Paul Raper: Make the portfolio a habit that is serving you

Paul Raper, MSc, is a former engineer turned linguist who studied Teaching English for Specific Purposes at Aston University in the UK with corpus linguistics as his primary subject. Paul now teaches English to engineers at University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and uses the ePortfolio as his primary coaching tool.

In this episode, Paul shares his practice of using SWITCHportfolio, a Mahara-based site for Swiss institutions of higher education, for his own portfolios as well as with student groups, encouraging collaboration and feedback giving.

Click through to the episode notes for the transcript.

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn

Resources

Special Interest Group ePortfolio at eduhub by SWITCH

Subscribe to the monthly newsletter about Mahara and portfolios.

Production information
Production: Catalyst IT
Host: Kristina Hoeppner
Artwork: Evonne Cheung
Music: The Mahara tune by Josh Woodward

Transcript

Kristina Hoeppner 00:05

Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast about portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on integrating portfolios with their education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. My name is Kristina Hoeppner.

Kristina Hoeppner 00:27

Today my guest is Paul Raper, engineer turned linguist who teaches English to engineers at FHNW, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. Currently, he is also the joint leader with Patrick Roth of the SWITCH ePortfolio Special Interest Group. Paul uses SWITCHportfolio, a Mahara site run by SWITCH, and IT and digitisation services provider for Swiss educational institutions.

Kristina Hoeppner 00:54

Paul, thank you so much for joining me my winter and your summer for this chat today. How did you get into using portfolios with your students or maybe even for yourself in the first place?

Paul Raper 01:06

Well, really, actually, it started with me wanting to create a portfolio for myself. And at that time, I was working at the HSR in Rapperswil. We used the same service provider as in SWITCH. They were actually launching at that time SWITCHportfolio to the universities and trying to get people interested in using it. I thought, "Well, why not? Let's have a look. Let's try it out, see how it could work for myself." I was doing at that time, my master's degree in teaching English for Specific Purposes through Aston University in the UK, and it seemed a good idea, a good way of actually collecting information and putting it all into one place. I was also attending quite a few workshops out and about, and I got into the habit over the course of time of actually always logging into my ePortfolio, and in keeping all my notes and all the links and all the information in place. So my ePortfolio kind of started to grow and to mushroom from there. 

Paul Raper 02:07

It was kind of at that point, I began to realise how useful it could be for students, if only they could actually develop the discipline to actually do this kind of thing. Because I think that's part and parcel of what we need as learners is the discipline to actually record things, to keep things, and to logically save them so they can be reused. But at the same time, we also need something which is actually practical, and the ePortfolio to me seemed to be a very practical way of doing that because I could log in anywhere. It didn't matter which device I had, I could have my phone, I could have my laptop, I could even be on somebody else's laptop. But I could always log in. That, for me was the big attraction to it.

Kristina Hoeppner 02:07

We're definitely hearing some more tips from you later on. But one quick tip, Paul, how do you keep adding to your portfolio consistently?

Paul Raper 02:58

For me, it's the practicality of the thing, but also the fact that you can share with other people. So for example, I have particular things that I have a very strong interest in. So I can collate those artefacts, I can collate those pieces of information, and I can then begin to organise it in the ePortfolio. For me, I suppose the biggest tip, the biggest trick, is the fact that the more you use it, the more you become familiar with it. I often hear from students, they will often say to be 'Ah well, yeah, but it's not very this or it's not very that, it's not very practical, it's not very user intuitive, or it's not very useful for me.' And my answer will always be 'Well, yeah but the more you use it, the more you're getting involved with it, the more you engage with it, then actually, the more it becomes logical as to how you do things.' Therefore, the big thing is to keep using things. It's like if you use Word, if you use Word on a regular basis every day of the week, then you think it's the great best thing since sliced bread. If on the other hand, you didn't use it for a month or six months, then you've probably become quite irritated by it. 

Paul Raper 04:05

So I think familiarity with things is the key tip there. Be familiar with it, make it your friend, make it the thing that you want to connect with and to go to place to save some information or as often is the case in my point, I'm sort of thinking 'Now, where did I find that? Where did I look that up on the internet?' I go to my portfolio and I find a page in the portfolio or the collection of pages where that particular thing has been topified and then go in there and that's where it is and I'll find it.

