Professional learning (PL) & Instructional support for using eportfolios

Professional Learning Plan (PLP)

 Instructional Plan

Instructional leadership and instructors must take into account several considerations when planning or implementing instructional technology learning environments to a course.

Some of the primary considerations for instructional technology begin with, “What is our purpose? What are we trying to accomplish?”

For example, are we talking about day-to-day operations and support for student learning in a computer science course? A writing lab? Teacher instructional support? Different classes will have different needs.

If we are talking about academic instructional support we must determine what available resources we have. Are there going to be back-to-back classes of different sizes using the same equipment – do we have enough resources? Do students have security credentials to login to the computers – is this a beginning class with freshman the first day of class or a class of seniors in the last grading period of the year? Is the appropriate software and resources loaded and available for the course?

Instructional design is done best when all the infrastructure questions have been asked and accounted for. In an ideal setting, they will be. For this discussion, we’ll assume the instructor has all the infrastructure they need, and there no external issues to distract from learning.

Many external elements influence student learning (Bates, p.312-318) and we have researched many examples and theories over the course of the DLL program about those elements – there is not one single theory on design practice that is a magic bullet to address every situation.

The challenge for all levels of instructional leadership is to be adaptive and flexible and I think most importantly – listen to what your front-line instructors have to say and be supportive of their efforts and provide constructive help as needed. Secondly, encourage and facilitate your departmental instructional staff to collaborate and pool resources.

In terms of design theories, I advocate for a constructivist approach to instruction with the application of active, experiential and authentic student learning. My experience is that sometimes teachers get lost in the woods of standardized curriculum that they can’t always see opportunities to teach in different ways. An example, could be in a journalism course, students are out reporting, writing and publishing stories instead of just reading about current events or conceptual or rhetorical ideas.

An article and passage I discovered and cited in earlier courses, “Grounded Practice and the Design of Constructivists Learning Environments” by Hannafin, Hannafin, Land, & Oliver, (1997, p. 107) deconstructs that the overall goal in designing instruction is to provide an environment with the resources for learners to create and control their work and gain understanding. I would add that learners do need guidance or coaching to synthesize information within certain parameters to keep coherence to the lesson.

Active learning environments are a good way to engage students and I think has a secondary benefit of helping teachers control classroom management. It is a bit like holding a wolf by the ears, it can be loud and boisterous, but it can also be fun and allow a variety of learning activities to manifest.

Implementation

The implementation of my UbD started as a conversation with my colleague Andy Coughlan, director of student publications at Lamar University, about requiring mandatory e-portfolios for all students that contribute to the University Press for academic credit or that are on the student payroll.

Andy Coughlan and I have very copacetic ideas about portfolios in general and he allowed me to fully develop the e-Portfolio requirement. We consulted with the Communication department chair, Natalie Tindall, and the Dean of Fine Arts and Communication, Derina Holtzhausen, and both agree it was a great idea and to provide reports and results of the program. Both the dean and chair added that they would like to use my plan as a model innovation for the Communication Department. In addition, the dean and the chair convened a strategy committee to develop an overall communication department innovation plan and I was asked to participate and submit proposals.

From that point, I developed the first generation of the e-Portfolio plan and Coughlan and I implemented it in Summer 2016 with 3130 Practicum and 4361 Advertising Internship and other 4300-level internship programs. Coughlan supervised and monitored the practicum students and I the internship program. We started off with 12 total students for the summer (comprising Summer I and II, and the mini-sessions).

The framework was presented in a blended environment using a shared Google Drive for class resources, a private Facebook group for discussions and announcements, and free WordPress for students to build their e-portfolios.

A challenge was the short time period between the end of the first generation and the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester. Adjustments I made were to post a more detailed syllabus outlining permissible artifacts and links to other successful e-portfolios. We retained the Facebook private group and chat.

Fall 2016 marked the first responses from students using their e-portfolios for employment applications with students from the first and second-generation reporting. Primarily students applying for positions that had a strong writing or graphic component were required by prospective employers to submit a portfolio of some kind, but all emphasizing digital access to the information.

