - so you,
"great grandson of David Carterwho can be found in the
Metropolitan Police Register ofHabitual Criminals of
(01:46):
1881-1925."
David Hicks (01:48):
He was born in York, is Yorkshire born,
Yorkshire bred, and one of hisfirst crimes was stealing
horses. If people question myethics, it's in my genetics now.
So it's not my fault [Kristinalaughs]. Blame a great granddad.
Kristina Hoeppner (02:00):
When did you start using portfolios yourself?
Because in the case study, yousaid your work in teacher
education goes back to 2013. Wasthat the first time or have you
already been using portfoliosbefore then?
David Hicks (02:12):
We've been using it before. So basically, in 2013
some other colleagues and Iwrote a paper about our initial
work that started in the early2000s. So we were kind of just
laying out there some of thework we were doing to create
this as an assessment and how weassessed portfolios. I've been
doing it in Social Studies, andit was Kelly Parkes in Music
(02:36):
Education at the time. And, youknow, in the early 2000s
probably from 2005, maybe 2006,2007 we've been doing electronic
portfolios as a capstone to theteacher education programme.
Kristina Hoeppner (02:49):
That's a long history that you can look back
at. So it's nice to see theevolution a bit in the case
study that you had published inAePR on folio thinking. What is
folio thinking and how does itcome into play in your portfolio
practice?
David Hicks (03:05):
From the very beginning, we have a number of
people at Virginia Tech, anumber of colleagues who do
portfolios.
Kristina Hoeppner (03:11):
Is that in different departments to yours
or in your own department?
David Hicks (03:14):
Yes, well, in the School of Education. So the
Elementary Ed do their portfolioas a capstone, and Maths do
theirs, and Science does theirs,Social Studies me, History and
Social Science does mine,English does theirs. I've
typically worked with theHistory and Social Science
people and also the Englishpeople.
I have always had a little bitof a bugaboo about what you
(03:35):
should be doing in a portfolio.
Even up to this semester, whenI've been on other people's
committees, I still tell mystudents that we do a proper
portfolio where you're reallybeing forced to engage in
reflective reasoning to explainthe what, the why, and how of
your teaching practice, andconsider how your reasoning and
(03:55):
explanations will inform yourfuture practice. So just to be
aware, you're aware of whatyou're doing, rather than
unaware when you're teaching.
I still have colleagues who Ithink they have students who
just throw up a couple ofartieacts and they just describe
the artefact. That's just ascrapbook. It's not really what
a portfolio should be about.
Folio thinking, then, to me,remains this idea of assembling
(04:18):
artefacts from over time orspace, and it's reflective, it's
a recursive process in which myteacher candidates will collect,
select, reflect, and connecttheir experiences and artefacts
in order to construct ameaningful narrative of their
growth, and then what that meansfor their future growth. The
aim, then is to help them movebeyond just a check box of look,
(04:40):
'I've answered this standard' toreally being metacognitively
aware of what you're doing andproviding evidence-based claims
to support your narrative of whydid you teach this way? What
have I learned? And how am Igrowing?
Folio thinking is thismetacognitive way of explaining
(05:01):
your actions and and showing alevel of awareness about what it
means to teach and learn for me,not just a me having a lesson
planned up and just saying, 'Oh,I did this lesson on whatever.'
One of the reasons why I've gotto this stage of folio thinking,
and I've often thought aboutthis, and I've said this to my
students, a lot of them are in -they're in the social sciences,
and you are expected to workwith evidence, make claims, make
(05:25):
citations, make inferenceswithin your own work around a
subject. So in history, it'svery evidence-based. And so I
try to get them to realise thatbasically, they are sourcing
their own experiences. They'recollecting sources, they're
choosing which ones apply,they're breaking them down, and
then they are looking forcritical incidents that they can
(05:46):
talk about, and then couple themtogether. So you tightly couple
artefacts over time to try andcapture and build a narrative
that's evidence-based.
I tried to talk about that as adisciplinary disposition that we
have into the social sciencesand that can serve as well when
you think about your portfolio,which is capturing a journey of
your growth over time and thenbeing able to explain it and how
(06:08):
what you've done makes sensebased on learning theory and how
it will also support your futuregrowth as you enter into the
profession.
Kristina Hoeppner (06:17):
It's really good to have that definition of
folio thinking available. Youput it nicely into the
ePortfolio development frameworkthat you're sharing in your case
study. Because in the ePortfoliodevelopment framework, just to
recap a bit what you had saidearlier, you do talk about the
collecting, selecting,reflecting, and connecting. So
(06:40):
all of these four activitiesbeing crucial and needing to be
present in a portfolio so thatwe can call it a portfolio, that
it's not just that collection ofartefacts, but really also what
was important of the artefactsthat you've collected, and why
are they important? And then howdo they connect to the further
(07:03):
learning story or maybe alsohaving connections to other
people. So that we are reallytelling that story, rather than
only looking at individualpieces of artefacts
Having that definition fromHelen Chen and then also
expanded on it by others,available does give us that very
nice framework that I think isalso really nicely explainable
(07:25):
because it does make good senseof not sharing everything with
everybody because nobody everhas time to just hear everything
from zero to 100 or 1,000 butreally selecting critical
components or critical incidentsand then reflecting on those and
weaving that into the existinglearning journey, as well as
(07:49):
where you want to go in thefuture.
David Hicks (07:52):
Yes, absolutely.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:53):
How do you introduce the ePortfolio
development framework to yourstudents so that they get into
the practice of creating those,what you called "proper
portfolios", rather than justthe summaries of their
activities?
David Hicks (08:08):
This has taken a long time to develop, and I
still keep iterating andtweaking on it. So I have the
students, the master students,it's just a 15-month programme,
and I have them for twosemesters, so I have them for
the fall and spring, and theundergraduates, I also have them
for the fall and spring. That'sthe final year for both. So I'm
fortunate to have them for awhole year. That helps me
(08:30):
scaffold it over time.
From the very beginning of thefall semester, they learn about
the portfolio pretty quickly. Italk about it being the very
final thing they'll do. It lookslike the portfolio defence is an
exam, but I say, "It is acelebration of your growth. It's
the celebration of your growthand the journey to the other
side of the desk from student toteacher. By the time you get
(08:53):
there, it's not about whetheryou pass or fail. You will know
exactly what you're doing.
You'll be proud of your work,and we will have celebratory
presentations."How does it scaffold? Well, to
me, the scaffolding is actuallyessential because reflection
doesn't happen automatically.
It's something that's got to besupported. You've got to nudge
students in certain ways. Andwhat I've also found is that
(09:13):
often they've got all thesecourses, and as they go through
life, they take a course, andthen it's done. It's checked
off, take a course, checked off.
And sometimes they takeassignments and they kind of do
them, and then they're inisolation. I don't think they
ever realise that oftenprofessors are really trying to
connect things together acrossclasses, so they see it as just
done and dusted, and it's like,no, these are really key pieces
(09:34):
that you need to consider thatinform your lesson planning,
inform how you deliver, how youwork with students, and inform
your teaching.