Kristina Hoeppner 04:36

Is it also a bit of making it a habit for the portfolio author?

Paul Raper 04:41

Yes, it is making it a habit. It's making it a habit that you feel is serving you. And I think that's the key thing is that you're not serving it. It's serving you. For me. It's the central place where I can go and even for the students when I'm working with the students. I'll have students who will say to me, 'Oh but why can't we use Teams or why can't be used this and why can't we use that?' And I'll say 'because simply put Mahara is for me, the place where I can collect you all together, put you all into a group, you all upload your work. It doesn't matter how you want to put your work on there, you can put it on there as a Word document, you've put it in there as a Mahara page. You can put it in there as a PDF or whatever you like. But I can go in and I can check your work and give you the feedback and you're all in one place. If I have you all split up working on different platforms and working on different things and working on different places, it becomes a nightmare to keep a record of what's going on.' That's why I use Mahara.

Kristina Hoeppner 05:42

One central repository of space that can be used to collect everything.

Paul Raper 05:46

Yes, but actually in a way more practical in some respects than Moodle. I love Moodle, I've worked with Moodle for almost as long as I've worked with Mahara, perhaps maybe a bit longer actually. And I like Moodle. I've got, you know, lots of experience with using Moodle. But when it comes to actually getting students to work together, Mahara wins out. It's far more a community whereas Moodle is not a community except for the teachers. Moodle is a teacher's tool. Mahara is a learner's tool. That's how I find to differentiate it with the students.

Kristina Hoeppner 06:19

So you've already started talking a little bit about how you're using portfolios and in particular Mahara with your students. Can you tell us more about your use then at your current workplace, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, FHNW?

Paul Raper 06:37

Basically, what I do is I create a collection, which is essentially all of the week by week topics that we're going to cover throughout the English course. That collection is then built into a group and becomes the group's basic resource, their basic go to place as it were the timetable so they know exactly what they're going to be doing over the course of the semester, when they're going to do it, what the expectations are and what they're going to be graded on. 

Paul Raper 07:04

Essentially, when I start the semester off, I will get all the students to sign into Mahara and to register for the group. Then what we do is we create pages. I get them to create a page for themselves and maybe collection, although this part I do leave to them to some degree because I think there has to be a certain amount of freedom, they have to use their own imagination because I like the fact that the students do do that they do become quite imaginative, quite creative in the course of the semester, but they create this basic page, which effectively is their aims, what do they want to get out of the course. And then they have a page which they create, which is going to be their assignment page where they put their coursework. 

Paul Raper 07:49

Effectively, they're all buddied up because they share the page to the group, they don't share it to their favourite person, but they share it to the group. Again, I used to in the old days, I used to say to them, 'Well, buddy up with somebody,' but problems there were twofold. One, sometimes if a student leaves the university because they don't complete the course, then somebody's left without a buddy, and the other thing is that you often found that people will buddy up with somebody who they felt would give them good commentary, good feedback. 'You give me some good feedback, I'll give you some good feedback.' 

Paul Raper 08:19

Basically, by sharing to the group, they can randomly give feedback to whoever they feel they want to give feedback to. Also there are some people who are more creative than other people. And because during the course of the lectures, I will go into the portfolio and I make the portfolio a part of the actual teaching experience, I don't just at that point, say, 'Right, okay, it's all now over to you, just carry on doing your work and get on with it.' We'll go in from time to time, week on week, and we can we'll just go and take a look at somebody's work. I will then pick on somebody and say, 'Look, this is a really good example of what you can do with Mahara.' So for example, by this stage, maybe somebody's figured out how they can add a skin to their portfolio, or somebody's figured out how they can do something else. I'm always surprised because there are a lot of things they work out that I didn't know I could do with Mahara. It's always a question then 'Well, how did you do that? Maybe you could just run this through how you actually achieved that.' And they'll run us through. And they'll often talk very proudly and very passionately of how they figured it out and how it worked out, and how they then integrated that into their work. That then inspires the others to get on with something. 'Yeah, that's a great idea. Maybe I should investigate that. Maybe I should take a look at that.' 

