Kristina Höppner 00:05
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast on portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on integrating portfolios into their education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara team at Cataly IT. My name is Kristina Höppner, and I look forward to speaking with Christine Dülfer today.
Christine works at the Berufliche Schulen des Landkreises Waldeck-Frankenberg in Korbach und Bad Arolsen, which are vocational schools in Germany. She's a Business Administration and English teacher and a team leader at the Hessische Lehrkräfteakademie in the media department, responsible for Moodle trainers. For a number of years now, Christine has been involved in the German Mahara community and supports the organisers of Mahara Hui Germany with her facilitation and baking skills. Thank you for chatting with me today, Christine.
Christine Dülfer 01:02
It's great to be there. Thank you.
Kristina Höppner 01:04
To get us started in our conversation today, Christine, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do?
Christine Dülfer 01:12
Well, as you already said in the introduction, I'm a teacher for Business and Administration and English at a vocational school in the middle of Germany. I've been doing that for about 20 years now. I think it's about 10 years ago that I started using Moodle and Mahara in my lesson plans and my teaching and my students like it.
Kristina Höppner 01:37
Why did you actually get started using portfolios with your students?
Christine Dülfer 01:42
Well, I think I have to give you a bit more background on that. One of the classes I teach is a 'Fachoberschule', which is equivalent to a vocation A level. This class consists or this school form consists of two years, and during the first year, the students do an internship in a company for three days a week, and two days a week they have classes in college. During that internship, we want them to well, write a report, and for many years, when I had to read written reports and mark written reports, and they were always very much the same, because they were kind of handed down from the former student to the next. So when a new student came to the company, they found the old report on the computer, they just tweaked it a bit, and handed it in. I found that rather boring and not very enriching, and then the report was just for myself. So the only person reading it was myself and the student.
The fantastic thing about this 'Fachoberschule' is that all the students do their internship in different companies. So what I wanted to have was a way of sharing their work experience without actually visiting them in the company because you can't take a whole group of students, take them to the company, and have a tour there. That's not possible. That's where Mahara comes in. So I decided to get rid of the old kind of the assignment so they don't have to write report any longer. What they do instead is they do a Mahara portfolio where they, for example, introduce the company they do their training with, and then they have one task where they have to explain and evaluate a task that they have to do during their internship.
With Mahara they can share their experiences and their portfolios with the other students. So we can visit each other in the other companies without actually going there. That was my first Mahara project, and it's still running and very successful.
Kristina Höppner 03:52
That is fantastic and kind of getting away from handing down my assignment solution, getting the same grade, to personalising the learning and making sure that you actually get to know what the students really think about the internship. How did the students take that on and then also, if you have to talk with the employers when you change things around from a report to a portfolio that might have even been a bit more reflective?
Christine Dülfer 04:21
Well, I would like to answer the second part of your question first. So we have some really big employers like the Continental Tire company, the Horizont Group; they do fences, for example, they do the fences for the Kruger National Park in South Africa. So we have some really big employers. One of the tasks I wanted to give my students was to actually do a tutorial for an administrative task and that involved using pictures and their camera, maybe their mobile phone, and we had to ask the companies and talk to them. Some of them don't want the students to actually take pictures in the company. For example, the Continental company, you're not allowed to even take your mobile phone or your smartphone onto the premises.
What we did to deal with this was that we actually set the task accordingly. So when they do a tutorial, then for example, they can do a tutorial on how to put a delivery note in SAP. So they could basically take a screenshot of a delivery note, and then they can take screenshots of the SAP. So they don't necessarily need to take pictures in the company and still can do this tutorial. We don't want to see any prices or delivery times or customer names or anything. That is part of the task. Part of the task is 'make sure that there's no sensitive data in your portfolio.'
We also decided that before they can hand in the portfolio, the company has to read it and agree that it can be published. It was an issue in the beginning, but then when they saw the first tutorials, they were really excited and Continental, for example, who was not very supportive regarding this tutorial task in the beginning, they are now great fans of it. They use it for their intern training.
Kristina Höppner 06:23
That is a fantastic outcome.
Christine Dülfer 06:25
Yeah, that is wonderful.
Kristina Höppner 06:27
So you're also changing company culture a bit through the activities that you're setting.
