October 15, 2024 • 36 mins
Honorary Senior Lecturer Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP, from The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia, teaches computer science students. He uses authentic learning tasks, in particular around the topic of job applications to engage his students in portfolio practice.
In this interview, Tom shares his own journey from a design portfolio to one for his Master's in Education and what he has learned along the way that is helping him support his students in their own reflective practice without employing portfolio language, but rather using language that has more meaning to his students.
Connect with Tom on LinkedIn
Resources
- Tom's blog posts on his portfolio course ideas
- Presentation 'A job application as the capstone for work integrated learning'
- Professor Dr Stephen Dann
- LEGO SERIOUS PLAY
- Professor Dr Charles Gretton
- ANU TechLauncher
- Awasthy, R., Flint, S., & Sankaranarayana, R. (2017). Lifting the constraints—Closing the skills gap with authentic student projects. 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 955–960.
- Worthington, T. (2019). Blend and flip for teaching communication skills to final year international computer science students. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Education (TALE), 1–5.
Related episodes
The Master in Education at Athabasca University:
- Dr Rita Zuba Prokopetz: Building a learning community
- Professor Dr Debra Hoven: The value of self-reflection and peer feedback
Mike Joiner-Hill: Represent yourself through a portfolio
Click through to the episode notes for the full transcript.
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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 (00:04):
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is
the podcast about portfolios forlearning and more for educators,
learning designers, and managerskeen on integrating portfolios
with their education andprofessional development
practices. 'Create. Share.
Engage.' is brought to you bythe Mahara team at Catalyst IT.
My name is Kristina Hoeppner.
(00:27):
Today, my guest is TomWorthington, an Honorary Senior
Lecturer, Fellow of theAustralian Computer Society, and
also Fellow of the HigherEducation Academy who works in
the Research School of ComputerScience at the Australian
National University. Thank youso much for joining me today,
Tom.
Tom Worthington (00:45):
Good morning.
Kristina Hoeppner (00:46):
Tom, can you please tell us a little bit
about yourself? What do you do?
Tom Worthington (00:51):
I'm essentially a semi retired computer
professional. So I had a wholecareer working in the Australian
Public Service, writing computersoftware, working my way up
through the hierarchy to be incharge of building computer
systems. And lastly, I wrotecomputer policy for the
Australian Department ofDefence. But more recently, for
(01:13):
about two decades, I've beenteaching part time at the
university and doing occasionaltraining in industry, and also
consultancy work. The fun partis teaching students.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:25):
You're also a lifelong learner because I
think, I've recently seen thatyou've also earned your Master's
in Education.
Tom Worthington (01:32):
That was quite a while ago. That was seven
years ago now, I think. You canblame it on the Vice Chancellor
at the Australian NationalUniversity who said, 'It'd be a
good idea if the people who areteaching actually had some sort
of qualification in teaching.' Istarted doing the short course
the uni ran, and then they said,'Oh, well, you want to do the
(01:52):
longer course? And then 'Youwant to do the graduate
certificate?' Then it justfollowed from that. I went did a
Master's.
Kristina Hoeppner (02:00):
Fantastic. So Tom, were you introduced to
portfolios in that Master's, ordid that already come earlier?
Tom Worthington (02:07):
That was many years before. I was trying to
calculate how long ago it was. Ithink it was 26 years ago. I was
at the Defence Departmentwriting policy on the use of the
internet and the web formilitary operations and looking
at the internet and seeing ithad graphics in it. It wasn't
just text. So I think I need tolearn something about graphic
(02:30):
design. So enroled in a courseat the University of Canberra in
the Design School. This is wherethey train architects and
graphic designers, and tookmyself off there a few days a
week for six months, and I'dleave the office with my severe
suit on, and then I'd get to theuni, take all that off and sit
in the ground and draw pictureswith the stick. For that they
(02:53):
said, 'You should have aportfolio,' which was a great
big ring binder to hold verylarge sheets of A1-sized paper
with your sketches and yourarchitectural drawings and all
that stuff to show prospectiveclients. I wasn't planning to be
a graphic designer, but I wentand got a binder and put all the
(03:13):
work I'd been doing in thecourse in it. It still sits
under my office desk at the uni,and that's a portfolio.
Kristina Hoeppner (03:21):
It sure it is. When did you encounter the
digital version of a portfolio?
Tom Worthington (03:27):
Well, as part of my Master's studies, they had
a capstone where you had toprepare an ePortfolio using
Mahara where you reflected onwhat you'd done in the courses.
It's one of these things wherethe idea is to try and knit
together everything you'velearned in separate courses and
(03:47):
try and make sense of it all.
This was at Athabasca Universityin Canada where I was an online
international student. They'dhad problems with the portfolios
because students were taking aslong to do their portfolio as
they had done to do all theirstudies. So they actually made
it a course, one semester long,and structured it where you had
(04:08):
to do a little sample bit, andyou'd get comments from your
colleagues in Mahara, and thenyou get comments from your
supervisor, and then you doanother bit, and so on, and then
you present it online, showingwhat you'd done. I went through
that difficult process, whichwas made easier by having that
scaffolding, as we say. Andessentially I've been using the
same thing for teaching studentsat the Australian National
(04:32):
University.
Kristina Hoeppner (04:34):
Tom, have you been, actually been a student of
Dr Rita Zuba Prokopetz or DrDebra Hoven? You mentioned
Athabasca University, and theywere doing the Master's in
Education there.
Tom Worthington (04:46):
Yes, Debra.
Kristina Hoeppner (04:47):
I'll make sure to also point to her
interview that I had done a fewmonths ago where she was talking
about that Master's in Educationand how they're using portfolios
in there. So it's wonderful toalso have you then, one of her
students on the podcast.
Tom Worthington (05:02):
So I was in the first cohort where they
introduced this structuredapproach. We actually had the
choice. We could have done itthe old way, where you just do
it yourself, or the new way. Ijust grabbed the new structured
way with both hands because Iknew I was going to struggle
otherwise.
Kristina Hoeppner (05:18):
How do you use portfolios with your
students? In which contexts doyou use portfolios with them?
Tom Worthington (05:25):
For the last eight years, I've been helping
with a capstone for thecomputing students at the
university. So these are a mixof undergraduate students and
master's students, and they dolots of technical computer
courses. They have to do somecourses on how to write and how
to present, and then at the end,they have to do a work
(05:47):
experience unit, work-integratedlearning. Some of them do an
internship where they go off toa company or a government
agency, and some of them dogroup projects for a client. For
all those students, they haveto, at the end, write up what
they've learned and how theyapply that professionally.
For eight years, I've beenstruggling in exactly how do you
(06:10):
do that for STEM students? Sothese are not people who are
learning to write artistically.
They are not generally peoplepeople. They are technical
computer nerds. To get them toreflect on what they've done is
really hard work.
Kristina Hoeppner (06:26):
How do you help them reflect?
Tom Worthington (06:29):
The people who self select to do STEM subjects
and computing and engineering inparticular, are not the people
who are self reflective. Sothey're about analysing the
world, structuring the world,having objective, external
reality, and an inner monologueis not their sort of thing. The
other part of it is we reinforcethis with the courses where we
(06:52):
say, 'We want you to do this,this, and this, and we will
compare your answer with thecorrect answer.' So we're not
saying to them, 'Think about thenature of the world in the
main.' So even if they arereflective, we might be driving
that out of them in this form ofinstruction. At the end, we say
(07:12):
to them, 'Now we want you totalk to people and work in
teams,' but we haven't trainedthem how to do that.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:18):
So how do you then help them to get into that
reflective mindset?