Paul Raper 09:32

Often, there'll be students at the beginning of the course who are, 'Gosh, I don't want to use another new tool. This is terrible. Oh, what a catastrophe.' And by the end of the course, they're actually beginning to see the sense of it. That's the goal. That's what I want them to do. 

Paul Raper 09:46

So effectively, through teaching using the Mahara tool, I achieve excellent results because we're doing a lot of formative feedback. We're not doing summative at the end of the whole thing and then sort of basically doing a feedback at the end, but we're doing feedback all the way through the course. It makes grading a lot, lot easier than doing summative, because at the end, you've got to read everybody's work from scratch and go through it all and give feedback whereas if you've been doing it all the way through your semester, you've actually given most of the feedback that you need to give leading up to the completion of the work. 

Paul Raper 10:19

The students themselves, actually, whereas in the old days, when we came to the questionnaires that students would do on the courses, and they would end up saying, 'Well, I don't think I really learned very much in that course.' So we have this concept land giving, what did I get out of it? And that would always be very, very meagerly ticked off. If you're doing as I do, you do self reflection, so the students actually reflect on what they're doing throughout the course of the semester, by the time they get to that, they actually have to stop and think, 'You know what, I did get something out of that course, I learned quite a lot,' may still be that you get the odd student who doesn't like Mahara, but then you will always get the student who doesn't like anything. So that's natural, that's human nature. 

Paul Raper 11:03

But I make the portfolio a part of the teaching so that it's actually all in there. It's not just a hang on. And I think that's the knack of it. If you make it a hang on, if you make an addition, then they don't like it, then they don't want to use it. But if you actually make it part of the teaching, it becomes part of the coursework, then that's when the acceptance of it is far higher.

Kristina Hoeppner 11:23

I guess also that comes back to what you said earlier, making it a habit, kind of using it on a regular basis so it becomes more commonplace, rather than the exception where you then always need to remember, 'Oh gosh, how do I do this now which I haven't been doing in a month or two month

Paul Raper 11:39

Yes, absolutely. By putting the course materials on there and also some video podcasts a bit like, perhaps what we're doing here, but mine have more to do with how do you do this or how do you do that or what we're going to do in the lesson and so on and so forth.

Kristina Hoeppner 11:53

Paul, earlier, you mentioned that your students are being creative in their portfolios. How do they express that creativity besides applying skins, maybe choosing a different background or a different font and different colours?

Paul Raper 12:09

Actually, that's very interesting point because the number of them that I've seen who have actually really changed the layout and changed the way that they present their entire selves if you like. I mean, we know from Mahara, when you come in, you have the landing page, which then you can go to your own portfolio, and you can look at the way your own picture appears and where all the different blocks are on the page and so on and so forth. And a number of them who go in and starting from that point, they really start to re-layout and reformulate things.

Paul Raper 12:39

Yeah, the images, the layouts, the multiplicity of different media that they bring in is absolutely astonishing, really is astonishing how they do that. Some of them will actually use the to do feature that's in Mahara. So they'll actually build in their to do list. And then you see that will be checked off as they go through doing each part of the whole process. Some will actually come up with their aims that way, they actually integrating into collections, sometimes quite cluttered with some and with others, it's really neat, they use the navigation block. So to put a navigation bar down the left hand side or whatever. I actually had one who actually introduced tabs. I'm sort of like, 'How did you do that? [laughs] That that was really nifty.

Kristina Hoeppner 13:26

Since your students work in groups and give each other feedback on their portfolios, how are you scaffolding that process?

Paul Raper 13:35

Effectively, again, by including the portfolio into the class, we can look at who's actually been looking at who else's pages. And we can also look at who's actually quite a common inspiration to other students. But actually, by basically pointing out to students, they get graded on all the aspects of the work they're doing. So they get a grade on giving peer feedback, they get a grade for doing self reflection, they get a grade for their assignment work, they get a grade for the portfolio design. 

