October 7, 2025 • 48 mins
Jack Rice, MBA, is the Director of Digital and Extended Learning at Acadia University and the Executive Director of the Maple League of Universities in Canada.
In this episode, he shares stories from his various positions where he encountered portfolios and how he's changed his view on the tool and pedagogy to embrace portfolios fully and seeing them as being very important in the future of education.
Resources
Related episodes
- Rita Zuba Prokopetz: Building a learning community
- Debra Hoven: The value of self-reflection and peer feedback
- Debra Hoven & Margaret Rauliuk: Disrupt the dissertation with an ePortfolio
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Production information
Production: Catalyst IT
Host: Kristina Hoeppner
Artwork: Evonne Cheung
Music: The Mahara tune by Josh Woodward
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kristina Hoeppner (00:29):
Today I'm speaking with Jack Rice from
Acadia University in Canada.
We've mainly connected atMoodleMoot Canada over the last
two years and then alsoelectronically on social media.
Since he's not just a fan ofenhancing learning through
learning management systems, butalso through portfolios, I
invited him for an interview tohear more about his perspective
(00:51):
on portfolio practice and how toincorporate that into a learning
environment. Hello Jack. Welcometo the podcast.
Jack Rice (01:03):
Thank you so much, Kristina. I'm very excited for
our conversation today. Thankyou so much for having me.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:10):
I also look forward to it. What do you do at
your current university, AcadiaUniversity?
Jack Rice (01:16):
My title is Director of Digital and Extended
Learning. Our unit runs all ofthe online courses for the
university, and also we'reinvolved in a lot of continuing
education, extended learning,graduate programmes, anything
else that's in that basket ofanything outside of the
undergraduate four-yearexperience. It's great. It gives
(01:38):
me a lot of chance to play andexperiment with different
things.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:43):
For how long have you been using educational
technology, facilitated throughthe internet?
Jack Rice (01:49):
It's really difficult to pinpoint the exact moment
when was first contact, when youfirst used it. But I was
probably, at the time, amongstmy peers a bit of an early
adopter in online learning andusing educational technology. I
found it to hold a promise thatI was looking for in education
at the time. Whereas some of mycolleagues were quite against
(02:13):
using educational technology, Iseemed to gravitate towards it
for particular reasons. So Iwould say it was certainly more
Kristina Hoeppner (02:20):
Do you actually remember what was your
than a decade ago.
favourite tool when you startedout?
Jack Rice (02:27):
I'd say it was VoiceThread. I love the power of
asynchronous sharing. The factthat I could put a prompt out
and I could speak to it, and Icould present, and then someone
else could speak a prompt intothe screen, either audio or
video, and then students couldrespond to that prompt, and all
(02:48):
of a sudden we just mushroomed.
That was really powerful for me.
So I really enjoyed usingVoiceThread. I've been using it
for over a decade, and in anumber of the classes that I've
taught. And then relatives ofVoiceThread, things like Flipped
Grid, which became Flipped, andall these kinds of tools, but
I've always really enjoyed themultimedia exchange of rich
(03:09):
media content.
Kristina Hoeppner (03:11):
That does get you away from just typing things
in so that you really make gooduse of the technology in
speaking, rather than onlyneeding to write like you would
typically do in a blog post orin a forum post.
Jack Rice (03:26):
That's right. The real cocktail is the
asynchronous element of thelearning. Because in education,
we spend so much of our time onstimulus and response, stimulus
and response, stimulus andresponse. The thing that I have
to let people know is thatlearning does not happen at
stimulus, and it doesn't happenat response. It happens either
(03:48):
in between, sometimesafterwards, sometimes a week
afterwards, a day afterwards, 10years after the initial stimulus
was shown or the initial firstresponse was given. This is
really important to me, and it'sreally related to how much I
love portfolios because in oureducation system, we value the
(04:10):
accuracy of the first response.
We don't look at the process oflearning, the growth in learning
longitudinally over a period oftime. It's the space between the
spokes in education that wereally have to concentrate on,
the moment between stimulus andresponse and what happens
afterwards in the learner'smind.
Kristina Hoeppner (04:31):
That's an absolutely fantastic way of
looking at the portfolio workbecause I like that idea of the
learning in between stimulus -response or afterwards because
you do need to digest first whatyou have heard or think about it
a little bit more and sure, wemight be reflecting directly in
the moment or having a response,which, of course, is based on
(04:52):
what we have heard, what we'veexperienced, but then the bigger
impact will happen afterwards.
Do you remember when you startedusing portfolios and why you
started working with them?
Jack Rice (05:05):
I remember a story. I was the headmaster of an
elementary school in Australia.
When you're the headmaster of anelementary school, you worry a
lot of times about riskmanagement. One part of my
process was that I always wouldlook at all of the report cards
before they went out to parents.
You know, you'd be doing amultitude of things that you'd
(05:26):
be working on, and you'd have astack of report cards, and I
remember looking at reports thata teacher had provided, and it
seemed very thick. The folderwas very thick, and I thought,
'Wow, that's going to take a lotof reading.' I saved it to the
end. I saved it to after lunch.
I took the teacher's work and Istarted flipping through it, and
(05:46):
I couldn't see any words. I waslooking for the prose. I was
looking for the comments, thedescriptions. All I could see
were these photographs. My firstresponse was, I was furious,
absolutely furious with theteacher. They had not created a
report card for the student. Iremember I took the folder, and
I marched out of my office, andI started slamming my feet as I
(06:10):
walked down the pathway toconfront this teacher.
I was organising my thoughts andmy response, and for some
reason, I went back and I lookedat it, and what I realised was,
this was not only a report, itwas the most sublime and
beautiful thing I'd ever seenbecause what it did was it
captured the student inphotographs, actually doing the
(06:35):
work that was in theirprogramme. What she had done is
she'd annotated it and connectedall of the different artefacts
to the standards that thestudent was supposed to achieve.
As I started looking at itfurther, and I realised that
some of the artefacts werethings that the student had
produced, by the time I got tothe classroom, I was almost in
(06:56):
tears. It was the most beautifulthing I'd ever seen, and it was
so much better than any reportthat I'd ever experienced. It
was at that moment that I reallystarted to get interested in
portfolios, and I used them morein K-12 education, and it was
that teacher that inspired me toshow me a different way that we
(07:17):
could view assessment.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:19):
That's a story from about 15 years ago.
Jack Rice (07:21):
That's right, well, 15 years ago.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:24):
It still stuck with you. So it has
definitely been a very impactfulexperience.
Jack Rice (07:30):
It was a profound moment in my journey as an
educator because, you know, whenI first started teaching, I was
a high school teacher. In myfirst couple of years, what I
had done was I had tried tofigure out what all of the
skills were that students wouldhave to learn in their
mathematics course, and Icreated quizzes every single day
(07:52):
that matched to those particularskills. So it was just quiz,
quiz, quiz, quiz, test - quiz,quiz, quiz, quiz, test. I got to
the end of the semester, I gaveout a final examination and the
students knew nothing, theydidn't know anything [laughs].
I was so forlorn. I was soforlorn. I remember the
department head of mathematicswas watching. He was just an
(08:13):
absolute brilliant educatorwho'd been teaching for 30
years. I was trying to explainto him. I said, "Look, I taught
all of this material. I don'tknow why they can't produce it
now on this final exam. Look atthese tests and quizzes,"
whatever. And he looked at me,and he said, "Jack, maybe you
should have taught the studentsinstead." And I thought, "Oh,
yes, of course." I was sofocused on the actual quizzes
(08:38):
and tests, I forgot to look upand I forgot to look at the
students, and I was not lookingat it through their experience.
That was very profound for me.
Of many moments in time thatI've thought about how we should
think about assessment andassessing learners, what is the
project here and what we'retrying to accomplish? Those
moments early in my career aboutthe disconnect of the constant
(09:01):
testing and why it wasn'tachieving the results that I
wanted, and then later on, theseeducators that showed me a
different way to view assessmentmore longitudinally, which is so
powerful.
Kristina Hoeppner (09:14):
In your position then, as headmaster,
Jack, did you then also changehow other teachers submit their
reports. Did you encourage themto create similar portfolios for
the students?
Jack Rice (09:28):
I did, but I'm always very cautious when I work with
teachers. Just as in my example,I needed to go through the
process to get to the end andresult and then create that sort
of feedback loop for myself thatsaid, 'Ah, it's not exactly what
I want,' and move in in aparticular direction. I've
always been apprehensive aboutdictating to teachers in
(09:50):
elementary school and highereducation about this is the way
to do it. This is going to workfor you because part of it is,
we're all on a differentjourney. We're all creating our
own portfolio as educators. Soour destinies with the learners
are entwined. They're creatingtheir portfolio. I'm creating
mine, and it's a dance that wemove together. Everybody's on a
different edge of that spectrum.
(10:12):
But absolutely, I would showthose artefacts that were
produced, and I would really tryto explain why this is a really
powerful method to assessment,and a number of the educators
picked up on that and started tocreate different forms of
portfolios in their ownassessment, which was wonderful.
Kristina Hoeppner (10:29):
What does your portfolio currently look
like? What do you have in it?
Jack Rice (10:35):
You know, it's funny, my own portfolio, when you look
back after you've been in acareer for X number of years,
you start to look at moments,really transitional moments for
you in your career, and youbecome less ashamed, more aware
of moments that didn't quite goso well. So actually, what I
(10:57):
stack in my portfolio, I think,is growth and elements of growth
for myself.
You could imagine a learnerthat's in their second year of
learners to do that because wehave learners competing with
university. You ask thatlearner, 'You've done 15
different assessment pieces,what three or four would you
like to put in your portfolio?'I would suggest to you that that
(11:18):
learner is going to put in thefour top grades or the four top
marks or where they hit therubric the best. But the
question is, is those the piecesthat showed the most growth?
It's a reframe to the project.
(11:52):
each other. Therefore they mustput in only their best work.
Oftentimes, our best work is notwhere the growth comes from.