So I say all that because when Ifirst get them, one of the first
scaffolded assignments I givethem, which is not for a grade,
it's a basic template. And itjust says, "Pick your four key
classes in Education, and I'llname them, and then, what did
(09:54):
you learn? What have you learnedin those classes? What are your
essential learnings? And why arethey important to you? And do
you have any evidence from whatyou've done that you've done
this, that you've learned thesethings? Then I ask them to
create a short screencast thatintroduces me, to then talking
about the class they took, theassignments, and then what
(10:14):
they've personally taken awayand what it means for their
future practice. It's anintroduction to me of what they
think they've learned and whatthey, you know, come away with.
But it also gets them take someartefacts and begin to talk
about them in a way of futuregrowth. That's really done in
the fall semester early on.
Kristina Hoeppner (10:33):
What do your students think about that
screencast and you wanting themto make those connections to
their previous learning?
David Hicks (10:39):
Some of them are terrified because they actually
don't know how to do thetechnology to start with. So I
have a little guide on that andgetting them started. But a lot
of what I do there is, well,'during the time of COVID, we
had to develop screencasts, andwe had to create mini lectures
and all this stuff for students.
This activity of creating ascreencast is something that you
may very well be expected to doif you do any online ed(ucation)
(10:59):
teaching. As teachers, this issomething that you're going to
be doing.'We have a number of assignments
where you write a narrative, butyou'll also provide a
screencast. So you can thenverbalise and talk through -
because when you can talkthrough something and explain
it, it really does connect, itsticks with you. I think they
don't necessarily mind it, butit's just me saying 'it's part
(11:19):
of your professional developmentbecause you're probably going to
be expected to do this, orthere's a good chance within
your future job. Just enjoy itand enjoy the moment.'
The screencasts are somethingthat's a consistent thing
through because in the end, theydo a final screencast that they
attach to their electronicportfolio that is a 15-minute
presentation of their highpoints. So they've got the
(11:40):
portfolio, and then on thefront, it's 15 minutes of these
are my key stories. These arethe things you're going to see.
These are a couple of thestories, and these are the
artefacts that show who I am andthe essence of my growth. So
that comes back round.
Kristina Hoeppner (11:55):
So you do also teach them digital literacy
skills by learning differenttools that they might need as
teachers as well.
David Hicks (12:02):
Funny thing really is that we've been doing
portfolios so long that I wastrying to think today of how we
first started using and what wewere using. What were the
platforms we used? We usedinitially a lot of like
WYSIWYGs, what you see is whatyou get. And then at one point,
we spent a great deal of timeplaying with Dreamweaver, and
they were kind of doing littlemini coding. And then it
(12:23):
suddenly always became moreabout the esthetics rather than
the content. Then I went tousing the WordPress blog and let
them play with that and then wewent to products that the
university was using, and thenthey wanted us to use them. I
didn't think they actuallyallowed for folio thinking. They
were just collecting informationand then talking about it a
little bit. So I ditched that.
(12:44):
We started then to - it isanother scaffold - I said, "my
concern is that a lot of you aresuddenly stuck on the colour and
a couple of pictures and tryingto make it sexy. I want more
content than, you know, thesexiness." We've started using
Google Sites, but we built atemplate. We built a template
for them that they can adjustand do certain things in, but
(13:06):
the template takes off the loadof them actually building
something from ground up. I havea Google Sites template, and I
also have a WordPress templatethat they can take on and use
now. So that's another scaffold,in a sense, that they just not
starting with nothing and havingto build it.
Teachers are meant to doreflections, and they have to
write about the reflections,right about the growth weekly.
(13:28):
But ours was based around themproviding evidence immediately
and identifying evidence thatconnected to specific standards,
and they would talk about iteach week, and then Sara or
myself would respond back andgive them feedback as they
talked through theirexperiences. They were already
using artefacts and trying tocouple the artefacts to how they
(13:48):
were doing in the field and whatthey would do next.
Another thing that I started todo was I realised that often
though, even though it's over aperiod of time, and we talk
about collecting all your work,going through the process of
collect, select, reflect,helping them have folders
online, that's InTASC 1, InTASC2, which are the standards, and
starting to put materials inthere, I often still found that
when they started doing theportfolio, they would just start
(14:13):
writing and making connections,and it was almost like I was
seeing a first draft. It was notalways as tight and as well
thought out as possible. So Ideveloped something called the
electronic portfolio foundationdocument, which is basically
just, you're going to do a draftin Word first, and you're gonna
basically take the standards,pick some artefacts, and begin
(14:33):
to tell me your stories of howyou meet these standards. They
are all around learning andlearner development or the
content knowledge.
So they write a document, andthen I give them feedback and
nudges about what should be inthere, what I like, what I don't
like, how they could talk aboutit in different ways. It's
almost like laying a basis forthem to practice reflecting.
(14:54):
That becomes quite a major part.
I tell them afterwards, "That'sjust your draft. Now, any good
draft, you take that and thenyou start to rework it, and you
make it tighter and sharper, andyou couple more of the artefacts
together, and you tell more ofthe stories, and you can talk
about why you did things, howyou did things, and how it's
going to change your practice."So they're given that structure
of keep saying, how's itinfluenced your practice? Why
did you do that? Can you explainit to me? Can you show me in the
(15:16):
artefacts and refer back to theartefacts to show me exactly why
you did this, how you'veimproved in certain ways over
time? So tell me a story of yourgrowth.
Kristina Hoeppner (15:27):
How do the students take that document and
put it into their electronicportfolio?
David Hicks (15:33):
So with the document, they will already be
linking to individual artefactsor put screenshots in. They can
link directly to the foldersthat are online that they've set
up. They can copy and pastesections. They can rewrite
sections in the template itself.
Then they just start to refillit out and repurpose, put in
their images and make links asyou go.
There's a couple of otherassignments I do. If it still
(15:55):
feels a little text-heavy orthere's images and then there's
links, I went back to the ideaof screencasts. I asked them to
do three assignments because Irealised that they really still
struggle to talk about andreflect on how they do
assessments. So I asked them toget three to four artefacts over
time that where they've doneassessments, and tell me their
story of how they've learned andimproved assessments. What are
(16:18):
assessments for? How does itwork? How have you grown, and
how do you use assessments? Andthen they build a screencast
with PowerPoint in the back, andthey're talking through their
growth with this evidence. Sothey have evidence, evidence,
evidence, and that then becomesan artefact unto itself that
they can put in. And then, Isay, "Pick two or three other
things, from motivation tocontent knowledge to working
(16:41):
with diverse learners, and getthree or four artefacts that can
link directly to working withdiverse learners, and then tell
me the story. You've got athree-minute screencast that
explains the artefacts" and thenexplains how they come together
and why this shows that they cannow have learned to work with
diverse learners, and what thismeans in the future. In essence
(17:02):
there, I'm nudging them in a waywill create self-contained
artefacts, self-containedstories that they can also add
into their electronic portfolio.
And then one of the finalassignments is they can only do
this at the very end. There's 10standards, they're broken into
four categories, learner andlearner development is one, and
then there'll be like threestandards underneath. And so I
(17:23):
have them then create anotherscreencast where they look at
their standards, and they lookat their portfolio and all the
work they've done, and they haveto create an introduction
screencast to those keystandards. It's like, 'Hey, in
this standard here is what I'vegot. These are the highlights.