Paul Raper 14:04

So effectively, what I do is I give them some criteria of things that I expect them to actually include into their processes. So feedback, for example, I don't want to just see 'Yeah, you've done a great job,' or 'I really liked your portfolio.' I want to see why you like so and so's portfolio. I want to see reasons from things that perhaps maybe you would want to take away for your own portfolio or things that you feel that could improve the portfolio. So for example, if something is not logical, if the pages aren't logically organised, there's no logical start, there's no logical end, and there's no bit in the middle that actually really ties up to things, then these are things that you should actually be looking at commenting on. 

Paul Raper 14:46

I don't look for the students to give comment on specifically each other's work because grammatically and on a vocabulary level and on a structural level that's my job as an English teacher. What I do like I plan to do is to look at each other's portfolios and actually comment on what they think are really good points about portfolio designs and things. And that is actually featured into each of the lessons. So as things start to develop, we start to look through particular points, and I might make an odd comment about somebody's portfolio and suggest perhaps maybe some other people could go in and have a look and make some suggestions about it. So it's actually a part of the lesson work.

Kristina Hoeppner 15:25

So how are your students taking that on giving each other feedback and not just the more superficial part, but really digging a bit deeper and supporting the other students in their learning process?

Paul Raper 15:38

That is very much by the criteria that I set for the grades. So that essentially, there shouldn't be anybody left out in the process. That is an essential part of the whole system, the whole way we're working through the portfolio. If there's a student who appears to be left out of the loop, as it were, why is that person left out of the loop? It could be actually that that person has left the course. And so therefore, there's no progress going on. And that's something that I actively chase up. But effectively, we're going through this on a week by the basis. And one thing that I would say that I do encourage with the students is that they do make this regular checking in and doing some work on their portfolio. So by actually them knowing that I'm watching what they're doing, they have a little bit of an incentive to - I'm not trying to embarrass them because that's one thing I try not to do. I try not to embarrass anybody, but if it's obvious that somebody is not really getting into it, then I will quietly go and pay them a visit and say, 'Excuse me, but I've noticed that you don't seem to be getting on particularly well with this. What's the problem?' And then maybe they open up and say, 'Well, yeah, actually, I'm having a few problems' based on having a few problems with that, and then we'll go through it privately.

Kristina Hoeppner 16:53

Paul, what would you like to be able to do with portfolios that you currently maybe can't yet really fully do?

Paul Raper 17:00

The one thing that I would really love to be able to include into the portfolios is the competencies. I think one of the things this is something that you, Catalyst, and myself and Urs maybe need to look at - Urs is from SWITCHportfolio - we need to look at is how we can actually do this.

Kristina Hoeppner 17:20

Mhh. SmartEvidence can definitely be used just on an institutional level because SWITCHportfolio is multi tenanted. So they are several educational institutions on it, but we can certainly limit a competency framework just to FHNW in order to make it only available to your students.

Paul Raper 17:36

Because that's as I say, I think for the students that would give them that extra dimension. And it would give them a bit more engagement into actually going in and looking at other people's work and realising that, you know, has that person actually fulfilled that or not fulfilled that?

Kristina Hoeppner 17:50

Paul, do actually others at FHNW also use portfolios so that your students can continue in their practice?

Paul Raper 17:59

I always make the point to the students that the portfolio is there for them, it is not a teacher driven tool. It is a student driven tool. That is the big difference between the portfolio and Moodle. Once you finish with a course in Moodle that's the end of it, they have nothing more to do with it. But with Mahara, SWITCHportfolio, they have this continuality to it. So they can actually go on using it, they can use it for other things apart from just simply using it for English. 

Paul Raper 18:28

I often get asked by people how on earth do you use it to teach English because a lot of people, colleagues, for example, they feel that the only way you learn English is by doing quizzes and doing little tests and doing gap fills and so on and so forth. And I try to explain to colleagues, actually no, using a portfolio to teach English is a really, really efficient tool. Probably more efficient than many others because they're learning by doing, they're not learning by simply completing fictitious, made up sentences, which may or may not work for them. So they're actually doing something which is very productive and very much focused on their own experiences. 

