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My 5 Biggest ePortfolio Mistakes

Dwayne Harapnuik —  January 4, 2019 — Leave a comment

In this Learner’s Mindset Discussion. Dr. Thibodeaux and I discuss the 5 biggest ePortfolio mistakes I have made over the years. Another way to look at these mistakes is from the context of what are the 5 things I wish I did sooner? If I were to start from scratch with what I know now what would I do?

  1. Switched to WordPress Sooner
  2. Stop playing the name game (i.e. website, blog, digital portfolio, ePortfolio, etc.)
  3. Create a domain of my own
  4. Post sooner and smaller
  5. Digital dump drawer

Bonus Mistake – 5b. or 6. Effective navigation structure

The following is a short summary of the highlights from the discussion:

1. Switched to WordPress Sooner
I started teaching fully online in 1995 and I started my first ePortfolio or started keeping a weblog what we refer to as a Blog at the same time. Unfortunately, I don’t have a fully functional record going back to 1995 because I kept on chasing the next best platform. I had learned HTML (hypertext markup language) and quickly realized that this wasn’t an efficient way to post quickly and often so I started using an early content management system what are commonly called CMS back in the late 90s. Unfortunately, many of these systems like XOOPS, Hyperwave, and Mambo no longer exist and many of the CMSs like Joomla and Drupal that are still around today are not the best tool for an ePortfolio. I have lost over a decade of my posts because of this. I have many archived versions of my earlier sites exported to HTML but these archives are just too difficult to use. In early 2000 I also started posting for the institutions that I was working for and when I left those institutions all may work remained and in most cases is no longer available. From 2006-2009 I posted almost daily and while I do have an archive it isn’t easily accessible online. In 2009 I finally stopped shopping around and realized that WordPress was going to be around for the long haul can I committed to this platform.

2. Stop playing the name game
My ePortfolio is the same as my blog or as my website, or my net presence. Regardless of what you call it…this is my space on the internet that I fully control where I can share my voice, insights, ideas, and resources with others… or not. This issue also contributed to my search for the ideal platform. I know I wasn’t just blogging so I actually stayed away the early WP because it really just focused on 90% of what I wanted to do. It wasn’t long before WP matured to the point it did everything the early CMS did and much more. But I still waited for too many years to move to it and also to create my own domain.

3. Create a domain of my own.
I own many many domains which I have parked and don’t use and in 2009 I finally registered my own name and have been using this as my only website, ePortfolio, blog, or whatever you want to call it. I wasted so much time, money, and resources moving from platform to platform or trying to copy the work when I was working with a number of different educational institutions. If you are using your school or institution’s platform for your website, blog, ePortfolio, etc. you never really own it and it will stay with the institution when you leave. Once again I have lost so much of my work over the years because I made this mistake.

4. Post sooner and smaller.
Seth Godin posts almost daily and sometimes it is just a matter of 2-3 sentences. Some of these best or most memorable and useful posts have been 2-3 sentences. It has taken me WAY too long to realize that my posts don’t have to have every detail or that they need to be perfect. It is much better to get your ideas out and in the process, you start to make those meaningful connections as you reflect on your experiences. You can always go back and edit what you have written or add a Part B or follow-up post.

5. Digital dump drawer
If you want your ideas to be useful to others you just can dump all your digital content into your site and treat it like people treat a dump drawer–you know that drawer or shelf or cabinet that you just dump things into and that you can never find again. Rather than just dump assignments, essays, or other digital content into your digital container you need to create a context for this information and connect it to that context. This is an integral part of making that meaningful connection.

Bonus
5b. or 6. Effective navigation structure
Just because you know what rabbit trail to take to your information doesn’t mean others will. Building an effective navigation structure, using tags and categories, and having a functional search engine will help others find your information…so will sending your audience an accurate URL. Having a fully functional search engine will also help you and your users to find things that haven’t been titled or categorized well. When you have several hundred or thousand posts/pages on your site a search engine is a necessity not only for your user but for yourself.