Tom Worthington (07:22):
There's some techniques we've used. For
example, we have ProfessorStephen Dann at the Australian
National University who has beentrained in how to use LEGO for
this. And we've used that withthe computing students, where he
will give each student, andthere's hundreds of them sitting
there, a small number of Legopieces, and asks them to make
something and then describe. Thetrick is because they're
(07:45):
physically making something, itdistracts them from the fact
that they're expressing personalviews. And so typically, in this
sort of class, we say to them,'So what do you envisage your
role is in the team you're in?
And what do you see yourselfdoing in the future?' When you
see two members of the same teambuilding thrones and putting
themselves on it with crowns ontheir heads so they're the king,
(08:06):
you know, you've got a problemin the team.
You essentially distract themwith something else. So if you
just say to them, 'We want youto reflect,' they go blank. So
you've got to get them workingon a task, which they're engaged
in and interested. The one we'vebeen using for the last few
years is we get them to applyfor a job. We don't say, 'You're
(08:28):
writing a reflectiveePortfolio.' We say, 'You're
writing a job application, whichhas a cover letter, a CV,
samples of your work, etc. Andin that we want you to provide
evidence of what you've beenlearning is relevant for this
job and how you see your careergoing.' They're all reflective
questions and the sort of thingyou do in a portfolio. But
(08:48):
because these students are aboutto graduate, and they'll be
looking for a job, or they'llwant to apply for a PhD, or set
up a company or something,that's something they need to do
and want to do, therefore theyunderstand why this portfolio
will be useful and relevant tothem. Whereas, if you say, 'We
want you to do this assignment,'they go, 'Well, why would I want
to do that?' If you say, 'Wewant you to write a job
(09:09):
application for a real job orapply for a PhD or a government
grant to set up a company,' theygo, 'Oh, yes, I want to do
that.'
Kristina Hoeppner (09:17):
So I'm kind of hearing two things that help
your students become thosereflective people, is, number
one, that it is an authenticlearning task and they are also
interested in so that they'renot just doing it for a grade,
and then number two, that youmight also not really want to
rely on portfolio specificlanguage that might not really
(09:40):
say anything to them, but phraseit in such a way that it is a
question that they can respondto without using the terminology
that is available. Would that bea fair summary, Tom?
Tom Worthington (09:53):
Yes because these are not students of
education or humanities, and soyou use the language of their
discipline to talk about whatthey're doing. The other part of
it is you don't just say tothem, 'Go and reflect.' You give
them that scaffolding that I hadwhen I had to do such a task.
And so you give them littleexercises to do, to practice
(10:16):
along the way. So this semester,for example, we're having three
workshops, and for the first twoworkshops, there's a small
number of marks associated withthe task to get them to focus.
Another part of this is I'm notthe one who teaches them this. I
look after the assessment partof it, but we have career
vocational professionalsdelivering the learning. So
(10:39):
these are people who you wouldnormally go to if you want to
get a job, you want to improvehow you do an interview. At the
university, we get those staffto do the teaching. The students
don't say, 'Oh, you know, he'san academic. He's got a tweed
coat on, what would he knowabout getting a job?' So we get
people who talk to employers allthe time. We get employees in to
(11:00):
talk to the students directlyand also former students who now
have jobs, and say, 'Look, youknow, when we're interviewing
people, don't worry about allthat. Nobody looks at that. This
is what we want.' That makes itvery immediate and relevant for
the students.
Kristina Hoeppner (11:14):
Have you then actually over the years seen an
uptake in employers appreciatingmore of that portfolio approach
where they can see the work ofthe students, read some
reflections of them, in order toalso understand better who they
are as people, rather than justlooking at the CV and the
grades?
Tom Worthington (11:32):
I think there are two conflicting things
happening. One is we're havingincreased use of automation
where what they write getsingested into a system which
analyses and decides the shortlist of candidates
automatically. And the otherpart of it is, once you have a
short list, a more nuancedanalysis of the candidates where
(11:52):
you do look at what their viewsare because you want a long-term
employee, not just someone tofill a role. There is a danger
that can get out of hand withpeople complaining about having
to go to interview afterinterview, and it's quite common
in the computer industry to setthe applicant a task which might
take hours of work for them,write some code, analyse
(12:14):
something. After a while, whenyou've done some of these, you
start to think, 'Am I justproviding free labour for the
employer?' Usually you're not,but it can get a bit overdone.
But yes, they want to seethey've got a person because
typically you tick all the boxeson the application to say you've
got this technical skill, youknow, that language, you get the
job. When you arrive, they say,'Oh, we've got this other task
(12:35):
which doesn't involve any ofthose things we selected you
for,' and it's really the factthat you articulate and you can
reason and you can solveproblems that is useful to the
employer, not a particulartechnical skill.
Kristina Hoeppner (12:49):
Yeah, it's those transferable skills. How
can actually institutionssupport students getting into
that reflective mindset earlyon? Is it that scaffolding? What
is it for you, specifically inyour area of computer science?
Tom Worthington (13:06):
I think it applies to any qualification
related to a job, whether it'scomputer science, engineering,
medicine, law. I don't think itmakes a difference. One of the
issues would be aboutintroducing this early on at the
start of their studies, ratherthan leave it to a capstone at
the end because if you teachthem more of these skills, it
(13:27):
will help them with theirstudying, I think, as they go
along. Another one is if there'ssome way you can integrate that
through the programme, theproblem being, you say to the
students, 'We want you to workin teams and talk to each
other,' but the university staffdon't do that. They just run
their own little course andleave it up to the students to
connect the dots. So if we had alittle more design that causes
(13:49):
problems, because that thenlimits the students in what they
can do if there's some sort ofunderlying structure through a
programme and not just acollection of courses.
If there was morework-integrated learning
throughout programmes, I think,that would also help. It's a lot
easier to do with postgraduatesthan it is with undergraduates.
To do my Master's of Education,I had to be employed in teaching
(14:12):
before I started. So the workintegration is built in. I
designed and ran some units forthe Australian Computer Society,
and similarly, you had to be apractising computer professional
in a job to enrol, and then youused your work experience to
help do your work.
Add a little structuring, butthe danger is you can end up
over scaffolding and driving thestudents crazy when you tell
(14:34):
them they have to do this littlebit, this little bit, this
little bit. So you have to havethe option where you can say,
'Well, we can see when you knowwhat you're doing. Just go for
it. Let us know when you needhelp.'
Kristina Hoeppner (14:43):
So purposeful design and then also sometimes
probably removing some of thescaffolding after some time once
you realise that they do notneed all of those guardrails any
more. Tom, is there actuallyanything that you currently
can't do with portfolios thatyou would love to be able to do?
Tom Worthington (15:02):
I have to admit, we've been doing this
approach with write a jobapplication for eight years. And
when we started, we used Maharabecause the Australian National
University has Moodle, andMahara is like the default
option for any portfolio whenyou've got Moodle. We had it, so
we used it. A few years ago, westopped making it compulsory and
(15:23):
say, You can use any tool youlike. We want you to submit
something as one PDF file, whichwe will mark at the end so you
can export from Mahara' or moststudents use a word processor
now to do this task. And so I'dlike better tools. I guess I had
this vision that we would andMahara and other tools have and
(15:44):
Moodle have some tools to dothis, this vision that you'd say
to the student when they enrol,'At the end, you have to have
all these skills and knowledge,and here's a big table of what
you require,' and the tablemight come from your
professional body, whichaccredits the university, and
say to them, 'By the end, whenyou've filled in all these
boxes, you will graduate.'This is actually literally what
I had to do when I did avocational education thing at
(16:07):
the Canberra Institute ofTechnology to be qualified to
teach in the vocational sector.