Paul Raper 19:08

One specific area where I noticed great, great potential with it is in my Engineering Writing, which is open to the students to be able to choose their own document types that they can create. So they're not locked into actually having to produce a standard document. So it may be you have one student who wants to do a report and other student wants to do a technical newsletter and other student wants to write specifications, and somebody else wants to write a user manual. The most teaching environments trying to teach that sort of multiplicity of different genres would be almost impossible. But within the SWITCHportfolio domain, it is really, really easy to be able to work with that and to allow students that level of freedom. And again, that's why I would like to be able to work with the competency, the SmartEvidence, because I think there's great potential to be able to take that into that particular area where you have this multiplicity of different document types. 

Paul Raper 20:07

But the students, it's made clear to them, this is yours. This is yours to keep. This is yours to take with you after you leave the FHNW, and you may use it somewhere else. You can't do that with Microsoft's Teams, for example, because it's very specific to the FHNW. So you can't actually take out from the FHNW the things that you've actually stored it the FHNW.

Kristina Hoeppner 20:31

The nice thing about SWITCHportfolio is then also that alumni can continue using it pretty much as lifelong portfolio, right?

Paul Raper 20:38

Yes, exactly. That's the point that I try to make to the students. You leave the FHNW, this is a life long learning tool. This is yours for life. That's something which SWITCH have very kindly and very generously offered to the students. This is something that we really have to work on trying to bring across far more clearly to students and to other lecturers that this tool exists.

Kristina Hoeppner 21:01

Yeah. Paul, you've been in the portfolio world for a while now. You have used portfolios for yourself, with your students, you are using it for teaching, and you're also the joint leader of the SWITCH ePortfolio Special Interest Group (SIG). What trends have you observed around portfolios over the years in all of these different areas?

Paul Raper 21:22

I think one of the big trends that I've seen is the move in terms of people just looking at portfolios as a relatively static tool that you just put things into it, and you grade it at the end, when it's been completed, to actually physically using it as a teaching tool. And actually using it on a week by week basis rather than using it on a 'This is the thing I want you to use, you put your stuff into it, and at the end of it will grade it.' And I think that was one of the big things that we always kind of thought of at the beginning when we started out with SWITCHportfolio and using portfolios that that's how it would be to having this question which was being asked by colleagues at various SIG meetings that we would have, 'How can I actually physically use it for teaching?' And the number of different strategies that people came up with; I can remember one that I think you were actually at this particular SIG meeting where we had a discussion about creating templates for the students because the feeling was that if you gave the students a template that saves them some time, that got them started. And I actually tried working with templates. And yes, some students, they quite like the idea of having a template because it was something that gave them the starting point, other students kind of figured that that shoehorned them or that shackled them to having to work to that, and they preferred the freedom to be able to go off and do what they wanted to do. 

Paul Raper 22:52

So I don't think there's any one silver bullet that actually solves a problem. If there is one tip that I would give to people it is really use it, use it, use it. And that is I think a biggest trend I've seen moving forward is the fact that we use it more continuously. We use it as an alternative to a coursebook. We use it as an alternative to your notebook. We use it as an alternative to the classroom PowerPoint because actually when I go into the classroom that will be the first thing that's on the board is Mahara, the group, and we look through what we're doing in this particular week, where we're at, what we're going to do next. It may be that PowerPoint is embedded into a page for that particular week. Everything is in Mahara. Absolutely everything, even planning for presentations, which some students have to do a presentation. The Excel sheet that actually has the dates and the timetables and everything else, that's all in Mahara. So they know exactly where they have to go. And I think that's about the only thing that may be slightly missing from Mahara is a calendar, but you can work around it, and I do work around it by embedding the spreadsheet from Microsoft in there. 

Paul Raper 24:03

I would say the biggest trend that I've noticed over the course of time is the rather than Mahara being sort of like an add-on and something which only the students use and they get given them, they just go off and do work on it, to actually using it and integrating into the classroom and making it a classroom tool. That actually is perhaps maybe the biggest trend I've noticed.