There's a lot of things in thatportfolio of mine right now that
I love to share because I'm in aposition in my career where I
can share those failures.
Kristina Hoeppner (12:09):
Do you have a particular way of encouraging
your students to get into thehabit of doing that so that they
also feel safe, or, in somecases, maybe even brave, to
share those moments?
Jack Rice (12:20):
A lot of it is your sense of humour about your own
learning, about their learning.
I went through this process onetime in a graduate level class.
One of the things I will admitabout my teaching career is I
have the worst time trying toremember people's names. You
know, it's absolutely atrocious,really. I would go a week, two
weeks, four weeks, and sometimesin a class, I may only have them
(12:42):
in a graduate level class foreight weeks or 10 weeks. By the
time I learned their name,they're gone.
So I ashamedly had to createname cards for my students. I
mean, it's really bad, but Iwould get involved in what I'm
doing, and I would look out, andthere'd be 29 people there, and
I just couldn't remember. What Idid was, if you can imagine a
(13:04):
Christmas card, a card stockpaper that's folded over with
their name on one side, 'Pleaseput that in front of your desk,'
and then it would look out andgo, 'Oh, hi, Kristina. How are
you?' Whatever. Well, one night,I realised that the student,
we'll name Kristina, had given areally great response to a
prompt, but I did notacknowledge it at the time. It
(13:26):
wasn't until I drove home that Irealised that the response was
so brilliant.
What I decided to do was Ithought I had all the name
cards. I collected them afterevery night, and I'd hand them
out the next week. Inside hername card [laughs], I wrote down
my response to her response, andI said, 'you know, I really
enjoyed that' blah, blah, blah.
The second night after I pickedthose up again, she had
(13:48):
responded inside. And I thought,oh, that's really interesting.
So I had to run this experimenta little bit longer. So then I
took the other name tags andeach side, in these other
Christmas cards, I startedwriting in something maybe they
had put on the LMS, maybesomething about a comment that
they had made, or a piece oftheir work, etc. And so I wrote
(14:10):
it. I didn't say anything. Ijust handed out the name cards
again.
Well, they responded backbecause this was personal to
them now. I was trying to get toknow the students. Start with a
name. This was just a change inattitude towards the class. Here
I had, very quickly, a portfolioin front of me inside this
(14:31):
little name card that was arecord of our conversation
throughout the entire term - goback and forth. There was all
kinds of marks in it, and thankyou for this, and I like this,
and there was personal thingsthat would come up a back and
forth, and I learned thestudent's name so quickly that
way. I started to realise thatthis is something that we could
(14:52):
replicate in the digital space.
Kristina Hoeppner (14:54):
That's VoiceThread, just in a written
form, right?
Jack Rice (14:58):
That's right, it is VoiceThread. And what was
produced as artefact at the end,this marked up Christmas card
laughs] at the end of the day,was a portfolio. It was a
portfolio of their work, oftheir thought, of their process
as they move through it.
I remember the first time I metyou, and I was like, probably
standing in front of your table,and you were talking about
(15:19):
Mahara and then the project andthis portfolio work. And I just
thought, that's really the firsttime as an instructor myself, I
really understood the power of aportfolio.
I also remember that I wasgrading exams, I think, at the
end of that first class, and thestudent wrote in the exam, "Hey,
(15:39):
Mr Rice, do you still rememberthe name of my cat?" And I
responded to it,"Congratulations on the A-.
Mittens would be proud." Soagain [laughs], just sharing
back and forth that sort ofattitude. Being playful with
students, I think this is reallyimportant. And of course, it's
very difficult. You know, youneed to be guarded and really
(16:00):
understand not to abuse thatsensibility. I think we've lost
a little bit of our playfulnessin education. If you look at a
portfolio and suggest to astudent, I want to see your
rough notes in there as well.
I'm not going to judge it. It'snot my job to judge another
human being [laughs] and the waythey come to their learning.
I've always said that the modernteacher needs to think a lot
(16:23):
more like a lawyer than a judge.
My job as an educator is to makea case for my student. I'm
advocating on behalf of mystudent. So I'm going to work
with you, and we're going topull out different pieces and
put it into a portfolio. We'regoing to annotate it, and we're
going to really be reflective inour learning and our practice.
(16:44):
My job is to create that casefor you, to make a case that
you've met the standards thatare in this programme. I'm an
advocate for you. It's notnecessarily my job to judge as
it is to be that advocate. Theidea of portfolios really plays
into that sensibility.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:03):
Did you actually take photographs of
your name cards?
Jack Rice (17:07):
Ah, you know what? I probably didn't, but I probably
still have artefacts of them,like the actual artefact of name
cards that I had over the yearsbecause these things end up in
boxes. You go through them asyou move around the world, and
you unpack boxes and you lookand go, "Wow, that was a
memory." I'm sure there's astudent or two over time that I
(17:28):
still have those sort of namecards, but the idea is that it
moved past name cards after twoor three years for more in the
digital space of like, how canwe accumulate a space for these
reflections and these sort ofmetacognitive experiences where
the student starts to understandhow they are progressing in
their own learning, and theystart to own it? Once you can
(17:51):
get a student to own thatlearning and own that process -
so important.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:56):
That's what I really like about Mahara, where
you can put up your artefactsand also create your portfolios
and then have the possibility tointeract with the viewers in the
comments, to hear theirfeedback, to further your
learning that way, to engage ina conversation around the
artefact or around thereflection, in order to not just
(18:17):
make it look like a web pagethat is only there for display,
but really continue thatlearning process.
Jack Rice (18:25):
That's right. And I know that Mahara has been used
in teacher education programmes.
I believe at AthabascaUniversity, it's used in teacher
preparation programmes. I thinkthat is such a great well placed
use for Mahara in the portfolioprocess because throughout your
teaching career, you'll havemoments of embarrassment and
you'll have moments that thingsdidn't quite go so well, but,
you know, hold on to them. Keepthem. They're part of that
(18:48):
tapestry that you look back, andit becomes that sort of
overarching teaching career. Soto learn that process for
yourself in your teacherpreparation programme and then
also sharing that with yourstudents as they're learning
becomes really powerful.
Kristina Hoeppner (19:04):
Yeah, Professor Dr Debra Hoven and
also Dr Rita Zuba Prokopetz havebeen teaching in the Master in
Education in Open, Digital, andDistance Learning, and also in
the Doctorate in Education,where they are working with
portfolios. They've definitelydone good work there
incorporating portfoliopractice, introducing teachers
(19:26):
who then go back into theircareers to portfolio work.
Jack Rice (19:31):
Just so many examples of educators that are using it
in very inspired ways. It'swonderful to see.
Kristina Hoeppner (19:38):
Beyond your name card portfolio that you've
collaboratively created withyour students, Jack, how have
you used portfolios with yourstudents throughout your
illustrious career in yourvarious positions?
Jack Rice (19:52):
I've used them, certainly, as repositories. But
I think what is exciting for meis I realised in education at a
point in time that here I wasinstructing a group, and I never
once saw any material, any work,a sample that the student had
ever created prior to visitingwith me [laughs]. Imagine like
(20:13):
if I'm teaching a student ingrade 11, and it's a new student
to me. I never saw anything thatthey've ever produced in grade
10, grade nine, grade eight,grade six. I don't know anything
about that student in theirjourney.
What became really important tome was being able to produce
something that the nextinstructor could use. So almost
(20:34):
like I want to introduce you tomyself as a learner. Here are
two or three or four worksamples that I've annotated,
that I've reflected on, that I'mreally proud of. What a way to
introduce yourself to the nextinstructor in the programme.
What excites me about portfoliosis that they can live past your
own class, and they can start tomove into another class in that
(20:58):
programme. If you think aboutwhere I taught a lot of times
with graduate programmes ineducational leadership, it was
nice you took all thesedifferent courses. But in
graduate programmes, you notonly take different courses, you
take different professors. I'mtaking this professor now and
this professor now, and I'mgleaning something for each of
them. So it's such a head startfor a professor. Imagine on the
(21:18):
first day, "Hi, I'm Jack Rice,and here's parts of my portfolio
that I'd love you to look at andreflect on yourself before I
start in this class." It givesyou such a heads up. That's how
I started to encourage learnersto create this kind of material
for the next instructor.
Kristina Hoeppner (21:36):
That way you encourage your students to be
seen as a holistic personbecause they don't just come to
the class and that's when theirpersonality or their learning
starts, but they come with allthe experiences that then this
new instructor can incorporateinto their class.
Jack Rice (21:53):
Yeah. I remember one of the other instructors say to
me [laughs], "Jack, why are yougiving me homework on day one
[both Jack and Kristina laugh]?
All of these students are givingme all of this material, and all
of a sudden I have to do thishomework?" I would say, "Look,
this is a learning community.
Sometimes you're a learner,sometimes you're an instructor."
Why is it always the older folksthat are doing the instructing
(22:15):
and the younger folks doing thelearning? If this is a learning
community, it should be bothways, right? I should be
learning, and they should beinstructing.
I don't think that a learnershould be able to get through a
programme at a university, anylearner, not just education, any
learner, without actuallyteaching something. Here's a
Moodle shell, you teach mesomething. Whether it's to how
to change a light bulb or a tireon a car or whatever you're
(22:38):
interested in. But again, it'sthat sort of metacognition about
the learning process and how itworks for you, and how you would
explain something to someoneelse that becomes so valuable.
If the portfolio, and this, Ithink, has been the flaw in
portfolio, that it's an artefactwhich does not live past the end
of the class. If that's what itis, and you're just submitting
(22:59):
this to me for this classroomexercise for me to grade it that
has some utility, but it's notas powerful a utility as if it
follows the learner throughouttheir career and throughout
their programme. That's what isreally exciting to me with
Mahara and tools like it is thatyou're really looking at
programmatic assessment as wellas learner assessment and
(23:22):
following it through thelearner's journey.