This is what I struggled with,and here are the key artefacts
(17:43):
that you'll see that show myunderstanding of blah, blah,
blah. And these are examples ofhow I've grown.' I keep pushing
'explain what you're doing, whyyou did it.' Often it is text,
there's images, there's links toartefacts, and then there's
these screencasts that they'vedone that they also drop in,
that really have themverbalising and talking about
their work as they go. All thathappens builds through the
(18:07):
semester.
Then I also set up just separatework sessions where the students
come and we sit and they show mewhat they've got, and we make
suggestions. I encourage them towork together in teams and look
at each other's and peer reviewand what they like and what
they've got. I often say,'Everybody's done similar
assignments, but you've all haddifferent experiences in the
(18:29):
schools. You know, as you'rereading somebody's experience,
are they really telling youabout their teaching practice
and how they've grown and whatdoes the evidence really match?'
And so they sit together andoffer people ideas and advice,
as well as sometimes technicalsupport when they're trying to
position an image and they can'tget it quite right. The
scaffolds I've been putting inplace over time, they've
basically built intoassignments, and then I give
them time to meet with me as wego.
Kristina Hoeppner (18:52):
David, what I really like is your approach to
the reflection, which soundslike a double reflective cycle,
that when they put the artefactsin, they already reflect on
them. Why is that particularartefact or this group of
artefacts really important forme to make a point, and then
they also look at it from thelens of the teaching standards.
(19:14):
So that's where then the secondround of reflection comes in,
abstracting it again from whatthey had already written before
and now putting that standardlens on top and looking at it
from that point of view.
Your students create theportfolio at the end of their
studies because you have thempretty much in their last year.
(19:35):
Do some of them encounterportfolios already before then
in their studies?
David Hicks (19:40):
I do not think so.
I may have had a couple who werein the master's programme who
did stuff at the undergraduatelevel, but a lot of them, the
idea is new, or this portfoliois a little bit bigger than a
course portfolio. We've had themsometimes have a little cost
portfolio in the past, butthey've only got a few things in
and this becomes allencompassing because it's about
(20:01):
the growth, not just in myclass, but everybody's classes,
and the whole programme itselfcoming together and telling the
story. While they may have had alittle bit of a portfolio, or
they've heard the term'portfolio', and they may have
some experience, I would saythat's minimal, and often this
is the first portfolio thatthey've done.
Kristina Hoeppner (20:21):
Do you sometimes then get the outcry
from students, 'Oh, had I knownthat in my first year, I would
have been able to alreadycollect and reflect and learn
all of those skills early on'?
David Hicks (20:32):
Yes, definitely.
Kristina Hoeppner (20:34):
Do you feel like there is work that can be
done at Virginia Tech to supportthe students, either in their
undergrad or earlier in theirmaster's to get to the point of
integrating portfolios more?
David Hicks (20:45):
I do think the portfolios as a form of
assessment themselves are verypowerful. In a period now where
we're actually talking aboutconcerns with AI and worries
about people cheating and thingslike that, I think portfolios as
a form of assessment thatrequires students to reflect on
their own growth and their ownlearnings and make sense of what
they've done can become evenmore powerful. And then somebody
(21:08):
is going to put a couple ofessays in an AI, put their
essays in and say, 'What did Ilearn?' And then they'll just
copy that back. But I do thinkportfolios can offset some
people's concerns with how AImay take away from the learning
process.
Kristina Hoeppner (21:23):
Especially with the screencasts work that
your students are doing thatit's not just the written word
that you see, but you also seetheir facial expressions and how
enthusiastic they talk aboutsomething, and therefore make it
even more personal for them thatthey might also not be inclined
to use an aid there.
(21:43):
Besides the reflection, whataspect of the portfolio work do
students often struggle withinitially?
David Hicks (21:51):
I think one of the big concerns is for them,
they're worried if they're goingto pass or fail because it is a
capstone. They'll be finebecause there's things built in.
The thing that I still find themost frustrating for many
students is we create these biglists of artefacts and
experiences that they've done,and sometimes they don't
remember what they've actuallydone in terms of artefacts and
(22:12):
evidence. I've sat there going,'don't you remember this
assignment from this otherclass? I know more about this
other class than you do.' I wantthem to be more own their own
connections, and we have tospend time helping them make the
connection still, which is partof the scaffold in itself, but
it's almost like an amnesia thatthey forget what good work
(22:33):
they've done, then they struggletrying to pull together a couple
of artefacts that they've notthought of. So it's that
thinking and bringing couplingthings together.
The other thing is, sometimes Iwould like them to be more
willing to look at smallsections of, say, lesson plans,
and take maybe their objectivesand how they've grown over time
to improve their objectives.
Sometimes, I think that kind offine tuning is what they still
(22:56):
struggle with. I have toencourage them and nudge them to
think about that more than Iwant them to. I want them to
have a little bit moreownership, which goes back to if
they had more experience forportfolios, and this process
before it might make it easier.
That's probably where I thinkthe challenge is. I see more
opportunities of where theycould make the connections than
(23:16):
they do. It takes quite a lot toget them going to start thinking
in this way of making theconnections and selecting stuff.
I keep talking about tightlycoupled narratives, and that
takes time, and I thinksometimes they find that
initially frustrating, and it'sonly when they start to realise
how much stuff they actuallyhave, and they're asked to think
about it.
Kristina Hoeppner (23:35):
That's why I'm wondering whether
introducing portfolios earlieron in their studies could then
help. Because while yourinstructors, as you've said, try
to make those connectionsbetween the individual classes,
it still needs that actualprompting to say, 'Okay, now so
make this connection,' and overtime, then hopefully they get
(23:57):
better at it, so that when youget them, it's not this new
concept for them because theyhave already been practising
that all along.
David Hicks (24:05):
Yes.
Kristina Hoeppner (24:06):
You've been using portfolios for over 20
years now, what have you learnedthroughout that time working
with your students, inparticular in teacher education?
David Hicks (24:18):
The biggest thing I've learned is we talk about
reflection a lot, and I thinkyou have to understand what
reflection is, and reflection isnot a natural thing for many
teacher candidates. It needs tobe taught, and it needs to be
modeled and it needs to besupported. I also realise that
you've got to think about theend in mind of what you want the
portfolio to be, a vision thatyou have to clearly communicate
(24:40):
to your students, for them tosee. I also don't want them to
copy last year's portfolios.
Now, I do let them look at somefrom last year or the year
before to get a feel, but Ioften say, 'And yours will be
better.'I've learned over time that the
portfolio design process needsto be a sequence of assignments,
the kind of prompts we use, theexamples we show, and then the
(25:01):
tone I set about it's acelebration of your journey to
the other side of the desk.
Something that becomes reallyimportant, and it shapes then
how they engage with theportfolios itself. It's not
purely an assessment tool, itis, but it's a pedagogical space
where they can wrestle withtheir growth, their values, and
(25:22):
begin to see themselves as beingand I often talk about 'You
actually sound like realteachers when you write that,
and when you say that, youactually sound like you know
what you're talking about,that's pretty cool.' And that's
what it's meant to be. It'smeant to be this mirror looking
back at what they can say and amap of where they're heading.