I was actually handed a sheaf ofpapers, and I had to be able to
tick every box with evidence,either by doing a course or
evidence from work orexperience. And when I ticked
them all, I graduated. I guess,I'd like to see something like
(16:29):
that and say to the student,now, 'We'll help you design your
programme, and you can cover allof this with formal courses if
you want. Some of it'll be bywork-integrated learning. some
will be by past experience, orit might be something else you
think of, and we want you tosubmit all the evidence, and if
you will use this tool to checkoff you've got everything.' So
(16:51):
I'd like some way to be able to,in a very detailed fashion, be
able to carry out that exerciseusing an ePortfolio package.
They claim to have it, but itdoesn't quite do the job at the
moment.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:02):
Have you then explored SmartEvidence in Mahara
for that?
Tom Worthington (17:06):
Yes, that's what I was thinking of. It's not
smart enough.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:10):
Then at some point we should have another
conversation around that and seewhat is missing for you in that
area because that is onepossibility to work with
competencies. Now, Tom, is thereanything else you'd like to
share around portfolio use,either from your personal side
or with your students?
Tom Worthington (17:30):
A missing factor is experience. The first
time I was brought in to help dothis eight years ago, I sat down
with a couple of professors, adozen tutors who were teaching
the subject, and I looked aroundthe room and I realised there
were two of us who werequalified in education, and
probably the only two had everused an ePortfolio. The others
(17:50):
had never had to be a studentusing this approach. And I think
that's part of what we need. Ifyou're going to have people
using these tools for teaching,they need to have done it for
real, either as part of some inservice education or as a normal
student.
Now, I help out the HigherEducation Academy, mentoring
(18:12):
people, applying for that,assessing them, and that's a
similar exercise where you haveto address specific skills and
knowledge and give examples,explain how you did it. I think
another part of it is to bringin other ways people do things
in terms of social media, video,and that sort of thing.
Otherwise, the portfolios tendto just look like an electronic
(18:35):
version of the folder I used tohave, which is very static.
Kristina Hoeppner (18:39):
Since the electronic portfolio is online,
there are those possibilities ofembedding content or adding a
video or sound recording andthings like that to make it more
interesting.
Tom Worthington (18:49):
I guess one of the important parts of all this
is the performative aspect. Oneof the things we do with the
computing students is because weteach them to talk to clients
and make presentations andanswer questions live,
face-to-face where they'requizzed, 'Okay, in slide six,
you claimed that the softwareyou built does the following.
(19:11):
Where is the evidence?' And theyhave to answer there and then.
That's an important part of theportfolio. Rather than think of
what is a document you submitand somebody marks it, it's
something you have todemonstrate to people, show you
understand the detail, canrespond, and that's why you have
these places where students haveto present their evidence.
(19:34):
We face the AI challenge. Forthe last few years, I have been
going to seminars, workshops andso on, almost every week about
AI and what it's going to do.
This is before ChatGPT was athing. This is part of the
answer that if you assessstudents by giving them exams or
just telling them to writethings, it's going to be very
(19:55):
hard to do to work out whetherthey did it or the computer did.
But if you say to people, 'Wewant you to not only show
evidence of your work and thereasoning behind it, but we're
going to question you using thatlive to see you thought about
it, and also to make sure youunderstand it, to just check
whether you really wrote it.' Ithink is another important part
(20:17):
of this.
Kristina Hoeppner (20:20):
How do you manage that then with your many
students, with hundreds ofstudents? Do you then just have
them talk to those futureemployers, or do you also have
tutors or lecturers sitting inthose conversations for the
marking?
Tom Worthington (20:36):
Professor Charles Gretton and others have
written papers on this there's acomplex process. What you do is
you have a lot of tutors, andyou get everybody to comment on
everybody else. So you getstudents, if they're working as
a team, you get their client tocomment on how they're doing.
(20:56):
You get another team to look atwhat they're doing and comment
on, you get the individuals inthe team to assess each other,
you get the tutor to assess whatthey're doing. So you have a lot
of that feedback. That's also avaluable experience because when
you're working in a job, thehard part is giving feedback and
also tell your boss when he'sdoing the wrong thing. It's
(21:19):
actually a lot easier workingfor military officers because
they've all been trained in howto give and accept feedback,
which is not the usual thing youget in a business environment.
Lots of formalised feedback andusing tools where it can analyse
what people are submitting andthings like you say to the
students, 'We want you to giveeach other a mark. If you all
(21:41):
give each other the same mark,that's not going to do you any
good. We're not going to beimpressed by that. You have to
honestly say what you think ofyour colleagues' work, and you
have to learn to do it politelyand respectfully.'
Kristina Hoeppner (21:53):
Do you give them some guiding questions then
that they can use to providethat constructive feedback?
Tom Worthington (21:59):
Yes. And also, you have tutors who do that live
as well. An interesting part ofthis is when you first say to
students they got to do allthis, they go, 'Ah, that's all
that soft stuff. That's reallyeasy.' And then when they go to
do it, they realise that this isreally, really difficult. It's
something they're going to haveto work at.
Kristina Hoeppner (22:18):
Do you can have a framework that you
employ?
Tom Worthington (22:22):
For the what we call ANU TechLauncher Programme,
which is the group projects, wehave a framework for that, and
essentially the same one is usedfor the internships as well, and
the same assessment structureand the same feedback process is
used. There's nothingparticularly novel about that.
(22:42):
It's derived from industrypractice.
I guess, the other part of thisis using industry tools. So
we're teaching computerstudents, and so they use the
same online tools for working inteams and communicating that
they would use in the workplace.
Those tools are designed toscale up to having 1,000s or
tens for 1,000s of people. Sothey work quite well with this.
(23:05):
And it'd be interesting tointegrate some of the
educational tools with that alittle more. It's fun to just
keep up with what the studentsare doing as well. Part of it is
the students are buildingbespoke software to help with
the process. So we have teams ofstudents who write and maintain
software that we use for givingthem feedback.
Kristina Hoeppner (23:27):
That's great to see that then tools they
built will help futuregenerations of students in their
own practice and then continuewith that, improve, and iterate
over it because those are allpractices we do in software
development, code review and soon, so that you don't always
start from scratch again atpoint zero.
Tom Worthington (23:44):
A lot of this is similar in things like
medicine where they are drilledin how to provide feedback
because it's life and deaththere. But I wonder if some of
this could be introduced toother disciplines and taught at
universities. I've got aquestion for you...
Kristina Hoeppner (24:00):
Sure.
Tom Worthington (24:00):
... since you look at all these things. What
is everyone else doing? I meanto me, this is all just normal
work. I kind of just assumeeverybody does this stuff as
part of higher education.
Kristina Hoeppner (24:14):
I wish everybody would be implementing
portfolios in one way oranother. I'm not saying that
every single course should nowhave a huge portfolio component.
What I really like is what yousaid earlier, Tom, that
sometimes the portfolio languagemight not really be the one that
should be used, but really tointegrate it into the courses so
(24:37):
that it is another task thatthey are doing, that they get
questions that help them reflectwithout saying, 'Okay, now we
are reflecting,' so that it'snot this extra bit, but that
it's really integrated.
What I'm seeing more and more,especially in Australia, is that
they are taking the programmaticapproach and programmatic design
(25:00):
of courses so that portfoliosintroduced at the start, and
then meaningful assessments arealso created throughout the
study programme that build ontop of each other. So that is
fantastic to see, and also tosee that the portfolio
assessment is being used as acentral part, and you did
mention AI just a little whileago, of course, also a bit to
(25:21):
offset some of those problemsthat could come with it because
the reflection is done by thestudents or should be done by
the students because it ispersonal. It is not knowledge
that they are just summarisingin different words than what is
in the book. They really need toapply that knowledge. Those are
a couple of really nice thingsto see, but of course, there are
(25:44):
still lots and lots of studyprogrammes where the portfolio
does not play a role at all,where then students potentially
still do some sort of reflectivetasks. It's just not portrayed
as a portfolio approach, per se,so that they might not be using
a portfolio software orsomething like that to reflect,
(26:08):
but they might still be usingpractices.