Kristina Hoeppner (23:24):
I feel also that when you create those
portfolios for assessment, thatthey then, after the assessment
is done, can become an artefactwithin the bigger learning
portfolio that a student mightkeep, or they can pull artefacts
out of that assessment portfolioin order to incorporate it into
that wider learning story thatthey might want to present to
(23:46):
somebody else then in thefuture.
Jack Rice (23:48):
It's all about starting conversations. That's
what education is. It's aboutsomething that I can provide to
the learner that will start aconversation that provides that
reflection and that space forgrowth in between stimulus and
response. The portfolio becomeseven a more powerful exercise to
have it live beyond that firstinteraction, but really to start
(24:11):
a conversation.
So the biggest part of aportfolio was not measuring
against a rubric at the end, butit's the last office hour before
the final assessment or beforein that final portfolio is
assessed. It's more about, "Inoticed on this artefact inside
your portfolio, you said this,how did you come to that? That's
so interesting." To allow thatstudent to then elaborate and
(24:33):
that student to help organisetheir own thoughts in their own
process. That's the real beautyand the power of learning.
That's deeply embedded learningthat's happening at that spot.
Kristina Hoeppner (24:44):
So you know all of those things about
portfolio work. What do youstudents think when they're
creating portfolios or maybeeven in hindsight realise things
about their portfolios?
Jack Rice (24:55):
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of unlearning that
has to happen. Students havegone to school from the age of
three or four and been told thatthey have to compete. And you
can say, well, we don't reallyhave a lot of competition for
students at that young age. Ifyou walk into a classroom of
learners that are the age ofseven and say, "I want you to
(25:19):
line up in order of who's thebest at mathematics and who's
the worst at mathematics," theywill line themselves up
perfectly based on the gradesthat they were receiving in the
class. This happens at the ageof seven. Imagine what happens
by the age 17 or the age 27 orimagine what happens over 170
(25:39):
years of this educationalproject. The pervasive
competitive instinct that weartificially put inside
education, and we just come toeven accept it. We don't even
question it any more thatstudents would get gold stars or
grades or their name on theirboard if they act up, or all of
the different competitivesystems that we create inside
(26:01):
our classes.
When I have students come to meand they're maybe in second year
university now or in a graduateprogramme, they want to know,
what do I need to do to achievea B+ in this class? For them,
oftentimes it's well, "I knowthat I have to like, I'm going
to get a Starbucks and I'm goingto walk into class, I'm going to
sit in the front row. I'm goingto smile at my instructor. I'm
(26:23):
going to laugh at their jokes."Like this is a whole exercise
that they've been doing sincethey were young, and they've
took them through high schooland into university. Asking them
to create a portfolio of theirwork over time, annotate it,
reflect on it, and think of itas their own project and not a
competitive project against theother people in their class,
(26:45):
that's incredibly challenging.
You're asking them to change aparadigm of learning that
they've been in since the age ofthree or four.
Can I change that paradigm ineight weeks in a classroom?
Likely not. But if I can getthem to understand that their
work is their own work, and itdoes not need to be compared
(27:06):
against anyone else, that it'sbeing prepared against their own
growth throughout the term, andif they can start to just lower
that level of competition alittle bit amongst the class
that I think is really powerful.
Think about different ways ofassessment. It's very
confronting for the students whoare very embedded in a game that
(27:26):
we've made them play their wholelives. But I get excited when I
can just see glimpses ofstudents trying to collaborate,
trying to cooperate, trying towork together, trying to think
about their growth rather thantheir best first effort that's
going to be graded. That'sreally exciting. I take very
small wins. Sometimes it's notsomething that happens in front
(27:47):
of you in the class. Some thingshappens 10 or 12 years later.
That is the impactful piece. IfI'm demonstrating for them the
commitment towards portfolioassessment, I know that's going
to happen later on in theircareer. They're going to
understand, I understand why hewas trying to get us to think
that way. I take heart in that.
Kristina Hoeppner (28:05):
Do you think that project work can help with
that when a small group ofstudents works together on an
individual task which isdifferent from the project that
another group is doing, so as toreduce the amount of comparison
in terms of what they areworking on, what they need to
Jack Rice (28:24):
It's a great point. I love to see students having the
explore?
agency to choose the projectsthat are most impactful for
them. If we as educators, if wecan just stop judging that for a
moment [laughs] and saying,"Well, that's really
interesting. You want to look atvideo games? Great. Can we look
(28:44):
at a project about how videogames are made? And really
exciting, really interesting."First, you might think, oh, you
know, Johnny is going to ask, dovideo games again? But really,
our job as the educator is totry to find the higher purpose
in it for the student, and notjudge so quickly what the
individual topic is.
Also really having studentsworking together in a project
(29:06):
based learning is difficult tofacilitate. It is exhausting to
facilitate group projectsamongst a group of people, and
that's where, again, you have toreally understand the wins that
you're looking for. Sometimesthe wins are not them producing
exactly what you want them toproduce. Sometimes they're
producing something that looksquite different. You have to be
(29:27):
an improv expert or a airtraffic controller and land all
the planes on time and thingslike that, looking out amongst
the class.
But I love that idea of havingstudents choosing their own
projects, working on differentprojects, discrete projects,
coming together and workingtogether. When you look at the
final project that they'veproduced, ask them about their
(29:48):
learning along the way. "Oh, Ireally want you to see this.
Don't you see this? We producethis, and it works 100% of the
time." I'm not so interested inthat. "What I'm interested in
[laughs] is this moment becauseI know this moment about week
two, when you wanted to pullyour classmates' hair out. How
did you get past that?" Youstart probing, and they're
thinking like, "Why do you wantto talk about that? I thought
(30:11):
you wanted to talk about howthis electrical circuit is
perfect." That's not what I'minterested in, right? I'm
interested in different parts ofthe learning along the way.
Students get quite curious aboutthat and why I might look at
different things on theirjourney, but I think over time,
they start to understand thatvalue.
Kristina Hoeppner (30:26):
That gets you beyond that summary of the task
or of the activity into thereflection of the why and now
what you're going to take out ofthat for you going forward.
Jack, you've held variouspositions throughout your
career, in if I countedcorrectly, three different
countries, Canada, the statesand also Australia. You've been
(30:48):
a classroom teacher, dean ofschool at a college, and
executive director of the MapleLeague of Universities, amongst
many others. Has there been ared thread of portfolio use at
these various institutions ordid you need to reorient
yourself every time or trysomething different every time?
Jack Rice (31:09):
I think that every time you go into a new
experience, and I've had a lotof them, where someone has come
to me, "Oh, we have achallenge." And I think, okay, I
can help you with that, and offI go to the next challenge along
the way. I get really excitedabout learning things new for
myself. I always view it as anopportunity to grow as leader.
(31:30):
Each time I go into a newexperience, this is the
opportunity to see what elementsof my leadership style will work
and what also I can incorporatethat is new and learn from other
people. In each of thosesituations, I've learned
something new about myself.
Often, when you go into a newcircumstance, you initially want
to challenge. Why do you do itthat way? We did it this way
(31:53):
over here, and it worked quitenicely, and now you're doing it
this way. Here, this is thesolution. I want to tell you
what the solution is right now.
But you have to try to preventyourself from that. Stop go
back, ask yourself somequestions and ask other people
questions.
The most important leadershipexercise you can have is to lead
with questions. Someone onceasked me to calculate my
(32:17):
question to statement ratio[laughs]. Take 10 things in a
group of people, how many ofthem are statements and how many
of them are questions? And youlearn really quickly, oh, no,
eight were statements and twowere questions. Let's flip that
around. Let's be moreinquisitive about what happens
there.
I would say that the throughline in my career is how focused
(32:37):
I am on human development. Thepurposes of education, which
have become cultural andeconomic, those two forces in
education, people talk to us allthe time about the cultural
project, how we do things aroundhere, what are the new skills?
What are the new cooperativestrategies, etc, that we're
(32:59):
going to need to participate inthe economy and the future?
Those things are really, reallyimportant.
But the thing that we've lostalong the way as educators is
the focus on the development ofthe individual human being
that's in front of us. That'swhere all of the lost potential
is in this human project. Forme, that switched on at various
(33:22):
times in my career, tounderstand that no matter what
you're teaching, you are in thefaculty of human development,
that's what you are [laughs].
You have humans in front of you,and you are trying to get them
to develop to their fullestpotential.
I mean, if you've taught for anyperiod of time, students will
come back to you. I happened tomeet a student that I taught
(33:46):
almost 30 years ago. They arenow in a similar position I am
at a university, and here were-met. If you ask that student,
"Can you tell me one thing thatI taught you about the quadratic
function?" Absolutely nothing atall [both laugh]. And you think,
oh, did I do anything good? Butthey will talk to me about a
(34:06):
story that I told or a situationthat I handled with grace that
allowed them to learn somethingnew about themselves and apply
it into the future.
This is the great thing again,and you're tying it back to
portfolios, this whole thing,the whole project on education,
is really understanding thedevelopment of the human being
in front of us. It's really thejob that we have portfolios
(34:29):
become a tool to upset ourthinking a little bit and move
it into that sort ofdevelopmental project. And it's
so important.
Kristina Hoeppner (34:39):
What challenges do institutions of
higher education face when theywant to increase the use of
portfolios?
Jack Rice (34:47):
The thing that we don't do very well is
subtraction in higher education.
We're really good at addition.
When somebody talks to us aboutinstituting portfolios in the
classroom, it's always somethingthat's in addition. Okay, that's
great. We're going to doportfolios, fantastic, but we're
still going to do six quizzes,the midterm, the final exam.
(35:08):
We're going to do all of thiswork, and at the same time, on
top of that, now we're going toimplement this portfolio. The
portfolio becomes performative.
This happens in education allthe time. We have a great idea,
but instead of implementing thatidea fulsome way, we do half of
it, we do like a quarter of it,and we get to the end, and well,
(35:28):
this didn't work. You didn'treally give it a chance because
what you did was you putportfolios as an addition on
everything else that you weredoing. It really requires this
moment of thinking about what weneed to give up.