Kristina Hoeppner 24:23

That's a really great trend to also point out and also to show how flexibly portfolios can be used so that yes, some students might like a template so that they know where they need to get started, and others are proficient enough or just want to try things out differently so that we can actually give them that freedom, give them that flexibility yet also scaffold their practice if that is needed. 

Kristina Hoeppner 24:50

That's why for me the template is not the house that you see at the end. For me it is more the frame and then the individual portfolio authors can still decide where they want to put the walls, where they want to put the windows, what sort of wallpaper or paint they want to use so that it is more of an invitation to get started to know what is expected, but not necessarily to give them everything step by step and bullet pointed. 

Kristina Hoeppner 25:14

That is, I think also where the what we call 'Placeholder' block comes in really nicely that was developed for Dublin City University originally and part of an idea that they had, and Lisa Donaldson reminded me that she wanted to call it 'Magic' block because it puts a block onto a page, a section for the portfolio, but it doesn't actually tell you whether it should be text, image, or video so that students can still decide on their own how they want to represent that evidence, but they know kind of the idea of what is expected there.

Paul Raper 25:47

For me, that's the huge beauty behind Mahara is that it is a reflection of the individual who creates the portfolio. It is a reflection or it is an image of their own creation. It is not a prescriptive output. And that's the one thing I've always wanted to get away from is this whole concept of prescription. Having worked as an examiner for Cambridge for years and years and years, we always used to give students these prescriptive tasks that they had to complete. And they had to, you know, use certain particular words and certain particular formulas and certain this and certain that. And the great thing with using Mahara is to be able to say to students, 'No, this is not about prescription. I'm not telling you how to do this. All I'm telling you is I want you to use the tool, and I want you to use your imagination. And I want to see a process' because the one thing I'm interested in more than anything else, even more than the actual finished product is how did you get from A to B? How did you get there? What was the process that you went through? Even if they use ChatGPT. Okay, you use ChatGPT to actually produce that piece of text. How did you check it? How did you validate it? How did you make sure it's what you wanted to say and that it's true? And I want to see all these processes actually intertwined, interweaved into the actual final piece at the end of it. But for me, it's important how you get from A to B. That's the learning. That's where the learning takes place.

Kristina Hoeppner 27:16

That kind of really already now takes us into our quick answer round or quick question round. Which three words or short phrases do you use to describe portfolio work?

Paul Raper 27:28

I mean, for me, portfolio work is about collaboration. It's about using your imagination, and it's about using a little bit of your fantasy.

Kristina Hoeppner 27:37

Did you say fantasy?

Paul Raper 27:38

Yes. 

Kristina Hoeppner 27:39

How does that come in?

Paul Raper 27:40

So I want them to show or to demonstrate a learning process. Again, I don't restrict them. I won't say to them, 'You can't use ChatGPT or you can't use Deepl or you can't use this or you can't use that. I love to see the multiplicity of different approaches that students use and adopt in order to go through that learning process. We're all individuals. And I know people will say there's no such thing as learning styles, but I think we all do have a particular way in which we prefer to learn. And so whether that's using pictures, whether it's using images, some students have even introduced Miro board in there. Some have used hand drawn graphics, they've used videos they've made, they've used YouTube video link to, all sorts of things. I don't want to restrict their fantasies, they're using their imagination as to how they can actually develop an idea and actually present it and get to the end goal. So very much it's about collaboration, they work together, very much about that working together, stimulating the process, and ultimately, yes, there's going to be a certain amount of fantasy. There's some fantastical portfolios that students produce.

Kristina Hoeppner 28:56

That's awesome to see the imagination come through with engineering or any other students in the context that you're using portfolios. Paul, which tip do you have for learning designers or instructors who create portfolio activities or who might be wanting to start out?

Paul Raper 29:13

If you're wanting to start out using a portfolio as a teacher, then my biggest tip is to make a good well structured set of instructions of what it is you want, what it is you're expecting the students to do, and always built into mine are a few how to videos for basic tasks like, how do I create a page? How do I put an artefact on a page? How do I share the page and things like that? So basically, if you're starting out, you've got to be clear with the students what it is you're expecting the students to be able to do. And you've got to be clear about why you want them to do it. Because the biggest stumbling block you'll have from students is 'Why do I have to do this? Why can't I use this? Why can't I use that?' Be clear why you want to use the portfolio. That's the most, most important thing. 