The third generation was for Spring 2017 and we began to assess whether to create a Blackboard version of the e-portfolio program and to expand it as a departmental-wide initiative. We kept the Facebook private page and chat along with the shared Google Drive. Students accessed the Google Drive less in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 preferring to research their own questions about WordPress and other platforms or meeting in small groups in the Perkins Newsroom for peer-to-peer tutoring and collaboration.

The Spring semester began with 18 students contributing to the UP and required to create e-portfolios and all 18 students completed the semester with a minimum of six posted artifacts. I am still gathering information from graduates about their employment experiences with their e-portfolios.

Learning delivery

 Online learning can be a valuable resource for a variety of learners. It serves the opportunity to learn somewhat at our own pace, with some exceptions, notably the five-week class cycle. The online environment provides the opportunity for a broad range of research resources and topics, however from discussions from current and former students, there is some discussion of concerns to the retention and ability to process copious amounts of information in so short of a period of time.

The long-range challenge is the retention and use of course related information over time and how it relates to their work environments. One of the criticisms of online learning and e-portfolio use is that the frequency of use tends to cycle down as more time passes from when a student leaves a course (Harapnuik, 2016). I think for the students in the course that are actively or routinely designing courses, the effects and relevance of the program will be longer lasting because it will be assumed they are using the program knowledge on a more frequent basis and that action is self-sustaining function.

From my perspective, I already see how I’m using this information in a day to day basis and I presume that will not change, but only develop more as I’m able to fine tune what I’m doing and with the opportunity to expand my knowledge and abilities into other courses.

The model that online learning seems to serve (especially if you watch the marketing campaigns) the prospective audience is that of older, employed learners seeking to acquire skills to achieve workplace mobility or to re-train from obsolescent occupations or skills to more desirable and technical skills. Online learning, depending on the nature of the instructor, is suitable to both rhetorical and experiential learning, but a lot variables come into play for a course and learning environment to be successful with student achievement.

Teaching is more than knowing content, it’s about making a connection to your students. It’s much like what makes a good actor or how to tell a good joke – it’s all in the delivery. The DLL program is no different, there are a variety of instructors with a wide range of delivery styles and, undoubtedly, they all have extensive knowledge about their subject, but to inspire and motivate their students is a different matter entirely that can’t always be defined by a syllabus. It’s not a negative, it’s just reality.

Professional Learning Plan

The most enduring understanding that I’m taking from this course is the exposure to the plethora of learning and instructional theories that I’ve been able to research. From the beginning of the program, I have written in several assignments about being excited about being able to provide a framework for my methods that I’ve been using all my career, but had no definable way of describing it other than, “that’s the way I do it” or “that’s the way I saw someone do it.”

During my teacher certification course work some years ago focused primarily on Bloom’s taxonomy and Skinner’s definition of Behaviorism and that was pretty much it.

This program has exposed me to so much more and it has challenged me to think in a more visceral sense of learning takes places and how, as an instructor, I can influence and shape learning to help my students be successful in their learning goals. The program has also exposed for me a better understanding of different research methods.

It’s difficult to calculate everything that I will apply to my teaching because I don’t think I yet, know everything that I would use. Every course has literally been an example of discovery learning because I find so many things that I find useful, relevant and interesting.

My innovation plan research supports several concepts that I have included to enhance the learning experience of students working at the University Press (UP) utilizing e-Portfolios and the instructional foundations to encourage achievement.

The research included and the plan I’ve implemented doesn’t necessarily provide groundbreaking details, but instead offers achievable reinforcement to build successful journalism, advertising and communications learning environments in higher education.

The focus of the plan and the innovative disruption (Christensen, 1997) it introduces is technological in its structure, the plan emphasizes instructional methods as the influencer of learning.

Technology has transformed all forms of media in a revolutionary and evolutionary way rapidly, especially in the last two decades, in how content is delivered to audiences large and small (Karimi, Walter, 2015).

The challenge for professionals in the field and learning institutions is how to keep pace with developing the education of new professionals entering media related career fields (ASNE, 2015).

My desire to pursue this concept is based on several years of classroom observations and numerous conversations with students, instructors and professionals regarding journalism skills for their staffs.

The heart of my plan is to affect both the classroom and the newsroom and is best summed up from Sonderman & Rosenstiel’s report to the American Press Institute (2015).