My thinking is, if you haveinstituted portfolios properly
in your classrooms, and then youcan look at a learner's growth
(35:53):
longitudinally, there's a lot ofthings that you don't need to do
in the classroom, right? You cansay to the learner, and this is
the most important thing about aportfolio, is the learner
agency. Now as a learner, I'm incharge of what goes into that
portfolio and what I want toshow and who I want to show it
to, and when I want to show itto them.
I would say that the mostimportant moment in higher
(36:15):
education is the office hour. Ifyou want to change one thing and
you want to increase something,increase the participation in
the office hours. You can disarmthe students and chat with them,
have great conversations, and sothe portfolio becomes a way of
getting you to the office hourwhere we can chat and reflect
and have a conversation aboutit. If you're an instructor, and
(36:37):
no one comes to your officehours, but everybody is there
for your midterm and your final,then I would say, you know,
shift that a little bit. Let'stry to change that a little bit.
Maybe portfolios are a tool thatcan do that. But the biggest
challenge, I think, is layeringportfolios onto everything else
that an instructor has to do,and not being able to take some
(36:57):
things or reframe what theproject is in front of them.
Kristina Hoeppner (37:00):
By just adding things, it only increases
their workload. In regards tothe office hours, thinking back
to the office hours that I, ofcourse, also had at the
university level when I was astudent, we really only did it
Jack Rice (37:11):
Here's a world of possibility that I would love to
when we thought we had aproblem, rather than also
live into. If a student came tome because they had a midterm
continuing the conversation withsomebody. So it was always more
coming up the next week, andcame to my office hour and sat
seen, "Oh, you need to go to theprincipal almost" [laughs].
at my table and we chatted forhalf an hour, and we had a
great, you know, fulsome chatabout the breadth of the subject
(37:34):
and provided a ton of examples,on the way out the door, I would
say to the student, "Don't evenbother coming to the midterm. I
already know it. You've shownit. You've demonstrated right
here. I have a recording ofthis, I have notes, I have
artefacts. You come to themidterm as a celebration of what
(37:57):
you already know. But whetheryou put that midterm grade or
that midterm performance intoyour portfolio or not, that is
up to you. You have the agencyto do that because as far as I'm
concerned, this conversation wehad was far more valuable than
that midterm." That is apossibility that I would love to
(38:20):
live into in education.
Kristina Hoeppner (38:22):
So Jack, where do you then see the future
of portfolios?
Jack Rice (38:27):
I wonder, if in the future or 20 years from now,
whether it's with AI or someother tool, we will be
generating portfolio we won'teven know we're generating it.
There will just be aconversation thread throughout
my career as a learner that isgathering samples and evidence
over time. So what I think isit'll become a much less onerous
(38:50):
process to gain all of thesedifferent artefacts. We'll be
able to embed these sort ofreflective exercises into
In the future, learning will belot less about the clock. Right
learning.
now, everything that we do ineducation has a clock associated
with it, and it's the mostcompetitive instrument that
mankind ever made. Just imaginethe possibility. I've always
(39:15):
wanted to walk into a lectureroom on the first day, put up a
ladder, take down the clock, andjust throw it out the window and
say, "All right, now we canstart."
In what universe does everyone[laughs] have to get to the same
concept exactly the same time?
Why does this have to be eightweeks? How come a semester is 15
weeks? Who made that up? What isa credit? The credit hour was
(39:38):
established in 1908. We'veevolved [laughs] slightly since
1908. Why are we still talkingabout credit hours? These are
traps that we made forourselves.
In the future, I'm hoping thatin education, grade one will
turn into grade two. It willjust sort of happen. We don't
(39:58):
have to have these artificialdefinitions and along the way,
we're always building ourportfolio of learning that we
can reflect on and demonstrate.
That's a powerful place that wecould get to in education, where
we could realise that all ofthese time based constraints -
we made it all up. This is justinvented [laughs]. There's no
meaning to any of this. But whatis really meaningful and
(40:20):
impactful is that individualhuman growth and development. So
let's celebrate that, andportfolios become one tool that
we can use that to do.
Imagine that you finished yearand you didn't even know you
were creating a portfolio, andall of a sudden you had a
portfolio created for you[laughs] that you could reflect
on. Not that it wouldn't be anactive process along the way,
(40:43):
but it would just be lessonerous to actually create the
artefact at the end.
Kristina Hoeppner (40:48):
That's important to have in there,
that, yes, the storing and thecollecting of the learning
evidence can be facilitated bythe technology, made easier, and
also artefacts being arranged.
In Mahara we offer that in theway that when you tag individual
artefacts, that you then cancreate a portfolio based on
those tags. You don't have to goand find all the five or 10 blog
(41:11):
posts that you have written orthe three or four files in a
folder structure three deep inorder to then pull them all
together in one portfolio, butyou have everything presented
and then can curate over that.
Because I still think that theactive process of curation and
(41:31):
also reflection should not beoutsourced to an AI, but the
rest can be facilitated.
Jack Rice (41:37):
Yeah, that's right. I absolutely want it to remain a
very active process for thelearner. That's so central, but
at the same time, if technologycan de escalate some of the
performative issues andoperational concerns around it,
so much the better.
Kristina Hoeppner (41:52):
That, I think, is a good segue over into
our last three questions in thequick answer round. The first
question is, Jack, which wordsor short phrases do you use to
describe portfolio work?
Jack Rice (42:06):
I would use 'follow the learner' as a quick phrase
because every one of those isreally important to me. It's the
fact that I'm following and I'mnot leading, but I'm following
the learner, taking me in adirection, and it really
emphasises the learning processand not some attempt that they
made that was that I'm supposedto judge right off the bat. To
(42:26):
me, it is about following thelearner. That has been my
philosophy for a long time now.
When portfolios are done right,that's what's happening.
Kristina Hoeppner (42:35):
What tip do you have for learning designers
or instructors who createportfolio activities?
Jack Rice (42:43):
The fundamental piece of any learning design is to
understand who the learners are.
Oftentimes, we skip that step inlearning design. I know what
happens here every day. We're ina rush. We start getting down
the process of designing, I wastend to say, "Well, hold on,
hold on, just wait one second,what's the name of their cat? On
their Facebook page for thisstudent, they have a kitten or
(43:04):
do they have a dog? I think it'sa kitten. What's the name of
their kitten?" And theneverybody rolls their eyes and
goes, "Right. We should bethinking about who the learner
is before we create thisexperience for the learner."
I think that just even with anykind of learning material that
you're putting together, anyprocess, any assessment, have
(43:26):
that real intentionalconversation early about what
are the profile of the differentlearners that are in my group?
That leads you to how I wouldintroduce portfolios to them.
Like, what part of the journeyof portfolios are they on? In
education, we tell students,"Well, just collaborate
together." Well, collaborationis a really difficult thing to
(43:48):
do, right [both laugh]?
So what are the preliminaryexercises that we need you to
get you to think about beforeyou can do this massive task
called collaboration? Portfolioscan again be very confronting
for a student. "Okay, I need tocreate a portfolio like, what do
I do?" So understanding like,what are the real simple
(44:08):
preliminary steps that we canreally demystify the process for
them and make it simple for themto connect with?
It comes down to understandingthat what level your students
are at, is it coming into theclassroom, what experience
you've had with portfolios inthe past, and what are those
sort of like formative piecesthat can get them to a more
robust, self reflective exerciseabout their learning?
Kristina Hoeppner (44:29):
That aligns perfectly with the AAEEBL
Digital Ethics Principle that wehave on DEIBD - diversity,
equity, inclusion, belonging,and decolonisation - so that in
any of the activities that arecreated for the students, the
students can see themselves.
They realise, "Yes, I'm welcomehere in the classroom. These
activities are for me. They arefostering my learning," rather
(44:50):
than just have a very genericthing where they don't know how
to connect the dots to theirprevious learning experiences or
also their personal lives andall that is going on around
them.
Jack, last question for youtoday. It's been fantastic
hearing all of your stories, andso I'd like to know if you have
(45:13):
any advice for your students orfor any other portfolio creator.
It might also be some of yourfaculty members?
Jack Rice (45:21):
I would just encourage them to be messy. Be
messy, make mistakes, and justget started. In education, we've
made students fearful ofpresenting things that aren't
perfect. It's difficult to be a13-year old or a 15-year old,
and you know, feel that you'rereally being judged by your
community and people that arearound you and going through
(45:42):
these difficult changes in yourlife. Same thing students come
here in higher education,there's still sort of later
adolescence [laughs] n a lot ofcases. They've got a lot to
worry about. So don't give themone more thing to worry about.
We do this all the time ineducation, we think that we need
to make them create cortisol intheir bodies to create these
high stress situations, and thisis what's going to get the best
(46:04):
out of them. It's absolutelyunproven by any research
whatsoever that this has anysort of positive effect over
time. Much better to sort ofde-escalate the process early
on. Allow your students toexperiment with it, be messy
about it, be imperfect about it,and just to sort of get going,
and then just meet the studentswhere they're at, and follow
(46:26):
them along in their journey. Ifyou do that, you learn a lot
more about those students.
You're going to fill up thatChristmas card, and you're going
to learn a lot more aboutyourself along the way. Have a
little bit more fun.
Kristina Hoeppner (46:38):
Thank you so much for that final advice and
also for all the stories thatyou've shared today that give us
a good insight into parts ofyour educational practice, not
just with portfolios, but alsobeyond, so that we can also see
who is that person Jack in theirwhole practice. So I really
(46:58):
appreciate the chat with you. Itwas wonderful catching up and
have that conversation with youand not just hearing a
presentation of you. So reallyappreciate your time, Jack, so
thank you so much.
Jack Rice (47:11):
Thank you, Kristina, always a delight to chat with
you and look forward to manymore conversations over many
more Moots and other events inthe future. So look forward to
it.
Kristina Hoeppner (47:20):
Me too. Thank you.