I think it really comes down tohaving those practices rather
than needing a separate tool forit because sometimes it can also
just be part of a Moodleassignment or part of the
submissions that the studentsdo, or part of the essay that
they are writing, that one ofthe questions is to reflect in
(26:28):
different words, of course, toreflect on what they had done.
We do also see it outside of theclassroom that portfolios are
being used. Increasingly, I findfor career purposes because also
we as employers, for example, Idon't just want to see a cover
letter and a CV. I really wantto see what they have done. Is
that something that I would liketo have replicated at the team,
(26:52):
or can they work with existingcode? How do they comment their
code?
But even outside of computerscience, if I were to hire a
team member more on theconsulting side of things, I
would very much like to see whattheir presentation skills are,
what their skills are to producelearning material and things
like that. And for that, I thinkthe portfolio is very well
(27:15):
positioned because we can seethose artefacts and then
ideally, also have thatreflection on them, so that we
know why that artefact is inthat showcase, why this
particular piece that they areshowing to us is so important to
them, why we should need to takea look at it, so that it's not
just here are the artefacts. Ileave it up to you to interpret
(27:36):
them, but that there's also thatnarrative around it, why it is
so important for me to showcasethis particular piece here for
that particular job that I'mapplying for or have somebody
applying for.
Tom Worthington (27:49):
I think another interesting area which I'd like
to explore is doing this in veryshort units of learning.
Universities are dabbling withmicro-credentials, which I think
should really bedeci-credentials because they're
like 1/10 of a degree. And thedanger is that those things will
end up like old fashioneddistance education, very, very
(28:12):
structured things. And could youuse portfolios to do those more
flexibly?
The other one is that I've beenhelping out with a few years,
things like hackathons where youspend 72 hours with a team of
students working on something.
So rather than six months or ayear, you take them through
(28:33):
everything very quickly. Socould you use these techniques
in shorter ways? For years, I'vebeen helping out with hackathons
in various areas, and during thepandemic, those switched over to
online delivery and workedextremely well. And some of them
were for the military, so theyweren't just play exercises.
These were defence industrypeople and serving military
(28:56):
officers learning to work in ateam. Could you use the
portfolios as part of that wherethey think about the skills
they're learning? So I thinkthere could be opportunities in
the ideation space for this sortof thing where you would need to
do it quickly and not with somuch structure as you would if
it's, you know, a six monthcourse or a university degree.
(29:18):
This is something where thevocational sector could teach
universities. They're used tosaying, 'What have you already
got? We'll give you credit forall that,' whereas universities
are, still in the main,reluctant to do that and tend to
do it in sort of an ad hocfashion. One of the tasks I was
given a couple of years ago wasto assess students for credit
(29:39):
for prior work experience orstudies or give them exemptions
from courses. They all want toget out of the soft skills sort
of courses, and you have toassess, are their communication
skills good enough and theirteamwork that they don't have
to, but that's kind of seen as,'Oh, we're giving credit, we're
giving exemptions,' and it couldbe structured a bit more.
Kristina Hoeppner (29:58):
Especially also when we get more mature
students who already come with awealth of experience.
Tom Worthington (30:04):
Some of these students, I think, oh, you
should be teaching the course.
They'll say, 'Well, I have threeyears experience as a team
leader at,' you know, 'MicrosoftResearch Lab Bangalore.' And you
think, right, we're going to getyou to help teach you this
course. But there are a wholelot of specialist tools, which
the administrative staff at theuniversity use for assessing
students' experience andqualifications, and a lot of it
(30:26):
has parallels with theePortfolios and how we might use
that in a structured way, andit'd be nice if we could bring
those two ends together and alsoinvolve the students more than
we're just it's not they submita form to apply for something,
but actually get them toexplain. What I suggested that
we introduced a few years ago isthe students have to write a few
(30:50):
paragraphs explaining how theirprior experience and studies are
relevant to what they'relearning now, and therefore why
they should receive exemption orcredit, but we do get them to
write a little thing about that,which is, in effect, reflection.
I think we could do more ofthat.
Kristina Hoeppner (31:08):
I do know you need to run to actually talk to
some of your students, Tom, solet's get to our last three
questions. Which words or shortphrases do you typically used to
describe portfolio work?
Tom Worthington (31:22):
I will use words like job application,
curriculum vitae, samples ofwork, relevant experience, those
sorts of words. So I'm usinglanguage from applying for a
job, not from ePortfolios. Iwill not tell them they're doing
a reflective ePortfolio inparticular because it doesn't
(31:46):
mean anything to them.
The other thing I do is I don'tclaim that what they do will be
useful in their career in thefuture because I'm not convinced
that's true, and also it is notrelevant to the student what
they do in the far distantfuture they want to complete the
course, graduate, get a job. Ifit's not about that, it's not
important to them.
Kristina Hoeppner (32:07):
What tip do you then have for learning
designers or instructors,lecturers who create portfolio
activities?
Tom Worthington (32:15):
Don't create a portfolio activity. Create a
relevant activity whichincorporates assessment. I think
one of the keys is to includeassessment because that's
something students focus on andbreak it up into pieces. Don't
say at the end of this unit ordegree you will have to do a
(32:35):
portfolio because they'll allleave it till the end. So you
have to deliver it in chunks asyou go along and tie it to
whatever they'te learning atthat point in time.
Kristina Hoeppner (32:46):
Full integration into the course and
leaving the lingo go out. Nowlast question, Tom: What advice
do you have for your students oranybody else wanting to create
portfolios?
Tom Worthington (32:59):
I guess the same advice. What do you need to
meet your aims right now? And ifyou're wanting a job, then what
is that particular employerwanting? Tailor your portfolio
to what they're asking for. Youmight have done something you're
very proud of that's very largeand important, but if it's not
(33:19):
relevant, it's a waste of time.
The other part is, rememberextracurricular things you've
done in life, which will beuseful and incorporate those as
well. An example was an academicwho was giving a seminar
applying for a job, and I saidto them, 'So what leadership
experience do you have?' Andthey said, 'I haven't got any.'
(33:41):
'None at all, you've never doneanything where you lead people?'
And they said, 'Oh, well, I wasthe head of the alpine mountain
climbing team at theuniversity.' And I said, 'So
people trusted their lives withyou to lead them up a mountain.
You know, that's very relevantexperience.'
The other thing is, don'tforget, there's a whole lot of
students we haven't talkedabout, who are research students
and where I think they could dowith some of this as well.
(34:04):
Otherwise, they just spend theirlives writing papers, writing a
thesis, and not thinking aboutwhy they're doing this. In some
faculties, sociology,journalism, you will have some
of that self reflection, butparticularly in the science
faculties, they're sort oftrained to leave the human being
out of what they're doing. Ithink it would be useful in
(34:25):
those environments toincorporate more of these
techniques.
Kristina Hoeppner (34:29):
Thank you so much for your time today, Tom,
to talk with me. I like that youhave given us some ideas of how
to incorporate portfoliopractices into classes for STEM
students, in your case, inparticular computer science,
where they might not be sofamiliar with the lingo and just
(34:50):
making the reflective activitiespart of their activities, giving
them strategies and alsoproviding scaffolding in order
to become these reflectivepractitioners without
necessarily knowing thelanguage, so that they are not
inhibited by it.
Tom Worthington (35:09):
Thank you, and hopefully we can meet up at some
conference somewhere.
Kristina Hoeppner (35:12):
Yes, that would be wonderful, after a few
years now, to see each other inperson.