But to do that, you've got toput things in place.
Kristina Hoeppner (25:41):
The exemplars that you're talking about, what
do they look like?
David Hicks (25:45):
So what I typically share with the students now, we
have a frequently askedquestions of what it looks like
and examples of what reflectioncould do. I take two or three
different portfolios from overtime, and they do spend time
going in to analyse what theylook like. So what do their
reflections look like? How didthe screencast get organised?
(26:06):
How did they pull it together?
So they've got these prompts toexplore the portfolio. Then I
ask them, which ones are thebetter ones for you? Which ones
make sense? Because I don't givethem just the good ones. I also
think have not kind of hit themark as well as they should. And
I say, 'Where are you in thisand what are you going to
borrow? What does reflectionlook like here? What does
reflection look like there? Howthey couple the information
(26:27):
together? Can you explain to mewhich ones you think I think are
best?'
Kristina Hoeppner (26:33):
Which is wonderful because they are
teacher education students, sothat also teaches them what they
will need in their futurecareer.
David Hicks (26:41):
I always say, 'I really don't need looking at
them. I don't need too much timewith them because you're going
to do it better. But I do wantyou looking at specific pieces
and telling me what you likeabout it and what makes sense,
and does this fit for exemplaryreflection, and are they using
their artefacts as well as theyshould to tell you that story?'
Kristina Hoeppner (26:58):
So now that we have looked back, what is on
your map for the future of yourportfolio journey with your
students?
David Hicks (27:06):
Things change a lot, and they continue to
change. For me at the moment, itis about stabilising the process
that we have, stabilising theuse of the templates, and then I
started bringing back studentsto talk about their experiences
and their portfolios - alumni -and talk about what they got out
(27:27):
and how to set it up there. AndI'm going to probably do a
little bit more of that.
Ideally, I'd like them to stilluse the portfolios, but they
don't, but they come back andtalk about how it's got them to
think about where they are nowbefore they move on. That's
somewhere I want to continue toget my alumni to come back and
talk about that more and be morespecific about their own work
with portfolios. I think we arealso moving in Virginia, moving
(27:49):
away from multiple choiceassessments and getting students
to recognise how portfolios canalso be used again in
classrooms, in historyclassrooms and things like that,
and have that as a model.
Kristina Hoeppner (28:02):
With your alumni that are coming back to
class to talk about theirportfolio experience, they now
have the privilege of hindsight.
Has there been any bigrevelation that stuck in your
mind of what one or two of thestudents have said, why the
portfolio did help them or howit helped them in their career?
David Hicks (28:21):
What is nice is sometimes they say to the
students, 'Listen to David,trust him. It is a celebration.
Trust him.' That helps. Whatthey've said, again, is the idea
that it did allow them to talklike a teacher, and the very
fact that they've also shared iton their job interviews and
shared versions of it withprincipals when they've gone for
(28:42):
interviews, and they've likedwhat they've seen, it makes them
feel more professional. It madethem ready to enter the
profession. It made them be ableto talk like a professional, and
it made them feel like they werewelcomed as professionals when
they were showing them as partas job interviews.
It's not just to get a job, butit really did show that it
connects to the profession, andit was well received. That story
(29:05):
of coming back feels good. Theyscare them a little bit when
they say, 'Well, that electronicportfolio foundation document
can get really, really long,'and I'm like, 'Yeah, but it's
you talking about yourselves,how cool you are, and where you
learned, and where you fell downa bit, and what you can do about
it differently.' Yeah, they dotalk about how that is a big
thing for them.
Kristina Hoeppner (29:22):
That's really fantastic to see that what
starts out as an assessment forthem to finish their capstone
course, get that pass, actuallydoes transition into their
career and helps them also lateron. Therefore, what you're
trying to achieve and trying toshow them from the start that
it's not just an assessment, butit gets you onto your lifelong
(29:44):
learning journey or becomingthat reflective practitioner,
things you should be doing asteachers anyway, they realise
just a bit later themselves.
Now to our last three questions,David, to our quick answer
round. Which words or shortphrases do you use to describe
portfolio work?
David Hicks (30:05):
Tightly-coupled, evidence-based narrative;
reflection on and in practice;and a celebration of your
journey to the other side of thedesk.
Kristina Hoeppner (30:15):
Awesome. What last tip do you want to share
with learning designers andinstructors for creating
portfolio activities for theirlearners?
David Hicks (30:25):
For me, it's you get what you ask for. So you've
got to be very specific. Sodesign backwards with what you
ultimately want. What's yourgoal? If you want them to engage
in deep reflection, you need toscaffold it and not just say,
'Do deep reflection,' but youneed to have touch points,
examples, feedback, and spacefor iteration.
Kristina Hoeppner (30:43):
What advice do you have for portfolio
authors, for your students?
David Hicks (30:49):
Don't just show.
It's not a show and tell. It'snot a scrapbook. It's about
explaining why somethingmattered to you, why it matters,
and how it changed you. Yourportfolio is not purely about
proving your competence, butit's telling the story of your
growth and your ongoing journeyto the other side of the desk,
and you do it withtightly-coupled evidence.
Have a positive mindset, but youcan still talk about
(31:09):
difficulties, but what you'regoing to do differently in the
future as well, but it's alwayswith a positive future mindset
to be a teacher and explainingand being aware of your work and
explaining why you did things.
Kristina Hoeppner (31:21):
Thank you so much for tying that bow back and
bringing us back to the foliothinking of your ePortfolio
development framework thatincludes collect, select,
reflect, and connect, so that wesee that it is about the journey
of each student. It is personalto them. Yes, it's an
(31:42):
assessment, but it actuallyhelps them also in many other
ways beyond that, and thenhopefully they will realise that
you are preparing them for theircareer later on. Thank you so
much for the chat today, David.
David Hicks (31:57):
Thank you very much, Kristina.
Kristina Hoeppner (32:00):
Now over to you. What do you want to try in
your own portfolio practice?
This was 'Create. Share.
Engage.' with Professor Dr DavidHicks. Head to our website,
podcast.mahara.org, where youcan find resources and the
transcript for this episode. Ournext episode of 'Create. Share.
(32:22):
Engage. Portfolios for learningand more' will air in two weeks.
I hope you will listen again andtell a colleague about our
podcast so they can subscribe.
Until then, create share, andengage.
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is
the podcast about portfolios forlearning and more for educators,
learning designers, and managerskeen on integrating portfolios
with their education andprofessional development
practices. 'Create. Share.
Engage.' is brought to you bythe Mahara team at Catalyst IT.
My name is Kristina Hoeppner.
(00:28):
Today I'm speaking withProfessor Dr David Hicks from
Virginia Tech. He, Dr Amy Allen,and newly minted Dr Sara Evers
wrote the article 'Foliothinking in teacher education: A
case study on the evolution ofreflective ePortfolio
assignments' in the latest issueof the AAEEBL ePortfolio Review.
David, thank you so much formaking time today for our chat.