Now over to our listeners. Whatdo you want to try in your own
portfolio practice? This was'Create. Share. Engage.' with
Jack Rice. Head to our website,podcast.mahara.org, where you
can find resources and thetranscript for this episode. Our
(47:42):
next episode will air in twoweeks. It would be wonderful if
you told a colleague so they canlisten as well. Until then,
create, share, and engage.
Today I'm speaking with Jack Rice from
Acadia University in Canada.
We've mainly connected atMoodleMoot Canada over the last
two years and then alsoelectronically on social media.
Since he's not just a fan ofenhancing learning through
learning management systems, butalso through portfolios, I
invited him for an interview tohear more about his perspective
(00:51):
on portfolio practice and how toincorporate that into a learning
environment. Hello Jack. Welcometo the podcast.
Jack Rice (01:03):
Thank you so much, Kristina. I'm very excited for
our conversation today. Thankyou so much for having me.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:10):
I also look forward to it. What do you do at
your current university, AcadiaUniversity?
Jack Rice (01:16):
My title is Director of Digital and Extended
Learning. Our unit runs all ofthe online courses for the
university, and also we'reinvolved in a lot of continuing
education, extended learning,graduate programmes, anything
else that's in that basket ofanything outside of the
undergraduate four-yearexperience. It's great. It gives
(01:38):
me a lot of chance to play andexperiment with different
things.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:43):
For how long have you been using educational
technology, facilitated throughthe internet?
Jack Rice (01:49):
It's really difficult to pinpoint the exact moment
when was first contact, when youfirst used it. But I was
probably, at the time, amongstmy peers a bit of an early
adopter in online learning andusing educational technology. I
found it to hold a promise thatI was looking for in education
at the time. Whereas some of mycolleagues were quite against
(02:13):
using educational technology, Iseemed to gravitate towards it
for particular reasons. So Iwould say it was certainly more
Kristina Hoeppner (02:20):
Do you actually remember what was your
than a decade ago.
favourite tool when you startedout?
Jack Rice (02:27):
I'd say it was VoiceThread. I love the power of
asynchronous sharing. The factthat I could put a prompt out
and I could speak to it, and Icould present, and then someone
else could speak a prompt intothe screen, either audio or
video, and then students couldrespond to that prompt, and all
(02:48):
of a sudden we just mushroomed.
That was really powerful for me.
So I really enjoyed usingVoiceThread. I've been using it
for over a decade, and in anumber of the classes that I've
taught. And then relatives ofVoiceThread, things like Flipped
Grid, which became Flipped, andall these kinds of tools, but
I've always really enjoyed themultimedia exchange of rich
(03:09):
media content.
Kristina Hoeppner (03:11):
That does get you away from just typing things
in so that you really make gooduse of the technology in
speaking, rather than onlyneeding to write like you would
typically do in a blog post orin a forum post.
Jack Rice (03:26):
That's right. The real cocktail is the
asynchronous element of thelearning. Because in education,
we spend so much of our time onstimulus and response, stimulus
and response, stimulus andresponse. The thing that I have
to let people know is thatlearning does not happen at
stimulus, and it doesn't happenat response. It happens either
(03:48):
in between, sometimesafterwards, sometimes a week
afterwards, a day afterwards, 10years after the initial stimulus
was shown or the initial firstresponse was given. This is
really important to me, and it'sreally related to how much I
love portfolios because in oureducation system, we value the
(04:10):
accuracy of the first response.
We don't look at the process oflearning, the growth in learning
longitudinally over a period oftime. It's the space between the
spokes in education that wereally have to concentrate on,
the moment between stimulus andresponse and what happens
afterwards in the learner'smind.
Kristina Hoeppner (04:31):
That's an absolutely fantastic way of
looking at the portfolio workbecause I like that idea of the
learning in between stimulus -response or afterwards because
you do need to digest first whatyou have heard or think about it
a little bit more and sure, wemight be reflecting directly in
the moment or having a response,which, of course, is based on
(04:52):
what we have heard, what we'veexperienced, but then the bigger
impact will happen afterwards.
Do you remember when you startedusing portfolios and why you
started working with them?
Jack Rice (05:05):
I remember a story. I was the headmaster of an
elementary school in Australia.
When you're the headmaster of anelementary school, you worry a
lot of times about riskmanagement. One part of my
process was that I always wouldlook at all of the report cards
before they went out to parents.
You know, you'd be doing amultitude of things that you'd
(05:26):
be working on, and you'd have astack of report cards, and I
remember looking at reports thata teacher had provided, and it
seemed very thick. The folderwas very thick, and I thought,
'Wow, that's going to take a lotof reading.' I saved it to the
end. I saved it to after lunch.
I took the teacher's work and Istarted flipping through it, and
(05:46):
I couldn't see any words. I waslooking for the prose. I was
looking for the comments, thedescriptions. All I could see
were these photographs. My firstresponse was, I was furious,
absolutely furious with theteacher. They had not created a
report card for the student. Iremember I took the folder, and
I marched out of my office, andI started slamming my feet as I
(06:10):
walked down the pathway toconfront this teacher.
I was organising my thoughts andmy response, and for some
reason, I went back and I lookedat it, and what I realised was,
this was not only a report, itwas the most sublime and
beautiful thing I'd ever seenbecause what it did was it
captured the student inphotographs, actually doing the
(06:35):
work that was in theirprogramme. What she had done is
she'd annotated it and connectedall of the different artefacts
to the standards that thestudent was supposed to achieve.
As I started looking at itfurther, and I realised that
some of the artefacts werethings that the student had
produced, by the time I got tothe classroom, I was almost in
(06:56):
tears. It was the most beautifulthing I'd ever seen, and it was
so much better than any reportthat I'd ever experienced. It
was at that moment that I reallystarted to get interested in
portfolios, and I used them morein K-12 education, and it was
that teacher that inspired me toshow me a different way that we
(07:17):
could view assessment.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:19):
That's a story from about 15 years ago.
Jack Rice (07:21):
That's right, well, 15 years ago.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:24):
It still stuck with you. So it has
definitely been a very impactfulexperience.
Jack Rice (07:30):
It was a profound moment in my journey as an
educator because, you know, whenI first started teaching, I was
a high school teacher. In myfirst couple of years, what I
had done was I had tried tofigure out what all of the
skills were that students wouldhave to learn in their
mathematics course, and Icreated quizzes every single day
(07:52):
that matched to those particularskills. So it was just quiz,
quiz, quiz, quiz, test - quiz,quiz, quiz, quiz, test. I got to
the end of the semester, I gaveout a final examination and the
students knew nothing, theydidn't know anything [laughs].
I was so forlorn. I was soforlorn. I remember the
department head of mathematicswas watching. He was just an
(08:13):
absolute brilliant educatorwho'd been teaching for 30
years. I was trying to explainto him. I said, "Look, I taught
all of this material. I don'tknow why they can't produce it
now on this final exam. Look atthese tests and quizzes,"
whatever. And he looked at me,and he said, "Jack, maybe you
should have taught the studentsinstead." And I thought, "Oh,
yes, of course." I was sofocused on the actual quizzes
(08:38):
and tests, I forgot to look upand I forgot to look at the
students, and I was not lookingat it through their experience.
That was very profound for me.
Of many moments in time thatI've thought about how we should
think about assessment andassessing learners, what is the
project here and what we'retrying to accomplish? Those
moments early in my career aboutthe disconnect of the constant
(09:01):
testing and why it wasn'tachieving the results that I
wanted, and then later on, theseeducators that showed me a
different way to view assessmentmore longitudinally, which is so
powerful.
Kristina Hoeppner (09:14):
In your position then, as headmaster,
Jack, did you then also changehow other teachers submit their
reports. Did you encourage themto create similar portfolios for
the students?
Jack Rice (09:28):
I did, but I'm always very cautious when I work with
teachers. Just as in my example,I needed to go through the
process to get to the end andresult and then create that sort
of feedback loop for myself thatsaid, 'Ah, it's not exactly what
I want,' and move in in aparticular direction. I've
always been apprehensive aboutdictating to teachers in
(09:50):
elementary school and highereducation about this is the way
to do it. This is going to workfor you because part of it is,
we're all on a differentjourney. We're all creating our
own portfolio as educators. Soour destinies with the learners
are entwined. They're creatingtheir portfolio. I'm creating
mine, and it's a dance that wemove together. Everybody's on a
different edge of that spectrum.
(10:12):
But absolutely, I would showthose artefacts that were
produced, and I would really tryto explain why this is a really
powerful method to assessment,and a number of the educators
picked up on that and started tocreate different forms of
portfolios in their ownassessment, which was wonderful.
Kristina Hoeppner (10:29):
What does your portfolio currently look
like? What do you have in it?
Jack Rice (10:35):
You know, it's funny, my own portfolio, when you look
back after you've been in acareer for X number of years,
you start to look at moments,really transitional moments for
you in your career, and youbecome less ashamed, more aware
of moments that didn't quite goso well. So actually, what I
(10:57):
stack in my portfolio, I think,is growth and elements of growth
for myself.
You could imagine a learnerthat's in their second year of
learners to do that because wehave learners competing with
university. You ask thatlearner, 'You've done 15
different assessment pieces,what three or four would you
like to put in your portfolio?'I would suggest to you that that
(11:18):
learner is going to put in thefour top grades or the four top
marks or where they hit therubric the best. But the
question is, is those the piecesthat showed the most growth?
It's a reframe to the project.
(11:52):
each other. Therefore they mustput in only their best work.
Oftentimes, our best work is notwhere the growth comes from.
There's a lot of things in thatportfolio of mine right now that
I love to share because I'm in aposition in my career where I
can share those failures.
Kristina Hoeppner (12:09):
Do you have a particular way of encouraging
your students to get into thehabit of doing that so that they
also feel safe, or, in somecases, maybe even brave, to
share those moments?
Jack Rice (12:20):
A lot of it is your sense of humour about your own
learning, about their learning.