Now, over to our listeners. Whatdo you want to try in your own
portfolio practice? This was'Create. Share. Engage.' with
Tom Worthington. Head to ourwebsite podcast.mahara.org where
you can find resources and thetranscript for this episode.
(35:36):
This podcast is produced byCatalyst IT, and I'm your host,
Kristina Hoeppner, Project Leadand Product Manager of the
portfolio platform Mahara. Ournext episode will air in two
weeks. I hope you'll listenagain and tell a colleague about
our podcast so they cansubscribe. Until then, create,
(35:57):
share, and engage.
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is
the podcast about portfolios forlearning and more for educators,
learning designers, and managerskeen on integrating portfolios
with their education andprofessional development
practices. 'Create. Share.
Engage.' is brought to you bythe Mahara team at Catalyst IT.
My name is Kristina Hoeppner.
(00:27):
Today, my guest is TomWorthington, an Honorary Senior
Lecturer, Fellow of theAustralian Computer Society, and
also Fellow of the HigherEducation Academy who works in
the Research School of ComputerScience at the Australian
National University. Thank youso much for joining me today,
Tom.
Tom Worthington (00:45):
Good morning.
Kristina Hoeppner (00:46):
Tom, can you please tell us a little bit
about yourself? What do you do?
Tom Worthington (00:51):
I'm essentially a semi retired computer
professional. So I had a wholecareer working in the Australian
Public Service, writing computersoftware, working my way up
through the hierarchy to be incharge of building computer
systems. And lastly, I wrotecomputer policy for the
Australian Department ofDefence. But more recently, for
(01:13):
about two decades, I've beenteaching part time at the
university and doing occasionaltraining in industry, and also
consultancy work. The fun partis teaching students.
Kristina Hoeppner (01:25):
You're also a lifelong learner because I
think, I've recently seen thatyou've also earned your Master's
in Education.
Tom Worthington (01:32):
That was quite a while ago. That was seven
years ago now, I think. You canblame it on the Vice Chancellor
at the Australian NationalUniversity who said, 'It'd be a
good idea if the people who areteaching actually had some sort
of qualification in teaching.' Istarted doing the short course
the uni ran, and then they said,'Oh, well, you want to do the
(01:52):
longer course? And then 'Youwant to do the graduate
certificate?' Then it justfollowed from that. I went did a
Master's.
Kristina Hoeppner (02:00):
Fantastic. So Tom, were you introduced to
portfolios in that Master's, ordid that already come earlier?
Tom Worthington (02:07):
That was many years before. I was trying to
calculate how long ago it was. Ithink it was 26 years ago. I was
at the Defence Departmentwriting policy on the use of the
internet and the web formilitary operations and looking
at the internet and seeing ithad graphics in it. It wasn't
just text. So I think I need tolearn something about graphic
(02:30):
design. So enroled in a courseat the University of Canberra in
the Design School. This is wherethey train architects and
graphic designers, and tookmyself off there a few days a
week for six months, and I'dleave the office with my severe
suit on, and then I'd get to theuni, take all that off and sit
in the ground and draw pictureswith the stick. For that they
(02:53):
said, 'You should have aportfolio,' which was a great
big ring binder to hold verylarge sheets of A1-sized paper
with your sketches and yourarchitectural drawings and all
that stuff to show prospectiveclients. I wasn't planning to be
a graphic designer, but I wentand got a binder and put all the
(03:13):
work I'd been doing in thecourse in it. It still sits
under my office desk at the uni,and that's a portfolio.
Kristina Hoeppner (03:21):
It sure it is. When did you encounter the
digital version of a portfolio?
Tom Worthington (03:27):
Well, as part of my Master's studies, they had
a capstone where you had toprepare an ePortfolio using
Mahara where you reflected onwhat you'd done in the courses.
It's one of these things wherethe idea is to try and knit
together everything you'velearned in separate courses and
(03:47):
try and make sense of it all.
This was at Athabasca Universityin Canada where I was an online
international student. They'dhad problems with the portfolios
because students were taking aslong to do their portfolio as
they had done to do all theirstudies. So they actually made
it a course, one semester long,and structured it where you had
(04:08):
to do a little sample bit, andyou'd get comments from your
colleagues in Mahara, and thenyou get comments from your
supervisor, and then you doanother bit, and so on, and then
you present it online, showingwhat you'd done. I went through
that difficult process, whichwas made easier by having that
scaffolding, as we say. Andessentially I've been using the
same thing for teaching studentsat the Australian National
(04:32):
University.
Kristina Hoeppner (04:34):
Tom, have you been, actually been a student of
Dr Rita Zuba Prokopetz or DrDebra Hoven? You mentioned
Athabasca University, and theywere doing the Master's in
Education there.
Tom Worthington (04:46):
Yes, Debra.
Kristina Hoeppner (04:47):
I'll make sure to also point to her
interview that I had done a fewmonths ago where she was talking
about that Master's in Educationand how they're using portfolios
in there. So it's wonderful toalso have you then, one of her
students on the podcast.
Tom Worthington (05:02):
So I was in the first cohort where they
introduced this structuredapproach. We actually had the
choice. We could have done itthe old way, where you just do
it yourself, or the new way. Ijust grabbed the new structured
way with both hands because Iknew I was going to struggle
otherwise.
Kristina Hoeppner (05:18):
How do you use portfolios with your
students? In which contexts doyou use portfolios with them?
Tom Worthington (05:25):
For the last eight years, I've been helping
with a capstone for thecomputing students at the
university. So these are a mixof undergraduate students and
master's students, and they dolots of technical computer
courses. They have to do somecourses on how to write and how
to present, and then at the end,they have to do a work
(05:47):
experience unit, work-integratedlearning. Some of them do an
internship where they go off toa company or a government
agency, and some of them dogroup projects for a client. For
all those students, they haveto, at the end, write up what
they've learned and how theyapply that professionally.
For eight years, I've beenstruggling in exactly how do you
(06:10):
do that for STEM students? Sothese are not people who are
learning to write artistically.
They are not generally peoplepeople. They are technical
computer nerds. To get them toreflect on what they've done is
really hard work.
Kristina Hoeppner (06:26):
How do you help them reflect?
Tom Worthington (06:29):
The people who self select to do STEM subjects
and computing and engineering inparticular, are not the people
who are self reflective. Sothey're about analysing the
world, structuring the world,having objective, external
reality, and an inner monologueis not their sort of thing. The
other part of it is we reinforcethis with the courses where we
(06:52):
say, 'We want you to do this,this, and this, and we will
compare your answer with thecorrect answer.' So we're not
saying to them, 'Think about thenature of the world in the
main.' So even if they arereflective, we might be driving
that out of them in this form ofinstruction. At the end, we say
(07:12):
to them, 'Now we want you totalk to people and work in
teams,' but we haven't trainedthem how to do that.
Kristina Hoeppner (07:18):
So how do you then help them to get into that
reflective mindset?
Tom Worthington (07:22):
There's some techniques we've used. For
example, we have ProfessorStephen Dann at the Australian
National University who has beentrained in how to use LEGO for
this. And we've used that withthe computing students, where he
will give each student, andthere's hundreds of them sitting
there, a small number of Legopieces, and asks them to make
something and then describe. Thetrick is because they're
(07:45):
physically making something, itdistracts them from the fact
that they're expressing personalviews. And so typically, in this
sort of class, we say to them,'So what do you envisage your
role is in the team you're in?
And what do you see yourselfdoing in the future?' When you
see two members of the same teambuilding thrones and putting
themselves on it with crowns ontheir heads so they're the king,
(08:06):
you know, you've got a problemin the team.