Links to some of the people, sites, or tools I mentioned in LMD and this post

Levi Bikes
http://levibikes.com/

Seth Godin’s Blog
https://seths.blog

WP – CMS Market Share
https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all

WordPress history
https://codex.wordpress.org/History

Mambo history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(software)

Joomla History
https://cms2cms.com/blog/hyper-speed-joomla-history/

Evolution of the CMS
https://cms2cms.com/blog/evolution-cms-platform-caveman-homo-sapiens/

Drupal History
https://www.drupal.org/about/history

History of blogging
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/history-of-blogging

History of EduBlog
http://historyofeducationsociety.blogspot.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edublog

In Blog, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Writing , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Portfolio Model May Finally Influence Higher Ed

Dwayne Harapnuik —  August 18, 2015 — Leave a comment
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/08/05/how-nanodegrees-are-disrupting-higher-education.aspx

How Nanodegrees Are Disrupting Higher Education — Campus Technology via kwout

In this Campus Technology John Waters presents the argument that nanodegrees also referred to as “micro” online certification programs are changing the educational pathways. If you take away the new terms of nanodegree or micro degree certification courses have been around education for well over 100 years so this idea isn’t that new.

What is new and exciting is the fact that Waters identifies the significance of people being able to show potential employers what they are able to do, create or build through some sort of a portfolio. The following affirmation from Cathy Sandeen, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges and University of Wisconsin-Extension that people without traditional four years degrees are showing employers what they can do:

A growing number of industries are open to the idea of employing people with portfolio backgrounds — that is, people without four-year degrees who have done different things and can show you what they’ve done,” she said. “We see it in tech industries, especially software development, but also in creative industries — Web design, graphic design, screen writing — jobs that have traditionally been open to people who have followed different sorts of educational pathways other than the traditional four-year degree. I think we’ll see more and more certification programs that may appeal to those industries.

I find Sandeen’s statement paradoxical. A growing number of industries are employing people without degrees who can show employers what they have done and can do – so Higher Ed should focus on certification programs for these people who are getting work based on their portfolios. This doens’t follow. Furthermore Sandeen and other quoted in the article to the fact that traditional degree students are either doing after degree certifications so that they can show some sort of experience or some are doing certification training while they are in their degrees to gain experience to be able to show potential employers that they can actually create something authentic. The common factor is that students are recognizing that they need to be able to show what they have been able to do, build or create and traditional education doesn’t give them this ability.

We have to acknowledge that Higher Ed is in the business is credentialing and if the traditional credentials (four year degree) have stopped mattering as much as they used to it may be time for High Ed to consider a different form of credential. Sandeen, Thurn and most other educators from the article are pointing to these new nano, micro, meso certificates as the new credential, but perhaps the new credential should be the portfolio. More specifically an eportfolio that can show what a person has created, their creative potential and their ability to learn how to learn.

Read the full article…

In Eportfolio , , , ,
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WordPress has 60% of Market Share

Dwayne Harapnuik —  June 29, 2015 — Leave a comment
http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all

Usage Statistics and Market Share of Content Management Systems for Websites, June 2015 via kwout

With more than 60% of websites still NOT using a CMS the 24.1% of all the websites that do, use WordPress. This gives the WordPress 60.2% of the market share.

One more reason why WordPress should be considered as an excellent platform for a learning eportfolio.

Read the full post…

In elearning ,
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Making Meaningful Connections in An Eportfolio

Dwayne Harapnuik —  May 26, 2015 — 1 Comment

In his most recent book, What To Do When It’s Your Turn, Seth Godin laments that many people who apply to his seminars or for internships have no hard skills to brag about and that:

They’re happy to check off boxes like “business development” and “making a rukus” but they rarely say that they know how to code or to use CSS or even InDesign. They’ve spent so many years following instructions, fitting in, and getting good grades that they have failed to learn to do anything that independent.

The side effect of a lack of hard skills is that these very same people almost never have much to show for themselves in the way of a project portfolio, online or off. They can’t point to something and say, “I made that.”