Paul Raper 30:04

Equally speaking, reward the students for using it, which is why 5% of the grade is for the design of the portfolio. Reward the students for engaging, for actually sharing their ideas with each other. Reward students for things like self reflection and make the self reflection a reasonable grade because otherwise, they'll do it very superficially. You want them to be really engaged, and you really want them to actually put some thought into it. 

Paul Raper 30:32

Approximately 25% of the grade is for the first assignment, 25% of the grade is for the second assignment, 25% is for the self reflection, and the remaining bit that's left in there, is divided up between portfolio design and peer feedback. But you have to give the students that reward. You have to actually make it worth their while doing it. Once they see it's worth their while doing it, once they see why you want them to do it, and so on, then that's the next thing. And by the way, if you're going to do it, and you're going to do it, because you want to give formative feedback to your students, you have to be disciplined as the person using the portfolio to actually go in there and do that. And that's one of the things that I made the point. I will do the feedback at a very minimum, every two weeks, sometimes I'll do even as much as every week to start with just to get them really going on it. But once they really going on it, I will give them feedback every two weeks, which maybe sounds like an awful lot of work, and it is an awful lot of work. But if they're expecting that amount of work from me, then they understand that I'm expecting something back from them, too.

Kristina Hoeppner 31:34

And it also keeps them in 'Okay, I've written my portfolio, I've written my reflections, I'm getting the feedback. So I can continue reflecting on what has been said, how you're going to incorporate that.' Because if they then have to wait until the end of the semester for your feedback, then they might also not really see why they should be writing continually. And that is not just feedback from yourself, but also from the other students if they get that on a regular basis, right? 

Paul Raper 31:58

That's right. 

Kristina Hoeppner 31:58

That's already a wealth of not just one tip. I think there were at least four or five tips for instructors in there. So it's a veritable treasure trove for it. Now, one last final tip, Paul, you've already shared tips for portfolio authors, but do you have one more piece of advice for the students of any age who are creating portfolios?

Paul Raper 32:20

I think if I were a student, and I'm using a portfolio, my tip is basically as the student, I need to be engaged. I need to be dedicated, I need to be motivated, and I need to have the discipline to go in and do it. But then don't be afraid to ask the person who is supporting you, your mentor, to give you feedback. And don't be afraid either to maybe hassle that person a little bit. I always say to my students, it may be that you put a comment on your page, asking me for some feedback, and by the way, please, please, please do not send the emails separated from the ePortfolio. Put the comment on the page because that way I know exactly whose page it is, and where I need to go and answer the comment. Put the comment on the page and don't be afraid to give me a little bit of a reminder. But if you're reminding me, be polite.

Kristina Hoeppner 33:14

Paul, thank you so much for this wonderful way through your years of using portfolios and also sharing so many very practical tips in how to use it as a lecturer, but also how to engage the students, how to ask them to collaborate, and also how to also how to encourage them to let their imagination flow through their portfolio and not just have a run of the mill learning management activity where they might only think in individual words or sentences, but really look at the context, what they are doing, reflect on that, and also not necessarily in writing, but also trying out different formats to figure out what is working for them, where they might want to dig deeper, where they might want to learn more, and which areas they already know a lot about. So thank you so much.

Paul Raper 34:09

And I think there's a terrific amount that they learn from each other. There is a terrific amount, and there's a lot of takeaways that they get from each other. So that's where really where the power of Mahara comes in is where they can actually share and learn from each other and pick up tips and hints from each other rather than just simply copying physical work.

Kristina Hoeppner 34:28

Thank you so much for this final tip. 

Kristina Hoeppner 34:31

Now over to our listeners. What do you want to try in your own portfolio practice? This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Paul Raper. 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 Hoeppner, Project Lead and Product Manager of the portfolio platform Mahara. Our next episode will air in two weeks. I hope you'll listen again and tell a colleague about it so they can subscribe. Until then create, share, and engage.