You essentially distract themwith something else. So if you
just say to them, 'We want youto reflect,' they go blank. So
you've got to get them workingon a task, which they're engaged
in and interested. The one we'vebeen using for the last few
years is we get them to applyfor a job. We don't say, 'You're
(08:28):
writing a reflectiveePortfolio.' We say, 'You're
writing a job application, whichhas a cover letter, a CV,
samples of your work, etc. Andin that we want you to provide
evidence of what you've beenlearning is relevant for this
job and how you see your careergoing.' They're all reflective
questions and the sort of thingyou do in a portfolio. But
(08:48):
because these students are aboutto graduate, and they'll be
looking for a job, or they'llwant to apply for a PhD, or set
up a company or something,that's something they need to do
and want to do, therefore theyunderstand why this portfolio
will be useful and relevant tothem. Whereas, if you say, 'We
want you to do this assignment,'they go, 'Well, why would I want
to do that?' If you say, 'Wewant you to write a job
(09:09):
application for a real job orapply for a PhD or a government
grant to set up a company,' theygo, 'Oh, yes, I want to do
that.'
Kristina Hoeppner (09:17):
So I'm kind of hearing two things that help
your students become thosereflective people, is, number
one, that it is an authenticlearning task and they are also
interested in so that they'renot just doing it for a grade,
and then number two, that youmight also not really want to
rely on portfolio specificlanguage that might not really
(09:40):
say anything to them, but phraseit in such a way that it is a
question that they can respondto without using the terminology
that is available. Would that bea fair summary, Tom?
Tom Worthington (09:53):
Yes because these are not students of
education or humanities, and soyou use the language of their
discipline to talk about whatthey're doing. The other part of
it is you don't just say tothem, 'Go and reflect.' You give
them that scaffolding that I hadwhen I had to do such a task.
And so you give them littleexercises to do, to practice
(10:16):
along the way. So this semester,for example, we're having three
workshops, and for the first twoworkshops, there's a small
number of marks associated withthe task to get them to focus.
Another part of this is I'm notthe one who teaches them this. I
look after the assessment partof it, but we have career
vocational professionalsdelivering the learning. So
(10:39):
these are people who you wouldnormally go to if you want to
get a job, you want to improvehow you do an interview. At the
university, we get those staffto do the teaching. The students
don't say, 'Oh, you know, he'san academic. He's got a tweed
coat on, what would he knowabout getting a job?' So we get
people who talk to employers allthe time. We get employees in to
(11:00):
talk to the students directlyand also former students who now
have jobs, and say, 'Look, youknow, when we're interviewing
people, don't worry about allthat. Nobody looks at that. This
is what we want.' That makes itvery immediate and relevant for
the students.
Kristina Hoeppner (11:14):
Have you then actually over the years seen an
uptake in employers appreciatingmore of that portfolio approach
where they can see the work ofthe students, read some
reflections of them, in order toalso understand better who they
are as people, rather than justlooking at the CV and the
grades?
Tom Worthington (11:32):
I think there are two conflicting things
happening. One is we're havingincreased use of automation
where what they write getsingested into a system which
analyses and decides the shortlist of candidates
automatically. And the otherpart of it is, once you have a
short list, a more nuancedanalysis of the candidates where
(11:52):
you do look at what their viewsare because you want a long-term
employee, not just someone tofill a role. There is a danger
that can get out of hand withpeople complaining about having
to go to interview afterinterview, and it's quite common
in the computer industry to setthe applicant a task which might
take hours of work for them,write some code, analyse
(12:14):
something. After a while, whenyou've done some of these, you
start to think, 'Am I justproviding free labour for the
employer?' Usually you're not,but it can get a bit overdone.
But yes, they want to seethey've got a person because
typically you tick all the boxeson the application to say you've
got this technical skill, youknow, that language, you get the
job. When you arrive, they say,'Oh, we've got this other task
(12:35):
which doesn't involve any ofthose things we selected you
for,' and it's really the factthat you articulate and you can
reason and you can solveproblems that is useful to the
employer, not a particulartechnical skill.
Kristina Hoeppner (12:49):
Yeah, it's those transferable skills. How
can actually institutionssupport students getting into
that reflective mindset earlyon? Is it that scaffolding? What
is it for you, specifically inyour area of computer science?
Tom Worthington (13:06):
I think it applies to any qualification
related to a job, whether it'scomputer science, engineering,
medicine, law. I don't think itmakes a difference. One of the
issues would be aboutintroducing this early on at the
start of their studies, ratherthan leave it to a capstone at
the end because if you teachthem more of these skills, it
(13:27):
will help them with theirstudying, I think, as they go
along. Another one is if there'ssome way you can integrate that
through the programme, theproblem being, you say to the
students, 'We want you to workin teams and talk to each
other,' but the university staffdon't do that. They just run
their own little course andleave it up to the students to
connect the dots. So if we had alittle more design that causes
(13:49):
problems, because that thenlimits the students in what they
can do if there's some sort ofunderlying structure through a
programme and not just acollection of courses.
If there was morework-integrated learning
throughout programmes, I think,that would also help. It's a lot
easier to do with postgraduatesthan it is with undergraduates.
To do my Master's of Education,I had to be employed in teaching
(14:12):
before I started. So the workintegration is built in. I
designed and ran some units forthe Australian Computer Society,
and similarly, you had to be apractising computer professional
in a job to enrol, and then youused your work experience to
help do your work.
Add a little structuring, butthe danger is you can end up
over scaffolding and driving thestudents crazy when you tell
(14:34):
them they have to do this littlebit, this little bit, this
little bit. So you have to havethe option where you can say,
'Well, we can see when you knowwhat you're doing. Just go for
it. Let us know when you needhelp.'
Kristina Hoeppner (14:43):
So purposeful design and then also sometimes
probably removing some of thescaffolding after some time once
you realise that they do notneed all of those guardrails any
more. Tom, is there actuallyanything that you currently
can't do with portfolios thatyou would love to be able to do?
Tom Worthington (15:02):
I have to admit, we've been doing this
approach with write a jobapplication for eight years. And
when we started, we used Maharabecause the Australian National
University has Moodle, andMahara is like the default
option for any portfolio whenyou've got Moodle. We had it, so
we used it. A few years ago, westopped making it compulsory and
(15:23):
say, You can use any tool youlike. We want you to submit
something as one PDF file, whichwe will mark at the end so you
can export from Mahara' or moststudents use a word processor
now to do this task. And so I'dlike better tools. I guess I had
this vision that we would andMahara and other tools have and
(15:44):
Moodle have some tools to dothis, this vision that you'd say
to the student when they enrol,'At the end, you have to have
all these skills and knowledge,and here's a big table of what
you require,' and the tablemight come from your
professional body, whichaccredits the university, and
say to them, 'By the end, whenyou've filled in all these
boxes, you will graduate.'This is actually literally what
I had to do when I did avocational education thing at
(16:07):
the Canberra Institute ofTechnology to be qualified to
teach in the vocational sector.
I was actually handed a sheaf ofpapers, and I had to be able to
tick every box with evidence,either by doing a course or
evidence from work orexperience. And when I ticked
them all, I graduated. I guess,I'd like to see something like
(16:29):
that and say to the student,now, 'We'll help you design your
programme, and you can cover allof this with formal courses if
you want. Some of it'll be bywork-integrated learning. some
will be by past experience, orit might be something else you
think of, and we want you tosubmit all the evidence, and if
you will use this tool to checkoff you've got everything.' So
(16:51):
I'd like some way to be able to,in a very detailed fashion, be
able to carry out that exerciseusing an ePortfolio package.
They claim to have it, but itdoesn't quite do the job at the
moment.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:02):
Have you then explored SmartEvidence in Mahara
for that?