David Hicks (00:52):
Thank you. Thanks for the invite.
Kristina Hoeppner (00:54):
David, what do you do at Virginia Tech,
please?
David Hicks (00:58):
I am a Professor of History and Social Science
Education, and so I work withundergraduates and graduate
students, basically preparingteachers. And then I also have a
PhD programme for people whowant to be university professors
or Social Studies supervisors,and Sara was one of my doctoral
students, and actually justgraduated this May.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:21):
David, with you being a Professor of History
and Social Science Education, itdoes make good sense that in
your biography, you do put ahistorical marker in it; just
looking at the AePR one, yousaid, "He is a great" - so you,
"great grandson of David Carterwho can be found in the
Metropolitan Police Register ofHabitual Criminals of
(01:46):
1881-1925."
David Hicks (01:48):
He was born in York, is Yorkshire born,
Yorkshire bred, and one of hisfirst crimes was stealing
horses. If people question myethics, it's in my genetics now.
So it's not my fault [Kristinalaughs]. Blame a great granddad.
Kristina Hoeppner (02:00):
When did you start using portfolios yourself?
Because in the case study, yousaid your work in teacher
education goes back to 2013. Wasthat the first time or have you
already been using portfoliosbefore then?
David Hicks (02:12):
We've been using it before. So basically, in 2013
some other colleagues and Iwrote a paper about our initial
work that started in the early2000s. So we were kind of just
laying out there some of thework we were doing to create
this as an assessment and how weassessed portfolios. I've been
doing it in Social Studies, andit was Kelly Parkes in Music
(02:36):
Education at the time. And, youknow, in the early 2000s
probably from 2005, maybe 2006,2007 we've been doing electronic
portfolios as a capstone to theteacher education programme.
Kristina Hoeppner (02:49):
That's a long history that you can look back
at. So it's nice to see theevolution a bit in the case
study that you had published inAePR on folio thinking. What is
folio thinking and how does itcome into play in your portfolio
practice?
David Hicks (03:05):
From the very beginning, we have a number of
people at Virginia Tech, anumber of colleagues who do
portfolios.
Kristina Hoeppner (03:11):
Is that in different departments to yours
or in your own department?
David Hicks (03:14):
Yes, well, in the School of Education. So the
Elementary Ed do their portfolioas a capstone, and Maths do
theirs, and Science does theirs,Social Studies me, History and
Social Science does mine,English does theirs. I've
typically worked with theHistory and Social Science
people and also the Englishpeople.
I have always had a little bitof a bugaboo about what you
(03:35):
should be doing in a portfolio.
Even up to this semester, whenI've been on other people's
committees, I still tell mystudents that we do a proper
portfolio where you're reallybeing forced to engage in
reflective reasoning to explainthe what, the why, and how of
your teaching practice, andconsider how your reasoning and
(03:55):
explanations will inform yourfuture practice. So just to be
aware, you're aware of whatyou're doing, rather than
unaware when you're teaching.
I still have colleagues who Ithink they have students who
just throw up a couple ofartieacts and they just describe
the artefact. That's just ascrapbook. It's not really what
a portfolio should be about.
Folio thinking, then, to me,remains this idea of assembling
(04:18):
artefacts from over time orspace, and it's reflective, it's
a recursive process in which myteacher candidates will collect,
select, reflect, and connecttheir experiences and artefacts
in order to construct ameaningful narrative of their
growth, and then what that meansfor their future growth. The
aim, then is to help them movebeyond just a check box of look,
(04:40):
'I've answered this standard' toreally being metacognitively
aware of what you're doing andproviding evidence-based claims
to support your narrative of whydid you teach this way? What
have I learned? And how am Igrowing?
Folio thinking is thismetacognitive way of explaining
(05:01):
your actions and and showing alevel of awareness about what it
means to teach and learn for me,not just a me having a lesson
planned up and just saying, 'Oh,I did this lesson on whatever.'
One of the reasons why I've gotto this stage of folio thinking,
and I've often thought aboutthis, and I've said this to my
students, a lot of them are in -they're in the social sciences,
and you are expected to workwith evidence, make claims, make
(05:25):
citations, make inferenceswithin your own work around a
subject. So in history, it'svery evidence-based. And so I
try to get them to realise thatbasically, they are sourcing
their own experiences. They'recollecting sources, they're
choosing which ones apply,they're breaking them down, and
then they are looking forcritical incidents that they can
(05:46):
talk about, and then couple themtogether. So you tightly couple
artefacts over time to try andcapture and build a narrative
that's evidence-based.
I tried to talk about that as adisciplinary disposition that we
have into the social sciencesand that can serve as well when
you think about your portfolio,which is capturing a journey of
your growth over time and thenbeing able to explain it and how
(06:08):
what you've done makes sensebased on learning theory and how
it will also support your futuregrowth as you enter into the
profession.
Kristina Hoeppner (06:17):
It's really good to have that definition of
folio thinking available. Youput it nicely into the
ePortfolio development frameworkthat you're sharing in your case
study. Because in the ePortfoliodevelopment framework, just to
recap a bit what you had saidearlier, you do talk about the
collecting, selecting,reflecting, and connecting. So
(06:40):
all of these four activitiesbeing crucial and needing to be
present in a portfolio so thatwe can call it a portfolio, that
it's not just that collection ofartefacts, but really also what
was important of the artefactsthat you've collected, and why
are they important? And then howdo they connect to the further
(07:03):
learning story or maybe alsohaving connections to other
people. So that we are reallytelling that story, rather than
only looking at individualpieces of artefacts
Having that definition fromHelen Chen and then also
expanded on it by others,available does give us that very
nice framework that I think isalso really nicely explainable
(07:25):
because it does make good senseof not sharing everything with
everybody because nobody everhas time to just hear everything
from zero to 100 or 1,000 butreally selecting critical
components or critical incidentsand then reflecting on those and
weaving that into the existinglearning journey, as well as
(07:49):
where you want to go in thefuture.
David Hicks (07:52):
Yes, absolutely.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:53):
How do you introduce the ePortfolio
development framework to yourstudents so that they get into
the practice of creating those,what you called "proper
portfolios", rather than justthe summaries of their
activities?
David Hicks (08:08):
This has taken a long time to develop, and I
still keep iterating andtweaking on it. So I have the
students, the master students,it's just a 15-month programme,
and I have them for twosemesters, so I have them for
the fall and spring, and theundergraduates, I also have them
for the fall and spring. That'sthe final year for both. So I'm
fortunate to have them for awhole year. That helps me
(08:30):
scaffold it over time.
From the very beginning of thefall semester, they learn about
the portfolio pretty quickly. Italk about it being the very
final thing they'll do. It lookslike the portfolio defence is an
exam, but I say, "It is acelebration of your growth. It's
the celebration of your growthand the journey to the other
side of the desk from student toteacher. By the time you get
(08:53):
there, it's not about whetheryou pass or fail. You will know
exactly what you're doing.
You'll be proud of your work,and we will have celebratory
presentations."How does it scaffold? Well, to
me, the scaffolding is actuallyessential because reflection
doesn't happen automatically.