I went through this process onetime in a graduate level class.
One of the things I will admitabout my teaching career is I
have the worst time trying toremember people's names. You
know, it's absolutely atrocious,really. I would go a week, two
weeks, four weeks, and sometimesin a class, I may only have them
(12:42):
in a graduate level class foreight weeks or 10 weeks. By the
time I learned their name,they're gone.
So I ashamedly had to createname cards for my students. I
mean, it's really bad, but Iwould get involved in what I'm
doing, and I would look out, andthere'd be 29 people there, and
I just couldn't remember. What Idid was, if you can imagine a
(13:04):
Christmas card, a card stockpaper that's folded over with
their name on one side, 'Pleaseput that in front of your desk,'
and then it would look out andgo, 'Oh, hi, Kristina. How are
you?' Whatever. Well, one night,I realised that the student,
we'll name Kristina, had given areally great response to a
prompt, but I did notacknowledge it at the time. It
(13:26):
wasn't until I drove home that Irealised that the response was
so brilliant.
What I decided to do was Ithought I had all the name
cards. I collected them afterevery night, and I'd hand them
out the next week. Inside hername card [laughs], I wrote down
my response to her response, andI said, 'you know, I really
enjoyed that' blah, blah, blah.
The second night after I pickedthose up again, she had
(13:48):
responded inside. And I thought,oh, that's really interesting.
So I had to run this experimenta little bit longer. So then I
took the other name tags andeach side, in these other
Christmas cards, I startedwriting in something maybe they
had put on the LMS, maybesomething about a comment that
they had made, or a piece oftheir work, etc. And so I wrote
(14:10):
it. I didn't say anything. Ijust handed out the name cards
again.
Well, they responded backbecause this was personal to
them now. I was trying to get toknow the students. Start with a
name. This was just a change inattitude towards the class. Here
I had, very quickly, a portfolioin front of me inside this
(14:31):
little name card that was arecord of our conversation
throughout the entire term - goback and forth. There was all
kinds of marks in it, and thankyou for this, and I like this,
and there was personal thingsthat would come up a back and
forth, and I learned thestudent's name so quickly that
way. I started to realise thatthis is something that we could
(14:52):
replicate in the digital space.
Kristina Hoeppner (14:54):
That's VoiceThread, just in a written
form, right?
Jack Rice (14:58):
That's right, it is VoiceThread. And what was
produced as artefact at the end,this marked up Christmas card
laughs] at the end of the day,was a portfolio. It was a
portfolio of their work, oftheir thought, of their process
as they move through it.
I remember the first time I metyou, and I was like, probably
standing in front of your table,and you were talking about
(15:19):
Mahara and then the project andthis portfolio work. And I just
thought, that's really the firsttime as an instructor myself, I
really understood the power of aportfolio.
I also remember that I wasgrading exams, I think, at the
end of that first class, and thestudent wrote in the exam, "Hey,
(15:39):
Mr Rice, do you still rememberthe name of my cat?" And I
responded to it,"Congratulations on the A-.
Mittens would be proud." Soagain [laughs], just sharing
back and forth that sort ofattitude. Being playful with
students, I think this is reallyimportant. And of course, it's
very difficult. You know, youneed to be guarded and really
(16:00):
understand not to abuse thatsensibility. I think we've lost
a little bit of our playfulnessin education. If you look at a
portfolio and suggest to astudent, I want to see your
rough notes in there as well.
I'm not going to judge it. It'snot my job to judge another
human being [laughs] and the waythey come to their learning.
I've always said that the modernteacher needs to think a lot
(16:23):
more like a lawyer than a judge.
My job as an educator is to makea case for my student. I'm
advocating on behalf of mystudent. So I'm going to work
with you, and we're going topull out different pieces and
put it into a portfolio. We'regoing to annotate it, and we're
going to really be reflective inour learning and our practice.
(16:44):
My job is to create that casefor you, to make a case that
you've met the standards thatare in this programme. I'm an
advocate for you. It's notnecessarily my job to judge as
it is to be that advocate. Theidea of portfolios really plays
into that sensibility.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:03):
Did you actually take photographs of
your name cards?
Jack Rice (17:07):
Ah, you know what? I probably didn't, but I probably
still have artefacts of them,like the actual artefact of name
cards that I had over the yearsbecause these things end up in
boxes. You go through them asyou move around the world, and
you unpack boxes and you lookand go, "Wow, that was a
memory." I'm sure there's astudent or two over time that I
(17:28):
still have those sort of namecards, but the idea is that it
moved past name cards after twoor three years for more in the
digital space of like, how canwe accumulate a space for these
reflections and these sort ofmetacognitive experiences where
the student starts to understandhow they are progressing in
their own learning, and theystart to own it? Once you can
(17:51):
get a student to own thatlearning and own that process -
so important.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:56):
That's what I really like about Mahara, where
you can put up your artefactsand also create your portfolios
and then have the possibility tointeract with the viewers in the
comments, to hear theirfeedback, to further your
learning that way, to engage ina conversation around the
artefact or around thereflection, in order to not just
(18:17):
make it look like a web pagethat is only there for display,
but really continue thatlearning process.
Jack Rice (18:25):
That's right. And I know that Mahara has been used
in teacher education programmes.
I believe at AthabascaUniversity, it's used in teacher
preparation programmes. I thinkthat is such a great well placed
use for Mahara in the portfolioprocess because throughout your
teaching career, you'll havemoments of embarrassment and
you'll have moments that thingsdidn't quite go so well, but,
you know, hold on to them. Keepthem. They're part of that
(18:48):
tapestry that you look back, andit becomes that sort of
overarching teaching career. Soto learn that process for
yourself in your teacherpreparation programme and then
also sharing that with yourstudents as they're learning
becomes really powerful.
Kristina Hoeppner (19:04):
Yeah, Professor Dr Debra Hoven and
also Dr Rita Zuba Prokopetz havebeen teaching in the Master in
Education in Open, Digital, andDistance Learning, and also in
the Doctorate in Education,where they are working with
portfolios. They've definitelydone good work there
incorporating portfoliopractice, introducing teachers
(19:26):
who then go back into theircareers to portfolio work.
Jack Rice (19:31):
Just so many examples of educators that are using it
in very inspired ways. It'swonderful to see.
Kristina Hoeppner (19:38):
Beyond your name card portfolio that you've
collaboratively created withyour students, Jack, how have
you used portfolios with yourstudents throughout your
illustrious career in yourvarious positions?
Jack Rice (19:52):
I've used them, certainly, as repositories. But
I think what is exciting for meis I realised in education at a
point in time that here I wasinstructing a group, and I never
once saw any material, any work,a sample that the student had
ever created prior to visitingwith me [laughs]. Imagine like
(20:13):
if I'm teaching a student ingrade 11, and it's a new student
to me. I never saw anything thatthey've ever produced in grade
10, grade nine, grade eight,grade six. I don't know anything
about that student in theirjourney.
What became really important tome was being able to produce
something that the nextinstructor could use. So almost
(20:34):
like I want to introduce you tomyself as a learner. Here are
two or three or four worksamples that I've annotated,
that I've reflected on, that I'mreally proud of. What a way to
introduce yourself to the nextinstructor in the programme.
What excites me about portfoliosis that they can live past your
own class, and they can start tomove into another class in that
(20:58):
programme. If you think aboutwhere I taught a lot of times
with graduate programmes ineducational leadership, it was
nice you took all thesedifferent courses. But in
graduate programmes, you notonly take different courses, you
take different professors. I'mtaking this professor now and
this professor now, and I'mgleaning something for each of
them. So it's such a head startfor a professor. Imagine on the
(21:18):
first day, "Hi, I'm Jack Rice,and here's parts of my portfolio
that I'd love you to look at andreflect on yourself before I
start in this class." It givesyou such a heads up. That's how
I started to encourage learnersto create this kind of material
for the next instructor.
Kristina Hoeppner (21:36):
That way you encourage your students to be
seen as a holistic personbecause they don't just come to
the class and that's when theirpersonality or their learning
starts, but they come with allthe experiences that then this
new instructor can incorporateinto their class.
Jack Rice (21:53):
Yeah. I remember one of the other instructors say to
me [laughs], "Jack, why are yougiving me homework on day one
[both Jack and Kristina laugh]?
All of these students are givingme all of this material, and all
of a sudden I have to do thishomework?" I would say, "Look,
this is a learning community.
Sometimes you're a learner,sometimes you're an instructor."
Why is it always the older folksthat are doing the instructing
(22:15):
and the younger folks doing thelearning? If this is a learning
community, it should be bothways, right? I should be
learning, and they should beinstructing.
I don't think that a learnershould be able to get through a
programme at a university, anylearner, not just education, any
learner, without actuallyteaching something. Here's a
Moodle shell, you teach mesomething. Whether it's to how
to change a light bulb or a tireon a car or whatever you're
(22:38):
interested in. But again, it'sthat sort of metacognition about
the learning process and how itworks for you, and how you would
explain something to someoneelse that becomes so valuable.
If the portfolio, and this, Ithink, has been the flaw in
portfolio, that it's an artefactwhich does not live past the end
of the class. If that's what itis, and you're just submitting
(22:59):
this to me for this classroomexercise for me to grade it that
has some utility, but it's notas powerful a utility as if it
follows the learner throughouttheir career and throughout
their programme. That's what isreally exciting to me with
Mahara and tools like it is thatyou're really looking at
programmatic assessment as wellas learner assessment and
(23:22):
following it through thelearner's journey.
Kristina Hoeppner (23:24):
I feel also that when you create those
portfolios for assessment, thatthey then, after the assessment
is done, can become an artefactwithin the bigger learning
portfolio that a student mightkeep, or they can pull artefacts
out of that assessment portfolioin order to incorporate it into
that wider learning story thatthey might want to present to
(23:46):
somebody else then in thefuture.