“Innovation is a product of culture. … Relatively small changes to an organization’s processes and structure can have magnified effects on its culture, which in turn can enable vital innovation in news organizations.”
My goal has always to make the approach of my innovation plan, first at the human level and then to the needs, behaviors, motivations, and problems of different types of people across the many functions of the UP and later, the Lamar University Department of Communication (LUDoC).

A second step in this process was to use the personas, as well as the insights from individual student, faculty and professional interviews and site to develop a model to help my plan advance more successfully. I always had an idea of why, what and how to do my project – but I didn’t have the words or research to construct a framework of what I wanted to do. I also knew that individual personas of students and faculty had a lot to do with the success and I wasn’t always sure how to document those interactions other than by saying vague, blanket statements like, “Howard knows a lot about grammar,” or “Andy is really good at layout and design.”

I knew that more meaning had to be applied for a concrete plan to develop and I had to identify what organizational characteristics enable innovators to thrive and organizations to evolve; identify what cultural, human and systemic obstacles get in the way of that occurring and identifying solutions to those obstacles.
What I have learned in the Digital Learning and Leading course is how to build collaboration, communication, trust and relationships with key influencers (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, Switzler, 2008).

I identified human challenges to be primarily about how people work with other humans in the organization. I still believe this to be the single biggest factor in empowering my colleagues to innovate.
My observations, interviews and crucial conversations revealed that much of the UP’s student and organizational success relies on a cultural expectation of excellence. This culture relies on resources of operation more so than funding, technology or extraordinary skill – it is best defined as a culture of learning and learning environment.

The several months of research I have done, has permitted this culture to defined in four ways:

1. Learning at the UP is student-centered, authentic and experiential (Roberts, Maor, & Herrington, 2016).
2. Learning is guided by instructors, but determined by student activity (McWhorter, Delello, Roberts, Raisor, & Fowler, 2013).
3. Learning and instruction is collaborative and reflective within peer groups of staff and contributors (Thibodeaux, Cummings, & Harapnuik, 2017).
4. Learning is contextual and is not predetermined or preassigned; is always ongoing and adaptive.

• Reinforcing research confirms the application of Leland “Buck” Ryan’s Maestro Method (1991) and a contemporary classification that can be defined under Choice, Ownership, Voice and Authenticity as described by Harapnuik (2016) and Cummins, Thibodeaux and Harapnuik (2017).

Professional Learning (PL) has been a planned component of my innovation plan from the start. I knew as my ideas developed there was a need for PL on several levels to foster success for the overall plan.

PL is one of the influence points of my innovation plan to administration and colleagues. The PL plan calls for me and my colleague Andy Coughlan to model our experiences with eportfolios since our formal application of the innovation plan beginning Fall 2015 with the University Press (UP) students.

An ideal time frame to implement a departmental eportfolio initiative would be summer prior to a fall semester simply because fewer colleagues teach summer courses and more individual attention could be applied to departmental PL. However, I have designed my innovation plan and PL to be implemented on any time frame or academic calendar.

Departmental PL would begin with small group presentations with the opportunity for at least two classroom opportunities per week over the last two weeks in May.  Individual or small group presentations could be made throughout June and July, barring faculty and staff vacations, research travel, etc. Coughlan and I would either team teach these sessions or rotate individual instruction for these opportunities.

Colleagues teaching summer courses would have the option, at the discretion of the department chair, to incorporate eportfolios for their learners as pilot programs. The eportfolio plan and faculty PL are designed to fit any timeframe. Instructional support example is support is available daily to any one – instructor or learner, via online, email or in person in the Perkins newsroom at 202 Carl Parker Building 9 a.m. - 3 p.m., Monday - Friday. Other times would available by appointment if needed. During regular semesters, Wednesday’s would not be available due to UP publication deadline and some other time blocks might not be available because Andy and I may be teaching a class at that time. Additional locations could include instructor’s individual offices and departmental lab spaces.

Additional support is provided via CourseSites, a Blackboard product, and can be used as an instructional companion to both learners and instructors. There will be a posting area on the site for instructors to provide examples of learners and their own work that could be monitored and reflected on by Andy and myself, the departmental chair and the dean.