It's something that's got to besupported. You've got to nudge
students in certain ways. Andwhat I've also found is that
(09:13):
often they've got all thesecourses, and as they go through
life, they take a course, andthen it's done. It's checked
off, take a course, checked off.
And sometimes they takeassignments and they kind of do
them, and then they're inisolation. I don't think they
ever realise that oftenprofessors are really trying to
connect things together acrossclasses, so they see it as just
done and dusted, and it's like,no, these are really key pieces
(09:34):
that you need to consider thatinform your lesson planning,
inform how you deliver, how youwork with students, and inform
your teaching.
So I say all that because when Ifirst get them, one of the first
scaffolded assignments I givethem, which is not for a grade,
it's a basic template. And itjust says, "Pick your four key
classes in Education, and I'llname them, and then, what did
(09:54):
you learn? What have you learnedin those classes? What are your
essential learnings? And why arethey important to you? And do
you have any evidence from whatyou've done that you've done
this, that you've learned thesethings? Then I ask them to
create a short screencast thatintroduces me, to then talking
about the class they took, theassignments, and then what
(10:14):
they've personally taken awayand what it means for their
future practice. It's anintroduction to me of what they
think they've learned and whatthey, you know, come away with.
But it also gets them take someartefacts and begin to talk
about them in a way of futuregrowth. That's really done in
the fall semester early on.
Kristina Hoeppner (10:33):
What do your students think about that
screencast and you wanting themto make those connections to
their previous learning?
David Hicks (10:39):
Some of them are terrified because they actually
don't know how to do thetechnology to start with. So I
have a little guide on that andgetting them started. But a lot
of what I do there is, well,'during the time of COVID, we
had to develop screencasts, andwe had to create mini lectures
and all this stuff for students.
This activity of creating ascreencast is something that you
may very well be expected to doif you do any online ed(ucation)
(10:59):
teaching. As teachers, this issomething that you're going to
be doing.'We have a number of assignments
where you write a narrative, butyou'll also provide a
screencast. So you can thenverbalise and talk through -
because when you can talkthrough something and explain
it, it really does connect, itsticks with you. I think they
don't necessarily mind it, butit's just me saying 'it's part
(11:19):
of your professional developmentbecause you're probably going to
be expected to do this, orthere's a good chance within
your future job. Just enjoy itand enjoy the moment.'
The screencasts are somethingthat's a consistent thing
through because in the end, theydo a final screencast that they
attach to their electronicportfolio that is a 15-minute
presentation of their highpoints. So they've got the
(11:40):
portfolio, and then on thefront, it's 15 minutes of these
are my key stories. These arethe things you're going to see.
These are a couple of thestories, and these are the
artefacts that show who I am andthe essence of my growth. So
that comes back round.
Kristina Hoeppner (11:55):
So you do also teach them digital literacy
skills by learning differenttools that they might need as
teachers as well.
David Hicks (12:02):
Funny thing really is that we've been doing
portfolios so long that I wastrying to think today of how we
first started using and what wewere using. What were the
platforms we used? We usedinitially a lot of like
WYSIWYGs, what you see is whatyou get. And then at one point,
we spent a great deal of timeplaying with Dreamweaver, and
they were kind of doing littlemini coding. And then it
(12:23):
suddenly always became moreabout the esthetics rather than
the content. Then I went tousing the WordPress blog and let
them play with that and then wewent to products that the
university was using, and thenthey wanted us to use them. I
didn't think they actuallyallowed for folio thinking. They
were just collecting informationand then talking about it a
little bit. So I ditched that.
(12:44):
We started then to - it isanother scaffold - I said, "my
concern is that a lot of you aresuddenly stuck on the colour and
a couple of pictures and tryingto make it sexy. I want more
content than, you know, thesexiness." We've started using
Google Sites, but we built atemplate. We built a template
for them that they can adjustand do certain things in, but
(13:06):
the template takes off the loadof them actually building
something from ground up. I havea Google Sites template, and I
also have a WordPress templatethat they can take on and use
now. So that's another scaffold,in a sense, that they just not
starting with nothing and havingto build it.
Teachers are meant to doreflections, and they have to
write about the reflections,right about the growth weekly.
(13:28):
But ours was based around themproviding evidence immediately
and identifying evidence thatconnected to specific standards,
and they would talk about iteach week, and then Sara or
myself would respond back andgive them feedback as they
talked through theirexperiences. They were already
using artefacts and trying tocouple the artefacts to how they
(13:48):
were doing in the field and whatthey would do next.
Another thing that I started todo was I realised that often
though, even though it's over aperiod of time, and we talk
about collecting all your work,going through the process of
collect, select, reflect,helping them have folders
online, that's InTASC 1, InTASC2, which are the standards, and
starting to put materials inthere, I often still found that
when they started doing theportfolio, they would just start
(14:13):
writing and making connections,and it was almost like I was
seeing a first draft. It was notalways as tight and as well
thought out as possible. So Ideveloped something called the
electronic portfolio foundationdocument, which is basically
just, you're going to do a draftin Word first, and you're gonna
basically take the standards,pick some artefacts, and begin
(14:33):
to tell me your stories of howyou meet these standards. They
are all around learning andlearner development or the
content knowledge.
So they write a document, andthen I give them feedback and
nudges about what should be inthere, what I like, what I don't
like, how they could talk aboutit in different ways. It's
almost like laying a basis forthem to practice reflecting.
(14:54):
That becomes quite a major part.
I tell them afterwards, "That'sjust your draft. Now, any good
draft, you take that and thenyou start to rework it, and you
make it tighter and sharper, andyou couple more of the artefacts
together, and you tell more ofthe stories, and you can talk
about why you did things, howyou did things, and how it's
going to change your practice."So they're given that structure
of keep saying, how's itinfluenced your practice? Why
did you do that? Can you explainit to me? Can you show me in the
(15:16):
artefacts and refer back to theartefacts to show me exactly why
you did this, how you'veimproved in certain ways over
time? So tell me a story of yourgrowth.
Kristina Hoeppner (15:27):
How do the students take that document and
put it into their electronicportfolio?
David Hicks (15:33):
So with the document, they will already be
linking to individual artefactsor put screenshots in. They can
link directly to the foldersthat are online that they've set
up. They can copy and pastesections. They can rewrite
sections in the template itself.
Then they just start to refillit out and repurpose, put in
their images and make links asyou go.
There's a couple of otherassignments I do. If it still
(15:55):
feels a little text-heavy orthere's images and then there's
links, I went back to the ideaof screencasts. I asked them to
do three assignments because Irealised that they really still
struggle to talk about andreflect on how they do
assessments. So I asked them toget three to four artefacts over
time that where they've doneassessments, and tell me their
story of how they've learned andimproved assessments. What are
(16:18):
assessments for? How does itwork? How have you grown, and
how do you use assessments? Andthen they build a screencast
with PowerPoint in the back, andthey're talking through their
growth with this evidence. Sothey have evidence, evidence,
evidence, and that then becomesan artefact unto itself that
they can put in. And then, Isay, "Pick two or three other
things, from motivation tocontent knowledge to working
(16:41):
with diverse learners, and getthree or four artefacts that can
link directly to working withdiverse learners, and then tell
me the story. You've got athree-minute screencast that
explains the artefacts" and thenexplains how they come together
and why this shows that they cannow have learned to work with
diverse learners, and what thismeans in the future. In essence
(17:02):
there, I'm nudging them in a waywill create self-contained
artefacts, self-containedstories that they can also add
into their electronic portfolio.