Christine Dülfer 06:32
I wouldn't go that far [laughter], but I think regarding the dual system, and the trainees they have, they didn't use self made tutorials before. I think definitely something new that we might have helped implementing.
Kristina Höppner 06:49
Christine, you just mentioned 'Duale System', the dual system or dual delivery in English. Can you briefly explain what that is because I think that is something pretty special that the German vocational school system has.
Christine Dülfer 07:03
I think in many countries, when you want to work in a certain job, you just - you go to college or university, you do your degree, and then when you start in the company, you basically do training on the job. We do have that in Germany as well, but not very often. It is more common that you have the dual system, which is basically a system where you have different jobs. For example, when you work in a company, as an office worker, you can make a special training, and this special training enables you not to only work in a specific company, but it's recognised nationwide. So when you do a training, for example, with our school and one of our companies, and to make your degree, you can apply for jobs all over Germany. If you have a certain degree, they will know that you've got a general training for a special job. The trainings last usually between two and three years, and you spent most of your time in the company, but you usually spend one to two days a week in college as well.
Kristina Höppner 08:19
How do the portfolio then fit into that whole system? Because students keep their portfolios, while they are on internship, but do you then also give them a grade for it? Is it for assessment or evaluation purposes? Or how do you then work with that portfolio at school?
Christine Dülfer 08:41
What my students do is they create a portfolio, for example for their internship, and they share it with their classmates and also with the students that are coming the year afterwards. We have a group where we have the 'Best off,' so if someone's really proud of his or her portfolio, you can join that group and your portfolio will be in there forever. I have portfolios in there of students who have left the school like five years ago. That is wonderful. For the internship, which is a full time schooling, the portfolio actually is an assignment. It's marked. It is also recognised as a written assignment. So they write fewer class tests. It's replacing part of the class test, part of the written exams that they have in the course of the academic year. I think it's also a great way for students to show how they learn. Many teachers at our school give the students kind of a sample for the portfolio. I think it's called 'Seite' now. I think in former times you called it 'view'.
Kristina Höppner 09:49
Oh 'Seite'. Yes, the page.
Christine Dülfer 09:51
We give them a sample. With the sample, we offer them support because part of it is, for example, 'what I want to learn' and another part is 'how am I going to achieve my learning result'. Then they can set milestones, and we want them to basically show how they learn, not just the final outcome, but we want to see the process.
Kristina Höppner 10:15
Do the students then take you up on that invitation to reflect on their learning and not just summarise what they have done? And do you also feel like you've had an impact on how students rethink their own learning?
Christine Dülfer 10:32
I think for some of the students, it really made a difference. The reflecting part is also part of the assignment. So they have to reflect their learning result in their Mahara page. It's difficult to assess whether they're really reflecting or whether they're writing what they know I would like to read. But even if they write what I would like to read, they still show that they are able to reflect in a way.
I have a couple of students whose learning was really changed by Mahara. I had one student, I think it's like six years ago, who fell in love with Mahara. He did everything with Mahara, and when he applied at Bentley Paderborn, he also shared his Mahara view with them, and they liked it. The portfolio was one of the enclosures in his written application. So he sent this in addition to the written application, and they liked it, and he really liked Mahara. When he had to give a talk in class, he preferred to videotape it at home and create a Mahara view. So we can watch the video. One of the reasons might have been that he wasn't that good in English, and with the videotaping, it took him a lot of time, but he was able to deliver a better presentation than he would have done if you had to do it in class.
Yeah, I think for some students Mahara really makes a difference. For others, it's just 'Okay, it's another assignment I have to make.' But what they all enjoy is looking at each others' pages. So for example, the first task that my internship class does is that they have to create a page for the company profile of the company they do their training with. Then they share it within the group. Students are always curious and want to know what other people, especially other students do. So they look at each others' portfolios and talk about it, and I think it's a great way of getting an insight into different companies.
Kristina Höppner 12:47
Christine, you've been using portfolios for a number of years, as you say, at the Berufliche Schulen, have you seen any trends come and go or has portfolio work been steady pretty much the same in your environment?