Other than a degree or certificate these people all too often have nothing tangible to show for their many years in education. It isn’t just the evidence of being able to create something that is lacking, many of these young graduates are not able to tangibly show that they can think critically and solve problems. Godin has been pointing to this inability of many students not being able to make meaningful connections for the past several years – see my blog posts Connecting Dots vs Collecting Dots and Experts Connect Dots not Just Collect Dots. His fundamental argument bares repeating:

Without a doubt, the ability to connect the dots is rare, prized and valuable. Connecting dots, solving the problem that hasn’t been solved before, seeing the pattern before it is made obvious, is more essential than ever before.

Why then, do we spend so much time collecting dots instead? More facts, more tests, more need for data, even when we have no clue (and no practice) in doing anything with it.

Their big bag of dots isn’t worth nearly as much as your handful of insight, is it?

It isn’t just the likes of Seth Godin who is concerned about the plight of our young graduates. Generation Jobless, a Doc Zone documentary by CBC points to the crisis of an increasing number of university and college grads who are underemployed – scraping by on low-paid, part-time jobs that don’t require a degree. The documentary reveals that while there “there are no official statistics in Canada, it’s estimated that after graduating, one in three 25 to 29 year olds with a college or university degree end up in a low-skilled job.

While there many systemic ways of addressing this issue that may include more co-op programs in higher education and resolving the embarrassing fact that Canada is the only country in the world without a national body responsible for education there is a very simple and effective way for students to show everyone what they have made, the problems they have solved and the insights they have gained.

A purposefully designed learning portfolio, ideally in the form of an electronic portfolio or eportfolio, would give students a platform that they could show future employers what they have done, what they are capable of doing and perhaps most importantly how they learned how to learn. I have been very explicit in calling for a purposefully design learning portfolio because the typical assessment portfolio that too many institutions purchase separately or as an add on to their Learning Management Systems (LMS) are simply glorified digital filing cabinets where students dump artifacts (assignment documents).

These LMS add-ons or other assessment portfolio tools are not useful eportfolios because they miss the primary point of creating a portfolio. An eportfolio is not just a digital file cabinet where one show how many dots they have collected– it is domain of one’s own where the student reveals their learning journey and shows through reflection, speculation and documentation all the meaningful connections that they have made. The eportfolio itself is a space that the student creates. Perhaps most importantly, an eportfolio can be used to show a students growth and how they have matured over time and how they have made a connection between their schoolwork and their personal and professional lives.

An eportfolio developed over the span of high school to the end of undergraduate or even graduate studies is a tangible asset that can explicitly show what a student has made and who they have become. Why aren’t we striving to give all our student this type of learning and growth experience?

In Learning, Meaningful Connections , , , ,
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A Domain of One’s Own – A Learning Portfolio by Any Other Name

Dwayne Harapnuik —  December 11, 2012 — Leave a comment
https://chronicle.com/blogs/techtherapy/2012/12/05/episode-101-giving-everyone-at-college-a-domain-of-ones-own/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Episode 101: Giving Everyone at College a ‘Domain of One’s Own’ – Tech Therapy – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

Jim Groom the director of teaching and learning technologies at the University of Mary Washington has a propensity for creating great names for some very common things. Several years ago Groom referred to the approach to teaching and learning practices that results from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude as “edupunk” and the name stuck. Groom latest great name is “A Domain of One’s Own” which refers to a net presence or space that faculty and staff are given to experience the full power of the web and create a net identity that they control and own even when they leave Mary Washington University.

Groom argues that this is more than just an eportfolio or learning because there is so much attached to this portfolio idea and unfortunately, due to poorly designed commercial software this generally refers to a repository of artifacts that are collected in a digital folder. A domain of one’s own goes well beyond this limited notion and challenges the students and faculty to create their own space and choose the tools and resources that they wish to use to set it up in the way they desire.

Taking ownership of one’s learning space should be central to the learning environment in higher education and it is refreshing to see institutions like Mary Washington promoting this important aspect of the learning environment.

Hats off to Groom for yet another great name for a simple but fundamental idea.

Listen to the full podcast…

In 21st century learning ,
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