And then one of the finalassignments is they can only do
this at the very end. There's 10standards, they're broken into
four categories, learner andlearner development is one, and
then there'll be like threestandards underneath. And so I
(17:23):
have them then create anotherscreencast where they look at
their standards, and they lookat their portfolio and all the
work they've done, and they haveto create an introduction
screencast to those keystandards. It's like, 'Hey, in
this standard here is what I'vegot. These are the highlights.
This is what I struggled with,and here are the key artefacts
(17:43):
that you'll see that show myunderstanding of blah, blah,
blah. And these are examples ofhow I've grown.' I keep pushing
'explain what you're doing, whyyou did it.' Often it is text,
there's images, there's links toartefacts, and then there's
these screencasts that they'vedone that they also drop in,
that really have themverbalising and talking about
their work as they go. All thathappens builds through the
(18:07):
semester.
Then I also set up just separatework sessions where the students
come and we sit and they show mewhat they've got, and we make
suggestions. I encourage them towork together in teams and look
at each other's and peer reviewand what they like and what
they've got. I often say,'Everybody's done similar
assignments, but you've all haddifferent experiences in the
(18:29):
schools. You know, as you'rereading somebody's experience,
are they really telling youabout their teaching practice
and how they've grown and whatdoes the evidence really match?'
And so they sit together andoffer people ideas and advice,
as well as sometimes technicalsupport when they're trying to
position an image and they can'tget it quite right. The
scaffolds I've been putting inplace over time, they've
basically built intoassignments, and then I give
them time to meet with me as wego.
Kristina Hoeppner (18:52):
David, what I really like is your approach to
the reflection, which soundslike a double reflective cycle,
that when they put the artefactsin, they already reflect on
them. Why is that particularartefact or this group of
artefacts really important forme to make a point, and then
they also look at it from thelens of the teaching standards.
(19:14):
So that's where then the secondround of reflection comes in,
abstracting it again from whatthey had already written before
and now putting that standardlens on top and looking at it
from that point of view.
Your students create theportfolio at the end of their
studies because you have thempretty much in their last year.
(19:35):
Do some of them encounterportfolios already before then
in their studies?
David Hicks (19:40):
I do not think so.
I may have had a couple who werein the master's programme who
did stuff at the undergraduatelevel, but a lot of them, the
idea is new, or this portfoliois a little bit bigger than a
course portfolio. We've had themsometimes have a little cost
portfolio in the past, butthey've only got a few things in
and this becomes allencompassing because it's about
(20:01):
the growth, not just in myclass, but everybody's classes,
and the whole programme itselfcoming together and telling the
story. While they may have had alittle bit of a portfolio, or
they've heard the term'portfolio', and they may have
some experience, I would saythat's minimal, and often this
is the first portfolio thatthey've done.
Kristina Hoeppner (20:21):
Do you sometimes then get the outcry
from students, 'Oh, had I knownthat in my first year, I would
have been able to alreadycollect and reflect and learn
all of those skills early on'?
David Hicks (20:32):
Yes, definitely.
Kristina Hoeppner (20:34):
Do you feel like there is work that can be
done at Virginia Tech to supportthe students, either in their
undergrad or earlier in theirmaster's to get to the point of
integrating portfolios more?
David Hicks (20:45):
I do think the portfolios as a form of
assessment themselves are verypowerful. In a period now where
we're actually talking aboutconcerns with AI and worries
about people cheating and thingslike that, I think portfolios as
a form of assessment thatrequires students to reflect on
their own growth and their ownlearnings and make sense of what
they've done can become evenmore powerful. And then somebody
(21:08):
is going to put a couple ofessays in an AI, put their
essays in and say, 'What did Ilearn?' And then they'll just
copy that back. But I do thinkportfolios can offset some
people's concerns with how AImay take away from the learning
process.
Kristina Hoeppner (21:23):
Especially with the screencasts work that
your students are doing thatit's not just the written word
that you see, but you also seetheir facial expressions and how
enthusiastic they talk aboutsomething, and therefore make it
even more personal for them thatthey might also not be inclined
to use an aid there.
(21:43):
Besides the reflection, whataspect of the portfolio work do
students often struggle withinitially?
David Hicks (21:51):
I think one of the big concerns is for them,
they're worried if they're goingto pass or fail because it is a
capstone. They'll be finebecause there's things built in.
The thing that I still find themost frustrating for many
students is we create these biglists of artefacts and
experiences that they've done,and sometimes they don't
remember what they've actuallydone in terms of artefacts and
(22:12):
evidence. I've sat there going,'don't you remember this
assignment from this otherclass? I know more about this
other class than you do.' I wantthem to be more own their own
connections, and we have tospend time helping them make the
connection still, which is partof the scaffold in itself, but
it's almost like an amnesia thatthey forget what good work
(22:33):
they've done, then they struggletrying to pull together a couple
of artefacts that they've notthought of. So it's that
thinking and bringing couplingthings together.
The other thing is, sometimes Iwould like them to be more
willing to look at smallsections of, say, lesson plans,
and take maybe their objectivesand how they've grown over time
to improve their objectives.
Sometimes, I think that kind offine tuning is what they still
(22:56):
struggle with. I have toencourage them and nudge them to
think about that more than Iwant them to. I want them to
have a little bit moreownership, which goes back to if
they had more experience forportfolios, and this process
before it might make it easier.
That's probably where I thinkthe challenge is. I see more
opportunities of where theycould make the connections than
(23:16):
they do. It takes quite a lot toget them going to start thinking
in this way of making theconnections and selecting stuff.
I keep talking about tightlycoupled narratives, and that
takes time, and I thinksometimes they find that
initially frustrating, and it'sonly when they start to realise
how much stuff they actuallyhave, and they're asked to think
about it.
Kristina Hoeppner (23:35):
That's why I'm wondering whether
introducing portfolios earlieron in their studies could then
help. Because while yourinstructors, as you've said, try
to make those connectionsbetween the individual classes,
it still needs that actualprompting to say, 'Okay, now so
make this connection,' and overtime, then hopefully they get
(23:57):
better at it, so that when youget them, it's not this new
concept for them because theyhave already been practising
that all along.
David Hicks (24:05):
Yes.
Kristina Hoeppner (24:06):
You've been using portfolios for over 20
years now, what have you learnedthroughout that time working
with your students, inparticular in teacher education?
David Hicks (24:18):
The biggest thing I've learned is we talk about
reflection a lot, and I thinkyou have to understand what
reflection is, and reflection isnot a natural thing for many
teacher candidates. It needs tobe taught, and it needs to be
modeled and it needs to besupported. I also realise that
you've got to think about theend in mind of what you want the
portfolio to be, a vision thatyou have to clearly communicate
(24:40):
to your students, for them tosee. I also don't want them to
copy last year's portfolios.
