a sharing friendly portfolio, or a portfolio friendly place to share?
Posted by: doug in Educause, Teaching and LearningDrawing on Technology: A Blueprint for Adopting E-Portfolios got me thinking about an alternative blueprint for LessonShare. Some of the early feedback from TAs on LessonShare has focused on “credit.” Will I get credit for my work? Will my course coordinator be able to see my contributions? If I update a lesson, how will I get credit for my updates?
In approaching LessonShare, we had rather idealistically assumed that TAs would find intrinsic value in sharing their teaching materials with colleagues, and were surprised to find that for many, the main interest lied in amassing a personal tally of their contributions to the department - in a sense - a portfolio.
As I took a look at the portfolio projects in this session, and saw how each teacher’s contributions were beneficial for the cohort of teachers in training, I began to wonder if our central focus with LessonShare (sharing), might need a bit of a remix.
The initial step in this direction should be fairly straight-forward. The “My Contributions” view that we developed for our Mexican Migration Portfolio should provide a nice foundation for something similar in LessonShare. Some of the next potential steps, however, might prove more challenging.
A collection of every lesson you’ve ever created or modified is far from a portfolio. To illustrate this one of the presenters made the distinction between the working portfolio, containing each and every contribution, and the “get a job portfolio” which is the result of sifting and winnowing. While I can imagine a couple of ways to approach the challenge of helping a user find and collect their best work, I don’t think we have a model in place for this. We also don’t have a bridge from LessonShare to a more public facing version of the “get a job” portfolio, something that would, I think, prove to be highly motivating for TAs.
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November 13th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
As a former TA, I think that connecting LessonShare and a portfolio for the job search makes perfect sense. It would motivate TAs to contribute, as you say, and it would also help them begin thinking in advance about what they will have to do to apply for jobs, which is very difficult to do at the last minute when also trying to finish up a dissertation. Perhaps it would begin to provide some support for how to develop a teaching portfolio, since this support may not be available in all departments.
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Thanks for your comments and your perspective on this issue. I’m starting to think that developing some “views” in LessonShare that help TAs keep track of their contributions, and potentially be used as a starting point for a portfolio project, is exactly the way to go!