Jack Rice (23:48):
It's all about starting conversations. That's
what education is. It's aboutsomething that I can provide to
the learner that will start aconversation that provides that
reflection and that space forgrowth in between stimulus and
response. The portfolio becomeseven a more powerful exercise to
have it live beyond that firstinteraction, but really to start
(24:11):
a conversation.
So the biggest part of aportfolio was not measuring
against a rubric at the end, butit's the last office hour before
the final assessment or beforein that final portfolio is
assessed. It's more about, "Inoticed on this artefact inside
your portfolio, you said this,how did you come to that? That's
so interesting." To allow thatstudent to then elaborate and
(24:33):
that student to help organisetheir own thoughts in their own
process. That's the real beautyand the power of learning.
That's deeply embedded learningthat's happening at that spot.
Kristina Hoeppner (24:44):
So you know all of those things about
portfolio work. What do youstudents think when they're
creating portfolios or maybeeven in hindsight realise things
about their portfolios?
Jack Rice (24:55):
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of unlearning that
has to happen. Students havegone to school from the age of
three or four and been told thatthey have to compete. And you
can say, well, we don't reallyhave a lot of competition for
students at that young age. Ifyou walk into a classroom of
learners that are the age ofseven and say, "I want you to
(25:19):
line up in order of who's thebest at mathematics and who's
the worst at mathematics," theywill line themselves up
perfectly based on the gradesthat they were receiving in the
class. This happens at the ageof seven. Imagine what happens
by the age 17 or the age 27 orimagine what happens over 170
(25:39):
years of this educationalproject. The pervasive
competitive instinct that weartificially put inside
education, and we just come toeven accept it. We don't even
question it any more thatstudents would get gold stars or
grades or their name on theirboard if they act up, or all of
the different competitivesystems that we create inside
(26:01):
our classes.
When I have students come to meand they're maybe in second year
university now or in a graduateprogramme, they want to know,
what do I need to do to achievea B+ in this class? For them,
oftentimes it's well, "I knowthat I have to like, I'm going
to get a Starbucks and I'm goingto walk into class, I'm going to
sit in the front row. I'm goingto smile at my instructor. I'm
(26:23):
going to laugh at their jokes."Like this is a whole exercise
that they've been doing sincethey were young, and they've
took them through high schooland into university. Asking them
to create a portfolio of theirwork over time, annotate it,
reflect on it, and think of itas their own project and not a
competitive project against theother people in their class,
(26:45):
that's incredibly challenging.
You're asking them to change aparadigm of learning that
they've been in since the age ofthree or four.
Can I change that paradigm ineight weeks in a classroom?
Likely not. But if I can getthem to understand that their
work is their own work, and itdoes not need to be compared
(27:06):
against anyone else, that it'sbeing prepared against their own
growth throughout the term, andif they can start to just lower
that level of competition alittle bit amongst the class
that I think is really powerful.
Think about different ways ofassessment. It's very
confronting for the students whoare very embedded in a game that
(27:26):
we've made them play their wholelives. But I get excited when I
can just see glimpses ofstudents trying to collaborate,
trying to cooperate, trying towork together, trying to think
about their growth rather thantheir best first effort that's
going to be graded. That'sreally exciting. I take very
small wins. Sometimes it's notsomething that happens in front
(27:47):
of you in the class. Some thingshappens 10 or 12 years later.
That is the impactful piece. IfI'm demonstrating for them the
commitment towards portfolioassessment, I know that's going
to happen later on in theircareer. They're going to
understand, I understand why hewas trying to get us to think
that way. I take heart in that.
Kristina Hoeppner (28:05):
Do you think that project work can help with
that when a small group ofstudents works together on an
individual task which isdifferent from the project that
another group is doing, so as toreduce the amount of comparison
in terms of what they areworking on, what they need to
Jack Rice (28:24):
It's a great point. I love to see students having the
explore?
agency to choose the projectsthat are most impactful for
them. If we as educators, if wecan just stop judging that for a
moment [laughs] and saying,"Well, that's really
interesting. You want to look atvideo games? Great. Can we look
(28:44):
at a project about how videogames are made? And really
exciting, really interesting."First, you might think, oh, you
know, Johnny is going to ask, dovideo games again? But really,
our job as the educator is totry to find the higher purpose
in it for the student, and notjudge so quickly what the
individual topic is.
Also really having studentsworking together in a project
(29:06):
based learning is difficult tofacilitate. It is exhausting to
facilitate group projectsamongst a group of people, and
that's where, again, you have toreally understand the wins that
you're looking for. Sometimesthe wins are not them producing
exactly what you want them toproduce. Sometimes they're
producing something that looksquite different. You have to be
(29:27):
an improv expert or a airtraffic controller and land all
the planes on time and thingslike that, looking out amongst
the class.
But I love that idea of havingstudents choosing their own
projects, working on differentprojects, discrete projects,
coming together and workingtogether. When you look at the
final project that they'veproduced, ask them about their
(29:48):
learning along the way. "Oh, Ireally want you to see this.
Don't you see this? We producethis, and it works 100% of the
time." I'm not so interested inthat. "What I'm interested in
[laughs] is this moment becauseI know this moment about week
two, when you wanted to pullyour classmates' hair out. How
did you get past that?" Youstart probing, and they're
thinking like, "Why do you wantto talk about that? I thought
(30:11):
you wanted to talk about howthis electrical circuit is
perfect." That's not what I'minterested in, right? I'm
interested in different parts ofthe learning along the way.
Students get quite curious aboutthat and why I might look at
different things on theirjourney, but I think over time,
they start to understand thatvalue.
Kristina Hoeppner (30:26):
That gets you beyond that summary of the task
or of the activity into thereflection of the why and now
what you're going to take out ofthat for you going forward.
Jack, you've held variouspositions throughout your
career, in if I countedcorrectly, three different
countries, Canada, the statesand also Australia. You've been
(30:48):
a classroom teacher, dean ofschool at a college, and
executive director of the MapleLeague of Universities, amongst
many others. Has there been ared thread of portfolio use at
these various institutions ordid you need to reorient
yourself every time or trysomething different every time?
Jack Rice (31:09):
I think that every time you go into a new
experience, and I've had a lotof them, where someone has come
to me, "Oh, we have achallenge." And I think, okay, I
can help you with that, and offI go to the next challenge along
the way. I get really excitedabout learning things new for
myself. I always view it as anopportunity to grow as leader.
(31:30):
Each time I go into a newexperience, this is the
opportunity to see what elementsof my leadership style will work
and what also I can incorporatethat is new and learn from other
people. In each of thosesituations, I've learned
something new about myself.
Often, when you go into a newcircumstance, you initially want
to challenge. Why do you do itthat way? We did it this way
(31:53):
over here, and it worked quitenicely, and now you're doing it
this way. Here, this is thesolution. I want to tell you
what the solution is right now.
But you have to try to preventyourself from that. Stop go
back, ask yourself somequestions and ask other people
questions.
The most important leadershipexercise you can have is to lead
with questions. Someone onceasked me to calculate my
(32:17):
question to statement ratio[laughs]. Take 10 things in a
group of people, how many ofthem are statements and how many
of them are questions? And youlearn really quickly, oh, no,
eight were statements and twowere questions. Let's flip that
around. Let's be moreinquisitive about what happens
there.
I would say that the throughline in my career is how focused
(32:37):
I am on human development. Thepurposes of education, which
have become cultural andeconomic, those two forces in
education, people talk to us allthe time about the cultural
project, how we do things aroundhere, what are the new skills?
What are the new cooperativestrategies, etc, that we're
(32:59):
going to need to participate inthe economy and the future?
Those things are really, reallyimportant.
But the thing that we've lostalong the way as educators is
the focus on the development ofthe individual human being
that's in front of us. That'swhere all of the lost potential
is in this human project. Forme, that switched on at various
(33:22):
times in my career, tounderstand that no matter what
you're teaching, you are in thefaculty of human development,
that's what you are [laughs].
You have humans in front of you,and you are trying to get them
to develop to their fullestpotential.
I mean, if you've taught for anyperiod of time, students will
come back to you. I happened tomeet a student that I taught
(33:46):
almost 30 years ago. They arenow in a similar position I am
at a university, and here were-met. If you ask that student,
"Can you tell me one thing thatI taught you about the quadratic
function?" Absolutely nothing atall [both laugh]. And you think,
oh, did I do anything good? Butthey will talk to me about a
(34:06):
story that I told or a situationthat I handled with grace that
allowed them to learn somethingnew about themselves and apply
it into the future.
This is the great thing again,and you're tying it back to
portfolios, this whole thing,the whole project on education,
is really understanding thedevelopment of the human being
in front of us. It's really thejob that we have portfolios
(34:29):
become a tool to upset ourthinking a little bit and move
it into that sort ofdevelopmental project. And it's
so important.
Kristina Hoeppner (34:39):
What challenges do institutions of
higher education face when theywant to increase the use of
portfolios?
Jack Rice (34:47):
The thing that we don't do very well is
subtraction in higher education.
We're really good at addition.
When somebody talks to us aboutinstituting portfolios in the
classroom, it's always somethingthat's in addition. Okay, that's
great. We're going to doportfolios, fantastic, but we're
still going to do six quizzes,the midterm, the final exam.
(35:08):
We're going to do all of thiswork, and at the same time, on
top of that, now we're going toimplement this portfolio. The
portfolio becomes performative.
This happens in education allthe time. We have a great idea,
but instead of implementing thatidea fulsome way, we do half of
it, we do like a quarter of it,and we get to the end, and well,
(35:28):
this didn't work. You didn'treally give it a chance because
what you did was you putportfolios as an addition on
everything else that you weredoing. It really requires this
moment of thinking about what weneed to give up.
My thinking is, if you haveinstituted portfolios properly
in your classrooms, and then youcan look at a learner's growth
(35:53):
longitudinally, there's a lot ofthings that you don't need to do
in the classroom, right? You cansay to the learner, and this is
the most important thing about aportfolio, is the learner
agency. Now as a learner, I'm incharge of what goes into that
portfolio and what I want toshow and who I want to show it
to, and when I want to show itto them.