Now, I do let them look at somefrom last year or the year
before to get a feel, but Ioften say, 'And yours will be
better.'I've learned over time that the
portfolio design process needsto be a sequence of assignments,
the kind of prompts we use, theexamples we show, and then the
(25:01):
tone I set about it's acelebration of your journey to
the other side of the desk.
Something that becomes reallyimportant, and it shapes then
how they engage with theportfolios itself. It's not
purely an assessment tool, itis, but it's a pedagogical space
where they can wrestle withtheir growth, their values, and
(25:22):
begin to see themselves as beingand I often talk about 'You
actually sound like realteachers when you write that,
and when you say that, youactually sound like you know
what you're talking about,that's pretty cool.' And that's
what it's meant to be. It'smeant to be this mirror looking
back at what they can say and amap of where they're heading.
But to do that, you've got toput things in place.
Kristina Hoeppner (25:41):
The exemplars that you're talking about, what
do they look like?
David Hicks (25:45):
So what I typically share with the students now, we
have a frequently askedquestions of what it looks like
and examples of what reflectioncould do. I take two or three
different portfolios from overtime, and they do spend time
going in to analyse what theylook like. So what do their
reflections look like? How didthe screencast get organised?
(26:06):
How did they pull it together?
So they've got these prompts toexplore the portfolio. Then I
ask them, which ones are thebetter ones for you? Which ones
make sense? Because I don't givethem just the good ones. I also
think have not kind of hit themark as well as they should. And
I say, 'Where are you in thisand what are you going to
borrow? What does reflectionlook like here? What does
reflection look like there? Howthey couple the information
(26:27):
together? Can you explain to mewhich ones you think I think are
best?'
Kristina Hoeppner (26:33):
Which is wonderful because they are
teacher education students, sothat also teaches them what they
will need in their futurecareer.
David Hicks (26:41):
I always say, 'I really don't need looking at
them. I don't need too much timewith them because you're going
to do it better. But I do wantyou looking at specific pieces
and telling me what you likeabout it and what makes sense,
and does this fit for exemplaryreflection, and are they using
their artefacts as well as theyshould to tell you that story?'
Kristina Hoeppner (26:58):
So now that we have looked back, what is on
your map for the future of yourportfolio journey with your
students?
David Hicks (27:06):
Things change a lot, and they continue to
change. For me at the moment, itis about stabilising the process
that we have, stabilising theuse of the templates, and then I
started bringing back studentsto talk about their experiences
and their portfolios - alumni -and talk about what they got out
(27:27):
and how to set it up there. AndI'm going to probably do a
little bit more of that.
Ideally, I'd like them to stilluse the portfolios, but they
don't, but they come back andtalk about how it's got them to
think about where they are nowbefore they move on. That's
somewhere I want to continue toget my alumni to come back and
talk about that more and be morespecific about their own work
with portfolios. I think we arealso moving in Virginia, moving
(27:49):
away from multiple choiceassessments and getting students
to recognise how portfolios canalso be used again in
classrooms, in historyclassrooms and things like that,
and have that as a model.
Kristina Hoeppner (28:02):
With your alumni that are coming back to
class to talk about theirportfolio experience, they now
have the privilege of hindsight.
Has there been any bigrevelation that stuck in your
mind of what one or two of thestudents have said, why the
portfolio did help them or howit helped them in their career?
David Hicks (28:21):
What is nice is sometimes they say to the
students, 'Listen to David,trust him. It is a celebration.
Trust him.' That helps. Whatthey've said, again, is the idea
that it did allow them to talklike a teacher, and the very
fact that they've also shared iton their job interviews and
shared versions of it withprincipals when they've gone for
(28:42):
interviews, and they've likedwhat they've seen, it makes them
feel more professional. It madethem ready to enter the
profession. It made them be ableto talk like a professional, and
it made them feel like they werewelcomed as professionals when
they were showing them as partas job interviews.
It's not just to get a job, butit really did show that it
connects to the profession, andit was well received. That story
(29:05):
of coming back feels good. Theyscare them a little bit when
they say, 'Well, that electronicportfolio foundation document
can get really, really long,'and I'm like, 'Yeah, but it's
you talking about yourselves,how cool you are, and where you
learned, and where you fell downa bit, and what you can do about
it differently.' Yeah, they dotalk about how that is a big
thing for them.
Kristina Hoeppner (29:22):
That's really fantastic to see that what
starts out as an assessment forthem to finish their capstone
course, get that pass, actuallydoes transition into their
career and helps them also lateron. Therefore, what you're
trying to achieve and trying toshow them from the start that
it's not just an assessment, butit gets you onto your lifelong
(29:44):
learning journey or becomingthat reflective practitioner,
things you should be doing asteachers anyway, they realise
just a bit later themselves.
Now to our last three questions,David, to our quick answer
round. Which words or shortphrases do you use to describe
portfolio work?
David Hicks (30:05):
Tightly-coupled, evidence-based narrative;
reflection on and in practice;and a celebration of your
journey to the other side of thedesk.
Kristina Hoeppner (30:15):
Awesome. What last tip do you want to share
with learning designers andinstructors for creating
portfolio activities for theirlearners?
David Hicks (30:25):
For me, it's you get what you ask for. So you've
got to be very specific. Sodesign backwards with what you
ultimately want. What's yourgoal? If you want them to engage
in deep reflection, you need toscaffold it and not just say,
'Do deep reflection,' but youneed to have touch points,
examples, feedback, and spacefor iteration.
Kristina Hoeppner (30:43):
What advice do you have for portfolio
authors, for your students?
David Hicks (30:49):
Don't just show.
It's not a show and tell. It'snot a scrapbook. It's about
explaining why somethingmattered to you, why it matters,
and how it changed you. Yourportfolio is not purely about
proving your competence, butit's telling the story of your
growth and your ongoing journeyto the other side of the desk,
and you do it withtightly-coupled evidence.
Have a positive mindset, but youcan still talk about
(31:09):
difficulties, but what you'regoing to do differently in the
future as well, but it's alwayswith a positive future mindset
to be a teacher and explainingand being aware of your work and
explaining why you did things.
Kristina Hoeppner (31:21):
Thank you so much for tying that bow back and
bringing us back to the foliothinking of your ePortfolio
development framework thatincludes collect, select,
reflect, and connect, so that wesee that it is about the journey
of each student. It is personalto them. Yes, it's an
(31:42):
assessment, but it actuallyhelps them also in many other
ways beyond that, and thenhopefully they will realise that
you are preparing them for theircareer later on. Thank you so
much for the chat today, David.
David Hicks (31:57):
Thank you very much, Kristina.
Kristina Hoeppner (32:00):
Now over to you. What do you want to try in
your own portfolio practice?
This was 'Create. Share.
Engage.' with Professor Dr DavidHicks. Head to our website,
podcast.mahara.org, where youcan find resources and the
transcript for this episode. Ournext episode of 'Create. Share.
(32:22):
Engage. Portfolios for learningand more' will air in two weeks.
I hope you will listen again andtell a colleague about our
podcast so they can subscribe.
Until then, create share, andengage.
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