Tom Worthington (17:06):
Yes, that's what I was thinking of. It's not
smart enough.
Kristina Hoeppner (17:10):
Then at some point we should have another
conversation around that and seewhat is missing for you in that
area because that is onepossibility to work with
competencies. Now, Tom, is thereanything else you'd like to
share around portfolio use,either from your personal side
or with your students?
Tom Worthington (17:30):
A missing factor is experience. The first
time I was brought in to help dothis eight years ago, I sat down
with a couple of professors, adozen tutors who were teaching
the subject, and I looked aroundthe room and I realised there
were two of us who werequalified in education, and
probably the only two had everused an ePortfolio. The others
(17:50):
had never had to be a studentusing this approach. And I think
that's part of what we need. Ifyou're going to have people
using these tools for teaching,they need to have done it for
real, either as part of some inservice education or as a normal
student.
Now, I help out the HigherEducation Academy, mentoring
(18:12):
people, applying for that,assessing them, and that's a
similar exercise where you haveto address specific skills and
knowledge and give examples,explain how you did it. I think
another part of it is to bringin other ways people do things
in terms of social media, video,and that sort of thing.
Otherwise, the portfolios tendto just look like an electronic
(18:35):
version of the folder I used tohave, which is very static.
Kristina Hoeppner (18:39):
Since the electronic portfolio is online,
there are those possibilities ofembedding content or adding a
video or sound recording andthings like that to make it more
interesting.
Tom Worthington (18:49):
I guess one of the important parts of all this
is the performative aspect. Oneof the things we do with the
computing students is because weteach them to talk to clients
and make presentations andanswer questions live,
face-to-face where they'requizzed, 'Okay, in slide six,
you claimed that the softwareyou built does the following.
(19:11):
Where is the evidence?' And theyhave to answer there and then.
That's an important part of theportfolio. Rather than think of
what is a document you submitand somebody marks it, it's
something you have todemonstrate to people, show you
understand the detail, canrespond, and that's why you have
these places where students haveto present their evidence.
(19:34):
We face the AI challenge. Forthe last few years, I have been
going to seminars, workshops andso on, almost every week about
AI and what it's going to do.
This is before ChatGPT was athing. This is part of the
answer that if you assessstudents by giving them exams or
just telling them to writethings, it's going to be very
(19:55):
hard to do to work out whetherthey did it or the computer did.
But if you say to people, 'Wewant you to not only show
evidence of your work and thereasoning behind it, but we're
going to question you using thatlive to see you thought about
it, and also to make sure youunderstand it, to just check
whether you really wrote it.' Ithink is another important part
(20:17):
of this.
Kristina Hoeppner (20:20):
How do you manage that then with your many
students, with hundreds ofstudents? Do you then just have
them talk to those futureemployers, or do you also have
tutors or lecturers sitting inthose conversations for the
marking?
Tom Worthington (20:36):
Professor Charles Gretton and others have
written papers on this there's acomplex process. What you do is
you have a lot of tutors, andyou get everybody to comment on
everybody else. So you getstudents, if they're working as
a team, you get their client tocomment on how they're doing.
(20:56):
You get another team to look atwhat they're doing and comment
on, you get the individuals inthe team to assess each other,
you get the tutor to assess whatthey're doing. So you have a lot
of that feedback. That's also avaluable experience because when
you're working in a job, thehard part is giving feedback and
also tell your boss when he'sdoing the wrong thing. It's
(21:19):
actually a lot easier workingfor military officers because
they've all been trained in howto give and accept feedback,
which is not the usual thing youget in a business environment.
Lots of formalised feedback andusing tools where it can analyse
what people are submitting andthings like you say to the
students, 'We want you to giveeach other a mark. If you all
(21:41):
give each other the same mark,that's not going to do you any
good. We're not going to beimpressed by that. You have to
honestly say what you think ofyour colleagues' work, and you
have to learn to do it politelyand respectfully.'
Kristina Hoeppner (21:53):
Do you give them some guiding questions then
that they can use to providethat constructive feedback?
Tom Worthington (21:59):
Yes. And also, you have tutors who do that live
as well. An interesting part ofthis is when you first say to
students they got to do allthis, they go, 'Ah, that's all
that soft stuff. That's reallyeasy.' And then when they go to
do it, they realise that this isreally, really difficult. It's
something they're going to haveto work at.
Kristina Hoeppner (22:18):
Do you can have a framework that you
employ?
Tom Worthington (22:22):
For the what we call ANU TechLauncher Programme,
which is the group projects, wehave a framework for that, and
essentially the same one is usedfor the internships as well, and
the same assessment structureand the same feedback process is
used. There's nothingparticularly novel about that.
(22:42):
It's derived from industrypractice.
I guess, the other part of thisis using industry tools. So
we're teaching computerstudents, and so they use the
same online tools for working inteams and communicating that
they would use in the workplace.
Those tools are designed toscale up to having 1,000s or
tens for 1,000s of people. Sothey work quite well with this.
(23:05):
And it'd be interesting tointegrate some of the
educational tools with that alittle more. It's fun to just
keep up with what the studentsare doing as well. Part of it is
the students are buildingbespoke software to help with
the process. So we have teams ofstudents who write and maintain
software that we use for givingthem feedback.
Kristina Hoeppner (23:27):
That's great to see that then tools they
built will help futuregenerations of students in their
own practice and then continuewith that, improve, and iterate
over it because those are allpractices we do in software
development, code review and soon, so that you don't always
start from scratch again atpoint zero.
Tom Worthington (23:44):
A lot of this is similar in things like
medicine where they are drilledin how to provide feedback
because it's life and deaththere. But I wonder if some of
this could be introduced toother disciplines and taught at
universities. I've got aquestion for you...
Kristina Hoeppner (24:00):
Sure.
Tom Worthington (24:00):
... since you look at all these things. What
is everyone else doing? I meanto me, this is all just normal
work. I kind of just assumeeverybody does this stuff as
part of higher education.
Kristina Hoeppner (24:14):
I wish everybody would be implementing
portfolios in one way oranother. I'm not saying that
every single course should nowhave a huge portfolio component.
What I really like is what yousaid earlier, Tom, that
sometimes the portfolio languagemight not really be the one that
should be used, but really tointegrate it into the courses so
(24:37):
that it is another task thatthey are doing, that they get
questions that help them reflectwithout saying, 'Okay, now we
are reflecting,' so that it'snot this extra bit, but that
it's really integrated.
What I'm seeing more and more,especially in Australia, is that
they are taking the programmaticapproach and programmatic design
(25:00):
of courses so that portfoliosintroduced at the start, and
then meaningful assessments arealso created throughout the
study programme that build ontop of each other. So that is
fantastic to see, and also tosee that the portfolio
assessment is being used as acentral part, and you did
mention AI just a little whileago, of course, also a bit to
(25:21):
offset some of those problemsthat could come with it because
the reflection is done by thestudents or should be done by
the students because it ispersonal. It is not knowledge
that they are just summarisingin different words than what is
in the book. They really need toapply that knowledge. Those are
a couple of really nice thingsto see, but of course, there are
(25:44):
still lots and lots of studyprogrammes where the portfolio
does not play a role at all,where then students potentially
still do some sort of reflectivetasks. It's just not portrayed
as a portfolio approach, per se,so that they might not be using
a portfolio software orsomething like that to reflect,
(26:08):
but they might still be usingpractices.
I think it really comes down tohaving those practices rather
than needing a separate tool forit because sometimes it can also
just be part of a Moodleassignment or part of the
submissions that the studentsdo, or part of the essay that
they are writing, that one ofthe questions is to reflect in
(26:28):
different words, of course, toreflect on what they had done.