I would say that the mostimportant moment in higher
(36:15):
education is the office hour. Ifyou want to change one thing and
you want to increase something,increase the participation in
the office hours. You can disarmthe students and chat with them,
have great conversations, and sothe portfolio becomes a way of
getting you to the office hourwhere we can chat and reflect
and have a conversation aboutit. If you're an instructor, and
(36:37):
no one comes to your officehours, but everybody is there
for your midterm and your final,then I would say, you know,
shift that a little bit. Let'stry to change that a little bit.
Maybe portfolios are a tool thatcan do that. But the biggest
challenge, I think, is layeringportfolios onto everything else
that an instructor has to do,and not being able to take some
(36:57):
things or reframe what theproject is in front of them.
Kristina Hoeppner (37:00):
By just adding things, it only increases
their workload. In regards tothe office hours, thinking back
to the office hours that I, ofcourse, also had at the
university level when I was astudent, we really only did it
Jack Rice (37:11):
Here's a world of possibility that I would love to
when we thought we had aproblem, rather than also
live into. If a student came tome because they had a midterm
continuing the conversation withsomebody. So it was always more
coming up the next week, andcame to my office hour and sat
seen, "Oh, you need to go to theprincipal almost" [laughs].
at my table and we chatted forhalf an hour, and we had a
great, you know, fulsome chatabout the breadth of the subject
(37:34):
and provided a ton of examples,on the way out the door, I would
say to the student, "Don't evenbother coming to the midterm. I
already know it. You've shownit. You've demonstrated right
here. I have a recording ofthis, I have notes, I have
artefacts. You come to themidterm as a celebration of what
(37:57):
you already know. But whetheryou put that midterm grade or
that midterm performance intoyour portfolio or not, that is
up to you. You have the agencyto do that because as far as I'm
concerned, this conversation wehad was far more valuable than
that midterm." That is apossibility that I would love to
(38:20):
live into in education.
Kristina Hoeppner (38:22):
So Jack, where do you then see the future
of portfolios?
Jack Rice (38:27):
I wonder, if in the future or 20 years from now,
whether it's with AI or someother tool, we will be
generating portfolio we won'teven know we're generating it.
There will just be aconversation thread throughout
my career as a learner that isgathering samples and evidence
over time. So what I think isit'll become a much less onerous
(38:50):
process to gain all of thesedifferent artefacts. We'll be
able to embed these sort ofreflective exercises into
In the future, learning will belot less about the clock. Right
learning.
now, everything that we do ineducation has a clock associated
with it, and it's the mostcompetitive instrument that
mankind ever made. Just imaginethe possibility. I've always
(39:15):
wanted to walk into a lectureroom on the first day, put up a
ladder, take down the clock, andjust throw it out the window and
say, "All right, now we canstart."
In what universe does everyone[laughs] have to get to the same
concept exactly the same time?
Why does this have to be eightweeks? How come a semester is 15
weeks? Who made that up? What isa credit? The credit hour was
(39:38):
established in 1908. We'veevolved [laughs] slightly since
1908. Why are we still talkingabout credit hours? These are
traps that we made forourselves.
In the future, I'm hoping thatin education, grade one will
turn into grade two. It willjust sort of happen. We don't
(39:58):
have to have these artificialdefinitions and along the way,
we're always building ourportfolio of learning that we
can reflect on and demonstrate.
That's a powerful place that wecould get to in education, where
we could realise that all ofthese time based constraints -
we made it all up. This is justinvented [laughs]. There's no
meaning to any of this. But whatis really meaningful and
(40:20):
impactful is that individualhuman growth and development. So
let's celebrate that, andportfolios become one tool that
we can use that to do.
Imagine that you finished yearand you didn't even know you
were creating a portfolio, andall of a sudden you had a
portfolio created for you[laughs] that you could reflect
on. Not that it wouldn't be anactive process along the way,
(40:43):
but it would just be lessonerous to actually create the
artefact at the end.
Kristina Hoeppner (40:48):
That's important to have in there,
that, yes, the storing and thecollecting of the learning
evidence can be facilitated bythe technology, made easier, and
also artefacts being arranged.
In Mahara we offer that in theway that when you tag individual
artefacts, that you then cancreate a portfolio based on
those tags. You don't have to goand find all the five or 10 blog
(41:11):
posts that you have written orthe three or four files in a
folder structure three deep inorder to then pull them all
together in one portfolio, butyou have everything presented
and then can curate over that.
Because I still think that theactive process of curation and
(41:31):
also reflection should not beoutsourced to an AI, but the
rest can be facilitated.
Jack Rice (41:37):
Yeah, that's right. I absolutely want it to remain a
very active process for thelearner. That's so central, but
at the same time, if technologycan de escalate some of the
performative issues andoperational concerns around it,
so much the better.
Kristina Hoeppner (41:52):
That, I think, is a good segue over into
our last three questions in thequick answer round. The first
question is, Jack, which wordsor short phrases do you use to
describe portfolio work?
Jack Rice (42:06):
I would use 'follow the learner' as a quick phrase
because every one of those isreally important to me. It's the
fact that I'm following and I'mnot leading, but I'm following
the learner, taking me in adirection, and it really
emphasises the learning processand not some attempt that they
made that was that I'm supposedto judge right off the bat. To
(42:26):
me, it is about following thelearner. That has been my
philosophy for a long time now.
When portfolios are done right,that's what's happening.
Kristina Hoeppner (42:35):
What tip do you have for learning designers
or instructors who createportfolio activities?
Jack Rice (42:43):
The fundamental piece of any learning design is to
understand who the learners are.
Oftentimes, we skip that step inlearning design. I know what
happens here every day. We're ina rush. We start getting down
the process of designing, I wastend to say, "Well, hold on,
hold on, just wait one second,what's the name of their cat? On
their Facebook page for thisstudent, they have a kitten or
(43:04):
do they have a dog? I think it'sa kitten. What's the name of
their kitten?" And theneverybody rolls their eyes and
goes, "Right. We should bethinking about who the learner
is before we create thisexperience for the learner."
I think that just even with anykind of learning material that
you're putting together, anyprocess, any assessment, have
(43:26):
that real intentionalconversation early about what
are the profile of the differentlearners that are in my group?
That leads you to how I wouldintroduce portfolios to them.
Like, what part of the journeyof portfolios are they on? In
education, we tell students,"Well, just collaborate
together." Well, collaborationis a really difficult thing to
(43:48):
do, right [both laugh]?
So what are the preliminaryexercises that we need you to
get you to think about beforeyou can do this massive task
called collaboration? Portfolioscan again be very confronting
for a student. "Okay, I need tocreate a portfolio like, what do
I do?" So understanding like,what are the real simple
(44:08):
preliminary steps that we canreally demystify the process for
them and make it simple for themto connect with?
It comes down to understandingthat what level your students
are at, is it coming into theclassroom, what experience
you've had with portfolios inthe past, and what are those
sort of like formative piecesthat can get them to a more
robust, self reflective exerciseabout their learning?
Kristina Hoeppner (44:29):
That aligns perfectly with the AAEEBL
Digital Ethics Principle that wehave on DEIBD - diversity,
equity, inclusion, belonging,and decolonisation - so that in
any of the activities that arecreated for the students, the
students can see themselves.
They realise, "Yes, I'm welcomehere in the classroom. These
activities are for me. They arefostering my learning," rather
(44:50):
than just have a very genericthing where they don't know how
to connect the dots to theirprevious learning experiences or
also their personal lives andall that is going on around
them.
Jack, last question for youtoday. It's been fantastic
hearing all of your stories, andso I'd like to know if you have
(45:13):
any advice for your students orfor any other portfolio creator.
It might also be some of yourfaculty members?
Jack Rice (45:21):
I would just encourage them to be messy. Be
messy, make mistakes, and justget started. In education, we've
made students fearful ofpresenting things that aren't
perfect. It's difficult to be a13-year old or a 15-year old,
and you know, feel that you'rereally being judged by your
community and people that arearound you and going through
(45:42):
these difficult changes in yourlife. Same thing students come
here in higher education,there's still sort of later
adolescence [laughs] n a lot ofcases. They've got a lot to
worry about. So don't give themone more thing to worry about.
We do this all the time ineducation, we think that we need
to make them create cortisol intheir bodies to create these
high stress situations, and thisis what's going to get the best
(46:04):
out of them. It's absolutelyunproven by any research
whatsoever that this has anysort of positive effect over
time. Much better to sort ofde-escalate the process early
on. Allow your students toexperiment with it, be messy
about it, be imperfect about it,and just to sort of get going,
and then just meet the studentswhere they're at, and follow
(46:26):
them along in their journey. Ifyou do that, you learn a lot
more about those students.
You're going to fill up thatChristmas card, and you're going
to learn a lot more aboutyourself along the way. Have a
little bit more fun.
Kristina Hoeppner (46:38):
Thank you so much for that final advice and
also for all the stories thatyou've shared today that give us
a good insight into parts ofyour educational practice, not
just with portfolios, but alsobeyond, so that we can also see
who is that person Jack in theirwhole practice. So I really
(46:58):
appreciate the chat with you. Itwas wonderful catching up and
have that conversation with youand not just hearing a
presentation of you. So reallyappreciate your time, Jack, so
thank you so much.
Jack Rice (47:11):
Thank you, Kristina, always a delight to chat with
you and look forward to manymore conversations over many
more Moots and other events inthe future. So look forward to
it.
Kristina Hoeppner (47:20):
Me too. Thank you.
Now over to our listeners. Whatdo you want to try in your own
portfolio practice? This was'Create. Share. Engage.' with
Jack Rice. Head to our website,podcast.mahara.org, where you
can find resources and thetranscript for this episode. Our
(47:42):
next episode will air in twoweeks. It would be wonderful if
you told a colleague so they canlisten as well. Until then,
create, share, and engage.
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