Christine Dülfer 13:03
When I think about my classes, there's definitely been a development. We started really small, and especially regarding the learning arrangements and the tasks that we set the students. The more you use portfolios, the more ideas you get, how you can use it, and the more creative you get. It's a bit like cooking. You know, in the beginning, you have the beginner's cookbook, and you just do your scrambled eggs, and then once you're comfortable with that, you try and experiment. It's a bit like that with portfolios.
I find that my students tend to do more podcasts, more audio files. They also like to well do slideshows. In the very beginning, we just had kind of one take video shots. Now they start and they cut their videos and they edit their skin and they arranged things a bit more. I'm not sure whether that is due to the portfolio work or because in social media we do that as well. 10 years ago, nobody, I think hardly anybody, was talking about Insta[gram] or Tik Tok, and many things have changed in the last years. That's told in the portfolio.
Last year, I had a student - I wanted them to do some creative thingy, and he said, "What, can't I do that with Tik Tok?" And I was like, "Do I really have to think about the Tik Tok account?" and I said, "Well, if you want to do that, record the screen and implement it in Mahara because for college, we're officially not allowed to use Tik Tok or Insta. We have the Hessisches Schulportal and we have Schul-Moodle and Schul-Mahara. These are the systems that we're allowed to use. We're not to encourage students to use other platforms, like Facebook. Sometimes it's a bit difficult because the kids want to do things which are hip and trendy, and then I have to say, well, but we have to obey certain rules in college.
Kristina Höppner 15:16
Germany definitely takes data privacy and data security really, really important.
Christine Dülfer 15:22
Very important.
Kristina Höppner 15:23
It's good for students to learn that. What I'm really happy about is though, that your students do more audio recordings and don't just type text and want to work with the media so that they can bring all of that together in their online portfolio.
Christine Dülfer 15:40
For the Industrial Management Assistants, the 'Industriekaufleute', these are basically administrative workers in companies that produce goods, I teach business English with them, and I wanted them to do a tour of the company. So one of the tasks I set them was I wanted them to draw a map of the company and then take us on a tour, and they took us on an audio tour. That was fun.
Kristina Höppner 16:08
Yeah, definitely sounds like fun. Christine, we're getting towards the end of our chat today.
Christine Dülfer 16:14
Oh, are we already?
Kristina Höppner 16:15
Morning for me, late night for you. So I have three final questions for you in our quick answer round. Which words do you use to describe portfolio work?
Christine Dülfer 16:26
Okay, I would say it's learn, design, show, and reflect. That is a bit like the PDCA model: Plan, Do, Check, Act, which is the system that we use as a basis for our learning. I think portfolios can do that. You can show how you learn, you can design, you can be creative, you can reflect, and you can show your results, and share them.
Kristina Höppner 16:56
Now onto the second question. What tip do you have for teachers, learning designers, or any other sort of instructor who create portfolio activities for ther learners?
Christine Dülfer17:10
Start small, and every little step matters. You have to start small because you have to make sure that you pick up your students where they are, and then you take them with you. They need a good start. Once they've had a good start, they will just go ahead and become really creative and have a lot of fun. But you have to make sure that the start is really well planned, and they're supported, and they're not left on their own. So in the beginning, baby steps, a nd then in end, the giant steps is what the students do on their own.
Kristina Höppner 17:45
Now, as the last question, what advice do we have for portfolio authors, our learners?
Christine Dülfer 17:53
That's very easy: Just give it a go. You can always change it afterwards.
Kristina Höppner 17:57
Thank you so much for sharing how you use portfolios at your vocational school in Germany.
Christine Dülfer 18:03
Thank you for having me.
Kristina Höppner 18:05
I love hearing those stories from the disciplines where portfolios may not immediately be expected because often we hear of course from teacher portfolios or nurses or other healthcare professionals using portfolios, but it is really good to see that portfolios definitely also have made a foray into a lot of vocational disciplines and seeing how that can help students not just in their studies, but also in understanding what they're doing in their internships and really reflect on that and learn from their experiences.
Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Christine Dülfer today. Head to our website podcast.mahara.org where you can find links and the transcript for this episode.
This podcast is produced by Catalyst IT, and I'm your host, Kristina Höppner, Project Lead and Product Manager of the ePortfolio platform Mahara. Our next episode will air in two weeks. I hope you'll listen again and tell a colleague about our podcasts so they can subscribe. Until then, create, share, and engage.