Our faculty will have a variety of needs for personalizing and individualizing their instructional practices and as Coughlan and I lead instructional support, we are going to identify additional members to incorporate into the instructional support group. Additionally, instructors using specific learning practices will be grouped into a self-supporting resource group. For example, we have courses for video production, TV production and film production. Those instructors are going to have similar needs although the purpose of their products might be different. They are going to need support for upload and hosting large files, organizing content and access, etc. Those folks would be grouped and encouraged to begin to develop their own specialized PL and emphasizing reflection of practices for adaption or modification.

As individual support groups develop within the department, the department chair is going to devote a section of the monthly departmental meeting to address and recognize issues or examples of the program’s implementation.

Conclusion and reflection
Journalism has certain standards of determining what is news, what are the functions of a journalist, ethical and legal standards, but how a journalist goes about accomplishing those standards as performance tasks are subjective and vary greatly in many aspects (ASNE, 2015).

My innovation plan is a way to compartmentalize the learning and instruction of journalism at the UP and to extend that as a collaborative effort across to the LUDoC to align goals, strategy and culture.

There is currently no coordinated journalism structure to align the UP and the LUDoC and I see this actually as positive deviant that lends a certain element of opportunity – because there is currently no process in place for opposition (Patterson, et. Al., 2008).

The primarily measurement for alignment is the inclusion of e-Portfolios. The UP has required all editors and staffers to produce an e-Portfolio that encompasses each semester students are on staff since the spring 2016 semester. The e-Portfolio represents 100 percent of academic credit for students in UP-related classes and is a requirement for all paid-student staff to receive payment.

The e-Portfolio serves as a tool for several purposes toward creating a significant learning environment (Graves, Epstein, 2011; Cummins, Thibodeaux and Harapnuik 2017; Hubbell, Pearson, 2009; McWhorter, Delello, Roberts, Raisor, & Fowler, 2013):

• An assessment tool for both the learner and the teacher (Ring, 2015).
• A developing academic and professional identity for the learner (Graves, and Epstein, 2011).
• A collaborative reflection tool for both the learner, teacher and faculty (Roberts, Maor, & Herrington, 2016).
• Provide a platform for ongoing content creation.
• A forum for learner and instructor communication and discussion (Harapnuik, 2016).

Conclusion

My interpretations of constructivism evolved from the contributions of many theorists Piaget (1952) and Vygotsky (1978), among others. Knowledge, according to constructivists, is not fixed or external; it is individually constructed. Thus, understanding is derived through experience. Ideally, student-centered learning environments emphasize concrete experiences that serve as catalysts for constructing individual meaning. This premise is central to the design of many contemporary learning systems.

Journalism programs cannot forgo the traditional standards of quality journalism and its ultimate goal: to promote a vibrant democracy via an engaged and deliberative public. Therefore, any new curriculum must continue to draw from the old paradigms by emphasizing social responsibility, significance, relevance, accuracy, and other qualities of journalism that ASNE and the API laid out as the fundamental elements of the profession. Much scholarship has demonstrated the industry’s need for continued vigilance in its watchdog role for society (ASNE, 2015; Sonderman & Rosenstiel, 2015).

Students should not leave a program today without the basics of reporting, writing, and grammar well learned and honed. These skills must continue to serve as the basis for any new pedagogical implementations.
Following the lead of Mendelson et al. (2005) and many other scholars who called for a concentration on experiential-learning, audience-centric journalism, this article also encourages e-Portfolios as a means to assess and monitor story execution to follow-up dialogue, journalism students can be taught to incorporate an understanding of “journalism as process,” and to rethink the idea that a news article is a singular, finite product.

Robinson (2013) writes:

“Any news product must help users navigate the new world via a transportive and
transactional characteristics. Individuals want informational data that allows them to
travel across mediated domains so they can “dig deeper” into their particular interest
areas and attain certain exchange benefits from the knowledge production.
Furthermore, the act of production becomes a collaborative process between journalists
and the audience. who are now active news producers on a myriad of levels. In
reworking syllabi in this manner, a journalism professor today can ground students not
just in digital tools essential for success in the communication profession, but also in an
overall paradigm that will help them feel comfortable in their worlds post-graduation as
both producer and consumer of mediated content.”

The combination of applying a student-centered learning approach within the framework of COVA and the sustainability of e-Portfolios as a learning environment enhancement needs more time to be studied, but preliminary research findings show that it is an instrument to codify learning and organizational culture in the UP newsroom.