We do also see it outside of theclassroom that portfolios are
being used. Increasingly, I findfor career purposes because also
we as employers, for example, Idon't just want to see a cover
letter and a CV. I really wantto see what they have done. Is
that something that I would liketo have replicated at the team,
(26:52):
or can they work with existingcode? How do they comment their
code?
But even outside of computerscience, if I were to hire a
team member more on theconsulting side of things, I
would very much like to see whattheir presentation skills are,
what their skills are to producelearning material and things
like that. And for that, I thinkthe portfolio is very well
(27:15):
positioned because we can seethose artefacts and then
ideally, also have thatreflection on them, so that we
know why that artefact is inthat showcase, why this
particular piece that they areshowing to us is so important to
them, why we should need to takea look at it, so that it's not
just here are the artefacts. Ileave it up to you to interpret
(27:36):
them, but that there's also thatnarrative around it, why it is
so important for me to showcasethis particular piece here for
that particular job that I'mapplying for or have somebody
applying for.
Tom Worthington (27:49):
I think another interesting area which I'd like
to explore is doing this in veryshort units of learning.
Universities are dabbling withmicro-credentials, which I think
should really bedeci-credentials because they're
like 1/10 of a degree. And thedanger is that those things will
end up like old fashioneddistance education, very, very
(28:12):
structured things. And could youuse portfolios to do those more
flexibly?
The other one is that I've beenhelping out with a few years,
things like hackathons where youspend 72 hours with a team of
students working on something.
So rather than six months or ayear, you take them through
(28:33):
everything very quickly. Socould you use these techniques
in shorter ways? For years, I'vebeen helping out with hackathons
in various areas, and during thepandemic, those switched over to
online delivery and workedextremely well. And some of them
were for the military, so theyweren't just play exercises.
These were defence industrypeople and serving military
(28:56):
officers learning to work in ateam. Could you use the
portfolios as part of that wherethey think about the skills
they're learning? So I thinkthere could be opportunities in
the ideation space for this sortof thing where you would need to
do it quickly and not with somuch structure as you would if
it's, you know, a six monthcourse or a university degree.
(29:18):
This is something where thevocational sector could teach
universities. They're used tosaying, 'What have you already
got? We'll give you credit forall that,' whereas universities
are, still in the main,reluctant to do that and tend to
do it in sort of an ad hocfashion. One of the tasks I was
given a couple of years ago wasto assess students for credit
(29:39):
for prior work experience orstudies or give them exemptions
from courses. They all want toget out of the soft skills sort
of courses, and you have toassess, are their communication
skills good enough and theirteamwork that they don't have
to, but that's kind of seen as,'Oh, we're giving credit, we're
giving exemptions,' and it couldbe structured a bit more.
Kristina Hoeppner (29:58):
Especially also when we get more mature
students who already come with awealth of experience.
Tom Worthington (30:04):
Some of these students, I think, oh, you
should be teaching the course.
They'll say, 'Well, I have threeyears experience as a team
leader at,' you know, 'MicrosoftResearch Lab Bangalore.' And you
think, right, we're going to getyou to help teach you this
course. But there are a wholelot of specialist tools, which
the administrative staff at theuniversity use for assessing
students' experience andqualifications, and a lot of it
(30:26):
has parallels with theePortfolios and how we might use
that in a structured way, andit'd be nice if we could bring
those two ends together and alsoinvolve the students more than
we're just it's not they submita form to apply for something,
but actually get them toexplain. What I suggested that
we introduced a few years ago isthe students have to write a few
(30:50):
paragraphs explaining how theirprior experience and studies are
relevant to what they'relearning now, and therefore why
they should receive exemption orcredit, but we do get them to
write a little thing about that,which is, in effect, reflection.
I think we could do more ofthat.
Kristina Hoeppner (31:08):
I do know you need to run to actually talk to
some of your students, Tom, solet's get to our last three
questions. Which words or shortphrases do you typically used to
describe portfolio work?
Tom Worthington (31:22):
I will use words like job application,
curriculum vitae, samples ofwork, relevant experience, those
sorts of words. So I'm usinglanguage from applying for a
job, not from ePortfolios. Iwill not tell them they're doing
a reflective ePortfolio inparticular because it doesn't
(31:46):
mean anything to them.
The other thing I do is I don'tclaim that what they do will be
useful in their career in thefuture because I'm not convinced
that's true, and also it is notrelevant to the student what
they do in the far distantfuture they want to complete the
course, graduate, get a job. Ifit's not about that, it's not
important to them.
Kristina Hoeppner (32:07):
What tip do you then have for learning
designers or instructors,lecturers who create portfolio
activities?
Tom Worthington (32:15):
Don't create a portfolio activity. Create a
relevant activity whichincorporates assessment. I think
one of the keys is to includeassessment because that's
something students focus on andbreak it up into pieces. Don't
say at the end of this unit ordegree you will have to do a
(32:35):
portfolio because they'll allleave it till the end. So you
have to deliver it in chunks asyou go along and tie it to
whatever they'te learning atthat point in time.
Kristina Hoeppner (32:46):
Full integration into the course and
leaving the lingo go out. Nowlast question, Tom: What advice
do you have for your students oranybody else wanting to create
portfolios?
Tom Worthington (32:59):
I guess the same advice. What do you need to
meet your aims right now? And ifyou're wanting a job, then what
is that particular employerwanting? Tailor your portfolio
to what they're asking for. Youmight have done something you're
very proud of that's very largeand important, but if it's not
(33:19):
relevant, it's a waste of time.
The other part is, rememberextracurricular things you've
done in life, which will beuseful and incorporate those as
well. An example was an academicwho was giving a seminar
applying for a job, and I saidto them, 'So what leadership
experience do you have?' Andthey said, 'I haven't got any.'
(33:41):
'None at all, you've never doneanything where you lead people?'
And they said, 'Oh, well, I wasthe head of the alpine mountain
climbing team at theuniversity.' And I said, 'So
people trusted their lives withyou to lead them up a mountain.
You know, that's very relevantexperience.'
The other thing is, don'tforget, there's a whole lot of
students we haven't talkedabout, who are research students
and where I think they could dowith some of this as well.
(34:04):
Otherwise, they just spend theirlives writing papers, writing a
thesis, and not thinking aboutwhy they're doing this. In some
faculties, sociology,journalism, you will have some
of that self reflection, butparticularly in the science
faculties, they're sort oftrained to leave the human being
out of what they're doing. Ithink it would be useful in
(34:25):
those environments toincorporate more of these
techniques.
Kristina Hoeppner (34:29):
Thank you so much for your time today, Tom,
to talk with me. I like that youhave given us some ideas of how
to incorporate portfoliopractices into classes for STEM
students, in your case, inparticular computer science,
where they might not be sofamiliar with the lingo and just
(34:50):
making the reflective activitiespart of their activities, giving
them strategies and alsoproviding scaffolding in order
to become these reflectivepractitioners without
necessarily knowing thelanguage, so that they are not
inhibited by it.
Tom Worthington (35:09):
Thank you, and hopefully we can meet up at some
conference somewhere.
Kristina Hoeppner (35:12):
Yes, that would be wonderful, after a few
years now, to see each other inperson.
Now, over to our listeners. Whatdo you want to try in your own
portfolio practice? This was'Create. Share. Engage.' with
Tom Worthington. Head to ourwebsite podcast.mahara.org where
you can find resources and thetranscript for this episode.
(35:36):
This podcast is produced byCatalyst IT, and I'm your host,
Kristina Hoeppner, Project Leadand Product Manager of the
portfolio platform Mahara. Ournext episode will air in two
weeks. I hope you'll listenagain and tell a colleague about
our podcast so they cansubscribe. Until then, create,
(35:57):
share, and engage.
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